Anti-advertising protests in France are an inspiring holiday season corrective.

"Consumer Madness":
Photo credit, The Guardian.

Nowhere else except France could there be a "Pee in Peace" parliamentary motion to "ban video ads above urinals and toilets."

But there should be such a movement here. After a half-century or more of reducing human beings to little more than consumer drones, we're reaping what we've sown in the form of pervasive societal cluelessness.

'Advertising breaks your spirit': the French cities trying to ban public adverts, by Angelique Chrisafis (The Guardian)

Activists in Lille recently demonstrated against advertising, while Grenoble has replaced hundreds of adverts with trees and noticeboards. Could cities remove ads altogether?

On a pavement in the northern French city of Lille, an advertising panel rotated pictures of bargain Aldi prawns and blended scotch whisky, competing for the average three-second attention span of pedestrians. Suddenly a 31-year-old hospital nurse darted across the street, unrolled a mass of white paper and began to cover the ads.

“I’ve been treating sick people in emergency rooms for 11 years, but this is about treating a sick society,” he said, as he reached up with other protesters to tape the paper in place. “When you walk down the street, how can you feel happy if you’re constantly being reminded of what you don’t have? Advertising breaks your spirit, confuses you about what you really need and distracts you from real problems, like the climate emergency.”

Passersby began to gather, some baffled, some nodding. Police officers arrived to move the demonstrators on, but they were already on the move, hurrying down into the metro to cover their key target: digital video screens advertising trainers.

For decades France has had one of the most well-organised anti-advertising movements in the world, ranging from guerrilla protests with spray-cans to high-profile court cases. But now the boom in what is artfully called “digital-out-of-home advertising” – eye-catching video screens dotted across urban areas, from train platforms to shopping centres – has sparked a new spate of French protests, civil disobedience and petitions ...

Aaron Fairbanks at The Aggregate: "Reflecting on the Heyburn Nine Trial."

I'm delighted to see Aaron Fairbanks contributing to The Aggregate News.

Check out The Aggregate News! It's a well put together site that brings all of your local, state and national news to one place, and it's put together by some incredible young people in Southern Indiana. I'm excited to be taking part in this project, and I look forward to seeing where this thing goes. In an age where obtaining reliable information is difficult, this is a welcome addition to our local media options.

What better place for Aaron to begin than a primer on civil disobedience?

Reflecting on the Heyburn Nine Trial, by Aaron Fairbanks (The Aggregate News)

... Three of the nine protesters—Courtney Kearney, Sonja DeVries and Bob Eiden—proceeded to a public two-day trial beginning on May 16, 2019 to shine a light on the atrocities that they were fighting against that day, and they were found guilty of trespassing but were lucky enough to have a sympathetic jury exercise leniency with their sentence. Each of them left the trial on the second day with a $150 fine satisfied by previous fines paid in their Federal case. But civil disobedience isn’t always given the benefit of the doubt before the law by any means with the absence of statutory protections for those who act in civil disobedience.

The many cases of civil disobedience are cemented in our history. Susan B. Anthony was arrested in Rochester, New York in 1872 and later convicted for voting preceding the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Rosa Parks was arrested and convicted for violating a city ordinance segregating public buses as well as disorderly conduct. Then perhaps most applicable to the Heyburn Nine case was the conviction of the Friendship 9, a group of student protesters who were convicted for trespassing and disturbing the peace when they staged a sit in at a private whites-only establishment at a time when there were no statutory protections prohibiting discrimination by private entities on the basis of race ...

R.I.P. Dick Leitsch. His "sip in" was a pioneering act of civil disobedience, clearing "the way for gay bars to operate openly in New York State."

Photo credit: The Villager.

“If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, not as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country, one's fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles.”
― Howard Zinn, The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy

Time for a history lesson.

Dick Leitsch, Whose ‘Sip-In’ Was a Gay Rights Milestone, Dies at 83, by Robert D. McFadden (New York Times)

 ... Three years before the Stonewall Inn uprising accelerated the gay rights movement in America, Mr. Leitsch challenged the common practice of bars’ serving gay customers under a no-questions-asked arrangement necessitated by an unwritten State Liquor Authority policy that regarded homosexuals as inherently “disorderly.” Bars that knowingly served them could have their liquor licenses revoked.

The policy, supported by no law and apparently unconstitutional because it precluded the right to free assembly, led to charades by gay men and lesbians. They would sometimes minimize their sexual identities by avoiding affectionate touching or dancing with one another or any other conduct that might be interpreted as “queer.” Bartenders looked the other way and poured the gin.

It was just another of the countless indignities and rights violations that gay men and lesbians endured in an age when vice squads raided bars frequented by gay clientele and entrapped men in homosexual “encounters.” Many publications, including The New York Times, referred to gay men and lesbians as “sexual deviates.”

Hypocrisy infected the era. Gay men and lesbians were widely regarded as sick by the medical establishment, sinners by the clergy and criminals by the law. Judges accepted the testimony of undercover officers who had solicited sex from gay men and then arrested them. For those with a name, job or family to protect, lewdness charges could carry fines, jail time and ruinous publicity ...

MLK Day 2018: "On MLK Day, acknowledge the past to improve U.S. future."

Photo Credit: Indy Star.

Something to remember.

Baghdad on Bono: Jeff Gahan spent so much time planning to topple Bob Lane and annex NAHA that he forgot to plan the Pyrrhic victory parade.

"Gahan's people-purge is not exclusively racial, but on principle, it is the same. MLK Jr. Day should be a moment when JUSTICE is a top priority. Denounce Gahan and his expulsion plan."

Something to read.

On MLK Day, acknowledge the past to improve U.S. future, by John B. King Jr. (Baltimore Sun)

To truly honor Martin Luther King’s legacy, it is important for us not only to celebrate the progress that the civil rights movement made possible but also to grapple with the full truth of our nation’s history, to acknowledge the inequities with which our society still struggles and to recognize our individual responsibility for social change.

As I reflect on our continued march toward social justice, I’m reminded of one of the most moving experiences from my time as U.S. secretary of education. It was in St. Paul, Minn., visiting the J.J. Hill Montessori Magnet School — the public elementary school where Philando Castile worked and was beloved by children, teachers, staff and families ...

All organizing is local: How to throw sand in the gears of Trumpism.

When Republican lawmakers already are proposing to outlaw free speech by banning public protests that interfere with the convenient operation of automobiles, it's merely more proof that the loony bins have been emptied and the occupants have been elected to State Senate.

As we await Ron Grooms' inevitable vote in favor of gutting the Constitution, but not before he asks One Southern Indiana for permission, here are two articles from The Nation.

First, what you'll have to be doing quite apart from posting resistance memes on Facebook.

Throw Sand in the Gears of Everything, by Frances Fox Piven

When it comes to stopping Trump, petitions aren’t going to do it.

Chanting crowds are the familiar insignia of movements. And I think movement politics may even make resistance to a Trump regime possible. But while the great movements of American history were the crucial determinant of our most important democratic reforms—from the basic electoral elements of representative democracy, to Emancipation, to labor rights, to women’s and LGBTQ rights—none of these movements achieved their successes simply through the gathering of people to show their commitment. People gathered, of course, but what makes movements a force—when they are a force—is the deployment of a distinctive power that arises from the ability of angry and indignant people to at times defy the rules that usually ensure their cooperation and quiescence. Movements can mobilize people to refuse, to disobey, in effect to strike. In other words, people in motion, in movements, can throw sand in the gears of the institutions that depend on their cooperation. It therefore follows that movements need numbers, but they also need a strategy that maps the impact of their defiance and the ensuing disruptions on the authority of decision-makers.

Piven observes that "political leaders in big cities are beginning to provide just that sort of electoral resonance and encouragement," and while noting that New Albany is a small city without a coherent leader in a county that voted overwhelmingly for Trump, there is at least a possibility that cities can be incubators for the resistance.

We may even be able to do some of it here, but if so, it will come without either political or community pillar support -- and on occasion, you might be forced to miss an IU basketball game. Sorry about that.

Cities Have the Power to Finally Bridge MLK’s ‘Two Americas’, by Ras J. Baraka and Ryan P. Haygood (The Nation)

The solutions to the enduring problem of economic inequality will have to come from the ground up in our cities, not from Washington, DC, down

Fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., looked to our city, Newark, New Jersey, and other urban communities and explained that the country consisted of “two Americas,” divided by race.

... At this critical juncture in our nation’s history, on the eve of the presidential inauguration after one of the most divisive and racially charged presidential campaigns in history, our cities hold incredible promise to advance an agenda that unites us, and to incubate progressive solutions to finally bridging the two Americas.

To do this, we must ensure that every person has access to economic opportunity through employment that pays a true living wage. This is the most direct way to confront poverty in our nation, and to bridge our class and race divides.

The solutions to the enduring problem of economic inequality will have to come from the ground up in our cities, not from Washington, DC, down.

ASK THE BORED: As for stopping gun ignorance, "This board is not into civil disobedience."

At some point, I'll know better than to schedule personal meetings for Tuesday morning. On June 21, a lawyer; on the 28th, my mother's medical appointment; and this morning, something I hope might lead to part-time work. To avoid the feeling of letting the side down yet again, here is an amusing excerpt from last week's BOW meeting.

Chairman Nash's questioning of Citizen Natale is absolutely priceless. Nash's deadpan expressions drip from the .pdf, don't they? Coming fresh on the heels of the College Girls Gone Wild saga on Lynn Drive, the chairman must be scanning the room for candid cameras.

Did Natale's "civil disobedience" seminar come to pass amid yesterday's rain? Or did he keep his powder dry?

Stemler on road-pounding trucks: “A (truck) carrying 20 tons of asphalt or crushed stone – we're taxing (the Clark Memorial Bridge) an awful lot."

Yesterday: One Southern Indiana's hypocrisy is absolutely reprehensible.

To Kerry Stemler, hypocrisy is an art form.

He is a soul-crushing oligarchic corporate criminal suitable for tarring and feathering, or worse.

And these "road-pounding" trucks ... the many trucks belonging to Stemler's own businesses and those of his fellow regional wealth extractors?

Naturally, they need to be kept off the toll rolls, and also off the Clark Memorial Bridge, but are just fine and dandy when speedily rerouted through residential streets in New Albany ... which like the bridge, were not constructed for the use of such vehicles, which is why their presence preferably comes with the full cooperation of New Albany's OWN ELECTED GOVERNMENT, which is happy (or sufficiently clueless) to oblige with nary a peep.

Louisville chamber chair backs commercial truck ban on Clark Memorial Bridge, by Marcus Green (WDRB)

... Besides his GLI position, Stemler sits on the boards of the Finance Authority and a six-person panel in charge of the bridges project's toll policy. In an interview, he said he plans to use his influence to push for several other ideas included in Dant Chesser's letter.

Specifically, Stemler said he also favors reclassifying certain heavy vehicles to avoid the toll rates charged to tractor trailers and exempting Transit Authority of River City buses from tolls.

Notice the deft public transit touch. Fortunately, we have plenty of old masonry walls hereabouts ready to be pressed into service following the show trial.

Bluegill provides the coda, as posted yesterday:

Today is street sweeping day in front of our house-- you know, spend hour after hour writing tickets penalizing residents for minute, non-moving infractions while thousands of cars and large trucks whiz through their neighborhood at 45 mph day. As such, residents crammed all their cars onto the side street to avoid the harassment. With said cars parked on both sides, the folks profiting from the Main Street Bicycle Denial Project placed their barricade right in the middle of the street so no one could get out without backing up down half the street and turning into the glass strewn alley where the street sweeper might actually be useful but never goes. I moved the barricade. Will again tomorrow. It's come to that.

Yes, it has come to that -- with New Albany's streets, and on Kerry Stemler's pet bridges, and the best strategies for coping with both have narrowed to calculated, principled civil disobedience. It may be the best single mayoral campaign idea for 2015.

But wait ... what was that?

You can't see how it is possible for a government sworn to uphold law to instead express disobedience?

Come now.

It hasn't been that long since Doug England publicly announced that he wouldn't enforce his own parking regulations. England didn't strike them, but merely renounced their enforcement. The ordinances remain on the books, and the city continues to ignore its own laws.

As we speak, I suspect those same heavy trucks that inspire throbbing erections on the part of the likes of Kerry Stemler are being exempted from speeding enforcement in New Albany, and I'll continue to believe it until someone within our close-mouthed City Hall proves to me otherwise. If the local chain newspaper can't or won't ask the questions, I will.  

Isn't it an act of willful civil disobedience for a sitting mayor not to enforce the city's own ordinances? If not, then what exactly is it?

Consequently, to campaign for the office of mayor on an explicit platform of civic disobedience as it pertains to matters like one-way streets and Stemler's auto-erotic tolling project strikes me as the most ethical choice available to a candidate.

Apart from drinking beer, that is. I vow to achieve that, too.

CM Caesar issues call: Save our Pearl Street from the free-love, two-way drunken pergressives ... arm yourselves with white bread ... don't be scared to use it!

When it comes to bridge tolls, let's vote with our pants.

I hope Jeff doesn't mind my reprinting his Facebook status below. It is a valuable first step in the impending discussion of civil disobedience to tolling, which I enthusiastically support.

Curtailing or ending trips across the river because of tolls will only the hurt the small, independent businesses we all care about rather than the gutless bastards who deserve it. There's no sense in punishing those businesses, especially the ones who paid enough attention and cared enough to fight tolls. What makes sense is mass civil disobedience. Keep on crossing but just don't pay - no transponder, no registered account, no financial exchange at all. There won't be any gates to stop people. What are they going to do? Suspend everyone's license and registration? It would also be fun to put small photos of each of our backsides on our license plates so they have to look at photos of them over and over again, but that's optional.

Resistance: How the NA/FC School Board should respond to state legislators.

Civil disobedience against irresponsible rule is a founding principle of this country. The school board has already passed one resolution against the state takeover of our local schools. That spirit should continue and they should be willing to put it into practice rather than just on paper.

Should those already outlined and further rules hostile to public education and local control be put in place, the NA/FC school board should simply refuse to follow them.

Stand up for teachers.

If the legislature guts collective bargaining as the governor intends, the board should give teachers even more negotiating rights.

If the legislature implores teacher evaluation rubrics, the board should ignore them and develop their own in consultation with teachers, students, and other members of the community.

If the state increases curricular mandates, the board should give teachers more leeway to decide what to teach and how to teach it.

And when the state declares that our local schools aren't performing the way some brute from Terre Haute or Anderson says they should according to resource-wasting tests that do little to nothing to measure actual student aptitudes and abilities, simply shrug it off and go on educating.

Citizens, on the other hand, should have their backs.

It's ridiculous to think that the state will somehow make teachers better by weakening their ability to determine what's best for their students, classrooms, and schools, hypocritical to say that charter schools perform better because they don't face such rigid state oversight while simultaneously prescribing more rigid state oversight for other public schools, and ridiculous to run for state office on a platform of lessened government intrusion and then declare local citizens unable to render community-wide decisions for themselves.

Whether in the media, in the court room, or at the ballot box, we can force the governor and legislators to explain how and why they think they are more qualified than local teachers and citizens working together to make decisions for our community's children, how and why they think standardized curricula and rote testing leads to innovation, and how and why competition, the very nature of which stands to pit schools against each other rather than proactively sharing best practices, is both necessary and just.

We owe ourselves that. Don't give in.

After the loving: Long live the once and future King, and pity those bar owners who know so very little.

To fully and accurately document the reason why Jeff Gahan officiously ordained the removal of my considerable bulk from last evening’s shambolic city council proceedings, one would be compelled to chronicle at length Gahan’s recent inexplicable descent into legislative incoherence and his growing, almost medieval personal animus toward anyone with the temerity to note publicly that this particular successor to King Larry seems to be wearing ever fewer articles of clothing when appearing on the street.

Or, as I observed even as I was being removed, precisely how and why Gahan has traversed the territory between onetime relevance (now been there, done that, and swapped the t-shirt with Dr. Harris) and the vicinity of the dark side – where his political mail is now delivered and presumably going unread.

At any rate, it is a task that would require far more than a minute, which after a grand spanking total of one (1) public hearing on the matter of smoking within the New Albany was all the time accorded to the numerous sincere and cooperative residents crowding into a meeting room impossibly tiny in the best of times, and utterly unsuited to the three ring circus that Gahan knowingly permitted to devolve (and deprecate) on Thursday night.

If Gahan genuinely cared about the public, which convened to oppose the city's chihuahuan smoking ban (later approved by identical 5-4 votes) to the tune of around 40 speakers to 13 (by the council’s own past standards of selectivity, far more than the minimum needed to defeat the most rock solid of rezoning proposals), the meeting would have been held in a larger room on another continent, but then it would have been necessary to actually listen.

How unspeakably tedious that would have proven, hence proceedings as usual.

What struck me was that those in attendance opposed to the smoking ban for the most part graciously accepted Gahan’s one minute solution, when they really should have asked why an issue second only in vitriol to abortion and the sad history of Southern slaveholding deserved such short shrift, but nonetheless, good natured compliance was the norm.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said of the professional lobbyists in the room, those for-pay consultants that the flip-flopping ban proponent Dan Coffey formerly accused of being unreliable when comapred to his own vast reserve of knowledge on matters ranging from tobacco to kitchen utensils. Perhaps for this very reason, Coffey sat stoically and mostly silently last night, gently nuzzling his Bazooka Joe divinity degree and playing championship notepad dots while the paid pros droned far past Gahan’s purely random time length meter to the council president’s purely calculated obliviousness.

Yes, but wait. Who am I -- who are we -- to question any of Jeff Gahan’s strategies and tactics? Didn’t we get the council mantra memo, which decrees that freedom of speech in New Albany is dependent on running for office and being elected? Perhaps NAC’s loyal readers should share the frequent joy experienced by this blog’s editorial team, wherein elected officials berate us and dismiss criticism both from ourselves and the electorate in the same terms that most people denigrate houseflies or maggots, under the curious dictum that we’re mere annoyances and couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to actually perform before the public for pay … or, as one of them recently put it, if a citizen has not run for office, said citizen should know enough to stay quiet, and barring that, ask for de facto permission before speaking aloud to the world.

Strange, isn’t it, how writing skill and the inability to respond in kind unnerves elected officials ... but, as always, I digress.

Meanwhile, understand that the straw finally breaking this camel’s/voter’s back was a five minute (at least) display of condescension from one of the paid lobbyists, who refrained from using science to illustrate the threat to workers posed by second hand smoke (award yourself a Gahan for Mayor '11 button if you dimly recall the time when SHS was the ostensible purpose of the ordinance, if entirely obscured by last evening’s theatrics), but instead aggressively attacked the pub owners present for knowing far less about the nature of their businesses than he and his statistics do.

Still wondering why I don’t blush when using terms like “health fascist”? Wonder no more.

I concede that this angered me. It still does. Had Gahan the simple courage to enforce his own rules (or, for that matter, the city’s), the lobbyist would have spoken far fewer words in a minute than in the five he was accorded, although to be honest, the words were tantamount to inadmissible, but then again, this is an illegally elected council that can’t or won’t redistrict itself in a city that can’t or won’t enforce its own laws, so what the hell: Consistency? That’s something they do over in them socialist countries after using the toilet, right?

There has been no eagerness to discuss the reality that those bar owners who stand to be hurt the most by the smoking ban are those who cater to a lower personal income strata, which itself is populated by more smokers than higher income levels. In short, the same people in need of protection from carnivorous slumlords are being told by Gahan and Co. that it’s more important to save them from themselves (save them from smoking in a bar) first and foremost, and then the rest of the public health issues will be addressed later – hey, trust us; we can’t pave the streets or resolve centuries-old sewer disputes, but we can publicly scoff at your vice even if it requires in excess of a minute … and, by the way, bar owners who have remained in business by knowing what their customers want mustn’t forget that an out-of-town dude in a bad suit always knows far more about the needs of their clienteles than they do.

One of our readers (I believe it was Ruthanne, but I may be mistaken) previously supplied the answer to the final piece of this bizarre puzzle in a blog comment. Bar owners, did you know that after this particular rug has been pulled from beneath your feet by the Ga-hanannies in local government, and should the unthinkable occur and your business actually close as a result of your no longer being able to cater to your customers, that when all is said and done, it was your own fault?

That’s right, guys and gals. According to the stats lovingly compiled by the suits from Indy, Atlanta and Tirana, you failed for one of two reasons. Either you were incompetent to begin with, or you were ready to retire, anyway. Get it? Before last evening, how many bar owners understood how very little they’ve ever comprehended about their own business matters? It’s a wonder you ever remained open in the first place, seeing how little you know. Must have been the conspiratorial nicotine in those butts, eh?

Don’t you feel better about yourselves now?

Sorry, but it’s all bullshit, plain and simple, and probably even Jeff Gahan and John Gonder – for that matter, even the saintly Jamey Aebersold -- know it, but in the end, science played next to no part in the smoking spectacle, which was about little more than creative sociological condescension and Gahan’s pathological eagerness to hang his political hat on it.

So, I snapped my fingers, King Jeff glared, and the animus was on. Rest assured, it will remain. I’ll let All4Word tell the rest of the story. His account is trustworthy. I was too busy trying to fathom the irony of the council president's empty seat to document the ejaculation.

----

For the early a.m. record: I suspect that Mr. Baylor knew he would be "ejaculated" from the meeting, but proceeded with his protest nonetheless.

A gentleman who is paid to advocate for public health (prohibitions of smoking in enclosed public spaces) attempted to squeeze in an encyclopedia-full presentation into the mandated ONE MINUTE limit imposed.

While almost no one complied, and while President Gahan wasn't particularly vigorous in enforcing his limit, this lobbyist not only presented much information quickly, but read aloud a letter from Lexington, Ky.'s vice-mayor - a man who owns 86 non-smoking franchise restaurants.

At long last, Mr. Baylor objected vocally to the filibuster. (I wanted to hear what he had to say, but I'll admit he went very long past the time limit.)

RAB, at first, politely inquired as to why this particular gentleman was being allowed to go on and on. Once Mr. Gahan identified the source of the outburst, the die was cast.

Roger escalated his complaint with each of Gahan's shoutdowns, accusing the council president of bias and favoritism and ultimately demanding of the speaker an answer to "Did you PAY for this (preferential treatment)?"

Perhaps the tipping point was when the speaker said, in effect, that the restaurateurs and tavernkeepers were gullible doofuses who were not just expressing their fears and honest opinions, but were rather the dupes of a cabal of their industrial lobbies and the tobacco companies, parroting cooked data sets as facts.

In fact, many were citing cooked or nonexistent data and expressing earnest fears and opinions.

IMHO, the speaker's accusations were permissible argumentative rhetoric - rhetoric similar to that often employed even here and more often at the trog blogs.

But to even imply that Roger was the dupe of a corporatist conspiracy (and though he was not named like other publicans, the implication/accusation was pointedly aimed a business owners opposed to the ban) was undoubtedly the last straw.

In effect, NAC's senior editor changed his game plan when the opportunity was presented. A more important point needed to be made, and he made it.

Roger dared Gahan to "ejaculate" him, and while it was unfortunate that it happened in the presence of Mrs. NAC, and more unfortunate that it meant the Publican would miss the official debate, it was Roger's choice.

Rest assured, our hero extracted every second of possible drama from the moment. The expulsion held the pomp and circumstance of a royal procession, with appropriate barbs disseminated throughout the recessional.

Roger was even accorded the honor of expulsion through the NORTH doorway, the hallowed ground of the privileged class.

I've always maintained that there is no shame in civil disobedience if you are willing to pay the price for it - arrest.

Fortunately, the disobedience was civil, so detention was not required, although I fingered my wallet for bail money, just in case.