No call for mall ouster


Opinion by Joe Slomka
Daily Gazette
01/04/2003


Shopping malls are private property, which means that visitors don't
have the same First Amendment right to speak out or assemble in them
as they do on public streets. Just the same, mall owners shouldn't be
so intolerant as to banish someone for wearing a T-shirt with a
benign, barely political message on it like "Peace on Earth," "Don't
Invade Iraq" or "Drop Toys, not Bombs."

That, unfortunately, is what appears to have happened at Crossgates
Mall on the Saturday before Christmas. A couple dozen members of the
Upper Hudson Peace Action group who were wearing shirts with the above
messages taped to them were forced to leave the mall after walking
around, individually and in groups of two or three, for about a
half-hour.

They say they were minding their own business: not "demonstrating,"
not leafletting, not even trying to talk to anyone; just walking
around and, like everyone else that time of year, shopping. But mall
security personnel apparently didn't like their messages and called
Guilderland Police, who escorted them to the parking lot and
threatened to arrest them if they tried to re-enter. They wouldn't
even permit a member of the group who had pulled the message off his
shirt to remain.

Mall officials have declined to comment, but if what the peace
activists say is true, they weren't out of line to have objected to
their treatment.  (Whether their reactions were "belligerent," as
alleged by mall security, is obviously a matter of interpretation.)

But in a mall where T-shirt messages like "Nuke Saddam" and "Abortion
Is Murder" get a pass, what's wrong with a little "Peace on Earth"?

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