"Free Speech" Stops San Francisco Trains

I often wonder what San Francisco would be like if it didn't have its large community of wingnuts wildly indignant about nearly everything. For one thing, rush hour commutes would be a lot faster and a great deal safer. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), which daily transports thousands of working people to and from their employment in The City, has been crippled at rush hour twice in the past week.

First, the background. A few weeks back, BART police shot and killed a knife-wielding man in one of the BART underground stations. That would have been good for a one column news report. But the knife-wielder was black. That immediately resulted in the "no justice, no peace" crowd demanding the heads of the BART officers involved in the shooting. Street demonstrations began to build amidst the usual cries of police brutality and racism. But when BART officials heard that the phenomenon of "flash mobs" was about to close the downtown stations, they turned off the grid that allowed cell communications in the BART underground stations.

The word to the potential mobs had partially gotten out before the cell communications shutdown, but the number of potential demonstrators was cut considerably, resulting in a fizzled first demonstration. BART had successfully thwarted a major demonstration which in its smaller manifestation had already started to turn violent. This initial "no justice, no peace" demonstration concentrated on the shooting incident, comparing it (entirely untruthfully) to the shooting of an unarmed and subdued young criminal on the Oakland side of the Bay over a year ago.

Recognizing that even San Franciscans, for all their pathological liberal guilt were not buying this "innocent victim" agenda to support rioting, the troublemakers and their allies decided to take a new tack. Where the first demonstration was designed to stir up racial resentment and anti-law enforcement hatred, the second and much larger demonstration on Monday revolved around BART's supposed suppression of free speech when it shut down the cell phone service. Interestingly, on the day of the second, bigger mob activity, BART did not shut down the underground cell grid. This was a result of all the hysterical negative publicity it received over the prior shutdown fomented by leftist organizations and the ubiquitous ACLU. Needless to say, the demonstrators drew a moral equivalence between BART's action and the complete communications shutdown used by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to squelch criticism of and demonstrations against his government.

The left must keep hatred alive, so when the "innocent victim" trope petered out, they had to find another cause to disrupt normal activity and set citizen against citizen. Knowing that most San Franciscans and all liberals are incapable of distinguishing between free speech and free rioting, they organized their functionally-illiterate gangs to trot out the First Amendment.

Did BART shut down cell communications which said "we must stop police brutality?" No. Did it shut down communications which said "we must convince our public officials that black victims are being killed because of their race?" No. Did it shut down communications which said "organize now to get your elected officials to change the murderous policies of the BART police?" No. They shut down communications when they said: "No justice, no peace. We are going to shut down the BART trains at rush hour, and stop the police and the white power structure from ignoring racism and violence against black folks. Join us in bringing the system to a crashing halt at the following BART stations this afternoon. Be prepared to push a few people around."

That is not a call for free speech or peaceable assembly. It's a call to disrupt civil law and order, prevent non-participants from going about their daily lives, shutting down a major public operation, with a strong hint of potential violence and harm to innocent bystanders. BART did exactly what it needed to do to keep the call to civil disturbance from going any farther. It turned off the grid.

Of course by the time of the Monday demonstrations, there was no need for the agitators to use the underground cell grid. They had a week to organize above-ground to get their mobs into the BART underground stations. And they succeeded rather well. Thousands of hard-working commuters who just wanted to get home to their families were prevented from doing so by walls of angry "free speech advocates." Holding up a sign promoting free speech is, indeed, free speech. Holding up that same sign while aggressively standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a mob while blocking train platforms is not free speech.

The whole mob was quite well-organized by this time. They first gathered at the Civic Center station, and effectively shut its operation down. Sensing the growing potential violence, the police (BART and SFPD) removed the demonstrators who then gathered outside. That meant one important hub was already unable to load and unload passengers. Once the station was effectively shut down, the growing mob then marched down east on Market Street, leaving skeleton demonstrations at Civic Center so it wouldn't re-open. By the time they were done, they had stopped all trains from picking up passengers at the four busiest downtown stations.

Shouting "no justice, no peace" and flashing the black power salute, the mob intimidated those who would have attempted to cross their lines and enter the stations. That inevitably led to the police blocking the entrances to the stations in order to prevent violence down in the four underground stations. But don't forget, the Monday demonstration was only tangentially about the alleged unjustified shooting. By now, it was about free speech. If you believe that, I have this really big orange bridge located in the same city that I'm wiling to sell you, cheap.

For the safety of the public, demonstrations are forbidden by law on platforms and trains in the underground portions of the BART system (which is a level below the MUNI underground city trains). If they follow simple rules for public demonstrations, these demonstrators are allowed absolute free speech rights on the surface, including each and every BART station.

The spokesman for the ACLU came up with this spurious logic: "Governments don't have to build parks, but once they do, they can't lock out speech they disagree with." Yeah, but if the demonstrators block access to the park, or prevent people from the use and enjoyment of the park, they can be removed. It's about the activity, not the speech. And there is still the issue of obtaining a pro forma demonstration permit. Individuals can do their thing as they choose, but groups must obtain the permit for the sake of the public. The permit cannot regulate the speech or its content, but it can determine the reasonableness of the time, place and manner of the demonstration. That is a rule which has consistently been upheld by the US Supreme Court.

In the case of "spontaneous demonstrations" in the underground stations, there has been a longstanding prohibition based on public safety. The cell phone cutoff did not interfere with the demonstrators' free speech rights, it merely inconvenienced them by requiring that they go outside to organize their permitless protests. The government has the right to limit free speech when the accompanying activity could reasonably be considered dangerous to the public ("compelling state interest" test).

BART's fear was not unfounded. A few years back, demonstrators in the underground clashed with counter-demonstrators, and a bystander was shoved onto the tracks of an oncoming train. No serious injury occurred, but it was narrowly avoided by quick BART personnel action. Flash mobs, regardless of their purpose, are not exempt from rules protecting the health and safety of other citizens. If you want to use your cell phone and social networking, don't expect to be able to use them to flout the law and create an inherently dangerous situation.