Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the Secret Service question her or one of her students.
But that’s what happened on September 20.
Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class “to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights,” she says. One student “had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb’s down sign with his own hand next to the President’s picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster.”
According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent.
But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect.
An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service.
Is there someone in Homeland Insecurity whose only function is to think of ways to waste money?
On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High.“At 1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had taken his poster,” Jarvis says. “I didn’t believe him at first. But they had come into my room when I wasn’t there and had taken his poster, which was in a stack with all the others.”
“Halfway through my afternoon class, the assistant principal got me out of class and took me to the office conference room,” she says. “Two men from the Secret Service were there. They asked me what I knew about the student. I told them he was a great kid, that he was in the homecoming court, and that he’d never been in any trouble.”
Then they got down to his poster.
“They asked me, didn’t I think that it was suspicious,” she recalls. “I said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!”
[Eventually]…The student was not indicted, and the Secret Service did not pursue the case further.
[Mrs. Jarvis’ response] “I blame Wal-Mart more than anybody,” she says. “I was really disgusted with them. But everyone was using poor judgment, from Wal-Mart up to the Secret Service.”
There’s a civics class that learned what freedom of speech really means — in 21st Century America.
Thanks Joe Taylor
This is crazy! Very ignorant.
The first part of the Constitution is about “We the People” and the rest is about how to protect that right.
Our founding fathers wanted us to have a government run by “We the People” not a government run by a king.
Our voice is whatever tool we apply to get the message out to our “We the People” government. Our voice is our vote.
For some strange reason we have stray to political machines with lobbyists“ (Republican & Democrats)
We have evolved and we now have the Internet to speak our minds and I am very sure that our founding fathers would be extremely pleased by the voice that is speaking to you via the Internet.
Make your voice clear and concise and make it your own.
It is a vote.
Lawyers have a way of limiting our speech but the United States Constitution give us the right to voice our concern.
Another reason why I don’t use a regular camera which requires one to develop film.
-A
From the article:
——————————————————————————————–
A person in the photo department at the Wal-Mart in Kitty Hawk said, “You have to call either the home office or the authorities to get any information about that.”
Jacquie Young, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart at company headquarters, did not provide comment within a 24-hour period.
Sharon Davenport of the Kitty Hawk Police Department said, “We just handed it over” to the Secret Service. “No investigative report was filed.”
Jonathan Scherry, spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., said, “We ertainly respect artistic freedom, but we also have the responsibility to look into incidents when necessary. In this case, it was brought to our attention from a private citizen, a photo lab employee.”
——————————————————————————————–
Do you see the pattern above? Every party points to another party. That’s what makes these incidents so recurrent. Nobody is held accountable. The buck does not stop. It’s always somebody else’s affair. Even the Wal-Mart store that initiated the incident feels that they have nothing to answer for.
Eideard, you should have provided the prior link in relation to Wal-Mart and its draconian views of film developing and printing.
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=2134
The lesson here is that you should NEVER take your film to Wal-Mart to be processed!
I am just completely appalled at this situation. Wal-Mart has no right to be looking at photos you’re paying them to develop. That Wal-Mart employee should be fired.
What a horrible waste of resources for secret services to make that trip. Did they actually think that a high school student expressing their rights was a threat to national security?!
Thanks, Fish. The chickens tend to come home to the same roost, don’t they?
Sercret Service? Don’t you mean Gestapo or KGB or the Stazi because that’s what they’re slowly, creepily mimicking. This is life under fascism people. These are not conservatives ethics or politics being practiced by the Bush Inc. administration. Capitalism killed most communism, now fascism is killing capitalism. Mr. Theodopoulos & the other brown shirted apologists that always make excuses for our installed President George W. Mussollini are too ashamed to admit they were suckered and sucker punched in the mouth by this fool.
&, I AM a proud conservative – for any of the douchebags that keep saying to question Bush is wrong. These people are anti-American phony patriots & armchair generals too chicken shit to enlist themselves.
They have stolen the vote through electronic voting, which will become standard procedure throughout the USA, eventually. The two parties are just fighting for the right to steal your money & to be the prostitute of Big Business.
You want your rights back? You’ll have to take them back as the only rights you have now are that which they LET you have. The Founding Fathers said that if a government should become tyrannical, it is the people’s right & duty to throw it off…preferably a nice high cliff.
Down the road, you will have to choose A) fight & have the chance to be free or B) remain a “slave.” This will be the great character test of our nation. Let us hope we do not fail!
New motto of the US Government:
The bucks stops…in China.
Alternate motto:
Don’t steal…the government hates competition.
US citizens should really start worrying about their own King-To-Be “W” and not these rediculously “imagined” terrorist threats that manage to falsh across the country a day or two after “W’s” ratings drop.
Wake up Amercia “W’s” stealing your Civil Liberties for boggymen that don’t exist and wrecking your economy for WDM’s that NEVER existed to the tune of $5.8 BILLION a MONTH for crying out loud!
Anyone that thinks shopping at or supporting Walmart is good for anyone is a complete and utter moron. The problem is that most people cannot be educated without a baseball bat and time, facts have no bearing on their beliefs.
Walmart hurts our country worse than Crossfire did, and that is saying a lot.
I’m sure it was the red thump tack through the head that caused the uproar. It is very much against the law to threaten the President of the United States, whoever may be holding the office. The Secret Service HAD to investigate the intent behind the photo — that’s their job. If that student had placed the tack outside of the President’s photo, it would never have been an issue. (Why red and why through the head?)
Freedom of speech does not extend to threatening anyone’s life.
Come on neocons! Where is your mindless, knee jerk defence of the worst pres in US history?
“Selina Jarvis is the chair”
A piece of furniture has a name? How cool!
Maybe that’s why the most comfortable seat in the house is named John.
Smith,
I agree with your take on it. The SS should have dropped it however, when they saw that it was a school project and a symbol of free speech, not a threat. To leave it open without saying that the matter is closed only makes the situation as appalling as it is.
Also, the Wal-mart employee is obligated through store policy to report the photo to the store management. If the employee wants to keep his near minimum wage job.
Moral of the story, DON’T LET WAL-MART DEVELOP YOUR PICTURES. Get a digital camera and do it yourself. Or if you must use film, take them to a Camera store that develops on the premises.
Why is it everytime someone looks at Bush’s nose the wrong way, it’s a “threat” on his life? If that guy thinks his stupid life is threatened every time he turns around then he needs to take a good look in the mirror and do something to change himself. All these imaginary “threats” to his life apparently means he has a guilty conscience. Kind of funny how he can kill whoever he wants, but let someone put a thumbtack through his forehead in a photo and everyone drops a load in their pants.
Come on people the Secret Service took the poster, talked to everyone involved and turned the “investigation” over to the AG. That’s all that happened. RTFM people!
Damn, if this doesn’t prove a serious disgusting problem with the collusion of government (mostly Republicans) and corporate leadership, I don’t know what you would need. If I was the manager of that store and an employee told me about this picture, I would have said to just develop the picture and don’t worry about it and then I would fire him for psychotic paranoia. BTW, how many freakin minimum wage photo developing Republicans could there be in the world?…He must of been some “obsessively dedicated to Bush through religion” nut. Furthermore, this picture could only be considered “life threatening” by a Fascist or Dictatorial government where they want to quelch all unfavorable expressions of opinion. Hopefully, this kind of sinister BS falls upon the shoulders of “preundecided” Bush voters because they are to blame for all these problems he has created and the ones he is working on.
Also, I guess we can refer to the ‘Secret Service’ Agency as the Dubya “SS” Guard. It looks like this new title would be quite appropriate as I’m sure Hitler’s “SS” Guard began this way.
Paul Theodoropoulos
Your rantings and tirading writing style make you APPEAR to be on the loony right fringe.
Maybe if you could use the”shift”key at the start of a sentence and CAPITALIZE you wouldn’t seem so out of the mainstream. And maybe if you didn’t apologize for the far right’s actions so often. And maybe if you could see G.W. Bush and his administration for the fascists they are then other’s might think you are closer to main stream.
Just some suggestions.
What the Hell? This is insane!? Don’t you think the Wal-Mart violated the student’s privacy by looking at the photo? Personally, it bothers me that Wal-Mart even looks at the Photos that are developed. I will never get photos printed at Wal-Mart again.
Read the terms of condiitions of everything. WalMart does have the right to look through your photos, they even “drop” ones they find distasteful or pornographic. Its crap, but they are a private industry and can do whatever they want. The negatives are your personal property but until you pay for the photographs they are not considered to be legally yours.