Roanoke City: John Reed Braden is Obscene

I’m not sure if I should take it as an endorsement of my work that the city finds me obscene, but I’m enjoying the new official designation… although I’m going to fight like hell to get the charges dropped.

Long story short:

I held up a sketch of seven assholes to traffic on Peters Creek Road in NW Roanoke City and was charged with public obscenity… and I believe that I have the right to grace the public of that particular stretch of road with my artwork.

There are seven assholes on this poster. Can you spot them all?

(continued)

Long story long:

Today was a major protest day for anti-abortionists.  They decided to spend the one day that Jesus can’t see them (the day after crucifixion and the day before resurrection) spewing lies and harassing women outside of the Planned Parenthood clinic located on Peters Creek.  At my last count, there were 44 protesters before the cops shooed them (and CJ and me) away like children chasing after pidgins.

And by “the cops,” I of course mean Roanoke City Police Officer L. K. Bowman (Badge: 0713, Car: 231) and Roanoke City Police Sergeant C.R. Sacra (Badge: 0347, Car: 0009).

Because so many protesters were expected today, I wanted the women with scheduled abortions to feel like they weren’t alone, and do so through love and humour, so a friend and I made a sign that said, “I SUPPORT YOUR CHOICE!” on one side and, “IGNORE THESE ASSHOLES.” on the other.  Love and humour.

Here’s the other side of the sign:

I arrived on the scene at 7:20 AM and found three people standing around with signs.  One sign said “Gone today, but on your conscience forever.”  The other two, held by men, had a picture of a baby on one corner and said, “Face it… Abortion Kills a Person.”  I walked over to talk to them and found out that one of the men, Barney Arthur, attends Hollins Road Baptist Church in Roanoke with his wife (the woman present) and the other man attended Riverland Baptist Church.  He and Shirley Jocelyn—I may not have the right spelling—of a Catholic group called Gift of Life organised the protest today.  They expected more than five people and did not receive a permit, dumbasses.

(I did not know they did not have a permit until the police arrived to break up the protest.  I was counting on them to have known the law and secured a permit, so I later tried to excuse CJ and myself by saying that because there was a physical barrier, a road sign and approximately 10 feet of open space, between us and the protesters, we were a second group.  Had they secured a permit, I believe we would have been considered a part of the same assembly or we would have been considered a separate protest, under five people, and therefore legal.)

Officer L. K. Bowman circled the area and then sat in the parking lot for about an hour before he came out of the car and addressed me about the sign.  I told him it was protected speech and he harassed me about not being able to quote word-for-word the city code or any Supreme Court ruling about protected speech, something he couldn’t do either.  He went back to his car and returned a few minutes later and said more nonsense about the sign.  I responded, “Look, I don’t think I broke any laws or that this is necessarily obscene, but if it bothers you so much, I can cover the word ass.”  He went back to his car.

Later, his sergeant, Sergeant C. R. Sacra pulled into the parking lot and conversed with Bowman.  I was told I was not allowed to talk to Sacra about the investigation of my own alleged crime, or, at that point, even know that I was under investigation.  ::cough:: FASCISTS ::cough::  Sorry, I’m still getting over the flu.

After Bowman returned from talking with Sacra he grabbed my sign and said, “Let me see this.”  He did not say, “I am taking this as evidence,” he said, “Let me see this.”  I replied, “Okay, but I’d rather not take my hand off of it.”  He held the sign and pretended to study it before grabbing my hand and trying to take my hand off the sign.  ::cough:: ORWELL IS ROLLING IN HIS GRAVE ::cough::  Sorry again.  Damn, this flu is persistent!

At the unwanted contact, I pulled the sign back to me [Add.: This was in my write-up to the ACLU, but I forgot to put it here: "and calmly said, 'You're touching me.  Don't touch me.'"] (Remember, he has not yet said anything about my being under investigation or that the sign was evidence.)  At which point, he firmly and forcefully ripped my hand away from the sign and told me that he could charge me for Obstruction of Justice and that I was under investigation for a crime.  This was the first I heard of it.  I told him again that I would be more than willing to cover the back of the sign with a shirt, but he resisted and locked my sign in his car.  ::cough:: MARTIAL LAW IS NOT JUSTICE IT IS THE USURPATION OF JUSTICE ::cough::  Ouch.  Can someone pass me the NyQuil?

After this, he went back to the parking lot (which, I might mention, is private property) to his secret caucus with the sergeant, discussed some stuff, and went away to talk on his radio or some other serious-business-looking thing.  At this point, I shouted up to the sergeant, “Can I come up and talk to you?”  He shook his head no.  “Then can you come down and talk to me?”  He shook his head no again.  “So you don’t think it would be beneficial in an investigation of myself to talk to me?”    He shook his head no and crossed his arms in the most intimidating way a phallicly-bald man can muster.  “Can I get your badge number then,” I shouted while scrolling through my phone for the number to the police dispatch centre.  Once again, he shook his head in a clear gesture of no.  I’m fairly certain this is a violation of police code and probably some federal law.  Maybe one of my less-exhausted readers could look this up for me.  Uh oh… I feel a big one coming on.  Excuse me for a second.  ::cough::  SERGEANT SACRA’S OWN SURLINESS AND REFUSAL TO PRESENT HIS BADGE WHEN FIRST ASKED, AND OFFICER BOWMAN’S MANHANDLING OF ME BEFORE I WAS TOLD THAT MY SIGN WAS EVIDENCE OR THAT I WAS UNDER INVESTIGATION, IS PROBABLY GROUNDS FOR THE WHOLE CASE TO BE DISMISSED AUTOMATICALLY, GOOD GOING, GUYS!  ::cough::  Medic.

After a while, Bowman and Sacra dispersed the entire crowd, even after I made the distinction between the two groups of protesters.  (Since the others didn’t get a permit, we were legally one group.)  Sacra still refused to acknowledge that I was talking to him the whole time until I said, “I’m calling the station and making a formal complaint right now.  I demand to see your badge number.”  Then he told me his badge number and continued harassing the other protesters.  After that, I headed to the police station to file a formal complaint and research the charge against me with another officer.

I believe I was as polite and cooperative as I could have been while watching two uniformed officers rape the Constitution.

I left the scene at 9 AM.

The Charge

Summons for Obscenity Charge

(click to embiggen)

I was charged with “Displaying of obscenity in public.”  For review purposes, this is the sign:

The “obscenity” was not defined at the time of arrest, so I’m not certain if the sketches of sphincters were considered obscene or if the offending part of the poster was the word assholes.

Here is the section of Roanoke City Code that defines obscenity:

ARTICLE IV.  OBSCENITY

DIVISION 1.  GENERALLY

Sec. 21-96.  “Obscene” defined.

The word “obscene,” where it appears in this division, shall mean that which, considered as a whole, has as its dominant theme or purpose an appeal to the prurient interest in sex, that is, a shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, excretory functions or products thereof or sadomasochistic abuse, and which goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor in description or representation of such matters and which, taken as a whole, does not have serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

(Ord. No. 23359, 12-6-76)

In defence of the word assholes:

In context, the word asshole was obviously meant to designate the other protesters.  The illustrations accompanying the word were obviously meant to turn the wording of the poster into a pun.  Given the two options of  perceiving my sign literally as a poster covered in assholes telling you to ignore the assholes on that poster, or figuratively as a poster telling you to ignore the people around it who are, almost all of them, assholes while ironically covered in drawings of literal assholes, I believe that almost all sane people would choose the latter.  That was the intent of the sign and so the text had no obscene intent, using the Roanoke City definition of obscene.

The poster’s declaration that people who protest at abortion clinics and harass women at a time when they most need support are assholes (in the figurative, not literal sense) obviously falls under having political value.  When taken as a whole with the sketches, the text gains new literary and artistic value.

In defence of the sphincter sketches:

The sketches of the sphincters offered valid artistic, literary and political merit to the text of the poster.  Artistic because they were a recreation of one of the many famous sketches of Kurt Vonnegut’s asshole.

Example:

The literary value of the assholes lies in the fact that their presence transformed the text into a double-entendre and without them, the poster would lose its (admittedly slight) cleverness.

HG Dumbass of the Week

So because it would be unwise of me, before my trial, to publicly declare the uninformed officer or his surly sergeant Homosecular Gaytheist’s second Dumbass of the Week, I’m going to declare the runners-up, Barney Arthur and his gang of ignorant women-haters Homosecular Gaytheist’s second Dumbass(es) of the Week.

Barney’s the Santa-looking goon.

Congratulations, Barney Arthur, Shirley Jocelyn, et. al., you earned it!

More pictures from the protest:

This has to be child abuse.

My camera is better, tubby.

They only knew three chords… and neither of them knew the same three.