Tonight I gloat in the news that the Capitol Police's summer smackdowns of Solidarity Singing was found unconstitutional in the eyes of the law. Those militarized bastards were taking gentle people down, zip tying hands behind backs with mean twists and jabs, dragging lovely folks into the purgatory of processing. They'd start the charade with this ridiculous bellowing incomprehensible call from on high, like Wizard of Oz rewritten by George Orwell, with a big stupid laughable overkill Warner Bros parody prop "LRAD" loudspeaker, crackling through the acoustical purity of the public areas of the capitol, telling us that we were an illegal assembly.
Why? Well, because we were singing, every day, singing, and pissing off Scott Walker and his freedom loving cultist colleagues. ILLEGAL ASSEMBLY - yes, that was indeed the second warning. Then the wolves came, cutting through the crowds, the pitiless and brute and mute and plain stupid policemen just doing their day's work.
Four hundred tickets later, untold traumas later, massive wastes of state resources because the DOA and DOJ were too stubborn and authoritarian to admit overreach, we are given the knowledge we always knew: the Walker administration's assault on First and Fourteenth Amendments will not stand!
“An unconstitutional act of the legislature is not a law. It confers no rights, imposes no penalty, affords no protection, is not operative, and in legal contemplation has no existence.” “An unconstitutional law is void, and is as no law. An offense created by it is not a crime. A conviction under it is not merely erroneous, but is illegal and void, and cannot be a legal cause of imprisonment.”
So allow me a bit of gloating tonight. This is a big deal here in Wisconsin for what is left of the Uprising. This is a funny little heartbeat of democracy, a little breath of a window hit bird, laying on the sidewalk, perhaps only stunned and ready to fly, perhaps too paralyzed to fly again, perhaps a pilot light, ready to ignite.
Let the civil suits begin!
Let the singing continue!
This was originally published on Daily Kos by noise of rain.