> http://counterpunch.org/cohen10112005.html
> October 11, 2005
>
> Sausage, Onion and an M-16 to Go Please...
> Showdown at Chuck E. Cheese
>
> By MITCHEL COHEN
>
>
> As we were running out of flyers, a mall security guard came outside and
> instructed us to move out of the area, claiming that the City sidewalk on
> which we were standing was actually private property owned by billionaire
> Bruce Ratner's Atlanic Terminal. We of course refused to move and the
> security guard called for the police -- 20 minutes later the police hadn't
> shown up, and we packed up our signs and said our goodbyes.
In the summer of 1969 we organized a test of a Mall's right to exclude leafletters. Seven of us leafletted in the Eastland Shopping Mall here in Bloomington and were arrested for trespassing. The Illinois ACLU carried it to the Supreme Court for us, and we lost. The Court declared malls were private property, not a public space.
This is a battle that, ultimately, has to be fought over and over again, until in desperation Malls give up the battle. We will never win it in the courts or in the legislatures or Congress. I don't know how large & militant a mass movement must grow before it can take on the Malls, but at some point we will have to. In the past one could leaflet on city streets or at factory gates. But in a good many cities, some of them of some size, this is no longer possible. The only place one finds large numbers of people from varied backgrounds it is the malls. Over the years I've thought of various possible tactics, as I imagine others have in other communities. The basic strategy would have to be to make it more trouble for Malls to refuse leafletting rights than to permit it.
Carrol