Associated Press – July 2, 2007:
Reverend Billy says he wants the New York Police Department to get right with the Constitution.
The performance artist — a cross between a street-corner preacher and an Elvis impersonator (but blond) — was arrested on harassment charges last week while reciting the First Amendment through a megaphone in Manhattan’s Union Square. On Monday, he donned his trademark white suit and returned to the scene of his alleged sin to demand that police repent.
“It feels so good to be back on the very spot where I was denied my First Amendment rights by reciting the First Amendment,” he told reporters over the din of an NYPD helicopter hovering overhead.
The video shows Talen preaching the “44 beautiful words of the First Amendment” to a visibly annoyed congregation of police commanders huddled a few feet away. At one point, an officer approaches and warns him that his sermon is breaking the law.
“What’s the law?” Talen asks.
“Harassment,” the officer answers.
When Talen persists, another officer comes up behind him and slaps on handcuffs. When being put in a police van, the satirist shouts, “We have a right to peaceful assembly!”
Because some jerk isn’t allowed to broadcast his voice at 100dB 24/7 in Times Square? I don’t think so, AA.
What many here seem to miss is that this is not about WHAT he is saying, but HOW he is saying it – with 100dB amplification that has the potential to cause hearing loss to anyone exposed for more than a brief time.
#34 Frank IBC
What Amplification? You really are dense!
100dB, who is covering their ears, You really are dense!
What, do you think he’s just using a PAPER megaphone?
Did you actually read the article, or do you just have mindless knee-jerk reactions to every sensational headline you see?
#36 I did read the article and watched the video. Rev. Billy was using a regular megaphone not an electric amplified one. Until you can prove that a regular megaphone can produce 100db, I think you should drop the melodrama.
My neighbor’s lawnmower is pretty noisy but so is mine. I am sure we both tolerate the noise so that our lawns can be mowed.
If people are worried about outside noise annoying them, then sound proof the interiors of your house and business. People should have the right to scream at a street corner and the other people should be able to scream back.
People are such whimps nowadays.
It maybe paper. The video clearly show the supposed MEGAPHONE and it has no electronics, it’s not amplified.
It also show the relative sound levels between his bellowings and people talking. No one is clasping their ears.
SO AGAIN I ASK:
What Amplification? You really are dense!
100dB, who is covering their ears, You really are dense!
Frank IBC says that it was exactly 100dB and that this man was doing it 24/7 so why are we not respecting him. He is qouting an exact figure for the noise level not an approximate one so he must have irrafutable evidence that that was the sound level. He also stated that the noise was happening 24 hours a day and 7 days a week which makes this so called person a robot and not an American so he or more accurately “It” should be allocated any rights at all. Once again why are we questioning Frank IBC. It is as if we think he is fabricating data and using hyperbole. What a sad cynical group we have become. I for one would like to appologize to Frank IBC for all the anguish he was caused by the decention he faced and the suffering he had to undergo due to the fact he had to repost his statement of facts to awaken the nonbelievers. Please forgive them Frank IBC for they know not what they do.
John S
</sarcasm>
I sincerely hope that post #40 by hhopper was not directed to my statement of facts in post #39. I would take such an indignity as an outright assault on my character. I say what I mean and mean what I say. Why I should ,in defense of Mr. Frank IBC’s good character, be subject to such slings and arrows seems indefensible by anyone goodly and righteous of character. To this I say “Goodday to you sir!” and end this post.
John S
more
Frank, you repeatedly make a point about an overly loud megaphone. Unfortunately, it does not apply here. The horn used was not amplified.
After watching the video, the city will once again pay out a sizable sum for infringing someone’s rights. There was nothing said, that I heard, or done that would rise to the level of “Harassment”.
100dB unamplified in a 24/7 delivery – wow. The guy’s got way too much audio power, not to mention stamina. It just ain’t natural. Why did the police arrest him instead of the MIB? Maybe Frank IBC can explain that.
When it comes down to the power of an individual citizen’s voice being used to exercise the freedom to speak on a public street in America versus the power of the State being used arbitrarily to punish that citizen, there is only one correct answer…
if you actually believe in the principles this country was founded upon.
Not only is this criminal endangering innocent citizens who are forced to stand right next to him and be subjected to dangerous SPLs in otherwise quiet, idyllic midtown Manhattan, but as Frank IBC sagely pointed out, he is “depriving people living in the area of the right to quiet enjoyment of their homes”.
For those unfamiliar with the site of this criminal activity, Union Square is a large public park which, coïncidentally enough, has been a traditional site of political protests for only the last 125 years, comparable to Hyde Park in London and the Mall in DC.
And if anybody lived there – sorry, Frank IBC, but no one does – they would already be quite accustomed to listening to protestors, both the amplified and unamplified kinds.
So, if you don’t see what an absolutely unAmerican thing these cops did, you really don’t grasp, on the 4th of July of all days, what American freedom is supposed to be. This is some sad shit.
No wonder almost half the voters in 2000 voted for a moran who thinks he’s the King. People, it would seem, really do get the government they deserve.
#45 Lauren the Ghoti, you can be brilliant some times. This happens to be one of them. Good Job.
Oh Frank IBC and NY finest, thanks for the entertainment and your adorable winsome ways of wit and wisdom. You both make a bloggers heart and fingers go pitter patter.
What’s really scary in the video is the almost “plainclothes” officers who are doing what, exactly? Oh, that’s right. Government surveillance of a group exercising their First Amendment rights.
America: My, what a police state you’ve grown up to be!