I just print out something simple and legible on a b/w laser printer and tape it to a piece of cardboard, 8.5x11. If it gets rained on or lost, no biggie. I’ve been going with “NO KINGS”. Which even the MAGA people agree with when it’s a Dem in office.
I got a colonial flag during a Paul Revere 250 event and I might wave that, the one with the circle of stars on blue, 13 red and white stripes.
I was thinking of seeing if I had bubbles. Or getting some. Our weekly rally is super chill but blowing bubbles would make us appear even more non-threatening.
Yeah, let me stress that simple is better. Like four words or less, and large lettering. No one wants to stop and spend half a minute reading a paragraph or 10-item list on a poster board. And small letters can’t be seen by cars passing by.
Four words or less, big-ass letters: No justice, no peace Defend the Constitution Real Americans fight fascism Trump ruins everything No kings Trump is a weakling Down with fascists This is bullshit
I’ve got my mom, step-dad, daughter, and teenage grandson coming with me to our local event. We live in in a red area, but I think it will be fine…this time anyway.
Full Title: Florida sheriff warns protesters ahead of nationwide rallies: ‘We will kill you dead’
Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey warned in a press conference Thursday that if any protesters “throw a brick, a firebomb, or point a gun,” they will be killed.
“If you block an intersection or a roadway in Brevard County, you are going to jail. If you flee arrest, you’re going to go to jail tired because we are going to run you down and put you in jail,” Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey said.
“If you try to mob rule a car in Brevard County, gathering around it, refusing to let the driver leave in our county, you’re most likely going to get run over and dragged across the street.”
Thirded. I am in Brevard and the first list I saw only had one in the entire county. I was thinking of going to the one in Orlando because it is closer to parking, but the streets are narrower and the protest is likely to be larger, creating a riper situation for mass arrests.
Whereas since there are, in actuality, several in Brevard, there are enough of them, and the buildings are dispersed enough, that there could theoretically be a police presence at all of them but not enough to form gangs of riot police at all of them. (That adjective still applies, but in a different way than it normally does.)
I know there has been some discussion of the Florida’s sheriff’s “warning” in the LA threads, but feel it’s too close to a hijack there, but glad it’s being brought up here.
Some of the reporting on this is terrible, especially the clickbait headlines, and it’s a fair complaint. But…
It’s still unspeakably terrifying, because of what it says about the Police/Sheriff mindset. Sure, there’s reasons for them to take action in terms of “brick, a firebomb, or point a gun”. But that means the sheriff is explicitly preparing them for deadly force at most challenges. Note the distinction between the three. One is a threat, but unlikely a lethal one, one is a lethal one, but more likely to be directed at property, and the third is probably worthy of a legal response (lots of nuance) but…
All three are to be treated equally with deadly force? Uh huh.
And for that matter, when you set up that “any threat will be responded too with death” you’re setting yourself up for deadly mistakes in a crowded area. Someone throws something (wet sponge, rotten fruit, eggs) and you immediately respond with deadly force because you’re worked up. Panicked cops often empty a full mag, so lets say 17+ rounds depending on firearm. Now you have say a half-dozen, wounded, maybe dying people, most of which probably weren’t even involved and FSM knows how many more hurt in the panic AFTERWARDS, even if other LEO don’t join in the shooting.
No, this attitude is beyond callous, it’s likely to create the exact scenarios they claim they’re trying to avoid. And I’m reasonably sure that’s the intent.
On the map for NY I’m seeing 21 in central NY, 7 in Finger Lakes/Southern Tier, 8 around Rochester, 8 around Buffalo and 4 in Watertown/Adirondacks.
And that’s not counting the Hudson Valley, Metro NYC and Long Island.
You’re right, though, I don’t see one for Geneva (just Seneca Falls) or Penn Yan.
The second and third parts are the most insidious. “We will meet force with force” is not terribly surprising. Overblown rhetoric, but not surprising.
But what the hell is blocking an intersection? Standing in it, or merely walking through it and thereby delaying the holy, sacred, sacrosanct vehicle traffic?
I’ve been in protests that were exceedingly peaceful marches that walked at a decent pace in the street. The stopped vehicle traffic on cross-streets was none too amused. But IMHO a few drivers turning red and steaming like Anger from Inside Out don’t magically convert a peaceful and well-organized march into disorder. The police around here (Chicago) thankfully seem to agree.
But I could easily see this sheriff treating the slightest delay to traffic from a march – or even people arriving at and leaving in numbers from a stationary rally, or a rally in a park or square overflowing into bordering streets – as disorder and reacting with arrests and clearing the whole march or rally.
And then we have the weird “mob rule a car” arrant nonsense. Trump-y media have convinced the MAGAts that intersection incidents during protests aren’t crazy MAGAts trying to run over defenseless peaceful protestors for the sin of insulting their orange deity, it’s actually psycho rioters trying to pull you from your SUV for being a Real Amurrrrrican. They show video of protestors smacking a car, “conveniently” omitting that the driver struck or near-missed one or more protestors before that.
This sheriff spinning attempted murder by F150 as “mobbing a car” gives carte blanche to the angriest and most antediluvian MAGAts to go to a protest in their coal-rollers and take out a few commie pinkos, knowing the sheriff won’t arrest them for trying to paste pedestrians but the protestors for daring to strike their steel behemoth with their limbs or cardboard signs.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) assured drivers in his state they will not be held liable if they hit protesters blocking roadways when they are fearful for their lives.
“If you’re driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety, and so if you drive off and you hit one of these people, that’s their fault for impinging on you,” DeSantis told podcaster Dave Rubin in an episode of “The Rubin Report” released Wednesday night. “You don’t have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and drag you through the streets.”
“You have a right to defend yourself in Florida,” he added.
You can already see the headline: “I was afraid for my life! I had to drive through the crowd!”
I saw that, and that Florida amended its statutes so this BS is “enshrined” in law and not just DeSantis talking out of his hat. Article.
It sure sounds like marching in the street is effectively forbidden, as walking on the roadway is not "the free, convenient, and normal use of a public street, highway or road.” So protests in Florida pretty much have be stationary and not in a street or road. Even a crowd marching strictly on the sidewalk (to the extent Florida has such things) is arguably inconvenient to motorists when the crowd crosses streets.
Oh, unless the cause you’re protesting for is acceptable to the state authorities. Like the Cuban protestors mentioned in the linked article, who blocked highways since the new law with no legal consequences.
[Originally posted by the Miami Herald]
The closest South Florida has come to the expected crowds this weekend was probably during the summer of 2021, when thousands of people took to the streets during the “Patria y Vida” marches. Protesters marched in unison with the hundreds of Cubans who had been arrested, beaten up and censored for protesting openly on the island.
Those marches took place three months after the state passed its anti-riot act, which clearly states that someone will be cited for a pedestrian violation if they “willfully obstruct the free, convenient, and normal use of a public street, highway or road.”
Police, that day, gave marchers a break. Despite thousands of people clogging main arteries on Coral Way and even closing down a section of the the Palmetto Expressway, there were no arrests under the new law.
The last time this year, we didn’t block the street at all. We were on all four corners of the sidewalk with signs, and occasionally walked across the street while waving the signs, but only in the crosswalks and when the walk signal was lit. I’m concerned that this could even be interpreted as “blocking traffic”.
Sadly, my Let’s Go Taco shirt is entirely too small. It won’t even fit my wife. (Turns out I’d ordered the wrong shirt. I just assumed all T-shirts are unisex.) I got a refund, and was told I did not have to return it.
We were at a rally on one of the Beltway overpasses in DC this morning. Using very dubious statistics, we estimated 27000 cars went by. We got 7 flipped fingers and one rolling coal. The overwhelming reaction was supportive horn tooting. That was particularly impressive to me given that the google traffic map showed that everybody going by had been in a couple miles of traffic that was clearly correlated to our bridge full of signs.
They show video of protestors smacking a car, “conveniently” omitting that the driver struck or near-missed one or more protestors before that.