A couple of 1970’s-era movies I’ve seen recently have referenced the idea that airports at the time were a favorite hangout of Hare Krishnas, Moonies, and other fringe religious groups, and they’d use the airport as a means of trying to spread their message to unfortunate passengers.
Was this really a common occurence back in the day?
Yes.
Yup.
Uh huh.
The big question was whether airports are “public spaces” or not. If they were, then it was not possible to ban non-commercial speech. They could, however, enforce reasonable “time and place” restrictions. There were several court cases on this topic and eventually it was ruled that airports and malls are not “public spaces”. It’s an interesting issue with compelling arguments on both sides.
Anyone remember the Face on the Milk Carton?
Airports lost out on the ability to ban them entirely. In some instances, they were limited to specific “free speech zones.” I think the San Francisco airport still has an “information desk” with a number of signs trying to explain that this is not an official airport passenger assistance desk, but I am sure any number of passengers have the surprising experience of going to ask where a gate is and getting an earful about Dianetics or whatever.
I went to O’Hare airport once and got hit on by a Hare Krishna for money after flattering me while pinning a poppy to my shirt all in the time it took to turn around and focus on her face having heard a woman start to talk behind me. I was in high school and with ma dropping someone off. I said I didn’t have money and needed to find ma. She immediately asked me to get money from ma. it was pretty much the Hare Krishna that hung out at the airports. They bothered people all over in public places.
The fact that the courts ruled against them being in the airport show you that they were there and a nuisance.
Hare Krishna airport solicitations curtailed
In 2004, I was pressured into taking a copy of the Baghavadgita in the St. Louis airport. It isn’t quite like Airplane!, where he had to karate through a teeming mass of Hare Krishnas, but I’ve never been anyplace in the US that was immune to public witnessing.
They hit highway rest stops too. One stop had a sign that said “we can’t ban these people but if they really bother you let us know”
My sister got harrassed by some LaRouchers at an airport in the 80’s. She was running to catch a connecting flight (before they built those little subway systems in the airports you could often get a lot of excercise running through the airport with your baggage while trying to get to your connection on time) and they started yelling and trying to get her attention. She snarled an obscenity at them and kept going.
That may be the case in the US, but here in Kanada it’s still being fought in the courts. As an organizer with the Ottawa Panhandlers’ Union, we deal with this issue on an almost daily basis. The precedents differ from province to province, but it is largely the case here that courts have held shopping malls (for example) to be what they call “quasi-public property” in the sense that, while they are privately owned, they have taken over the role which was once served by public space in our cities. Judges have acknowledged that the constitutional freedom of assembly is tacitly violated when public space is eliminated and replaced by commercial enterprises.
As I said, precedents tend to be uneven here. While on the one hand we have cases where the court sided with the malls (such as one instance in which a court held that striking workers could not picket inside a mall despite the fact that the only entrance to the store was located inside the mall), we also have cases where courts have agreed that protests must be permitted on private property where there is no other logical location for the protest to be held, as protest is considered to be in the public interest.
It’s still very much an undecided issue.
Ah yes, the LaRouchers were out in force at LAX in the 70s.
“Used to”?
Flying into LAX maybe 3 years ago I was approached by a guy dressed like a traveler in the baggage claim area, carrying a wheeled suitcase, who turned out to be a monk of some kind and the suitcase was full of books he wanted to sell. I was 18 at the time and completely broke, but somehow he bilked me out of $10 as a “donation” to make him go away.
I’ll tell ya, I get no respect.
I was at the airport and a Jesus freak came up to me and said, ‘God… likes you. As a friend.’
There were lots of airports that posted official signs that said something like:
“Please be aware you may be approached by people excercising their rights as defined by the courts to provide religious information and solicit donations. These people are in no way authorized or supported by the airport management.”
And when I saw the movie “airplane” - at the scene where the passengers beat the hell out of the Hare Krishnas, the whole theater applauded.
Everybody hated those bastards. They were everywhere, and really obnoxious.
The Hare Krishnas were the most obvious, because they had shaved heads…but there were also Moonies. Does anybody remember other groups, too?
What ever happened to them, and why did they stop doing it?
Increased airport security has incidentally reduced the amount of space that is available for witnessing. I’ve noticed that more and more of the shops and eateries tend to be located in the secure areas, so passengers don’t hang around as much in the area of public access.
The Moonies are still around, but mostly in Asia now.
A shame, really. Sometimes I think it’d be a good idea to pretend to be one of them just to take advantage of their rather liberal sexual practices.
He loves you, He’s just not in love with you.
I saw this thread and said ‘this is a question, I am getting old’
Mormons, too. The Krishnas wised up sometime, IIRC, during the 1970s and changed their garb, no longer wearing the saffron robes and shaved heads which made it possible to spot them clear across the terminal and avoid them. It seems to me that most religious proselytizers still dress kind of funny, though. I remember getting hit by a Krishna after they dropped the robes - he was in a very eccentrically cut sport coat in a strange color, with a flower in his lapel, and few other touches that were too “theatrical” for street wear, even in the 70s. He looked like he was trying out for “Godspell”.