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We Surround Rochester
Aug 28, 2010, Washington DC
by rochester_veteran
While driving into work this morning, I heard a news report on WHAM (1180) about the ACLU. The city of Ferndale, Michigan, started enforcing a “no honking” ordinance in response to peace activists who held signs urging motorists to “honk for peace”. Anti-war protesters had been carrying signs and urging motorists to honk at a Ferndale street corner every Monday for five years to protest the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Could you imagine having a business or a home close to where the anti-war demonstration was being held and having to listen to honking horns in the evening? I used to have neighbors whose visitors would stop in front of their house and keep on honking their horn until my neighbors would go out and talk with them… it was really annoying!
Leave it to the ACLU to make the claim that horn honking for a anti-war protests is a protected form of free speech! Attorneys for Ferndale cite a city ordinance and state law that prohibit motorists from honking a car horn unless they are warning others of danger. The case was heard yesterday in U.S. District Court in Detroit and it’s not clear when Judge Denise Page Hood will decide on the case.
Here’s a link to the story from the Detroit News:
Raging Grannies honk off Ferndale
Do you think horn honking is a protected form of free speech? Do you think the ACLU would have taken on the case if this had been patriots urging motorists to honk their horns in support of the troops? (I doubt it!)
All POW-MIA
1 response so far ↓
1 phantomlord // Jan 17, 2008 at 10:25 am
Horn honking can be seen as a form of free speech. However, free speech is limited. For example, libel and slander. You can’t yell “FIRE!” in a crowded theater and create a safety hazard. There are also noise ordinances where you can’t make a certain amount of noise after 10pm or how you can’t have a car radio over a certain volume.
Your right to free speech ends when you cross over into causing someone else harm. If they’re violating the municipality’s ordinance on sound, assuming its reasonable, then they’re exceeding their right to free speech. If they’re disrupting the ability for others to engage in free speech, they’re exceeding their right to free speech. If they’re creating a safety hazard, they’re exceeding their right to free speech.
All that said, our veterans should go stand across the street, shoulder to shoulder, in uniform and just smile at them for an afternoon. Give people a contrast between those who die to protect our freedoms and those who act like idiots to protest their defenders.
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