It was 105 days ago (three months and 13 days ago) that U.S. District Court Judge Brian Jordan Davis heard oral arguments challenging eleven (11) First Amendment violating City of St. Augustine city ordinances.
Artists, musicians and those who agree with Mayor Nancy Shaver that "our streets are not lively" await his decision in the case brought by four visual artists, ably represented by lawyer William Sheppard's firm.
The angst and anger from City officials who habitually violate First Amendment rights is palpable. City managers and their minions are anxious -- they're misbehaving, acting out, acting meanly, behaving nastily and not hiding their fear and loathing of the expected 2015 federal court intervention against the latest manifestations of "Jim Crow Law" in the City that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called "the most lawless city in America," a City repeatedly found by federal courts to be violating First Amendment rights, in 1963-64, 1999, 2005 and 2009, etc.
While three present and former City Commissioners attended the memorial service for artist Greg Travous, art and music remain crimes on our City streets, with eleven (11) ordinances possibly about to be declared unconstitutional by Judge Davis.
Meanwhile, Bruce Kevin Bates, lead plaintiff in both 2009 and 2015 actions, is picketing near our Slave Market (below), where civil rights protesters gathered in 1963-64, opposing Jim Crow segregation and its vicious enforcement by Police Chief VIRGIL STUART and Sheriff LAWRENCE O. DAVIS (who is honored on Sheriff DAVID BERNERD SHOAR's website).
Plaintiff Bruce Kevin Bates picketing, December 1, 2015, photo credit: Charles Dickinson
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