RetroFed
“Clapping Is a First Amendment Right:” An Interview With the Person Arrested for Clapping at a Data Center Meeting
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The original was posted on /r/technology by /u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 on 2026-07-29 23:22:44+00:00.
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Hey ‘Murica, you’re getting pretty ridiculous. Please put an end to it. Sincerely, The World.
We are going to need international help. France, please send guillotines.
HCSOThrowawayWe’re going the route of Germany; I sincerely doubt we’re just going to snap out of it and return to normal on our own.
I agree that this is ridiculous and hope the guy wins a hefy lawsuit over this. That said, you can’t seriously tell me that other parts of the world don’t also have corrupt, power hungry people who make it to local office here and there who do asinine stuff like this, can you? We have a lot to fix. I’m just not sure that this particular thing is what makes America ridiculous. There are so many more ridiculous things that impact so many more people.
First amendment no good? Try the second.
The 2nd Amendment exists for when ALL the other amendments fail.
Well the 5th amendment also failed this week. Someone got arrested for not sharing the contents of his phone.
At this rate you’ll be quartering soldiers in your home by Tuesday.
And the 4th amendment, don’t even get me started on that. When has law enforcement ever respected that?
mercBoy howdy, when that 27th amendment fails, someone’s getting holes in them!
ManticoreWhen the 2nd amendment was written, only the first amendment even existed. That’s why it’s the 2nd.
Who told you that you aren’t allowed to exercise rights until you are so disempowered you couldn’t exercise them anyway? What do they gain from that?
bklynThe first 10 were added simultaneously. It’s called the Bill of Rights.
What is going on with this world that this needs to be stated
If you have to state this then you should have realized by now statements aren’t the solution, engaging in the system that led to this isn’t the solution
Breaking down Flock cameras is, slashing cop car’s tires is, road blockades are, even throwing marbles on the ground cartoon style would be more useful than more peaceful statements that previous peaceful statements were legal
Shouldn’t there be more guns in the US than people, peaceful protesting this far into fascism is not just unproductive(everyone already knows that they want their rights back) but counter productive
Part of the issue is that when something like you suggest is done, it’s not mentioned in the media. You heard about bryan thompson of course, and you heard about one warehouse being set ablaze ("all you had to do is pay us enough to live") but you haven’t heard about Wesley LePlatner. You didnt hear about the ice agent getting hit by a car in new jersey, and nobody being able to find who did it. You didnt hear about any of the other warehouse fires.
“The revolution will not be televised”
There were like what 9 more copy-cat warehouse fires? And when my friend was working for a company that did Tik-Tok moderation, he had mentioned how he had to censor news on like 3 other CEO’s having either an attempt made, or actually gunned down. Should have drilled them for more answers at the time.
You’re not wrong, we aren’t see the whole picture online, there is a lot of data missing while the data they want us to see gets amplified.
Or as it has been put in the past: The Revolution will not be televised.
Its been going on for a few years now. There was someone who put some rounds in a substation to stop an event at a gay bar or some other equally silly reason, and while that was stupid and bad, they never found out who did it and quietly stopped talking about it.
vaultdweller013Is that the one that happened up in Sacramento or something where the security camera caught the bullets hitting the chain link fence or are you referring to a different instance?
arested for clapping at a meeing? Sounds like some local government needs to be out on thier asses
They were even yelling at people who were waving their hands in Sign Language, so it wasn’t the noise, or the interruption, or the delays that were the issue, they simply didn’t want the audience to show support for each other, which is insidious.
When I was in high school, the School Board did something unfair to the band, so all the musicians showed up to multiple school board meetings to try to change their mind, and we were treated worse than disrespectfully each time, for daring to care about school policy that directly affected US.
At the last meeting we attended, I pointed to each member of the Board, and told them that we would replace them in the next election, except for one, who had two kids in Band, and was on our side.
We didn’t forget. When election season came, we spread across the city, and knocked on doors. There were are least 250 kids in band/orchestra/chorus, and every parent, and older sibling, relatives, etc. were on our side, and we could count on their votes. Beyond that, there were a LOT of residents that counted their band experiences as some of the best they had in school, and weren’t happy to hear about the band being screwed by the School Board.
Every single one of those disrespectful school board members was voted out by a wide margin, except our own guy, and everyone coming in had learned not to fuck with the band. We proved ourselves to be a powerful and effective voting block in that town.
nkat2112What you did was so inspiring! And in its written form, in your comment now, your story may continue to inspire others. Thank you for sharing this and bravo!
The precedent is set. In the near future a polite, muffled cough will allow them to clear the room so they can proceed in secret.
They don’t even have to do that. They can just do what my local politicians do and schedule it at the end of the meeting, limit testimony to 4 or so people, ignore that there’s hundreds of others that came to speak and 90% registered as opposed and then hastily vote and adjourn.
Ivan OverdriveIn the novel Soft Apocalypse, radicals planted bamboo to disrupt infrastructure. Not sure why this trivia popped into my head suddenly.
It was genetically modified to grow through concrete very fast if I remember correctly. Would be crazy if someone made that.
It was in the book, but regular bamboo can make a crack into a pothole.
Clapistan bans clapping!?
God I was so embarrassed watching the king of fucking england cringe at our clap obsession in congress a few months ago…
The good news is that after the lawsuit, he’ll own the town, and can make all the decisions himself.
UltraGiGaGigantic“Land of the free”
CileTheSaneFree labour, free data, free from consequences…
Only for the oligarchs of course. The pesants aren’t people
finallymadeanaccountThey could go the religious persecution route:
“Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy!” – Psalm 47:1
The Bible only works in the US when it comes to persecuting minorities.
Bigots only have the OT quotes about hatred barrelled, book, chapter, and verses. They cannot recall where a single passage talks about love and mercy and generosity.
dunestormAmericans are fucking weird man, not normal at all.
Pretty normal in a lot of places for a government to crack down on speech and protests.
I really am tired of people pretending like this kind of thing is purely an American problem and that Europe has no issues with authoritarianism. coughHungarycough (might be coming to an end, (maybe not, we’ll see) but living in 16 years of it…. some stuff here would make Republicans blush). Incidents in the UK with pro Palestinian movements are similarly discouraging…
I’ll go one step further, I’m tired of pretending like the people causing problems in America didn’t come from Europe. As a Native American I firmly believe that Europe needs to clean up its colonial mess.
Europe exported most of its problematic behavior and now likes to pretend it’s the model of civilization
The only continent they didn’t directly fuck up is Antarctica, and that’s just because it wasn’t profitable to colonise
Those places don’t call themselves shit like “land of the free” tho
local councils are often elected by grifters/ or gop because nobody pays attention to local politics(R voting R in the name is just as bad), this is the consequences of that.
Those council members will need to lock thier doors and and board up thier windows. This one ain’t going down quietly. (do note I’m not in thier area, I am not a threat. Don’t be evil.)
“Clapping is a First Amendment right”
Use this quote in a headline after it’s said by a judge who dismisses the case with prejudice.
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everyone and their dog knows if someone clapped for the opposite talking points it would have been permitted
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The pro-datacenter people won’t be making public comment, they are smoozing privately with the decision makers and making them sign NDAs.
pro datacenter people are the ones promoting it, the techbros.
Yes, but they aren’t standing up in city council meetings praising it. They are either the interested businesses that will privately meet with the council members, pay for advertising that keeps their specific names out of the ad, or rant in the media about how unfair it is that people don’t want the datacenters that would further enrich the tech bro.
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I’m saying broadly, like that other council meeting where the simple question of ‘are you bound by NDA with the company’ was only answered by two of the council members and the rest refused to answer. Every municipality is a bit different, and the one where I grew up pretty blatantly held a meeting, everyone said no, the council said they were rolling with it anyway. Why in the world would a city council go against unanimous expressed public opinion? Because private opinion spoke loader, probably with dollars.
I’m simply stating that none of the public expressions are in support of the datacenters, so there’s no way to compare.
spoopyFunny, you tried to reply to me and immediately deleted your comment before I could clown on you for how cucked the gubbmint has you. Realized I know more than you about laws and rights, got embarrassed, and ran away before I could clap your cheeks, I reckon.
Run on back to maga.place, fash
Edit: Really beating those fascist allegations by DMing me death threats and telling me to kill myself 
Disrupting civil proceedings is not. I applaud (heh) his actions, but they are not protected by the first amendment.
Edit: But an arrest seems extreme. He should have just been removed.
whyNotSquirrel“It was annoying,” Claridge told 404 Media. “So what happened was I clapped for the previous speaker. She hadn’t even gotten back to her seat before I stopped clapping. My wife was on the way up to the podium. The time for my wife’s speech hadn’t even been reset yet […] you see the 51 seconds remaining from the previous speaker. So I don’t know what I was disrupting exactly, but I was not clapping the entire time.”
i have to admit that the article was too long and I stopped, so I’m not really sure that was the “wrongdoing”
At city council or committee meetings the gallery is not allowed to make noise. They are there only to observe.
The gallery was especially noisy at this meeting and was warned to be quiet multiple times. Just because no one is speaking does not mean the gallery is allowed to clap.
You like the boot, but the rest of us don’t. Learn to read rooms.
That’s fucking stupid, it’s a stupid rule and nonsensical. What, are people not supposed to have reactions to things?
I think it’s just to not disrupt the proceedings. If you want to speak to an issue you can register as a delegation.
I’m reminded of a funny incident during a recent Calgary council meeting where a delegation was asked to stop clapping — they could continue singing, but I guess clapping is against the rules of decorum: https://youtu.be/UQRi4FpEj34 at about 4:55.
My whole point is that if someone is clapping or booing or otherwise reacting to a person speaking and they’re not actively disrupting the speaker it shouldn’t be a problem.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect people to not react or be silent when talking about stuff that impacts them directly and as long as it’s not very clearly outright hate speech or disrupting a speaker then it should be okay.
Rules of decorum are fine and all but when they’re used as a cudgel to silence expression from constituents at a town hall that’s bad.
It’s not about interrupting the speaker, it’s about the procedure. Boring legal stuff. Refer to funny anecdote I shared from Calgary (I realize Canada and US may do some things differently).
At the risk of being called a bootlicker, they weren’t just saying stuff and clapping, they were interrupting official meetings and asked to be dragged out.
Is this an abuse of power? Probably. How many people have been asked to leave or arrested for supporting the commissioners agenda? If this guy was disruptive (he did refuse to leave), did that deserve arrest? I don’t think so
Local government is still government, and is beholden to state, federal, and constitutional law. The first amendment allows US citizens to address their government as they see fit, barring a few exceptions such as viable threats or violence. Clapping in approval of others expressing their first amendment right to address grievances with their government is not basis for government force, and any reasonable court would struggle to claim it was so disruptive as to prevent the event from being able to proceed. He didnt stop any speakers or officials from moving to or from the podium, prevent them from reasonably being heard by the attendees, or cause the event to be unsafe.
Government buildings are also public property, and authorities cannot legally force someone to leave public property in the US unless they can articulate a crime being committed. Cops love to throw around disorderly conduct, but that typically gets thrown out because, shocker, those statues are more complex than “I find you personally annoying.”
This is basic US civics and the most basic of basic rights in the US. I’m no attorney, but a bachelors CJ degree and 10 years in that career field always leaves me astounded at how poorly the average person in this country understands their rights. I guess that’s why it’s so easy for them to be eroded.
I think GP is probably right that removing him was correct within the letter of the law and the rules for council meetings. However, I do get the impression that in this case the rules were enforced so strictly to shape public perception of how unpopular the datacenter is, not to prevent interruptions. I hope the council member that asked for his removal isn’t re-elected or loses his position.
I also think that in a context where civilians are addressing the council, there should be an exception to the no noise rule allowing for some applause and whatnot at appropriate times.
I disagree. Local council rules do not supercede the law, and it is a slippery slope we are already struggling to climb when we start making exceptions to avoid uncomfortable political realities. Clearly the residents in this area are opposed to this data center, and instead of acting as responsible elected officials carrying out the needs of their constituents, they arrest them for dissenting and getting in the way of their illegitimate cash flow.
This is the exact opposite of how we purport our government to work in the US. We are supposed to be the standard for a free nation and a model of governance where our system works for us, the people. What this event was in reality was fascism and political persecution, and the officials and law enforcement involved in this decision should be held civilly and criminally liable.
I agree that what happened goes against the spirit of the law and free speech. But I do think that the government is allowed to limit speech to an appropriate time and place.
People can still express their opinion by loudly protesting outside, posting online or placing an ad in the paper, etc. They’re just not allowed to express it in a place and a manner that interrupts elected officials when they’re doing their job.
Do you feel free speech should be so strongly protected that people are allowed to prevent the government from functioning? Because that’s why the no noise rule exists. I think that rule was abused in this case, but it does make sense to me.
Correct, they can limit free speech in the ways that the Supreme Court has told them they can. Clapping does not meet the standard.
Convenient and non-disruptive protest has a time and place. The US is far beyond a time and place where it is useful, though. When the government is blatantly out of control, even at the local level, the people are within their right to escalate. I’m a leftist, and I believe in actual freedom and the power of the people, not a lib who’s afraid to stray too far from the center in case someone cries about being uncomfortable when we’re talking about government overreach.
This person was “inconvenient”? That fucking sucks. Welcome to government work, suck it up or resign to make room for someone more capable of taking criticism and putting their pride away for the good of the community. The people don’t want a data center, it doesn’t matter that the city council does.
Clapping does not meet the standard.
I suspect that might be a valid legal opinion, but I have my doubts whether there is enough precedence to make it a legal fact. But IANAL, so I don’t really have an argument, nor does my opinion hold a lot of weight.
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