Legal, yes. Sensible, no. We already have trained professionals to carry lethal force, we call them “cops”.
Carrying a handgun in a holster to a public demonstration, and being an irredeemable nutbag are not mutually exclusive.
That wasn’t my point, though. The OP mentioned brandishing firearms, as did Chronos. Brandishing a firearm specifically means waving it around - it does not mean carrying it in a holster.
And since the discussion is about the treatment of protesters by the police, I hope we all can agree that the police should not bother people who are not violating firearms laws. Of course, if they are in a crowd in a demonstration the police should be watching them just to keep the peace.
Right?
So you’re beef is with the difference between “public display” and “aggravated public display”? Crucial distinction, and we thank you for your vigilance.
The Occupiers do have a permit for the space they are camping in. I have not heard of the group breaking any laws. Mayor Nutter went to (I can’t remember what square they are in) and spoke to the protesters. I believe several high ranking police officials did as well. The city even provided the camp with an electrical outlet.
That’s probably a good thing. We know what can happen in Philadelphia when the cops and the mayor get upset at a group.
Do they have lots of fire extinguishers at the campsite?
Actually, that’s a pretty significant distinction in that one is legal and one isn’t.
I think the problem is that the Occupiers are getting much bigger crowds than the Tea Partiers could get. Hell, the Tea Party *wishes *they could get as many people as what we’re seeing now. And when you have more people, you get more extreme examples of behavior. The yahoo that takes a crap on a car is going to make more news than the 21-year-old trust fund kid who politely displays a sign saying that she’s not being taxed enough.
Well, I for one welcome our new Occupier Overlords.
Got a nice ring to it-- sort of like “Visitors”.
Perhaps if the Tea Partiers had invited everyone who had had anything at all to bitch about, no matter what the topic, they could have pulled in the same numbers.
I’ve not really been following these protests, but I thought the largest single one was around 15k one day in New York? If so there have been many Tea Party meetings that were much bigger.
There were also several 100k+ anti-war demonstrations prior to the Iraq War, to put things in context. Do you guys remember how effective those were at stopping the invasion? And I believe the Iraq War protests set the Guinness Record for largest anti-war protests (with a 3,000,000 person protest in Rome.)
I have no problem with protest, I’ve just never participated because I genuinely can’t think of a single time in American history protests have changed anything.
Even extremely large and violent riots have almost to a one failed in their goals. The draft riots in New York City did not stop the draft, and they were immensely larger and more dangerous. At the end of the day most protests these days be they Tea Party rallies or this Occupy Wall Street thing really seem to be more about people wanting to do something they find fun than they are about people really believing in anything. Most protesters that get interviewed are idiots, and I’m saying this about conservative and liberal types alike.
Now, obviously armed revolt has changed things, but that’s a different part of the spectrum.
According to Nate Silver, who’s hardly a fan or advocate of the Tea Party movement, nationwide on tax day of 2009, the Tea Party protests had over 300,000 participants.
If the occupiers have “much larger crowds” than the Tea Party protests then logically speaking they must have far more than 300,000 participants.
Can you provide links to reliable sources with estimates well above that because judging by the rather anemic Occupy Boston movement, that’s not the case.
I’m no fan of the Tea Party, but I think you’re dramatically underestimating their support.
That has to be the single most ignorant thing you have ever posted here, and that is saying a lot.
You’ve probably never examined the issue in any detail, or held a position in which you’d have experience with the question. When most people say protests don’t change anything, they have in their heads some simplistic model of change in which politicians look out their windows, see protests, and then switch their votes or somesuch. That doesn’t happen.
What does actually happen is more subtle, like most things in the real world. First and foremost, protests shape media coverage and often political focus. We’ve already seen this happen with the Occupy protests. I’ll guarantee that if you examined coverage and discussion of wealth inequality in cable news six months ago versus today, you’ll find a statistically significant increase in coverage.
Protests also add credence to lobbying efforts, because they are a demonstration of intensity – something polling doesn’t generally measure, or measure well. This effects political results at the margins, on issues for which the polling is close. Protests also create connections among likeminded groups and individuals.
Eventually, to create real change, these myriad intermediate effects of protest have to ultimately effect the mechanisms of power, political or otherwise. But that does happen. All the time. Especially at the state and local level. People who say protests don’t matter are the same people who say writing to your representative doesn’t matter. It’s a glib, perhaps intuitive thought. But it’s empirically false.
I never said protests don’t do anything at all. I would not deny that protests get people’s attention, but if the issue people were protesting over was actually popular on a wide scale they would not need to protest. However, my whole point is the kind of attention that people get from protesting has not, to my memory, ever resulted in any widespread social or political changes.
Protests are just an ancient form of opinion polling, mostly useless in the 21st century. There’s a reason Bush completely ignored the massive anti-war protests leading up to the invasion of Iraq: the opinion polling was very different, while the country was pretty split, it was obvious that Bush had a lot of backing in the polls. If 90% of the country had polled as being vehemently against the Iraq war, it never would have happened (because Bush would have been hesitant and with 90% opposition most of Congress would not have been willing to do it.)
Look at where protesting really came from, absolute monarchs would do things and sometimes people would protest. In a totally undemocratic system it was one of the few ways to show displeasure. Since even absolute monarchs feared mobs, they would sometimes take actions to placate protesters. So that might be an example of a protest effecting change, right? Not really. A protest is an appeal to someone who can effect change to do something, by its nature a protest cannot change anything, but only ask that something be changed. That’s why you don’t see people protesting for the Bush tax cuts when Bush was President, the people that actually held the power to enact those tax cuts were going to do it, so there was no need for the people removed from direct power to appeal to someone. Anymore than you’d need to appeal to Bush to invade Iraq, he was already doing so.
However, in reality I think protests are no longer very respected as the opinion polls they historically have been. People who protest these days are disproportionately in the 18-30 age group, and that age group has almost disenfranchised itself by extremely low voter turnout. Protesters are thus not only unrepresentative of the population at large, the sub-population they represent has very low participation in politics. Further, that sub-group also is very low on the list of groups that are going to be involved in more professional lobbying efforts, and are usually not going to be donating very much money to causes, either.
When London used to see riots every few weeks in the reign of George III it was everyone rioting who was pissed off, not just the twenty somethings looking for something to do. So the one utility protests once served–as a barometer of public opinion, really doesn’t exist anymore because protests by and large are almost exclusively niche, trendy sort of entertainment ventures these days.
You’re just spitballing your own ad hoc history of protest that has nothing to do with the actual history of protest and civil disobedience in the United States. Go read some Taylor Branch.
Even on the level you’re evaluating it, you’re incorrect. Protests are not an outdated form of opinion polling, because they register something that polls are bad at measuring: intensity. You ignore that, and then make a bunch of other incorrect statements about the demographic makeup of protestors and their propensity to vote in order to reach the conclusion that this measure of intensity is irrelevant to political power. The statement that 18-30 year-olds don’t vote is particularly wrongheaded. They vote at lower rates than the elderly, but 18-30 year-olds nevertheless constitute roughly 1/5 of actual voters.
And second, you’re historically and empirically wrong that focusing attention on something, and the other effects of protests, never cause widespread change. It never causes change when you isolate it from the effect protests have on politics (see, e.g., civil rights movement), but it is part of the cause of that change. It no more causes change than one Senator’s vote causes change. That doesn’t mean that the opinion of Senators never matters.
Fundamentally, you underestimate the importance of political focus and media narrative. You believe that if a majority wants something, it happens. And if they don’t, it won’t. This doesn’t begin to explain political reality, which is that organization, intensity, message, and influence matter. And protests affect those issues.
Richard Parker mentioned the civil rights movement – which, honestly, standing alone, eviscerates your point – but I’d be interested to hear a few examples of the kind of big changes you’re talking about that were not traceable to protest movements, Martin. I really doubt that you can name any “widespread social or political change” that didn’t have protests at its beginning.
Alright, imagine a chemist with a chemical in a beaker. He pours another chemical in, and the beaker begins to bubble up, eventually the chemist is worried that the foamy mess is going to spill out, and pours another chemical in which neutralizes the reaction and it settles back down.
Who here has changed anything, the inanimate chemicals which simply reacted, or the chemist who actually applied the chemicals?
I’ve not said protests do nothing, I’ve just said they are not what actually changes anything.
In a true monarchy, unless the monarch is removed by force or stripped of power, the monarch is the only agent of change. Anyone who acts as agent for the monarch is simply an extension of his will. In a country like the United States, the people are the source of power, and our politicians are extensions of our will. Just like the chemist we can respond to the chemical reaction, but we do not have to–it is our choice, and the reaction has no ability to actually effect change itself. Thus my characterization of protests as an appeal–that’s all they are. If I appeal a case to an appellate court, that court gets to make the decision, not me.
Further, if the elements of society protesting were of real power, then the agents of the people would reflect that in any case, and thus the protests would be unnecessary. So by their very nature all protests are the powerless asking for the powerful to make a concession.
That makes sense under some systems, but under our system you can actually change the agents of the public will through elections. However even an election just reflects change that has already happened, and makes it reality. A protest is just a reaction, it isn’t anything more.
It’s not that I don’t understand your argument, it’s that it is wrong. That a majority of people support something is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for political change.
Organization, political messaging, political and media focus, intensity of support, and other factors all effect how political power is wielded. And all of those things are affected by protests.
If you say so. And yet you would never say that appealing a decision doesn’t ever change anything, which makes it a strange choice to support your point. The appeal is a necessary element of getting what you want, even if the outcome takes the form of a judge’s decision.