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<p>She was arrested on trespassing charges and will fight it in municipal court.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8Q2OG402.html[/url]”>http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8Q2OG402.html</a></p>
<p>If the rolls were reversed, then she wouldn’t even been told to leave.</p>
<p>Like I say, it’s an interesting case. Clearly Stevens is rude, by any standard American etiquette book. One simply doesn’t make intrusive personal remarks to strangers or offer them unsolicited advice. But the Constitution protects rudeness. Harassment (which the station is alleging) is a different story though. Even though it’s just municipal court, it will be interesting to see where they draw the line.</p>
<p>How do you trespass at a bus station? It’s public transportation.</p>
<p>scary stuff, that rudeness is a crime</p>
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<p>Entering after being forbidden, most likely. IIRC, if there is sufficient grounds, even public facilities can bar certain people (or “86” as it’s known in the bartending trade). I know our local school board has gone to court to bar certain people from their meetings, and sometimes won.</p>
<p>The question is going to be whether her conduct deserved a barring. Was she just rude? Or did she cross the line into harassment?</p>
<p>I suspect it’s going to hinge on how often she made these kind of remarks, tone of voice, volume, if she continued to make them after people asked her to stop, followed them around, was making racial slurs, etc.</p>
<p>If you allow people to burn and desecrate the American flag like they do at pro-illegal immigration rallies, why should she get in trouble for saying that.</p>
<p>“If the rolls were reversed, then she wouldn’t even been told to leave.”</p>
<p>I doubt many folks would think it worthwhile to tell a 76-year-old woman she needs birth control…but there’s always one…;)</p>
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<p>I am very sympathetic to your sentiments here, but I believe that political speech should be very protected. I would much rather a city ordinance that banned profanity in public places than one that banned flag burning.</p>
<p>You can be offended by what she said all you like, but that does not mean you can take away her freedom to voice her opinion. I have seen video’s of some people ‘voicing their opinion’, directly to the police, in way that is meant to instigate; they don’t get in trouble. </p>
<p>As for it being a right to desecrate the flag, do you really think the founding fathers would appreciate that? I feel as though by dragging the flag upside down in the gutter they are saying ‘we can do whatever we want’, and it is just like spitting on the graves of all the American soldiers who have lost their lives fighting for that flag.</p>
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<p>No, they wouldn’t. I would like to think that they might personally rescue the flag from being desecrated, and that they would pass no laws forbidding it.</p>
<p>The flag was pretty far down the list of priorities for the Founding Fathers. They were quite busy protecting the Declaration of Independence, and then the Constitution including the Bill of Rights. I wish a few more people these days would share those priorities.</p>
<p>I can see how they would put limits on racially charged speech, it has potential for inciting problems. They don’t want to lose riders because of one person and most services reserve the right to deny service to someone who is messing with their business, even in the public sector I’d assume. There have traditionally been limits to free speech, we tend to limit things that have potential to incite issues. Giving birth control advice “because you’re taking over our country” and similar comments are probably not going to be tolerated if there is money being made in this operation and she’s hindering it. That’s not really limiting her speech, it’s limiting her ability to access this service (not protected by the Constitution). I suppose they have not barred her from say, making an Internet page with her views, or sending a letter to editor without political retribution, or writing a book and publishing it. She just may not go and bother people on the bus because of her track record with that.</p>