Last weekend in downtown Spruce Pine in the middle of a festival, people were preaching on the streets on sidewalks in front of businesses who did not mind what they were doing in their doorways. Some folks walked by them, some people crossed the street not to have to, but no one told them they couldn’t be there. Get out of the online rabbit hole, get out and get some fresh air with your neighbors. They don’t agree with each other, but that’s ok. They aren’t in the Mall of America in Minneapolis.
Malls are private property. It doesn’t matter what kind of tracts anyone is “handing out.” If they are blocking the doors and access to businesses, pressing your materials on others who are not there to listen to you, it doesn’t matter if those materials are about religion or something being promoted or sold, people doing it may be trespassing on someone else’s property and harassing their “guests,” as they call them.
No one was taking away that Ethiopian immigrant’s rights as an American citizen. He could have been wearing a shirt that blasphemed and done the same things and he’d have had a problem. It was a mall not a public park or sidewalk. The mall cops were not very smart apparently and their conversation pretty dumb, but the wanna’ be cops being dumb doesn’t mean what is being presented.
The very thought that people in America don’t understand that or try to influence others so they don’t understand it is very, very disturbing. Where is it these people misleading folks into believing things like this, saying they are something they are not, are trying to march us all toward? It is, indeed, very disturbing that this kind of misleading groupthink is being promoted in the land of people historically seeking freedom for more and more people. What’s more disturbing is people who seem to be ok with it. That’s very, very scary.
