Your tax dollars at work in California! No free speech, Mein Bureaucratic Fuhrers! We need another law, we need court, we need more lawsuits!
Even if you’re not a Nazi, but your name is Norse and you made The Gesture in Question in reaction to someone being the usual ‘your time is up, get off the podium!’ stuff and not even as a political statement, and you are championing the right to speak of someone with the last name of Zeman-and you did it with your left arm- doesn’t matter- no matter how lame, it’s so not cool that the guy has to be arrested and this whole BS should go to the supreme court ?
They couldn’t have just ignored it, the one guy had to act like an officious little tattle-tale and make a huge deal of it. I wonder how much this crap is going to cost Santa Cruz. I kinda have to take the homeless hippie’s side on this one.
I wonder, would it have gone this far if the guy had simply flipped him off? These are the dudes running things, acting worse than girls. Is this what men do instead of crying, calling girlfriends or writing in journals? They flex their teeny bureaucratic muscle. Where’s my black bandanna to cover my face and go out and burn stuff? Oh wait, I forgot, I’m a fascist- according to my Hate Mail, I’m supposed to like these douchebags, right?
Please step away from the microphone. Ma’am please step away from the microphone. Said in that blah cop monotone. You know how this crap goes. They push, making it a big deal for her not to finish her deal on wasting money rousting sleeping homeless, so she escalates and starts mewling away ‘why can’t, I don’t see why…waaa’ – soon all hippie hell breaks loose. “uhhh derr out of orderrr , let the record show that Mr. Norse made a Nazi salute and should be removed.. arghhh against the dignity of (something) …should be removed….” Oy the trauma, let’s take a recess. Then there’s what looks to be a real cop shows up, all gung ho to arrest this homeless hippie Santa. This happened in 2002 but the furor still rages on :
Robert Norse :I’ve offered to settle a costly lawsuit. I’ll drop my financial demands for tens of thousands of dollars in the “two-second mock-Nazi lawsuit” if the city of Santa Cruz will stop wasting money on ticketing homeless people for sleeping where they must at night. But Mayor Ryan Coonerty and his Council say no.
In the last year the city spent more money on police, hosts and private “security.” For what? To bust the poor for sitting on a public bench for more than an hour? For smoking a cigarette outside the library after it’s closed? For holding up an “End the Sleeping Ban” sign at City Hall at 10:30 at night? Cops spent public money to take all these “crimes” to court last year…..
Let’s end such costly stupidities as last year’s seven-day infraction trial for singing homeless songs near Mayor Coonerty’s Bookshop Santa Cruz, the week-long misdemeanor Peace Camp 5 trial for sleeping, and the city attorney’s personal appearance to convict Wes Modes of walking in a New Year’s eve parade.
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/opinion/ci_18067570
SANTA CRUZ – In an effort to give government leaders greater authority to control public meetings, the city of Santa Cruz has urged the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal of a free speech case brought by a persistent City Council critic who was arrested after making a Nazi salute and refusing to leave….http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_18241694
Lawyers for the city argue in a petition filed with the nation’s highest court this week that officials nationwide need better guidance on limitations for maintaining order during public proceedings. The city notes that courts do not tolerate “hate gestures” similar to the one made by Robert Norse – who claims his ejection from a March 2002 council meeting violated the First Amendment – and therefore cities shouldn’t have to, either.
Norse, 63, a resident of Santa Cruz and Felton, said the appeal, formally called a petition for a writ of certiorari, demonstrates city leaders are “thin-skinned and thick-walleted.” He said, “They want the power to intimidate critics that are clearly not being disruptive.”
The Spoils of War 
As the videographer who took the video on March 12 2002, I have followed this case from day one. Fitzmaurice has shown great disdain for Robert Norse in the past. At a previous City Council meeting, he walked out while Norse was speaking, loudly denouncing him as “anti-Catholic” (and disrupting the meeting and NORSE’s speaking time as he did so). At a different council meeting, Fitzmaurice led a walkout by four council members when Norse chose to speak in as a character, a Mystic from the East, in imitation of one of the councilmember’s deep affection for Ghandi. Norse spoke in an Indian dialect. Fitzmaurice stood up, denounced him as “a racist” and walked out, with 3 other councilmembers in tow.
It’s interesting that in the bid for the Supreme Court, they are, for the first time ever, referring to Norse’s silent gesture as “hate speech.” So how will they explain allowing two speakers at the following City Council meeting to also give “Nazi” Salutes during their time at oral communications, but this time without arrest or even having their microphones muted?