‘Hey, Ann, you can’t come speak on Thursday because we’re worried that Antifa / BAMN will riot and someone could get hurt, maybe even you.’ <— that’s called a “heckler’s veto”, hence the lawsuit alleging First Amendment violations.
Your link suggests that a ‘‘heckler’s veto’’ involves government suppression of speech in this way. It doesn’t seem to be legally relevant to private citizens.
Let me put it this way. If there were an anonymous social media post stating that at 12pm the day of the speech, someone would shoot Ann Coulter, and the University decided to cancel the event in the interest of her not getting shot, would that be a violation of free speech? Or just common sense?
Or to give another example, when Zoe Quinn was speaking out about Gamergate, and the venue had to cancel due to bomb threats, was that a violation of her free speech on the part of the venue?
I’m just really hard-pressed to understand how the university can be held legally responsible for this. I see no indication that the university did anything other than take the most prudent course of action in response to an apparently escalating threat.
And what the fuck do you think would have happened if they had ignored the warnings, let her speak, and she had gotten injured…or worse? Do you think her lawyers would be saying, “you had no responsibility for her safety-Don’t worry about any lawsuits from us.”?
Listen, this feels like pedantry to me, and I’m not interested in that sort of argument. By ‘‘right to feel safe’’ I don’t mean in the legal sense, I mean in the ethical sense. I think people should generally be able to speak their minds or be themselves, without a credible threat to their safety. This includes trans people, Milo go-fuck-yourselfopolis, and Ann Coulter. It is my opinion that Milo’s behavior undermined the safety of the students he targeted, ergo, I’ll be happy if he never speaks at another university again. But I staunchly oppose any violent action or threats exhibited toward him. Despite the fact that he is an incredible douchebag, he, too, has a right to feel safe.
Hurricane Ditka, Is UC Berkely considered an acting government agent because it is a public university? (serious question - also, I thought it was a private school.)
I am in agreement with the ACLU, but the ACLU seems to be blaming the liberal students responsible for creating an unsafe environment, not the university.
Can you link to the ACLU statement itself? Just curious. One reason I love the ACLU is they tend to champion free speech even when it’s not popular.
Yes, UC Berkeley is part of the University of California system of state-run universities and it is “considered an acting government agent” in the sense that the First Amendment and a lot of associated jurisprudence constrain certain actions the university might otherwise wish to take.
While the Oregon “riseup” group doesn’t claim the “Antifa” label for themselves, they seem to be styled along those same use-violence-to-suppress-speech lines:
It’s also visible in the original video where she gets punched. You have to look carefully, but before she is punched you can see her in the background with it. I’m having trouble finding the original video; Youtube is filled with edits and commentaries on it.
A wine bottle is a deadly weapon. It can fracture a skull, destroy eyes or slice a jugular vein.
He ridiculed her but he did not “out” her. She was already out, as the picture Milo used was from an interview she did with local TV news. There was controversy because she was demanding to be allowed to continue using the women’s locker room (including the sauna) and to expose her penis to ciswomen who didn’t want to see it.
I’m not sure where the left stands on this issue. “Transgender people should be allowed to use the locker room they want to” seems to conflict with the feminist belief that women should be exposed to penises they don’t want to see, or to expose themselves without consent. If they get their way on the trans-locker room issue, it’ll mean that 14-year-old freshman girls in high school will be forced to strip in front of 18-year-old senior genetic males with penises, and they’ll be mocked and attacked as transphobic bigots if they’re upset by it. That seems un-feminist.
Snopes has an article on this (well, more or less – it’s actually on whether the bottle was being used as part of an incendiary or explosive device) where they say that Damigo hit Rosealma twice, and the first time she had an empty bottle in her hand.
Looks like Snopes managed to ferret out a claim to refute that almost no one was making. I’ve not heard or read a single claim that the wine bottles were being used as incendiary devices outside of Snopes’ repudiation of it.
With regard to her being hit twice, the account I read a day or two afterward said that Damigo first pushed Rosealma/Marshall/Nauert to the ground to stop her either from throwing the wine bottle or from hitting the blond guy who was pummeling the other bottle thrower on the head with it. That account seems to be backed up by the photo I posted upthread which appears to depict the two of them in the instant after he shoved her. I would imagine also that had he hit her twice she would have been making a big issue of that, but instead she talks only about the one blow…and lies even about it.
Funny as it may sound I’m thinking Damigo in his own way may have been trying to go easy on her. First, he pushed her instead of punching her to stop her from throwing/hitting someone with the bottle, and then when she came after him he pretty deliberately hit her in the forehead rather than in the nose or mouth or cheek, all of which could have sustained considerably more damage than her forehead. So who knows, maybe chivalry isn’t dead after all.