In 1977 the Washington DC city council passed the DC Human Rights Act which was not so much about "human" rights as it was about "civil rights".... guaranteeing the PRIVILEGE of access to any and ALL PUBLIC and COMMERCIAL facilities for ALL people REGARDLESS of ethnicity, race, color, gender, religion, or general personal characteristics. What THAT meant is that NO public agent OR commercial proprietor can whimsically BAR or EVICT from the premises ANY person that they don't personally like. In other words, you have the RIGHT of access and presence on the site provided you are NOT violating either policy OR law. However, in MY recent experiences both observational and participational I have found the situation to be DIFFERENT! Some restaurants, like the McDonald's, have time-limit signs for staying at the place NO MORE than fifteen minutes. THIS is a RIDICULOUS policy and I have NEVER observed it posted ANYWHERE outside of Washington DC before. But HERE it's common! It is retroactively negative to the business because naturally it DIScourages people from coming in to sit and lounge and linger with repetitive purchases of the menu. In other words, it does NOT exhibit good "hospitality". This was demonstrated to me one day when I entered one in the neighborhood in which I reside near Howard University in NW DC. I mention this location because it is a typical "ethnic" institution established for the descendants of Nigro slaves and still in existence. Nevertheless, as I was sitting there dining I watched a Nigro woman sitting near me, who had also been a CUSTOMER and clearly had her purchases present as proof, be ORDERED by the manager to LEAVE; DESPITE the fact that she was NOT disturbing the place and was merely done eating. IRONICALLY, the ORDER came from a NIGRO FEMALE!! When the customer refused to leave, the manager called the police to NOT ONLY have her escorted out but also BANNED by a "barring notice" from the place for SEVEN YEARS!! I had NEVER witnessed such an occurrence in my life. The SECOND time it HAPPENED TO ME!! Not at a restaurant but at a FedEx Office Store near the White House, no less, at which I was a frequent patron.The night-duty counter clerk who was a foreigner of apparent Arabic ethnicity didn't appreciate my presence there at night for some reason; DESPITE the fact that I was FREQUENTLY there as a PAYING customer and HE violated store policy by allowing the numerous homeless (mainly Nigro) to come in and sleep at the cubicles REGARDLESS of the seasonal weather!! Last summer his attitude toward me of DIScourteous "service" finally came to a climax when he played a trick on me to get me out of the store and into trouble. He announced to both me who was there doing business and to the black man sleeping at one of the cubicles that he was going to be closing the store for an hour to make an urgent delivery in Virginia; DESPITE the fact that this particular store is the ONLY OPEN 24/7 FedEx in the District! After I gathered my possessions and went outside, intending to wait for him to return so I could finish the project I was working on, I found that instead of leaving he was staying inside and beginning to collect the trash!! The black man had not even been awakened to leave! So naturally I went back in and confronted him about the matter, stating that since he was going to be engaged in another chore which would take some time, I was going to come back in and resume my work until he was ready to actually close the store. UNbelievably, he REFUSED to allow me entry.... LYING that I had been "ordered" not to return my management and PLAINLY stating that I was NOT welcome there and the store "was not a SHELTER"! I ignored this arrogant absurdity and reentered anyway, at which point he called the police. When they arrived, the cops IGNORED the Nigro sleeping in the corner yet in plain view and went to the proprietor. After speaking with him, they came up to me and told me that I had to leave because he wanted me too. I of course refused for OBVIOUS reasons to do so. They then asked him if he wanted me "banned" from the premises, to which he assented so the cops wrote out a "barring notice"; doing so by the way DEFICIENTLY and DEFECTIVELY to the point that when I showed a mediator the document he expressed doubt about its legal authenticity! Nevertheless, overlooking that, I still refused to leave and stood my ground of customer privilege. As a result, I was ARRESTED FOR TRESPASSING!! FedEx declined to prosecute so the charge was eventually dismissed, but the ISSUE of POLICE VIOLATION OF A LAW is NOT!! The main contention is NOT whether proprietors have "the right" to prevent or remove people from their premises for ANY reason. The issue is about THOSE they use, namely the POLICE, to have people removed!! It's one thing for the average minimum-wage employee not to know the law; it's ANOTHER thing entirely when the COPS acting as THUGS either behave ignorantly or just plain DISREGARD the law and NEGLECT to enforce it on behalf of those they SHOULD be enforcing it for!! The "trespass law" did not come into effect here because though the DC municipal code defines "trespassing" as being on the premises "WITHOUT LAWFUL authority to remain", the DC Human Rights Act of 1977 IS the "LAWFUL" authority! Apparently however THAT doesn't mean anything to either the DC Metro Police Internal Affairs Bureau which IGNORED my complaint, the DC Office of Police Complaints, which IGNORED my complaint, or even to the DC CITY COUNCIL itself, at which meeting of its Committee of the Judiciary and Police Supervision I testified this year with the accompanying documents of the incident!!! What galls me MOST however is the REFUSAL of the Washington DC Lawyers' Committee for Equal Rights and Justice to represent me WITHOUT reason in litigation against the perpcops involved!! HOW the heck can this city EXPECT people will want to come "live" and work HERE with the knowledge that the POLICE(THUGS) can be used to THROW you out of ANY building if those in charge of it DON'T WANT you there!! That puts US rights back to the pre-1955 days that King and all those others protested about when ANYONE can be discriminated against for ANY reason. And of course, as the clerk did with me, THEY'RE NOT going to tell the cops they just don't want you there; they're going to LIE with a FALSE accusation against you so that the cops think there is a need to get involved on THEIR behalf. The problem is when the cops IGNORE the character of the scene with their own sense and simply go by what the "person in charge" basically commands them to do. In my case they did that by IGNORING the homeless man sleeping at the cubicle in CLEAR VIOLATION of POSTED store policy and in not requesting to see ANY visual evidence of the character of the transaction between me and the store clerk where he claimed that I behaved "aggressively"....... as IF who WOULDN'T after being treated like THAT??!! THIS kind of "customer service" is BAD for EVERYBODY, except ironically the neutral party.... the POLICE who don't give a damn because they're "just doing what they're told to" and THEY KNOW it WON'T EVER be done to THEM because THEY have the "FORCE" behind them!! A cop out of uniform is as powerful as a cop IN uniform. I wasn't even aware of the DC Human Rights Act last year when this flagrant violation occurred, but NOW I carry around a printed copy of it wherever I go.... for all the good it will do. Just to SHAME the HYPOCRITES of this city I shall quote the gist of it... &2-1402.01... "EVERY person shall have an EQUAL opportunity to participate fully in the ECONOMIC, cultural, and intellectual life of the District and to have an EQUAL opportunity to participate in ALL aspects of life including but NOT limited to... places of PUBLIC accommodation... and COMMERCIAL SPACE accommodations." &2-1402.31 PROHIBITIONS (a) "General. It shall be UNLAWFUL DISCRIMINATORY practice to do any of the following acts wholly or partially for a DISCRIMINATORY reason... (1) To DENY, directly or INdirectly, ANY person the FULL and EQUAL enjoyments of the goods, SERVICES, FACILITIES, PRIVILEGES, advantages, and accommodations of any place of PUBLIC accommodations. (2) To print, circulate, post, or mail, or otherwise cause, directly or indirectly, to be published a statement, advertisement, or sign which indicates that the full and equal enjoyments of the goods. services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of a place of public accommodation will be unlawfully refused, withheld or denied any person; OR THAT A PERSON'S PATRONAGE OF, OR PRESENCE AT, a place of PUBLIC accommodation is OBJECTIONABLE, UNWELCOME, UNACCEPTABLE, OR UNDESIRABLE." The Law even states that the qualification of EXEMPTION from its application for the SOLE purpose of "business necessity" or operations CANNOT be justified by the circumstances of "increased cost", "BUSINESS EFFICIENCY, "comparative group characteristics", or ANYBODY'S "preferences"!! And I wasn't even "obstructing" operation of the place by conducting my customer business there; but the guy SLEEPING at one of the cubicles in VIOLATION of the POSTED store policy AGAINST LOITERING is UNharrassed by the police AND the employee. The question to me of "WHY?" doesn't matter.... the question of WHO is going to enforce the civil rights laws is what MATTERS and WHAT is to be done if they don't!!
In a follow-up to the preceding post, I am recounting the CONTINUING CORRUPTION of "Washingdung DSleaze" (as I now refer to it) with regards to civil rights. As many throughout the country, and the world as well for that matter have long suspected, Washingdung talks the talk but does NO MORE THAN THAT. I am increasingly finding that out with attempts to bring the police to court for their violation of wrongful arrest involved in the precedingly-recounted FedEx store incident. First of all, IF you are POOR, as I am, you're chances of finding a pro bono attorney to represent you against the police are practically NIL! Many think there are many civil rights advocacy organizations located here in DC, but as a resident of three years I can assure you THAT'S NOT true!! There are of course NUMEROUS lobbyist organizations here of everything from the (in)famous Teamsters Union to the Wheat Growers Association; but for civil rights organizations standing against POLICE MISCONDUCT/CRIMINALITY and obstruction of free access to ALL "PUBLIC accomodations", there are only TWO: the ACLU, and the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Equal Justice and Urban Affairs; and you're likely to get the SAME excuse for NON-assistance from BOTH of them as I have gotten, and for that matter got from the ACLU when out in Colorado: "UNABLE to help due to too many cases and not enough staff and funds." UNbelievably, I was told by the DC Bar Pro Bono Center they have NO attorneys connected to their network licensed in DC that litigate against civil rights abuses!!! That's WASHINGDUNG for ya, folks! That being said, for those like me who are SERIOUS about their civil rights, there remains no recourse but to represent themselves in court. But THEN there comes the problem of the integrity of the judges! Early last month I finally got around to submitting my legal complaint to Feralcourt along with a request to wave the court application cost since I am on Social Security Disability compensation of LESS than a thousand dollars a month, have to a pay a FULL THIRD of my income for subsided housing rental, and have only a thousand dollars in the bank! With all my connections to governmental "welfare" departments, there is NO way I could hide anything. YET, today I got a court order from Judge Boyd CLOSING my case and DENYING my application of waiver of costs request. Based on what? FALLACIOUS information that HAD to be concocted because there is NO proof of it! It was stated in the court order that I had $6000 in cash in a bank account! THAT'S an OURIGHT LIE! I haven't had $6000 in ANYTHING for two or three years since I moved here to DSleaze! Where he got that info I don't know but I only have ONE bank account the latest statement of which just before the very period I applied shows ONLY $1000 in savings. That has not changed and I only keep it in there so I can cash my monthly government check fee-free as the MINIMUM limit required for doing so by bank policy. I usually manage to keep at the most another thousand in my pocket as spending money as needed so I average no more a month in savings than TWO thousand dollars; which is NOWHERE NEAR six! Furthermore, even IF I did have six thousand dollars, THAT is STILL well BELOW the sub-poverty line of $10,000 in liquid assets. Granted, with Social Security increases my ANNUAL INCOME has been somewhat above $10,000 for the past year, but the judge did NOT account assets by annual income in his denial of waiver reasons. He DENIED based on a FALSE data that I had $6000, which I NEVER claimed to have and have the bank statement to prove it which I had not submitted at the time because it was not required or requested. But I WILL do so tomorrow so the judge reopens the case. ONLY a CORRUPT jewdicial system would require a poor person with no more than a thousand dollars for actual expenses to pay FOUR HUNDRED to "buy" a chance at justice!! In reality, since our taxes support the court system, we SHOULDN'T have to pay ANYTHING at all for litigation UNLESS you lose the case!! We'll see HOW money-hungry DC really is like the big cash vacuum it's supposed to be (spewing it out and sucking it back in) as I keep you posted with ongoing developments.
In reality, there are no citizens any longer. Americans are subjects to the Federal Government and therefore the property of the government. There is no freedom, there is no republic, there is no respect for human rights. There is just tyranny.
There is a substantial difference between individual rights and group rights, in my opinion. The group rights of any individual within the group are not as absolute. They probably have this ridiculously strict rule so they can selectively enforce it. If there's anyone they don't like, they can go pointing to this rule they made. What you have discovered is that the judicial system is not "fair". That being said, I might have done the same thing if I had been that judge too. You are trying to assert your "rights" which are not really real rights at all, but made up "rights" which the government chose to give certain groups of people, and you expect the government to have to pay all the adjudication costs for your complaint. The right not to be discriminated against, by a privately owned business, is not an absolute right, not in the same sense as other individual rights. It would be different if it was your life or personal liberty that were at stake. The judge was most likely just being practical and trying to discourage trivial complaints. So I do not really see anything very wrong here.
If a business tells you it's time to go, it's time to go. You can't be trying to "assert your rights". (not in this situation)
Then you DON'T know Washington DC! As a resident of what's been called by even natives of it the "Dumbest City" in America, let me tell you about it. To do so I will give a record of MY OWN personal experiences here. I moved here from Boulder Colorado in 2012. The first year here I didn't experience anything legally offensive by the "system", though I often heard of the usual police shootings and harassment of the black "minority" of the city. BUT then IT began. The following year (2014) I was ARRESTED for "TRESPASSING/UNLAWFUL ENTRY" at the FedEx Office Store on K Street near the While House while I was there as a CUSTOMER CONDUCTING BUSINESS and had SPENT SEVERAL HUNDRED DOLLARS over that weekend working on a project there!! The reason I was ARRESTED and CHARGED with that crime is because I REFUSED to acknowledge an ILLEGAL banning order by the Washingdung DC po-lice which was issued simple because the night-shift store employee DIDN'T LIKE MY PRESENCE THERE. For the record, I am NOT "black"; though HE VIOLATED company policy against loitering by allowing the homeless blacks to come in and SLEEP THROUGHOUT THE NIGHT at the computer cubicles SUMMER as well as winter!! BOTH his request to have me banned from the premises AND the DC po-lice action of arrest WERE ILLEGAL and VIOLATIONS of the DC HUMAN RIGHTS ACT of 1977, which stipulates that NO company can prejudicially DENY access OR service to ANYONE for ANY reason EXCEPT of course, criminal behavior. Because the po-lice basically knew this, I was released the very next day on a court summons/citation without having to have first appeared in court. IF they were going to do it THAT way, then WHY didn't they just remove me from the premises and THEN write out the summons INSTEAD of making me have to spend the rest of the night in one of their skanky jails?! Anyway, I was NOT prosecuted for the charge because FedEx WISELY chose NOT to send representatives to trial court. IT's own video evidence of what transpired that night (of a CUSTOMER being ARRESTED while BUMS were being ALLOWED to loiter SLEEPING on store property) would NOT have looked good! The latest incident occurred at my apartment residence just this January. The female tenant above me has been harassmentally making noise-disturbances for the past year and a half. I do not have a phone to call the police and THAT doesn't matter because she does it in such a way that they WOULDN'T catch her in the act because she could see them coming since both our apartments face the street. I have a record of NUMEROUS email complaints to management about her behavior and going back since the beginning of last year and so far, NOTHING has been done to discourage her to stop. Her actions have caused damage to my apartment ceiling because she DELIBERATELY DROPS heavy objects on her floor, particularly around my bed area, AS IF she KNOWS where I sleep! (NO, she is NOT and never was my "girliefriend"!) From the force of the sound it appears she does not have a carpet but a hard floor; unlike my unit. Some time in the past last year I began RETALIATING by banging on my ceiling loudly to induce her to stop by showing how annoyed I was. I had already attempted to speak to her once as normal people do in similar situations by going up to her apartment and knocking on the door telling her who I was and why I needed to speak with her. She simply told me to go away or she would call the police. So then I began bringing the noise closer to home by going up and banging on her wall and door, sometimes with a hammer. FORTUNATELY, one night this past month when I did so after enduring a day of her noise harassment, a nearby tenant came out to see what the noise was about. He WASN'T mad at me and I explained to him the problem. At the time the girl was STILL "noising off", jumping around "dancing" in her apartment to some loud music as if having a one-person party!! The nearby tenant went over and heard it and I told him that I had to endure THAT kind of thing reverberating over me head day AND night as well as OTHER noises and he agreed that he would RETALIATE too. He also agreed to be a WITNESS for me in any complaint I made to management OR in any dispute with the po-lice. Well, sure enough, GOOD THING I finally got an earwitness because the VERY NEXT DAY she ended up calling the po-lice on ME!! Here's what happened: first they came to my door. I opened it and asked what was the matter. One of them was a black female cop. She told me she wanted me to come out in the hall and speak to them. I told her I was fine right where I was behind my threshold, because I KNEW that they had NO legal right to reach in and pull me out for arrest WITHOUT a warrant. Of course IF THAT HAD happened, there would have been NO evidence recording the fact that they had done so and therefore, given what subsequently happened, I WILL NEVER AGAIN open my door to cops who want to talk to me! They can talk to me through the closed door. If they want to talk to my face then they better get a warrant! Anyway, she told me that they had "evidence" of me "harassing" the girl tenant upstairs and she had called them to complain. I explained that it was just the other way around and that ANYTHING I had admittedly done was done as RETALIATION for what SHE was doing! I told them about the ceiling damage and offered to show them the traces of it and email records of my complaints to management. They declined. I then told them I had an earwitness to her activity and they agreed to come up with me to interview him. We went up and he opened his door for me to show him that I NEEDED HIM now! He admitted to hearing what she had been doing. I admitted to banging on her door and wall but ONLY in retaliation for what she was doing and not getting any assistance stopping her. The female cop then DUMBFOUNDEDLY tells me that I was going to be ARRESTED then and there for "STALKING", according to DC "law"!! She flagrantly IGNORES the reason for my action; she DISREGARDS the proper procedure of using witness testimony to issue a warning to the PRIME offender; and she MISREPRESENTS the character of the action I did!!! IF anything, it was NOTHING like "stalking" behavior but harassment, which it WAS in RETALIATION for the HARASSMENT the girl was doing as the prime offender!! The case is now going to go to trial because at THIS point it's GOT to be either HER OR me that goes!! Recently she even accused me of violating the court-ordered ban "not to harass HER" by claiming that I have been banging on my ceiling throughout the night, when IN FACT, she has been CONTINUING HER actions and dropping things to the extent that she has CAUSED YET ANOTHER CRACK in my ceiling near the bed almost right over my head!! Tomorrow I will see just how well this little foreigner with an unpronounceable babblish name presents herself in court for giving testimony because I have a hearing scheduled to determine IF I should still be on release OR held in jail!! IF I lose the hearing the odds are that I will lose the trial but I'm NOT going to live anywhere in such harassmental subjection so I'm going all out with this because IF I win I'm going to press charges against her!! THIS is a VERY sensitive case pertaining NOT JUST to "civil" rights but to TENANT RIGHTS and HOW effective the law system is in stopping offenders whose behavior is NOT detected by their actions!! To LOSE a case like this would be DAMAGE to EVERYBODY who has a complaint WITH witness testimony about one of the more "covert" kinds of crimes.
IF you don't "see anything wrong" here then you miss the whole point and it's people like you who would agree with what a judge is doing that are helping to erode the civil rights system in this society with your trivializing between "personal rights" and "group rights". What is a group composed of but separate people. You diminish the rights of one you diminish the rights of all. My discovering that the judicial system is not "fair" means discovering the judicial system is NOT "just"! If the "justice system" is not "JUST" then it is CRIMINAL because it is NOT about JUSTICE and RIGHTS. The right I asserted of freedom of access to PUBLIC accomodations IS a RIGHT guaranteed by the DC Human Rights Act that I had quoted! The "government" pays NOTHING for the adjudication costs of my complaint; it merely provides the service of adjudication. The burden of expense in PROVING, NOT in getting the opportunity to prove, my case is on me. As it SHOULD be in a true justice system. Trying telling the black ethnics of this country that THEIR SIMILAR complaints of DISCRIMINATION back in the early to mid twentieth century were "TRIVIAL complaints". Are you stating that the VERY SAME issue which started MLK on his civil rights crusade with the Greensboro case of 1955 or 56 was "TRIVIAL"?? Furthermore, FedEx INC. is NOT a "privately-owned" business. It is a COMMERCIAL CORPORATION with NO PERSONAL ownershop. In other words, it is NOT a "mom and pop shop".
NO it isn't. UNLESS it's the owner. AND unless they want to start LOSING business. Period. You should learn a thing or two about "customer relations".
Why anyone would move from Colorado to NW DC is beyond me. Why anyone who hates foreigners would expect them not to be in every business in DC they walk into baffles me more. Move to Silver Springs.
RICHARDD, People are not logical, I have a good friend, he often finds himself in similar situations, he responds to knuckleheads with less brains than your average shrimp or crab ! You should moderate your way of dealing with people, I do because people act stupidly. I am a retired policeman, and as such, held to a higher standard of accountability, it is important to do things a bit better. I had a legal project years ago, and I invested around $ 3,000 in computer equipment and won a victory. I make better food than McDonalds and computers and printers are cheaper than dirt. Live your life quietly, ignore stupid people, you will be much happier, also, attending group therapy helps. cheers mate !
