Women Against War just sent this E-Mail:
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Organizers were called today by the Associated Press and other reporters who wanted our response to the following:

Yesterday at Crossgates Mall a 31 year old man and his father purchased t-shirts that read: (front) Give Peace a Chance, and (back) Peace on Earth. The two men put on their shirts and continued their shopping.

They were soon approached by security guards who requested that the men remove their shirts or leave the mall. The 31 year old removed his shirt, but his father refused. His father was arrested.

The father has been arraigned in Town of Guilderland court today on Criminal Trespass charges.

Our response:
Meet at the Women's Building 10-11am to purchase your antiwar t-shirt ($15 regular price, $12 if you are willing to be arrested in the shirt!)

We will meet at Crossgates Mall at Noon... meet at the entrance left of the Bugaboo Creek moose (lower level, Western Avenue side).

Wear your antiwar t-shirts and buttons. No signs, please. We are going shopping at the mall to demonstrate that We Don't Buy This War!

Please make every effort to attend this action, and bring a friend. If we are asked to leave the mall, you may leave at that time without being arrested. Those who wish to refuse to leave may be arrested as an act of civil disobedience.
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This is not the first time that people wearing t-shirts promoting peace have been asked to leave this mall... I am not sure whether I will be directly involved in this protest, because I am fasting at the Women's Building for 24 hours, beginning at 5:30 tonite... so I will probably stay there, although I will ask for advice from the Director of Women Against War... I am willing to be arrested in this case... (and yes, there is a moose at the meeting place!)

You have got to be kidding.
Is this true?
I am really having a hard time believing this Wyld. Did these guys do anything else besides just wear these shirts?
Who owns this mall......the Bush family?

Just be sure that nobody is yanking your chain on this, it sounds just to weird to be true.

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by Larry on Mar 04, 2003 ---</FONT></center>

no... it IS true...
About a month and a half ago, a similar situation resulted in six or seven women being asked to cover their shirts/remove their buttons... or leave the mall. They felt they were within their rights, since the nowadays mall substitutes for the "village green" of old. They chose to leave the mall. There was a protest march outside the mall the following week ...

Don't know who owns that mall... but I won't actually SHOP there...

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by Wyldflower on Mar 04, 2003 ---</FONT></center>

Larry, I don't know anything about this particular situation, but I don't find it as weird as I'd like to. This isn't the 60s and people aren't acting the same way. An awful lot of people who don't agree with this peace movement seem to think it's legitimate to stop it by any means available, and freedom of speech doesn't seem to mean anything anymore.

that is really, really scary, wyld! if this is the point we've gotten to in this country, we're in bigger trouble than i thought!

Thank goodness they picked on someone who can defend himself, I hope those bastards get taken to court for their actions. I would sue, the mall and the security company that hired the guards who called the cops.

<FONT size="6">PEACE NOW</FONT s>

.....that is a scary story.....
...though not so different than some 60's stories on the NJ Turnpike......
....but it's scarier that this time some of our civil rights have been legislated away...

....i've been inspired by groups of folks, mostly women, but some men....who believe the vulnerability of no clothes can be a powerful statement.....

...the site is G rated.....nothing is visually offensive.....unless you don't agree with "No More War"...
http://www.baringwitness.org

Yep... it was an exciting day for me...

I was one of the 100-150 protestors at Crossgates mall...
My day started out relatively quietly, doing my 24-hour rotation in the Women Against War Fast for Peace (I was the 90th participant, and we finish the fast on Saturday, International Women's Day). I had much time for reflection, and it was wonderful. Then people started coming in to the Women's Building to buy teeshirts to wear to the protest. We sold about 50 shirts, and many people, of course already had shirts with appropriate messages.

We went to the mall intending to test the policy about wearing peace shirts... but since there were so many of us, the mall security declined to get involved at all... and did not even come to our assistance when someone assaulted one of our ralliers... they locked themselves in the security office and called for Mall Management to send someone to talk with us. They gave us a copy of their press release about Mr. Downs' arrest, which claimed that he had been disruptive. Mr. Downs is known to many of us, and when he says he was not disruptive, we believe him.

So now, since we were planning a similar demonstration on Sunday, the mall management has dropped the charges against Downs. They think we are going to go away, but that was only one of our demands... the other demand is that they clarify their policy about "clothing with disruptive messages"... we have all seen kids wearing shirts bearing obscene or profane messages, with impunity. The policy should be uniformly applied... perhaps they need a "TeeShirt inspector" at the entrances to the mall. ... an interesting side note: the shirts that the Downs gentlemen were wearing? they were made for them at one of the shops in that mall!

So anyway... there is some discussion about baring witness... www.baringwitness.org ... and if asked to remove our peace tee shirts, we will... the same message will be there on skin!

today's New York Times, Section B, page 1

<img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif" width=15 height=15>

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Wyldflower:





So anyway... there is some discussion about baring witness... www.baringwitness.org ... and if asked to remove our peace tee shirts, we will... the same message will be there on skin!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, as the saying goes "fight fire with fire" so why not "fight boobs with.....boobs?" <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif" width=15 height=15> <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/confused.gif" width=15 height=22>

Our organizers decided that this is not the time nor the place to do this type of protest, although it was seriously considered... but we will plan something for baring witness in the not distant future...

Congrats Wyldflower on the great job you're doing with your protests!!

You make us proud!

<img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif" width=15 height=15>

Here's a link to a follow-up article...

Ban carries message far beyond mall

We are still planning a second action on Sunday, meet at Crossgates Mall at Noon. Our questions about mall policy and selective enforcement of that policy have yet to be answered...

Also... having taken my turn in the Women Against War Fast for Peace, I participated in a Press Conference this afternoon, which announced the conclusion of the rotating fast, in which more than 92 women participated. (I can be seen standing on the steps with many of the other fasters...) I'll send you a link to anything on that event when I have it...

It's really nice to have my "independence" from certain family situations... it's much easier for me to get active... and remember that Peace=Love, and to Love is an Active Verb... not passive!

And ya know... I love you guys!

... and in today's NY Times:
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March 7, 2003
Mall Case Creates Antiwar Celebrity
By WINNIE HU


ALBANY, March 6 — Stephen F. Downs started the week as an unassuming state lawyer nearing retirement whose idea of political protest was to wear a "Peace on Earth" T-shirt at the local shopping mall.

Now Mr. Downs is a celebrity, fielding hundreds of interview requests from the likes of Connie Chung, Bill O'Reilly, the BBC and News Australia. This morning, even his wife's relatives in the Netherlands called after reading about him in a local newspaper.

"I'm completely an accidental symbol," Mr. Downs, a 60-year-old father of three from Selkirk, N.Y., said today with some embarrassment. "There are more committed people to the peace movement who deserve more credit, but my thing is that everyone has the right to speak out about it."

Mr. Downs owes his sudden fame to the security guards at the Crossgates Mall on the outskirts of Albany, who called the local police on Monday night when he refused their order to take off the T-shirt, which had "Give Peace a Chance" on the back, or leave the premises. He was arrested for trespassing.

Mr. Downs said that he had never attended an antiwar demonstration (that he can remember, anyway) and that, until he had the shirt made, the most he had done in the way of political protest was to write a series of carefully worded letters to his congressman.

"It's funny," he said. "No one asked my opinion about anything before, and now suddenly the whole world wants to know."

Although the mall decided on Wednesday night not to pursue the trespassing charge, the news began to circle the globe, and the calls came pouring in. An Albany public radio station worked him into a fund-raising campaign as a symbol of free speech, raising a record amount. Talk radio hosts from Kansas City to London were on the phone. He said that even the conservatives on "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox, though not agreeing with his antiwar position, were sympathetic.

Mr. Downs, the chief lawyer for the Commission on Judicial Conduct, has spent so much time running from one interview to the next that he said he had not watched himself yet on the news. "It's been wild," he said. "It feels like a feeding frenzy."

It all began when Mr. Downs and his son, Roger, 31, an ecology consultant, ordered custom T-shirts at a store in the mall and wore them over their clothes to the mall's food court. Upon a security guard's request, his son later removed his T-shirt, which read "No War With Iraq" and "Let Inspections Work."

The older Mr. Downs, a firm believer in free speech, said he wanted to see what would happen, because he had heard that people sporting antiwar messages on their clothing were being asked to leave the mall. He stressed that he and his son did not pass out fliers or try to convert anyone. "I didn't want to get arrested," he said. "But I didn't know what the situation was and that gnawed at me."

Tim Kelley, a director for the Pyramid Management Group, which runs the mall, said today that security guards had received a complaint about "two gentlemen bothering customers." He said their concern was over Mr. Downs's behavior, not his clothing. "It was not an issue of us asking him to leave because of what was on his shirt," he said. "That's not our policy."

The courts have generally ruled that malls are private property and that their owners have a right to remove people who disrupt business, including those engaged in political activity. But the Guilderland police chief, James Murley, said that his officer did not want to arrest Mr. Downs and spent more than an hour trying to broker a truce between the two sides, even reading aloud from a section of the law on trespassing.

Even so, the chief was busy defending his department today from a tide of e-mail criticizing the arrest. "We could care less about what people are wearing — really, it's not our rules," he said. "But we are sworn to uphold the law."

Herbert J. Gans, a sociology professor at Columbia University, said that people were flocking to Mr. Downs's cause because it symbolizes an antiwar sentiment that was already important to them.

"They sort of react intuitively," he said. "You look for allies wherever you can find them, and here was one in the public eye already."

Though Mr. Downs did not ask for their help, more than 150 antiwar activists donned T-shirts with peace messages and marched through the Crossgates Mall on Wednesday, trailed by a horde of journalists.

"This isn't the place where we thought we were going to fight to stop the war," said Erin O'Brien, a member of Women Against War, who helped organize the march.

While Mr. Downs insists that the sudden celebrity has not gone to his head, he is planning to give up his day job. In three weeks, he will retire and leave for a long-planned vacation in New Zealand. "By the time I get back," he said, "hopefully everyone will have forgotten me."
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Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company