This Happened in America?

Two men, a father and son, were arrested for wearing t-shirts which read "Give Peace a Chance" and "Peace on Earth" to a mall in Guilderland, New York. At first I thought maybe they were working at a store had been asked to remove the t-shirts while on the job, but, no they were simply shopping in th emall. Not protesting, no yelling, not screaming, simply walking around wearing the t-shirts. The mall management had security tell the men to remove their t-shirts and when the older gentleman (61!) did not, security called the police and the man and his son were arrested for trespassing. Arrested!

Certainly, this mall was private property, but to argue that these men were distrubing the peace or loitering or trespassing - whatever - is ludicrous. Nonethelees, since it's private property, the mall does have the right to make such ludicrous requests. The fact that the police actually arrested them, though, I find most bizarre and unjustified. The police should have told the men to go on their way and dismissed the mall management's request as frivilous. Hell, they should have fined the mall management for waste public funds on calling the police in on something like this.

Eventually, the mall did ask that the charges be dropped - after a 100 protesters marched on the mall in defense of the men.

And apparently, these were the first people to be asked to leave that mall for wearing peace-related t-shirts in the last few months either.