Know your "rights" before you find yourself in hot water. Keep yourself safe from police repression.

The Know Your Rights information here came directly out of a Free Skool Santa Cruz workshop on the subject. We created a Know Your Rights handbill and poster that we hope you'll find useful.

Download the PDF poster and handbill. We encourage all of our friends to hang the poster next to the toilet in their co-op houses where we know it will get read.

How about holding the next Know Your Rights forum in the any of the downtown Public Parking lots, where public assembly is now forbidden.

Or advising poor and homeless people of their rights to stay in and use public spaces such as the shrinking shelf of space they're allowed on public sidewalks as benches and other seating areas disappear?

In the past, Know Your Rights sidewalk forumistas have advised folks to ask officers "Am I free to leave?" when approached by the police. What if they want to stay?

I appreciate the fine role-playing and public education going on, but would encourage the teachers to expand their repetoire to deal with situations that poor and homeless folks face daily (and nightly).

'Twould be a challenge to take and hold the public space and a fine place to learn just which shrinking rights we're willing to defend.

For those interested in working on such forums, please give a call to HUFF (Homeless United for Friendship & Freedom) at 423-4833 or come to a HUFF meeting Wednesday mornings 9:30 AM in the basement cafeteria of the county building at 701 Ocean St.

We still allow homeless downtown? I guess Ryan Coonerty hasn't gotten his way completely yet.

Last summer we perceived that our downtown location at Cooper and Pacific might not be the most welcoming of places for the homeless and poor (read, non-shoppers) to enjoy a free skool class in which they might learn their rights. So in Fall we held the class on the River levee to bring Rights to the homeless, as it were.

Alas, we had but one person show up. So this time, we opted to go back to out toni downtown location.

So if you have friends and acquaintances who are poor, homeless, immigrant, or wayward youth, please encourage them to come to the class, where we can turn Cooper and Pacific -- at least for one afternoon -- into a welcoming place for those castoffs who we would normally shuffle off to the outskirts of our rich, liberal town.

And indeed, we will talk about the parking lot panic law. And beyond "Free To Go," we'll talk about your right to stay where you are.

Here is a novel idea to include in your pamphlet. Stay out of trouble and don't break the law and you won't have a reason to be looked at by the police.
Not everything a few folks hold dear is worthy of a protest, nor are they protected activities.

Free School Santa Cruz, " Know Your Rights" and other great classes are not a protest for one. They are a class held on public property. Its not about teaching people to break the law but know their rights. I think its great, not just this class but the numerous others done by people who simply care. I could not attend this one, but have gone to two others. It helped me a great deal in dealing with Cops who are not protecting my rights. The poor and homeless are supposed to have all the basic rights you and I and everyone have, but they do not. That may be ok with some folks, but its not with me. We were warned in the non-binding Declaration of Independence if you read the entire thing. Sad that we have lost so much of our supposedly binding constitutional rights that the Constitution means so little today as its has been torn to shreds.

So they teach people how to protect their own rights legally. Is that something to be very concerned about? Is it the fact that they are teaching the poor or people you perceive in a certain possibly class driven manner about their rights that bothers you?

The face of homelessness and poverty is not just on the mall, they are not not the poster children for poverty and homelessness. Everyone has rights and I applaud Rico and Wes for the work they do for free, teaching people with lesser means how to stay out of trouble. In essence they are saving your tax dollars by stopping bogus arrests and the vast waste of police resources on petty unconstitutional laws. The Move along law, the blanket ban, the sleeping ban, the 15 trespass law, these are unconstitutional selectively enforced laws which waste police time when they could be looking for murders , rapists, and real criminals. Thanks Free School Santa Cruz!