Wal-Mart Turns in Student’s "Bill of Rights" Project; Secret Service Investigates

Conspiracy theorists' favorite NWO frontrunner Wal-Mart looks at your pictures in the developing department. Sometimes they turn you in.

Wal-Mart Turns in Student’s Anti-Bush Photo, Secret Service Investigates Him
TheProgressive.org
Matthew Rothschild
October 4, 2005

Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the Secret Service question her or one of her students.

But that’s what happened on September 20.

Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class “to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights,” she says. One student “had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb’s down sign with his own hand next to the President’s picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster.”

According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent.

But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect.

An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service.

On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High.“At 1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had taken his poster,” Jarvis says. “I didn’t believe him at first. But they had come into my room when I wasn’t there and had taken his poster, which was in a stack with all the others.”

She says the student was upset.

“He was nervous, he was scared, and his parents were out of town on business,” says Jarvis.

She, too, had to talk to the Secret Service.

“Halfway through my afternoon class, the assistant principal got me out of class and took me to the office conference room,” she says. “Two men from the Secret Service were there. They asked me what I knew about the student. I told them he was a great kid, that he was in the homecoming court, and that he’d never been in any trouble.”

Then they got down to his poster.

“They asked me, didn’t I think that it was suspicious,” she recalls. “I said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!”

At the end of the meeting, they told her the incident “would be interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student could be indicted,” she says.

The student was not indicted, and the Secret Service did not pursue the case further.

“I blame Wal-Mart more than anybody,” she says. “I was really disgusted with them. But everyone was using poor judgment, from Wal-Mart up to the Secret Service.”

Given other harrassing infringements and intimidation of late from the Secret Service over such trivial things as regular peoples' anti-Bush bumper stickers while conservative broadcasters have historically said things with impunity like the State Department should be nuked, ATF agents shot on site, or any variety of nasty things should be done to Federal Judges (not to mention Janet Reno or the entire Clinton family), I just don't know why we even pretend to live in a free country anymore.

Do the initials SS now stand for United States Secret Service? Do they wear two little lightning bolts on their lapels and a 'Skull and Bones' on their caps?

Do they have informants working in every One Hour Photo?

Bill of Rights, indeed. How does this photo constitute a threat against the POTUS?

We may need a nationwide 'Bill of Rights Project', starting with teaching it to Wal-Mart One-Hour Photo employees and the SS.

[edit on 5-10-2005 by Icarus Rising]

Originally posted by RANT
I just don't know why we even pretend to live in a free country anymore.

Not all of us do.

That is the most ridiculous story! That poor kid will be traumatized and will never trust governmental authority. Not that he should...

I guess the Wal-Mart employee is partially to blame. I can't help but also blame those who continue every day to enforce the fear scenario. A few years ago, the employee may have laughed it off. But I suspect that the state of fear and imminent danger that pervades the people of this contry contributed to his need to call the authorities (it might be a terrorist!)

Or else he was a Bush supporter and wanted to turn someone in.

In any case...

And a potential ATS member is born thanks to the SS and Wal-Mart! How do they consider a poster as described to be suspicious when there are people who have far worse things held up on posts at protests and such? Just one more incident in the many where man-hours and money are wasted running down something that obviously had precisely 0 to do with any serious threat what so ever.

Personally, I'd say the lesson was learned...far more accurately than the teacher intended.

Did you expect anything less from North Carolina?

What doesn't surprise me the most is that this involved Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is the biggest bastion of American economic power, so it's no surprise that they are now directly employed by the Bush administration.

Well think about it, the kid put a red tack through the president's head.

I couldn't care less about the thumbs down thing, but the red tack I can see why it attracted attention. Assasination? Dissent only goes so far, but to be possibly saying our national leader should be shot, it a little too far...

i thought Wal Mart comprised of mostly poor people? why would they be helping to save Bush from "attempted" assasination? i dont know if poor people suppose to support Bush wen he aint doin ani favors for them. without poor people, Wal Mart wouldnt exist.

People want it both ways, don't they? If a terrorist lead comes in and isn't dealt with, the gov't is negligent. (You KNEW You KNEW). I guess they're only supposed to investigate the risks that pan out, which would be great if you're clairvoyant.

Suspicion is suspicion. It was investigated and turned out to not be a threat and dismissed. Big deal. Yep, scary for the kid. These are the times in which we live. Potential threats cannot be dismissed until they're investigated, I hope.

The link to your source does not work?

Interesting stuff though.

Originally posted by noslenwerd
The link to your source does not work?

Interesting stuff though.

Hmmm, it has been taken down or the site is under attack.

Looking for a copy though I found this similar case from last year.

www.firstamendmentcenter.org...

Secret Service questions student about anti-war drawings

By The Associated Press
04.27.04
PROSSER, Wash. — Secret Service agents questioned a high school student about anti-war drawings he did for an art class, one of which depicted President Bush’s head on a stick.

Another pencil-and-ink drawing portrayed Bush as a devil launching a missile, with a caption reading “End the war — on terrorism.”

The 15-year-old boy’s art teacher at Prosser High School turned the drawings over to school administrators, who notified police, who called the Secret Service.

“We involve the police anytime we have a concern,” Prosser Superintendent Ray Tolcacher told the Tri-City Herald newspaper.

Secret Service agents interviewed the boy on April 23. The student, who was not arrested, has not been identified.

The school district disciplined him, but district officials refused to say what the punishment was. Tolcacher said the boy was not suspended.

The artwork was apparently part of an assignment to keep a notebook of drawings, according to Kevin Cravens, a friend of the boy’s family.

The drawing that drew the most notice showed a man in what appeared to be Middle Eastern-style clothing, holding a rifle. He was also holding a stick with an oversize head of the president on it.

The student said the head was enlarged because it was intended to be an effigy, Cravens said. The caption called for an end to the war in Iraq.

A message left by the Associated Press with an after-hours duty officer with the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., was not immediately returned.

“If this 15-year-old kid in Prosser is perceived as a threat to the president, then we are living in 1984,” Cravens said.

Tolcacher insisted it was not a freedom of speech issue, but a concern over the depiction of violence.

“From what I saw, (school officials) were right to be concerned,” Prosser Police Chief Win Taylor said.

[edit on 5-10-2005 by RANT]

Good grief. Whilst I agree that threats need to be investigated, some common sense needs to be applied in determining exactly what constitutes a credible threat and what does not. The fact that this investigation made it all the way to the US Attorney's office is plain ridiculous. Surely a simple, non-intrusive background check would have told the Secret Service, or even the police for that matter, everything they needed to know to assess that this student did not represent a credible threat to the President.

Yes, we live in scary times and yes, the Secret Service are paid to protect the President from threats. But perhaps they need to better examine what a threat is and what it is not.

Originally posted by RANT
TheProgressive.org

At the end of the meeting, they told her the incident “would be
interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student
could be indicted,” she says. The student was not indicted, and the Secret
Service did not pursue the case further.

Are you sure this is for real? Has there been any other news sources
other than 'The Progressive' to put forth this story? That's kinda like
posting World Net Daily and expecting people to believe it.

Considering all the school shootings and all the underage criminals
running around this country I would hope that the Secret Service would
investigate ALL potential problems that are CREDIBLE. I find this story
not to be credible. I find the threat of indictment by the Secret Service
against a child and her Social Studies project (protected under the Right
of Free Speech) not to be credible either.

Find me some other CREDIBLE news source that doesn't lean so far
to the left (and not the NY Times either) and I'll believe it. IF it is true,
then the Secret Service shouldn't have said to her what they did.

I'll leave ya' with this 10 point list by Beyer (1988) that identifies 10
points when pondering the validity of claims or arguements and
understanding if advertisements and news articles are credible.
I'm sure that being a mod, a SUPER mod at that, you are already
aware of them. However I'll post these for others to see and take
note of. BIAS and source credibility are important. I question the
source of this news story - 'progressive' magazine. They may be
right, but just that it's coming from that source makes me want other
sources to back it up.

1) Distinguish between verifiable facts and value claims
2) Distinguish relevant from irrelevant information, claims or reasons
3) Determine factual accuracy of a statement
4) Determine credibility of the SOURCE.
5) Identify ambigious claims or arguements
6) Identify unstated assumptions
7) Detect BIAS
8) Identify logical fallacies
9) Recognize logical inconsistencies in the statement's line of reasoning
10) Determine the strength of the arguement or claim

[edit on 10/5/2005 by FlyersFan]

Does anybody has notices how fast the "secret services" is in "investigating common citizens" but they have fail to get to more pressing matters that involve our own government and their dirty tricks.

You people are Right we are not in a free American anymore, and this brings me to a teacher I had in college many moons ago that said to us, that freedom was just in between brackets and it was not such thing as a free country.

Originally posted by RANT
“If this 15-year-old kid in Prosser is perceived as a threat
to the president, then we are living in 1984,” Cravens said.

Age has nothing to do with it. The content of what he did in
art class is what should be looked at. (I didn't see a problem
with it). But to put it like a '15 year old kid' couldn't be a
threat to the president .... well ... that person is living with his
head in the sand. There are 12 year olds shooting kids and
teachers at schools. A 15 year old could definately be a threat.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
Are you sure this is for real? Has there been any other news sources
other than 'The Progressive' to put forth this story? That's kinda like
posting World Net Daily and expecting people to believe it.

Well, not being an American makes it kind of hard to gauge what you would consider a legitimate source, but it seems that additional news networks are carrying the story. For example:

ABC 11 Eyewitness News

Once again, if this is not a valid, newsworthy site, chalk it up to my unAmericanness.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
Are you sure this is for real? Has there been any other news sources
other than 'The Progressive' to put forth this story? That's kinda like
posting World Net Daily and expecting people to believe it.

Well, that would be true if World Net Daily had been around since 1909 and was respected like The Progressive magazine. It's not.

About The Progressive
One of the first voices to speak out against McCarthyism in the 1950s, The Progressive continues to be among the staunchest defenders of the First Amendment, publishing regular pieces by Nat Hentoff as well as McCarthyism Watch updates by Progressive editor, Matthew Rothschild. Now it is one of the few independent voices in the media reporting on Bush’s imperial designs, environmental degradation, and the resurgence in racism, particularly against Muslims and Arab-Americans.

Barbara Ehrenreich, Molly Ivins, and Howard Zinn write regularly for The Progressive. And some of America’s leading poets—Adrienne Rich, Martín Espada, C.K. Williams, Wendell Berry, and Rita Dove—publish original work with us.

We interview the likes of Seymour Hersh, Maxine Hong Kingston, Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Walker, Barack Obama, Howard Dean, Helen Thomas, Ani DiFranco, Steve Earle, Margaret Cho, Janeane Garofalo, George Carlin, Studs Terkel, Sam Hamill, Danny Glover, Roger Ebert, Martin Sheen, and Terry Tempest Williams. Past contributors include: Jane Addams, Martin Luther King, Jr., Helen Keller, James Baldwin, Upton Sinclair, Clarence Darrow, Jack London, George Orwell, Carl Sandburg, Edward Said, John F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Tammy Baldwin, June Jordan, Kevin Phillips, and Paul Wellstone

The Progressive has been recognized by:

The George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting

The Utne Independent Press Award for Political Coverage

Print magazine, Communication Arts magazine, How magazine, and The Society of Publication Designers

progressive.org...

Originally posted by Jeremiah25
Good grief. Whilst I agree that threats need to be investigated, some common sense needs to be applied in determining exactly what constitutes a credible threat and what does not. The fact that this investigation made it all the way to the US Attorney's office is plain ridiculous. Surely a simple, non-intrusive background check would have told the Secret Service, or even the police for that matter, everything they needed to know to assess that this student did not represent a credible threat to the President.

Yes, we live in scary times and yes, the Secret Service are paid to protect the President from threats. But perhaps they need to better examine what a threat is and what it is not.

Maybe that's why it's "newsworthy"? Because it doesn't happen that often? I'd rather see a couple of incidents like this hit the news occasionally, than find out stuff was getting summarily dismissed because of "common sense" which in my experience, isn't so common.

Big ups to Australia.

Originally posted by RANT
About The Progressive
Now it is one of the few independent voices in the media reporting on Bush’s imperial designs, environmental degradation, and the resurgence in racism, particularly against Muslims and Arab-Americans.

Like I said .. bias. However, Jerimiah provided the additional source
that verifies the article you posted from that magazine. That's all I
was looking for. If the Secret Service used the threat of indictment
then they went too far. I favor them checking anyone who is a
possible threat to the president, no matter the age of the possible
offender and no matter what political party the president is with.

Rant you scare me, just coming in and totally owning the competition with quick words and links. Must be heck of a debater...

Nothing wrong with the article so far source wise, believable for the most part actually.