Protecting First Amendment Rights (while praying for the Fox-watching fools who believe this illiterate sign)

It's another beautiful day in a beautiful place, and St. Augustine Civil Rights Movement leader Dr. Robert Hayling, D.D.S., is up for consideration for the La Florida award by the City of St. Augustine tonight.  President Barack Obama has been re-elected and re-inaugurated.  In the most eloquent Inaugural Address in decades, a week ago, President Obama spoke out for environmental protection, action on Climate Change and safeguarding the rights of our "Gay and Lesbian brothers and sisters."   On December 10th, our City of St. Augustine amended its Fair Housing Ordinance to protect GLBT people, rejecting lies from hate-preachers (arguments that won the day in Jacksonville City Council back in August). (The City of St. Augustine Beach passed a similar ordinance on first reading  and will finalize it next month.)

The Koch Brothers and their ilk spent billions trying to pervert our democracy.  They lost. Meanwhile, a few Fox and Koch misled soreheads cast aspersions (or asparagus).  Count their misspellings, illogic and pejoratives (as on a datil pepper vendor's uninformed and supercilious sign, above, stating inter alia "MOUCHERS," "UNIFORMED" and "SOCIOLOGIST").

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and the John Birch Society once ran St. Augustine and rioted here, in our lifetimes, railing against equality, throwing bricks, with "Don't Tread on Me" signs brandished by KKK members in the Slave Market.

Today their ilk doesn't even get party invitations here any longer, much to their chagrin.  A local hate site laments the coming of the "Picasso Art and Arena" exhibit at our Visitor Information Center, ululating about not being invited to an art opening party).

There's still much work to be done to make our town a better place. Our federal 450th Commission is moribund, and needs to get to work on legacy projects, like the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore.  www.staugustgreen.com

And down on St. George Street, it is still illegal to sing, paint, draw or entertain -- holdover "Jim Crow" law from a prior City Manager.  Yet, despite the arrests of people for signing and painting, a small group of  pestiferous hate group members routinely infest our sidewalks with threatening, provocative signs about gun control and with hate-Obama signs (one says "Obama is a Communist" and another says "Obama is 666.").  We wear the hater's scorn as a badge of honor.   They belong to history's ashbins.  How 1964 of them!  (These are the same misguided people who oppose the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore, calling supporters "Communists and Nazis," comparing us to "Hitler, Goebbels and Stalin," opposed equality for all in St. Augustine's Fair Housing ordinance -- while worshiping weapons of mass destruction, which have killed so many Americans).

Their pestilential presence has First Amendment benefits for all of us, and for our future as a City.

St. George Street is now a First Amendment Forum again, thanks to the Tea Party's continuing presence -- it cannot be denied to artists, musicians and entertainers any longer.  City policemen sit and watch the Tea Party's hateful behavior and allow it -- therefore, the City cannot enforce its Philistine anti-music, anti-art and anti-busker ordinances any longer.

Tonight's City Commission meeting will address vendors, but it needs to address more -- public rights to Free Speech, nondiscrimination and Equal Protection -- starting with amending our City of St. Augustine Ordinance 1-08 and ending illegal artist, musician and entertainer arrests.  We want our buskers back.  The First Amendment and human decency compel that result.


What do you reckon?

Photo credits: Ed Slavin (above); St. Augustine Record (two below); and Examiner (last one below).