Citizenship Inc.: Negotiating Civic Spaces in Post-urban America

Abstract

As part of a protest against the seemingly inevitable war in Iraq in March 2003, Stephen Downs and his son, Roger, visited their local mall in Guilderland, New York to have t-shirts printed with peace and antiwar slogans across them. Stephen Downs' read 'Peace on Earth' on the front with 'Give Peace a Chance' on the back, while his son's had the phrases 'No War with Iraq' and 'Let Inspections Work' printed on it. They chose to wear their newly purchased tshirts and went to have dinner in the food court at Crossgates Mall. Shortly afterwards, mall security guards approached them and asked them to remove their shirts. Stephen Downs refused; the local police were called and, after failing to broker a compromise between Mr. Downs and the mall owners, arrested Mr. Downs for trespassing. The director of operations for the owners of Crossgates Mall commented on the incident to the New York Times two days later: 'Their behavior, coupled with their clothing to express to others their personal views on world affairs were disruptive of customers.'1 Although the mall's management quickly requested that the trespassing charge be dropped against Mr. Downs, it came too late to avert a protest from more than 150 antiwar and civil libertarian protestors. Given the impending war, the mass protests across the globe in February of that year, and the popularly-imagined all-Americanness of the shopping mall, the incident attracted attention not only from the New York Times, but also from news corporations across the world including the BBC, News Australia and even Fox News' The Bill O 'Reilly Factor. The owners of Crossgates Mall were able to have Stephen Downs arrested for trespassing because of the mall's legal status as private property. Although shopping malls are places of public gathering, federal and state courts have ruled, with limited exceptions, that shopping centres have a legal right to remove people disrupting their business. Following the U.S. Supreme Court's 1976 ruling in Hudgens