Free Speech On The Beach

report from Beach'feat 2011 - jc

Specifically, SC's beach, during Beach'fest: where are
1st Amendment rights allowed, and where are they not,
is my question post SC's 2011 Beach'fest extravaganza,
where 66,000 folks flooded SC's Pier Bowl beach, to party
down, tan-up, surf, swim, build sandcastles, to be lobbied
endlessly by retail tents galore, food stands, and a whole
bunch more.

A commercial blitzkrieg in sand - under tents with signs -
Try Me! Try This! Buy This! Free Samples! Save This!
Know This! Know That! Talk, Talk, Talk.

Some things do cost at B'f - but 'speech' is always free.

Until this year.

Free Speech-at-the-beach, wasn't so free this year.
Seems someone or some-Thing, was tightening the
muzzle on SC-citizen's 1st Amendment voice.

99.9% of everyone there, were free to say anything,
non-stop - to sell their product. Push their ideas.
Lobby their points-of-view. Talk, Talk, Talk, Talk.
All free. All the time. But not this year.

This year, if you said something opposing a
Beach-bash sponsor's free speech 2-day dialogue -
something like this might get whispered in you ear,

"Get off the beach, you're littering."

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Case in point: SONGS nuke plant:
owned by SoCalEdison, hosted a Tent-full of happy
nukers / all free speech talking nonstoppers.
Selling what they perceive as - the benefits of
electricity created thru nuclear fission.

To a growing number of some in SC, nuke-fission
is a scary, dangerous process re: Fukushima's
ongoing meltdown (ripe to happen here).

This growing number, thinks SONGS' 7.5%
electrical contribution to CA's grid is not worth the
molten hot-cost of meltdown. And they have a
point, because "Meltdown" translates to "all of us"
leaving SC via one big fast mass evacuation.
Most likely permanently.
Much too radioactive.
No more Beach-fest - ever?
Ever.

Maybe no more anything, within the 50-mile circle
of the eternally melting / com'busting nuke plant
site lyrically known as SONGS.

For sure, the very real probability of SONGS melting -
deserves talking about, especially during Beach-fest 2011.

66,000 OC'ers (all here at B'f) needed to know.
Actually, 7.4 million need to know / the population inside
SONGS' 50-miles in every direction evac-zone-circle
of excessively hot Rads, aka Escape from SONGS.

So - at Beach-fest 2011, two brave SC residents,
who believe SONGS' meltdown-potential is heating up
(according to seismic experts pretty much everywhere),
walked among the happy beach'ers, telling (not selling)
their Free Beach Speech SONGS POV, and handing
out flyers.

Two out of 66,000 - as the busy-bee vendor-Tents
poured a forest of printed material into the beach crowd,
that most likely went directly into a beach trash can,
or next to it / litter / litter'ing the beach.

At some point, the Beach-fest Event Coordinator
(as the story goes) instructed our two anti-SONGS
beach free-speech'ers, to STOP handing out their
heartfelt, truth-filled, anti-SONGS flyers on the beach - or leave.
Suggesting, said flyers were litter, and littering's not allowed
at Beach-fest (paraphrasing here) - something along the lines of,

"stop what you're doing, or we'll all talk to the Sheriff."

One of the accused, asked the obvious,

"But, what about all the Tent-people, handing
out their potential litter (their trash cans overflowing)?"

The Event Coordinator's beach-bluff partially worked.
But the cops were never summoned.
One of the No-SONGS'ers went home.
The other ran out of material.
End of story?
Maybe not (all you free-speech loving SC'ers).
Prompting this free-speech-on-the-beach question:

during Beach-fest, is SC's beach a free-speech zone,
closely monitored by the Beach-fest Coordinator, to
make sure, the only free-allowed-speech on the beach
during Beach-fest, is voiced by event sponsors,
and only them?

In other words: everyone else, keep your traps shut,
until after Beach-bash.

Personally, this writer thinks the city, and the
Beach-fest Coordinator have some explaining
to do. And for sure, two apologies.

Free Speech in SC is forever, or we don't have
a 1st Amendment.

Or, has SONGS melted-down our right to speak
freely on our own beach?
Who does rule our beach speech - SONGS?
Does anyone know?
That is, besides SC's Beach-fest event planner.
She obviously knows.
Party-planners know everything.

2012 - a nuke-free Beach'fest?
What a cool concept.

Late word from Japan (NYTimes): beef sales in
Japan banned cattle from Fuksuhima area -
their Cesium levels: 6-times over the limit.
Some contaminated cattle grazed 70-miles from
the melting nuke plant. Here, that translates to
beyond Riverside. No one escapes the plume.
Shutting SONGS is the best idea to come to
San Clemente since Ole Hanson.
Let's get it done - now. Because with loose
nukes, "later " carries a 10,000 year-minimum
shelf life. Anyone want to talk property values?

jerry collamer
San Clemente
Ca - 92672

Nuke Plants + Fault Lines + Tsunami Hazard Zones = Fukushimas... Any Questions?