During a March demonstration downtown, a Seattle police officer accused pro-Palestine protester Carmen Woodson of property destruction for slapping a sticker on a McDonald’s sign. The sticker read, “This company helps fund genocide” and “Peace in Palestine,” and it included some images of bloody handprints.
Republican City Attorney Ann Davison’s office pursued prosecution for more than a month before eventually moving to dismiss the case based on proof issues. Even with that dismissal, though, Woodson argued that City prosecutors wasted public time and resources just to humor a cop with a bruised ego.
On the day of the demonstration, Seattle Police Department (SPD) Sergeants Matthew Newsome and Ian Stuart posted up near a McDonald’s on Fourth Avenue near the Space Needle, according to a police report of the incident. A McDonald’s employee spotted the officers and asked them to help move some demonstrators out of the restaurant’s pathway, and they obliged. As Newsome and Stuart continued to stand around, they warned a demonstrator against putting a sticker on the restaurant’s sign. That demonstrator argued over the legality of stickering the business but then ultimately walked away.
Then Woodson walked up to the sign. According to the police report, Stuart told Woodson not to sticker the sign, but Woodson looked at him mid-stick and said something to the effect of “it’s too late.” Woodson then walked away. Newsome and Stuart followed her “at a distance” before stopping her at Denny Park, where they told her they planned to charge her with property destruction. After that, the cops returned to the McDonald’s and discovered more stickers on the sign.
To recommend charges against Woodson, the cops relied on a slightly tortured interpretation of the City’s property destruction ordinance. Under the ordinance, a person commits property destruction when they write, paint, or draw “any inscription, figure or mark” on public or private property. Newsome argued in his police report that Woodson had “marked” the McDonald’s with her sticker. He also ticked two boxes on the police report indicating the crime exhibited elements of bias and involved hate graffiti.
About two months after the demonstration, the City Attorney’s Office charged Woodson with property destruction. During a hearing on June 18, a City prosecutor tried to force Woodson to stay away from the McDonald’s as a condition of her release. Seattle Municipal Court Judge Catherine McDowall denied that request because the City could offer no evidence to back up the need to keep Woodson away from the business. On Tuesday, City prosecutors moved to dismiss the case, acknowledging that the City had no proof Woodson “wrote, painted, or drew as required by the ordinance.” Seems like something they might have wanted to check before filing the case.
Woodson suspects the cops were just retaliating against her for calling them “assholes” and for suggesting that they get paid well enough to spend their time peeling stickers off signs if they didn’t like the look of them. (In the police report, the cops claimed Woodson said a McDonald’s employee could remove the sticker, but Woodson denied that.)
Moreover, ticking the hate-crime boxes seemed like an abuse of power, as claiming the company supports genocide doesn’t amount to an expression of hate or an incitement of violence against a group based on their race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.
“I feel like, all-in-all, they should be held accountable for wasting public dollars to do this. It’s so aggravating on that front,” Woodson said.
Glad that these brave protesters are getting the word out not to buy a cheeseburger because something something genocide or whatever.
So am I to conclude that the Stranger is ok with people covering its signs with stickers accusing the paper of supporting terrorism and genocide?
As petty as it is preposterous. What a crock.
Not really a fan of McDonald’s. I think the last time I had a burger from there was during The Plague.
Big Mac sounds good all of a sudden.
Sounds like a waste of public money, but did get us this chuckle: “… claiming the company supports genocide doesn’t amount to an expression of hate or an incitement of violence against a group based on their race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.”
Yeah, claiming that some entity “supports genocide” is an expression of pure love and tolerance towards that entity.
@tensora Facts do suck when you have to defend the indefensible.
Cops wasting time and money?
Shocked, I tell you! Shocked!
@7 Saying that you condone genocide isn’t a hate crime. Quit your whining or even better, grow a conscience.
@8: So, my leading with, “Sounds like a waste of public money,” read like a defense to you?
What color is the sky in your world?
@7 Corporations are not people. They have no human rights for another to respect or disrespect. Not surprised that you are not intelligent enough to understand that.
@1 Raindrop, if your statement isn’t ironic, it might be one of the most brain-dead, slop-eating comments I’ve seen, and it marks you as a fearmongering victim who should be living in Coeur d’Alene instead of whichever Seattle suburb you’re crying about STICKERS from.
How I Pike-Pine for the long-lost days of the Seattle Music Scene. Back then, within a few days — perhaps a week at the utmost! — of some local radical stickering a McDondald’s for genocide, I could, whilst relaxing over a drink at the Off-Ramp, savor the dulcet tones of “Cheeseburgers for Genocide,” as the opening act for both Stenchgrinder and the Posies.
If you ask me, a waste of sticker material.
Like Parisians who were going to make personal deposits in the seine before Officials swam in it, I’m sure her pals plastered that sign.
Does genocide or famine mean the
same as 25 or 50 years ago? 78?
I think not.
Usage makes words mean less, or more. What a waste.
Seattle cops are pussies.
fucking
“HATE CRIME”?
why not just label
it “TERRORISM!” and
Murder every Last stickerer?
Calling for an End
to Genocide – or Calling Out
a soulless Corporate entity, LLC bitches
that feeds you Poorly and which supports
a Fucking Genocide is surely NO fucking Crime
it’s an Act of
Fucking Patriotism
tho the Capitalists’ll
have a Fucking Hernia*
if word like That gets around.
Calling out a fucking Genocide
ain’t a Fucking Hate Crime
it’s attempting to
End One.
let the
Nuremberg
Trials fucking Begin
*that’s your Cue
Wormtongue
@18: So, my leading with, “Sounds like a waste of public money,” read like a defense to you?
What color is the sky in your world?
This isn’t a waste of my tax dollars. I want a city free of vandals. Defacing signs of businesses isn’t free speech, it’s vandalism. It makes me associate criminality with your cause.
Palestinians support terrorists like Hamas by wide margins. They are the real people seeking germicide. Get your shit together, liberals.
@15 Great post. Genuinely loved it, spot on, and I, too, miss that music scene of bygone years.
As for the headline, “Pro-Palestine” is the corporate media framing of all acts of resistance to US support of the actions in Gaza. No particular reason TS needs to follow along with it, as it tacitly implies “Anti-Israel” thus furthering the goal to conflate anti-semitism with all criticisms of the Israeli government or military. “Pro Human Rights” or “Genocide Resisters” are each more apt.
Lastly, I am hardly surprised by this petty act of retaliation from our police/court system at any sign of criticism of the corporation/Israel connection. They have lost a sizeable chunk of the masses, can’t understand why, and are lashing out. But I am curious how, specifically, McDonalds supports genocide. It would hardly be surprising.
Those that are against funding Israel are clear about it. Stop funding zionist Israel with our billions of tax money. Zionism is a fascist, racist death cult. Check out scholar Norman Finkelstein’s descriptions of this available on youtube and elsewhere.
The federal government is funding mass murder, torture, dismemberment, imprisonment of a population without human rights. Its called Genocide.
Do not expect people to be silent about this. We will not and cannot accept that this is done in our name. There are corporations that fund this and they should and can be exposed. BDS has a huge impact on helping to stop this ongoing horror by psychopaths.
We cannot bear to view the results of the siege imposed on babies, children, women and men by zionist Israel. We will speak out and continue to protest until these war crimes done by this federal government is stopped and Palestine is free.
We are doing what the resistance is nazi occupied countries did. The American people are being betrayed by those in power and all that agree or allow that genocide continue.
Critical thinking is helpful not fascism.
@23 Preach!