General Hoohah & Homeless & Van Dwelling and Car Living 08 Jul 2006 03:17 pm
Protect your constitutional rights and preserve your freedom
Please check out these guides to your constitutionally provided rights. The cops, feds and DHS are not your friends and are not looking out for your best interest when they just want to ask “a couple questions.” The are looking for a crime and will gladly use carefully crafted question and pressure to get you to yield your rights so you can make your own noose to slip your own neck into.
Flex Your Rights produced a video detailing what to do and not to do when stopped by officers and Busted is currently available on google videos. The ACLU also has a convenient pocket card along with other downloads to help you keep secure your constitutionally provided rights. NORML has a great plain language summary of your rights too though I wouldn’t be caught dead reading their Freedom Card in front of a cop. Last thing I’d want to flash before a cops eyes is the logo of a marijuana legalization organization. But if anyone needs to know this information it’s the pot heads who are always carrying.
The video is also supplied as a torrent by Flex Your Rights if you’d like a higher resolution version without actually purchasing it. Info on what a BitTorrent is here.
on 09 Jul 2006 at 10:00 am 1.mary said …
Thanks for sharing. Like some ethnic groups, homeless are seen by some police as being “suspect” simply for walking down a street, or sitting down in a park, in the middle of the day.
on 09 Jul 2006 at 12:27 pm 2.April said …
Being a target for such profiling has been a rather eye opening experience. I’ve not really formulated an opinion or theory yet but it seems that my very behavior or demeanor has changed in such a way that I get a different level of attention–or at least a different kind.
Avoiding such profiling is why I’ve tailored my wardrobe a bit to be less “desperate” looking, to seem a bit more affluent than I actually am. Appearance is everything and I’d much rather avoid looking like a poor drifter.
on 09 Jul 2006 at 7:11 pm 3.Hoopty Life: One homeless woman’s guide to van dwelling, car living and urban camping » Baby sitting and the police said …
[…] Having just posted about dubious police tactics I thought this was the universe screaming out for me to teach them how to handle the police. So when it was all over we talked about being respectful, not causing suspicion and protecting our rights. I broke down all the interactions and how things like not inviting them into the home to talk was the right thing to do as the police don’t need to see inside–a good thing too since largely forgotten illegal fireworks were in plain sight on the kitchen counter. With the one that was old enough to drive we talked about what to do when pulled over too. […]