NYC cops dismantling all signs with PVC tubing. "TARU" members on scene in NYC.

[Fire Walk With Me]

That's the counter-terrorism unit of NYPD. Plenty of "counter-terrorism" shirts are visible. But it's a free country.

http://www.ustream.tv/occupysf

[a geek named Bob]

1. PVC makes for a nifty weaponry

Being part of the Society for Creative Anachronism, in my youth, I learned just how much damage one can do with PVC.

Peaceful protest doesn't give you the right to arm up.

My wife suggests using pool noodles instead.

[Fire Walk With Me]

2. Yes, the Spiratualution group are getting ready to...meditate or something beneath them.

The HORROR. Sometimes a thing is just a thing.

https://www.facebook.com/Spiritualution?ref=ts

Yes, they took Spiritualution's signs/PVC.

[a geek named Bob]

3. So use pool tubes/noodles

Look, guy...

Peaceful protest doesn't give you the right to carry around things that might be used as weapons.

Some other options:
-LOTS of t-shirts
-major origami
-signs on pool noodles
-bedsheet signs

It's that, or lose your signs. You DON'T have the right to carry polearms!

[Fire Walk With Me]

4. Oh yes, look at the last year's history of brutality and violence and bloodletting involving Occupy

and remember that it's all done by police. Sorry, you must have the wrong channel. This is Occupy, not...whatever you're seeing in your head. Take a look:

http://www.ustream.tv/occupysf

Even I got hit over and over with a baton...for having a camera. Sorry, you should fear the police, not us.

[a geek named Bob]

5. Fire Walk With Me...

That shift you made from "I can't have a PVC pole" to "the police are brutal"... would suggest that you want weapons...

Bad move...

What's wrong with those options I suggested?

From your shifts in logic, I do fear YOU.

I fear large groups of irrational people armed with makeshift polearms...

[Fire Walk With Me]

6. It's called mockery (of your fallacy that Occupy is violent) and juxtaposition regarding who IS.

And your either entirely forgetting it or willfully ignoring it, and that =in spite of it, we are not violent=. You can realize that we are not violent and congratulate it and wonder WTF is wrong with the cops in juxtaposition, or you can go where no man has gone before... Go ahead and imagine whatever you wish; that's the miracle of belief. You can be beholden your entire life to things entirely untrue. Gonna block you now, take care!

[a geek named Bob]

9. I see...

you want what you want, when you want it... okay

If you want to have a peaceful protest, as protected under the constitution... then you ought to be able to show that your signs aren't melee weapons...

[TreasonousBastard]

10. And you are ignoring the simple fact that while you proclaim...

nonviolence, if you have what appears to be a weapon, you will lose that weapon and it may not be in the most peaceful manner. And what is important is not whether it appears to be a weapon in your eye, but in the eyes of those who would take it away.

Changing the subject from having your PVC taken away to police actions in the past does hint that you would like that PVC in case you "need it."

I remember days when protesters carried baseball bats, and I'm sure there are some police who also remember those days. Nobody wants a return to that, and the rule has generally been nothing more lethal than thin cardboard tubing. Very thin.

[backscatter712]

18. Don't engage with the trolls.

a geek named Bob is trying to derail the thread - that's his job.

[Fire Walk With Me]

21. The freaking thought never entered my mind. However, lots of Occupy critics who ignore

one entire year of non-violence despite horrible, systematic police brutality, are certainly thinking "weapons". Thanks all for telling us what's on =your= minds. Now stop, because it's really ugly, and watch what Occupy are actually doing.

Some days, DU sounds like Fox news. Can you all hear yourselves?

[Downwinder]

7. Peaceful protest negates the second amendment?

[a geek named Bob]

8. Now that's the interesting question...

I've walked to protests with igniters in my rucksack (when a cop asked what they were, I showed him my NAR and Tripoli cards.)
I haven't had any trouble...

[TreasonousBastard]

11. Are you suggesting protestors may be armed while protesting?

Good luck with that.

[Downwinder]

12. I was questioning whether protesters give up their

Constitutional Rights by the act of protesting. If so, does that include all Constitutional Rights or only select ones?

[TreasonousBastard]

13. Cute. Now explain why a "peacful protestor" would want to be armed. Then...

continue down that bumpy road of "rights" that have been argued for hundreds of years, noting particularly that there are no "rights" that are absolute.

[Downwinder]

14. For the same reasons that people take their

CCW to a grocery store or elsewhere.

As far as rights are concerned, I just want to know which ones I am giving up by protesting. Might my vote be suppressed because I protested?

[TreasonousBastard]

15. Taking a piece to a peace rally seems a little odd...

but unless busted for a felony I doubt you'd lose your vote.

Losing your mind, though, is another question entirely.

[Downwinder]

16. I never expected to lose my vote because

I quit driving. But now that is a possibility. Poor planing, I didn't locate within walking distance of a DPS office.

[backscatter712]

19. Only if you're with the Tea Party.

Then you can open-carry assault rifles.

Remember, IOKIYAR.

If you're a teabagger, you can go to a Democratic town-hall, you can heckle to your heart's content, shout down a member of Congress, with words bordering on threats of violence, and the police will stand there, smile and wax poetic about the First Amendment.

Go to a Republican event as an Occupier and try the same thing, and twenty cops taser you, pepper-spray you, beat the shit out of you as the teabaggers cheer and chant "USA! USA! USA!", and then they give you a year-long jail sentence for "resisting arrest."

Remember, the vast majority of cops are Republicans. They became police officers because they're authoritarians. They think it's funny to beat the shit out of people, and they think the law is something they can use as a weapon against people they don't like. They don't think the law applies to them.

[limpyhobbler]

17. They always find something to harass people about.

Sounds like a typical excessive policing, over reaction.

They ought to just let the thing happen already.

[Fire Walk With Me]

20. Yep. If they'd take a look at the last year they'd understand.

Then again, they -have- been looking at us an entire year, and still don't get it.

[antiquie]

22. Don't let the basta'ds get you down.

If we let those escapees from Politics run things, we will have to go back to fighting the Vietnam War.