Just one day after a left-wing activist attempted to deface private property (and a woman who got in her way), the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York has announced they will amend their rules regarding the types of advertisements that offended her.
The New York Times is now reporting the MTA will prohibit any advertisements that it “reasonably foresees would imminently incite or provoke violence or other immediate breach of the peace.” Those “viewpoint” ads that do not meet this criteria will be allowed, so long as a disclaimer is included saying the MTA does not endorse them.
The MTA met on Thursday in order to discuss the rules, which were approved unanimously 8-0. In doing so, New York City has not only retreated from the U.S. Constitution, but rewarded one individual’s violent destruction of private property with an assault on the rights of all Americans.
It was the self-proclaimed “proud liberal Muslim” (and incredibly vile-mouthed) activist Mona Eltahawy who was rewarded after her violent-spray-painting of a pro-Israel advertisement placed in the New York City subway:
But Pamela Geller of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which ran the ad in the New York subway system, says the Times has it wrong:
The fact is, the MTA doesn’t mean that it will be enforcing the Sharia or adhering to the blasphemy laws under Islamic law. The enemedia is assuming that they will prohibit our ad, but it is not necessarily so. And if they do, we will certainly fight back. It’s fairly safe to say that the MTA is referring to prohibiting ads that genuinely incite to violence, such as ads from Occupy Wall Street calling for people to get guns and shoot businessmen and police. It’s the same as it was before. If they block us, we’ll sue again.
Pamela Hall, a courageous American, used her body to shield the subway station ad, while Eltahawy repeatedly shouted foul-mouthed attacks at her and fought with her to continue spray-painting.
A video documenting the events shows Hall refusing to back down as she placed herself between a New York subway advertisement and Eltahawy, in the process of what Eltahawy referred to as “her freedom of expression,” and “non-violent” protest.
These types of violent and aggressive tactics, played off somewhat inexplicably by Eltahawy as non-violent expression, are just another example of how the left seeks to redefine clearly violent actions as “non-violence.”
Eltahawy’s redefinition of violence mimics the Occupy Movement’s own redefinitions, whereby they creatively labeled their encampments “not as tents, but forms of protest,” all the while illegally occupying public property. It’s no surprise that at today’s public meeting of the MTA, audience members held signs in support of Eltahawy saying the subways “belong to the 99%.”
Members of the radical left-wing organization Code Pink, such as Medea Benjamin and Russia Today TV host Adam Kokesh, employed a similar media tactic last year when they staged a “dance in” at the Jefferson Memorial. They brought their own camera crew to film them getting arrested, as they knew they would be. Sending their message out to the world that “the United States is a police state,” after supposedly being “prohibited in their right to freely express” themselves was their goal. This, despite disrupting other Americans’ opportunity to view the memorial in peace.
Returning to the staged tactic of Eltahawy, note that while being handcuffed be NYPD officers in the video, she demonstrates that she has no concept of what the First Amendment means, shouting “this is what happens in America when you express yourself.” Her erroneous view of the First Amendment informs her that if you see something you don’t like or disagree with, you have the right to express yourself however you feel like, as long as you feel like you are acting in a supposedly “non-violent” way.
The Founding Fathers, however, saw the critical issue of freedom of speech as something necessary to protect one’s ability to speak out against the government without fear of being tried for seditious treason–quite the opposite from destroying others’ property at will because someone said something you don’t like.
The rights afforded to all Americans cease to exist as rights when they are perverted and used as a weapon to harm or cause injury to another person or person’s property. Somehow this crucial point never sinks in with the radical left, who are so enamored of claiming that anything they do is protected “Freedom of Expression.”
Indeed, Eltahawy’s actions are both an affront to the rights of all Americans and violent at their very core. Eltahawy set out specifically to destroy the sign, which is the property of someone else. While another individual stood up to protect that property by placing herself between it and Eltahawy’s can of paint, it wasn’t enough. Eltahawy, enraged, continued to violently spray paint the sign, despite it being against the law and despite the potential physical danger she could have caused her fellow citizen Pamela Hall.
This video must be appreciated for the glimpse it provides into the convoluted and perverted understanding of our rights that Eltahawy and the rest of her ilk on the radical Left share. We can thank the New York Post for being on the scene at the time of the crime, but this raises yet another question: How did the Post videographer know when and where Eltahawy was going to pull off her stunt?
Sadly, with the MTA’s seal of approval, our government, too, has begun to adopt backwards views and to turn its back on the Constitution in fear of the violence the radical left brings to the table.
Revolutions in days past have been marked by the destruction, seizure and redistribution of private property. Eltahawy is a glaring example of how that sort of savage thinking begins.
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