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News :: Civil & Human Rights : Elections & Legislation : Protest Activity |
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US presidential candidates arrested |
Current rating: 0 |
by anon
(No verified email address) |
09 Oct 2004
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Badnarik, Libertarian, and Cobb, Green, have both been arrested in St. Louis after attempting to serve papers on the Commission on Presidential Debates. |
Michael Badnarik and David Cobb, presidential candidates of the Libertarian and Green parties, respectively, have been arrested in St. Louis after crossing a police line surrounding the presidential debate between Kerry and Bush at George Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Badnarik was attempting to serve legal papers to the Commission on Presidential Debates to protest their exclusion of third parties from the debates.
http://www.badnarik.org/newsfromthetrail.php?p=1346
http://www.votecobb.net/news/arrested |
See also:
http://newswire.indymedia.org/en/newswire/2004/10/811486.shtml
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This work is in the public domain |
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David Cobb and Michael Badnarik Arrested |
by David Baake
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
10 Oct 2004
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The Green presidential candidate David Cobb and Libertarian nominee Michael Badnarik were arrested on Friday attempting to participate in the 2nd Presidential Debate that took place in St. Louis. The men passed through the police barricade that was intended to enclose demonstrators, keeping them away from the scene of the debate and ensuring that their message was heard by as few people as possible. They intended to participate in the debate, claiming that it was illegal for a debate funded by public money to place restrictions on who could join in the discussion of issues facing the country.
Apparently, both men were handcuffed and sent to jail for an undetermined amount of time. However, both men are cheerful and proud of their resistance. "The real crime is the corporate hijacking of our democracy," says David Cobb. Previously that day, Cobb and Badnarik had participated in a third party debate, which also included Walt Brown of the Socialist party and Mike Peroutka of the Constitution Party.
The arrest of Michael Badnarik and David Cobb is an act of repression against political dissident and an attack on the freedom of speech. Their arrest is hardly something unexpected, indeed, it is a growing national trend for people with alternative political ideas to be denied their freedom of speech as the corporate and imperialistic political viewpoints are hammered into the public conscious constantly by media devices.
It is time to destroy the restraints on freedom of speech in this country. As a supporter of free political discourse, I believe the arrest of Mr. Cobb and Mr. Badnarik to be entirely unacceptable. It is imperative that people on the Left make the public aware of the repression that is going on, be it the ‘free speech zones’ in New York at the RNC or the monopolization of public debates by corporate parties.
http://newswire.indymedia.org/en/newswire/2004/10/811575.shtml |
