Wanna paste that up on a website somewhere so I can tweet it?
Or if not, can I put it in some pastebin or something ?

On 12/24/2014 07:13 AM, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 09:09:25AM -0800, Seth wrote:
>> On Tue, 23 Dec 2014 00:11:40 -0800, Robert Jakob <rsjakob@???> wrote:
>>> I was very surprised with what a small percentage of people said yes they
>>> should be allowed to protest. How did the Mall of America get
>>> $250 million
>>> in taxpayer money?
>>>
>>> Freedom of assembly is in the constitution. You don't get to
>>> protect those
>>> rights only when it's convenient for you.
>>
>> It's a weird situation. The argument or principle advanced that if a
>> legal person accepts taxpayer $$ (is there a threshhold?) from the
>> government they therefore automatically forfeit certain property
>> rights and must allow political protest on what is ostensibly their
>> property is not one I'm comfortable with.
>>
>> At the same time I have no great love for malls, mall culture, or
>> welfare of any kind, especially corporate.
>
> Some more background:
> http://www.startribune.com/business/208425631.html
>
> And now it gets weirder.
> http://www.startribune.com/local/west/286734251.html
>
> It's not the *mall* filing civil suits. The Bloomington city attorney
> is wasting taxpayer money going after organizers. It was not *the protestors*
> that caused shut downs and loss of business, it was the police, on the
> request of the mall owners.
>
> There is also this amusing commentary:
> http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2014/12/after-mall-protest-a-threat-of-overplayed-hands/
>
> which I think basically says if mall management had taken a nonviolent approach
> and allowed the protestors to stand around and sing, it would have been another
> protest that nobody cared about. But now we have an overplayed hand by one of
> the singular examples of conspicuous overconsumption, and it's almost like
> someone who hated working at the mall *wanted* this to become a political
> firestorm, and indeed it did, because it's now a huge urban/suburb political
> battle between Minneapolis and Bloomington (where the mall is), and people like
> me are throwing "why do I have to pay taxes for this crap if it's private"
> rocks.
>
> I don't have a good answer for you on the property rights issue. The mall is
> taking public tax money for infrastructure for what I think most people consider
> a public space. The place exists to be open to anyone that wants to spend money
> and buy something there. Now if a group of people that don't want to buy anything
> show up, is that really the Bloomington city attorney's problem, or just bad
> marketing and PR on the part of the mall?
>
> One store has had better sales because their employees joined in, so why is
> tax money being used to cover the bad marketing decisions of the owners?
> http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2014/12/22/lush-employees-mall-of-america-protesters-sales-up.html?page=all
> _______________________________________________
> unSYSTEM mailing list: http://unsystem.net
> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem
>