Sovereign citizenry and misquoting admiralty law in your hearing about driving without valid registration or saying the court doesn't have jurisdiction because the flag has gold fringe on it is so close to mental illness it's hard to assign concepts like "smart" or "dumb" to it.
In the past I have considered pursuing litigation pro se because it is very difficult to find an attorney willing to take a public records case on contingency. The stereotype that anyone who represents themselves in court must be a soverign loon or think they're Will Hunting is one reason I did not do so. It is not ideal, but neither is not having access to the justice system due to not having a bunch of money to burn.
I represented myself pro se in a civil matter that really should have been in small claims but was in superior court because of the remedy being sought by the plaintiff.
>> While some people believe that the fringe has symbolic meaning, its primary purpose is ornamental, giving the flag an air of distinction and honor. Fringed flags are usually displayed on indoor flagpoles, though they may also be used in parades or during other ceremonial presentations. It’s important to note that these flags are not typically flown outside, as the fringe is not designed to withstand outdoor weather conditions.
In short: people get confused because they only see the fringe on special occasions or indoors as in courtrooms. It has no meaning.
It has something to do with (incorrectly believing) what laws apply to what court based on the type of flag. This is from memory so may be wrong but I seem to recall it being basically if there is gold fringe, the court is in/part of a different jurisdiction, and the procedures are different, and as such the (actually correct) procedures the judge and prosecutors follow are viewed as incorrect by the SC.
I'm aware of what the belief is (admiralty court, all that hokum...). I'm interested to know the actual origin of the belief-- like who was "patient 0" for coming up with the silliness.
It seems like a waste of time at best. But have any sovereign citizen got what they wanted at the end of any kind of proceeding?
It seems like a very bad strategy to solve their own selfish problems. (DUI, speeding, not paying taxes, going against gun regulations, etc.)
And this strategy is usually coming from being unfortunately so tragically misinformed that they cannot help but reject the boring standard model of reality for a bouquet of conspiracy theories.
They do "win" sometimes. The rational person just pays the ticket. The sovcit demands a jury trial and, rarely, gets a win when a deal is offered or a witness fails to show. And often just having the proceeding is the win. They get off on being the center of attention. Defending themselves in court is the one time all the important people have to listen to them. They enjoy it.
I found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_costs which generally seems to say that you only have to pay in criminal cases if convicted, or in some states never. To clarify, I'm not talking about the costs of your own attorney, but the cost charged by the court itself.
I was asking because in Germany, you generally (only) have to pay if you're convicted, I think.
Some people like to portray petty mostly victimless lawlessness as sovereign citizen shenanigans as a means to discredit the reasoning that lead to those people to decide not to follow the law.
Not everyone who doesn't get a building permit or a fishing license is a sovereign citizen.
It isnt mental illness. Having incorrect beliefs is different than being insane. But it is a mental heath issue that leads people to adopt these beliefs. Be it flat earth, Qanon or Sovcit, people under stress will reach out to conspiracy theories in an attempt to regain a sense of community and control whilst thier lives are otherwise going off the rails. The beliefs are the symptom, not the disease.
With sovcit specifically, there is also a rational layer. Many people think the law some sort of elite club where mastery of a secret language can allow one to escape legal scrutiny. This comes from TV and the news that never explain the nuance of legal practice. They arent insane, just very incorrectly educated. Rosa parks was not insane. She knew she was breaking the law. The rational sovcit thinks themselves the next Rosa Parks, but mistakenly believe that means they cannot be arrested. Rational but wrong.
> people think the law some sort of elite club where mastery of a secret language can allow one to escape legal scrutiny
pc86 didn’t say sovereign citizenry is mental illness per se. They said it’s indistinguishable from mental illness if pursued all the way to a hearing. At that point, enough flags have been intentionally ignored to validly cross into delusion.
But i would say they are very distinguishable. The man who drives as 85mph because the spiders are chasing him is insane. The man who drives as 85mph because facebook told him that the state lacks jurisdiction over roads painted with yellow lines is not. The incorrect behavior (speeding) is identical but the overall situation is very distinguishable.
>The man who drives as 85mph because the spiders are chasing him is insane. The man who drives as 85mph because facebook told him that the state lacks jurisdiction over roads painted with yellow lines is not.
They are both insane, just in different ways. Sane people don't just automatically believe random stuff from facebook that is contrary to everything they know and have been taught.
As I read the original comment, it sounds as if they meant that continuing to insist that you were legally in the right is the problem. Being gullible is one thing. Insisting on your gullible belief when it's about to result in a prison sentence comes much closer to "invisible spider" territory.
> man who drives as 85mph because facebook told him that the state lacks jurisdiction over roads painted with yellow lines
This is a stretch, but possible. It breaks when that man is pulled over, cited, given the opportunity to research or consider another viewpoint, and then shows up in court to plead that case. That’s invisible-spiders levels of delusion, and while it may not be caused by a chemical or physical problem in the brain, it’s indistinguishable from it.
>Freemasons exist and your judges, lawyers, and cops are freemasons.
Sure, but they don't have a secret language that allows them to escape legal scrutiny. Freemasonry isn't even an elite club, they'll take pretty much anyone willing to pay the dues and memorize some stuff.
Not talking about lower levels here because those are the commoners. High ranking freemasons such as those found in positions of power are obligated to get each other out of trouble to the greatest effort possible given the circumstances.
Freemasonry only has 3 “ranks”. The organizations that have other levels, like the Shriners, York Rite, Scottish Rite (created in France in the 19th century) aren’t organizationally or legally related to any actual Masonic grand lodge — they’re a completely separate organization that only accept 3rd degree masons— the highest Masonic rank — as members. The conspiracy theory information you cite can’t even keep basic facts straight about the way freemasonry operates. I’m not even a Mason— this information is really really easy to find online.
Oh, is that what I said? Or is that what you wish I said because you had a specious response to it pre-cooked? Does your response directly address anything I said? Are you sure you're responding to me and not some conceptual 'other side' that has predictable views that perfectly yin-yang curve around 'your side' because falling back into groupthink is a lot easier than having to actually read and think about what other people say, and be accountable for saying things that are easily provably completely incorrect? Are you sure that's not what's happening here?
Rosa Parks also was a handpicked woman of unimpeachable character who deliberately chose to break the law that day. Various civil rights organizations had guaranteed her family that they would replace any income lost. Still a brave woman, but it was not a random decision on her part.
Fun fact along the same lines: Homer Plessy (of Plessy v. Ferguson) had one African-American great-grandparent. He was of mostly European descent and would have been unnoticed had he not declared to the conductor that he was “colored”. He was sponsored by the railroad, which wanted to save money by not having to have separate cars for “white” and “colored” passengers, as it was rare to have a full complement of each.
As cool as those anecdotes sound, I am not sure that either of them are true.
Homer Plessy
The Wikipedia article on Plessy v. Ferguson explains the following:
“In 1890, the State of Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, which required separate accommodation for black and white people on railroads, including separate railway cars. A group of 18 prominent black, creole of color, and white creole New Orleans residents formed the Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens) to challenge the law. Many staff members of The New Orleans Crusader, a black Republican newspaper, were among the group's members, including publisher Louis A. Martinet, writer Rodolphe Desdunes, and managing editor L. J. Joubert, who served as president of the Justice, Protective, Educational, and Social Club at the same time Plessy was vice president.
The group contacted attorney and civil rights advocate Albion W. Tourgée, who agreed to help them bring a test case to court in order to force the judiciary to determine the constitutionality of Jim Crow laws. In his correspondence with Martinet, Tourgée suggested finding a plaintiff who had "not more than one-eight colored blood" and could pass as white.”
Rosa Parks
The Wikipedia articles on Rosa Parks and on The Montgomery bus boycott seem very clear that Rosa Parks decided on her own to break the law. Nowhere do they suggest that Parks was specifically selected to engage in her act of civil disobedience:
“In 1955, Parks completed a course in "Race Relations" at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, where nonviolent civil disobedience had been discussed as a tactic. On December 1, 1955, Parks was sitting in the foremost row in which black people could sit (in the middle section). When a white man boarded the bus, the bus driver told everyone in her row to move back. At that moment, Parks realized that she was again on a bus driven by Blake. While all of the other black people in her row complied, Parks refused, and she was arrested for failing to obey the driver's seat assignments, as city ordinances did not explicitly mandate segregation but did give the bus driver authority to assign seats.”
“During a 1956 radio interview with Sydney Rogers in West Oakland several months after her arrest, Parks said she had decided, "I would have to know for once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen."
In her autobiography, My Story, she said:
People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
When Parks refused to give up her seat, a police officer arrested her. As the officer took her away, she recalled that she asked, "Why do you push us around?" She remembered him saying, "I don't know, but the law's the law, and you're under arrest." She later said, "I only knew that, as I was being arrested, that it was the very last time that I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind. ... "”
Although I haven’t spent much time looking, a few minutes on Google didn’t turn up any evidence confirming either of your claims.
Keep reading the article on Plessy. It quite clearly goes on about how Plessy was handpicked for the second test case and had the cooperation of the railroad.
As for Parks, it's a recollection from some reading long ago. I can't cite it as it's been at least twenty years, but it's not out of the nature of the civil rights movement to have picked people who had unassailable character for test cases. Wikipedia is a valuable resource, but it's also not the place you go for a full story.
> Mrs. Parks was not the first person to be prosecuted for violating the segregation laws on the city buses in Montgomery. She was, however, a woman of unchallenged character who was held in high esteem by all those who knew her. At the time of her arrest, Mrs. Parks was active in the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), serving as secretary to E.D. Nixon, president of the Montgomery chapter.
... which to me certainly suggests that she was not random.
> Shortly after the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in December 1955, many black community leaders were discussing whether they would file a federal lawsuit to try to challenge the City of Montgomery and Alabama about the bus segregation laws.
> About two months after the bus boycott began, civil rights activists reconsidered the case of Claudette Colvin. She was a 15-year-old who had been the first person arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, nine months prior to Rosa Parks's actions. Fred Gray, E. D. Nixon, president of the NAACP and secretary of the new Montgomery Improvement Association: and Clifford Durr (a white lawyer who, with his wife, Virginia Foster Durr was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement) searched for the ideal case law to challenge the constitutional legitimacy of the Montgomery and Alabama bus segregation laws.
> Gray later did research for the lawsuit and consulted with NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys Robert L. Carter and Thurgood Marshall (who would late become United States Solicitor General and the first African-American United States Supreme Court Justice). Gray later approached Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith (activist), and Jeanetta Reese, all women who had been discriminated against by the drivers enforcing segregation policy in the Montgomery bus system. They all agreed to become plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit (except Jeanetta Reese due to intimidation by the members of the white community), thus bypassing the Alabama court system.
Heck, even the Wiki article on Parks notes that she worked for a pro-civil-rights white couple where the husband was a lawyer, that they had sponsored her in going to training on activism, and that that lawyer and the president of the local NAACP were the ones who bailed her out of jail on the night of her arrest.
I read the entire Plessy entry. Nowhere does it say that he was “sponsored by the railroad” or anything like that.
The closest thing I could find is the following statement:
“The railroad company, which had opposed the law on the grounds that it would require the purchase of more railcars, had been previously informed of Plessy's racial lineage, and the intent to challenge the law.”
I agree with you that Plessy was handpicked, but you also wrote that Plessy “was sponsored by the railroad.” That is what I responded to, and I still don't see any evidence that it’s true. On the contrary, it seems clear that Plessy was selected and sponsored by a group that had no affiliation with the railroad company.
What evidence do you have that the Comité des Citoyens — which recruited Plessy, orchestrated his arrest, and organized the litigation in Plessy v. Ferguson — was connected to the railroad?
Rosa Parks
None of the things you quoted are evidence that Rosa Parks was selected in advance, by anyone other than herself, to engage in her famous act of civil disobedience. Parks’ own statements after the event indicate that she self-selected.
The fact that Parks was very involved in the NAACP is not evidence that the organization recruited her to engage in civil disobedience. Most of what you quoted is in relation to litigation that happened after Rosa Parks’ civil disobedience.
You also wrote that “Various civil rights organizations had guaranteed her family that they would replace any income lost.” What evidence do you have that Parks received such a guarantee prior to her act of civil disobedience?
I told you, I read it a long time ago. Disbelieve me if you wish. It's nigh impossible to find genuine information anymore on the internet, assuming that what I originally read is even still up.
I don't have enough time to play Wikipedia editor games about attribution. Believe me or don't.
How can you think you're breaking a law that does not apply to you?
> They arent insane, just very incorrectly educated.
Well, they can be both. The test of insanity is to see what happens as they are faced with the usual adversity that comes with these beliefs. Are they capable of learning or keep doing something that every sane person recognizes will certainly lead to ruin (or at least failure)?
