Maine National Guard bars Green Party leader from flying

georgemw at speakeasy.net georgemw at speakeasy.net
Sun Nov 4 20:56:56 PST 2001


On 4 Nov 2001, at 17:59, Bill Stewart wrote:


> It's one thing for a minimum wage ArentSoBright security guard
> to be concerned about the people carrying scary computer parts.
> (Hi, Dave!)  That's a problem, but it's a one-off.
> 
> This is something different - the Guardsman is sworn to uphold the
> Constitution, yet he's violating someone's rights in what
> appears to be a pre-planned retailiation for her political beliefs.
> That's a one-strike firing offense, like a cop getting caught stealing.

Right.  I didn't see it this way,  I got the impression that she was
prevented from flying because she gave the guard attitude
(deliberately slowing down when he told her to speed up,
etc.) rather than for her politics as such.    Still unacceptable 
behavior, of course,  but (to my mind) not nearly as bad. 
My suggestion that he should be let off with a reprimand should
be read in that context.
	I should add here that none of us know exactly what happened,
and it's conceivable that she might have said/done stuff
significantly more threatening than what she mentioned, and that 
keeping her off the flight was actually the right thing to do.  Not
asserting that this is the case, of course, just pointing out the 
possibility.


> The separate issue is the airline - the airline employee clearly
> deserves a reprimand, and whoever told all the other airlines that
> they don't want this Green Party person flying does as well.
> They sold her a ticket, and violated their contract to carry her,
> and the issue of whether it really was safety-related or whether
> a really egregious breach of contract is a question for a court.
> 
I'm not sure how egregious is egregious in the context of missing
flights. I've been unable to fly when I was supposed to because
of weather, mechanical problems, and because the asshole cabs
weren't there to pick me up when they were supposed to be.
Never get any compensation for it.
None of this justifies anything, of course, but the point is that 
there's always a non-negligible chance that you won't be able to
get on the flight you paid for.  So the odds of getting significantly 
more than a refund on the ticket seem slim.
Also, so far as motivation goes, I expect that the airline employees
genuinely believed she was a safety risk, it seems highly
unlikely that they just felt like persecuting greens. Whether
or not that was a reasonable belief is a separate question.

George  





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