It could get you jailed . . .

Monday, August 21, 2006

I’m always a little reticent about protesters’ complaining about the consequences of their civil disobedience — ergo, "How dare the police jail me for breaking city ordinances about lawful assembly!" and the like.  My view is, if you’re going to engage in civil disobedience (emphasis on "civil"), then part of that is accepting the consequences.

But then, there are those instances where "protesters" have gone to great pains NOT to engage in civil disobedience, to stay well within the law, and to respect law enforcement, and they still receive what appears to be unreasonable, biased, and, even, egregious treatment by the law.

What the Ottawa Sun columnist Licia Corbella describes, here,  seems to fall into the latter category.  According to Corbella, Artur Pawlowski, a former homebuilder and a refugee from formerly Communist Poland, gave up his lucrative business to devote his life to turning streetpeople and others away from lives of drug abuse and what else goes with life on the street.  Pawlowski had the temerity to talk to "Fringe Festival" participants about the occult.  When asked to stay well away, he did, but went to the fringes of where the Fringe Festival was set up to pray for the participants, out of earshot.

Even so,  members of the Calgary Police Service responded to a complaint made by a participant in the Fringe Festival and arrested Pawlowski.

"Ah, yes," you may be thinking, "but how do we know Pawlowski and Co. didn’t engage in UNcivil behaviour?"

According to Corbella, it was caught on video that showed the facts as she reported them.

But here’s my question for the occultists:  "Assuming they  really believe this stuff, why didn’t they just call on the ‘gods’ of the occult instead of the Calgary coppers?"

Posted by Russ Kuykendall on August 21, 2006 in Religion | Permalink