to serve and ridicule

we covered a story today about a policeman and 2 firefighters who were fired in 1998 for their part in a labor day parade float that mocked stereotypes of blacks. well, they've been appealing their firing under the argument that their right to speech was violated by the city. today, the court upheld the city's decision, ruling that the city's interest in protecting the public and deflecting possible backlash was greater than the individual's right to expression. i have to say i agree with the court, but my reasoning is also tied to the fact that this type of behavior was habitual. i can't describe their previous efforts, so i'll let the words of the judge speak instead:

"Each year, Broad Channel plays host to a loosely organized Labor Day parade. The parade features, among other things, floats with varying themes and of varying degrees of sophistication. Local politicians award prizes to floats designated, for example, “prettiest,” “most original,” and “funniest.”

In each of the nine years leading up to 1998, the prize for funniest float was awarded to a particular group of individuals who entered floats that often, but not always, featured racial, ethnic, or other stereotypes, and that played off themes from popular culture. In 1994, for example, this group entered a float entitled “Hasidic Park,” a play on the film Jurassic Park, that featured stereotypes of Hasidic Jews living in prehistoric times. The group’s 1996 float, called “Gooks of Hazard,” depicted Asian stereotypes. Another year, the float styled itself “Happy Gays” and made fun of gay men. Steiner and Walters participated in each of these floats, and Locurto in the 1996 and 1997 floats. There is no evidence that any of the previous floats generated any substantial contemporaneous controversy or public attention.

For the September 7, 1998 Labor Day parade, the group, which included the plaintiffs, decided to enter a float called “Black to the Future – Broad Channel 2098.” The conceit, a play on the 1985 time-travel film Back to the Future, was to depict how Broad Channel would look in 2098 when, presumably, the community would be more integrated than it was in 1998. Each of the float participants, including the plaintiffs, covered their faces in black lipstick, donned Afro wigs, and accompanied the float along the procession in attire ranging from overalls with no T- shirt underneath, to cut-off jeans and ratty T-shirts, to athletic pants and sweatshirts. The float itself featured two buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken on the hood of a flatbed truck.

One of the participants (not a plaintiff in this case) ate a watermelon and at one point threw the remains into the crowd. The float participants engaged in various chants, including, “No Justice, No Peace,” “This isn’t Johannesburg,” and “We didn’t land on Broad Channel, Broad Channel landed on us.” Plaintiffs Steiner and Walters yelled to the crowd, “Crackers, we’re moving in,” and Walters simulated “break dancing” alongside the float. Near the end of the procession, and apparently without the others’ knowledge, Walters held onto the truck’s tailgate, pretending to be dragged by the truck, and yelled, “Look what they did to our brother in Texas, we would not allow them here . . . .” The scene was intended to invoke and parodically recreate the dragging death of James Byrd, Jr., an African-American man who had been murdered months earlier outside of Jasper, Texas after being chained to the back of a moving pickup truck by three white men.

The float never reached the viewing stand to be sized up for the annual funniest float prize because a thunderstorm ended the parade early."