The students, charged under an obscure anti-KKK law, face up to a year in jail.
If you are charging black people with a law meant to fight the KKK, you are almost certainly in the wrong. No way white students would have caught a felony over the same thing.
It’s not a felony, it’s a misdemeanor according to the article.
Hmm, I thought I read it was a felony in the paper today
I did too, so went back to find it…
The Class A misdemeanor charges, the highest level short of a felony,
So, not a felony.
for theft of advertising services.
What did they take?
It’s phrased as “unauthorized advertisement in a newspaper or periodical."
They had a parody ad for Israel birthright travel services and I think that’s what they’re being charged for - absurd.
They wrapped the real newspaper with their parody version and left them in the newsstands. The law, as I understand, was created for the purposes of preventing the Klan from doing the same thing with recruiting flyers back in the day.
Now, to charge these students - black students, apparently? - using that same law for this situation is obviously absurd and gross; but that’s what is allowing them to do it since the “problem” isn’t the content, it’s the distribution method.
We all know they were just pissed about the content, but they found a loophole to bring charges outside of content objections (which are 1st amendment protected). Here’s hoping whoever hears their case has some sense.
It’s not an advertisement actually.
Now we’re cooking with Goodman, I like this angle.
For anyone wondering there was no money changing hands. No commerce no ability for the government to regulate it. It’s protected under the first amendment.
The law in question bans you from acquiring a paper, putting info you made inside it (literally, like putting a brochure physically inside), and then dispensing the bundle to someone else. The law is framed to claim the newspaper company is the victim when you do this, because you are benefiting from advertising “with” the paper without the paper’s consent. This was done to try and stop the KKK from doing this with recruitment paperwork, although it’s unclear to me why the law doesn’t frame itself as having consumers be the victim of fraud.
So they didn’t take anything, they just didn’t pay for something they allegedly should have.
Jesus fuck.
with the tagline “One man’s home is another man’s former home!”
Keeping in mind these are students happily living in the USA, they should’ve been charged with 1st degree Irony
They’re Black, and Black folks didn’t exactly have much choice in the matter of coming to America.
Do you think most people living in America made a choice to come there?
Neither did I.
Oh, you mean our ancestors. You’re over-generalizing. Many black people did not voluntarily come to the US, but many have, both since collonial times through today. Things got worse in the US for blacks throughout the 1700’s and after, but by no means is every black person in the US descended from involuntary (enslaved) immigrants. Voluntary immigration of black people has continued since emancipation through today in healthy numbers. Most of us did not choose to be born here.
Ok… I admit America is racist… No body has a choice??
Black people were forcibly brought over as slaves, remember? We didn’t steal the land; we were stolen ourselves and forcibly brought here. And we can’t exactly “go back” to where we came from because we don’t know where exactly “back” IS.
Oh, you poor thing.
Solid display of empathy and understanding there.
Request a jury trial. It’ll be fine.
