That’s why it is called civil disobedience.
Nobody is disagreeing with that.
Your personal opinion about what you’d like to see happen in your fantasy world to people (at least, people you disagree with) who knowingly commit misdemeanors is not relevant to the legal penalties that such people are subject to in the real world.
[QUOTE=Hank Beecher]
There have been hundreds of thousands of people at Trump rallies and hundreds or thousands of protesters screaming insults. There shouldn’t be any surprise a few people got punched.
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:dubious: For somebody who just got so upset about protesters committing nonviolent misdemeanors such as blocking roads, you seem awfully chill about Trump supporters committing actual assault.
[QUOTE=Hank Beecher]
There is no right to go to someone else’s event to spread your message, when they have created the event with their time and money, for the explicit purpose of communicating their message to their supporters and others interested in hearing it.
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Actually, they do have a right to try to spread their message at opponents’ events. If they are violating the rules of the event they can be removed, and if they are breaking a law they can be charged. Nobody’s disputing that.
But it’s perfectly legit for protesters to try to “spread their message” at “someone else’s event”. That’s what protesting an event means.
None of which is congruent with “Bernie Sanders supporters,” who, as you have admitted, have not been evinced in Arizona.
There were a handful of identifiable Bernie supporters there, and a small minority of the organizers were explicitly pro-Sanders. Most had no detectable position on the Presidential contest, except opposition to Trump.
Your ongoing characterization is either careless and lazy, or simply dishonest, and reduces the effectiveness of the free-speech and democratic-process arguments that should stand on their own (and which many Sanders supporters would agree with).
You know, a comparison like this is “hyperbolic, lazy, antiquated, nonsense.” Or at least someone here claimed.
Emphasis on the nonsense of course.
Peaceful civil disobedience as protest is not fascism or authoritarian thuggery. It is against the law and those who protest by nonviolently breaking a law should be prepared to be punished according to the law. Those who violently break the law should be punished according to the law as well. The penalties for violent offenses are appropriately more severe than for nonviolent ones.
I do not think that tickets to any of these events required signing a form certifying that you supported the candidate and I think these events are legally open to all who you gave tickets to. There is no legal obligation to cheer or to not boo at any of these events. If there are rules established then enforcement of those rules is fine: it is fine for security to peacefully remove protesters who are disrupting an event.
Personally I think attempting to disrupt the opposition’s events is not only poor form but counter-productive. Protesting outside is fine. I abhor Trump’s message and defend his freedom to say it: proper authorities should efficiently enforce the laws in order to allow access to his events for those who want to hear it, and they should allow safe expression of protest against what he is saying as well with strict and swift enforcement of laws against physical assault and against incitement to violence as well.
It’s a Tweet from a political writer for the LA Times. And it’s not an extraordinary claim. We already know from many other reports that the road was blockaded.
A counter protest is legal, and entirely different than an illegal, forceful attempt to “block his message”.
Usually, civil disobedience involves breaking a law and accepting the punishment, in order to demonstrate to the public that the law is an unjust law.
In this case the attempt is to block political speech, and has the opposite effect. It shows how the laws against these actions are just and necessary.
It is a just punishment. If someone intentionally blocks a highway to prevent others from exercising their right to freely assemble, then they should be jailed at minimum for a time equal to the cumulative time they blockaded others. The maximum punishments are fairly severe for the crimes that are committed when people do this stuff, so there doesn’t even need to be new laws. People just have to get sufficiently sick of it.
Out of several hundred thousand people, a few fights are not surprising, especially considering that people come there for the strict purpose of disrupting the event and insulting the attendees in the most vile ways they can imagine. If you go to a Raider’s game in Bronco’s gear and start calling everybody niggers, or apparently to a Trump rally in a Klan hood and call people KKK members, don’t be surprised if a black guy takes offense and womps you on the head. It doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do, and he should and probably will be punished for it, but the guy who wore a Klan hood to a multi-racial gathering and screamed race-baiting insults in people’s faces is an idiot nonetheless.
No, they don’t have that right. That’s why they can be stopped from doing it. Everyone else has the right to have a gathering without them, one which does not include the protester’s voice.
No, protesting an event means broadcasting a counter-message, often but not always in a public space adjacent to the event being protested. Disrupting an event is throwing a tantrum because someone is allowed to say something one doesn’t like.
“Bernshirt” is just a jokey shorthand for the people disrupting the rallies. When asked, they do very often voice support for Bernie. And a whole big crop of them were chanting Bernie’s name in Chicago. I can’t find them now but I saw a few lists of some of the groups who organized both the Chicago and Arizona protests, and they were typical of the types of far-left groups that usually take part in these “actions”. Bernshirts.
I’ll grant you the hyperbolic and maybe even the lazy since I didn’t make it up. But the term is anything but antiquated, and it gets the intended point across quite well.
These “peaceful” protests involve forcefully occupying or blockading public roadways and other spaces, and mobbing and disrupting events. They are done, not in order to spread a counter message in the public square, but in an explicitly stated attempt to “block” unpopular political speech in spaces where people arrange among themselves to gather and communicate that message. That actually is starting to get into authoritarian thug territory a bit.
Not always. You would probably be likely to do more time for getting caught burglarizing a jewelry store than for getting into a bar fight, for example. The maximum penalties for many of the laws that are broken by the protesters are actually rather harsh. They just aren’t generally enforced very strongly at all. If I understand correctly, there were only three arrests made at the Arizona blockade, for example. People are used to this, and are therefore more likely to participate. Sometimes even mistakenly believing that they have a legal right to disrupt others’ speech. Just like other crime waves, if it becomes a problem there should be crack-down on after a campaign to publicly announce that it is a crime whose punishment will be enforced. Like the “$500 for littering” signs on the highway that pop up in areas where there are lots of trash.
I think purposefully disrupting the events is illegal.
I agree. There should be counter events. They should be, more than anything else, more fun to attend.
I agree with you.
What says you about the young woman removed from a Trump rally (and had a mob screaming hateful shit at her as she was taken out) for wearing a shirt that says “I come in peace”?
What kind of an event takes the message “I come in peace” to be disruptive?
I would say that I consider it very unlikely that ever happened. In the event you are likely referring to, the people were ejected because they were wearing yellow stars, clearly meant to communicate that Trump and his followers were equivalent to Nazis.
The hypocrisy of your position is duly noted and acknowledged.
Please cite the law. Because googling some I am finding quite a bit otherwise.
If someone enters a ticketed event without a ticket they are trespassing - a crime. I’ll even grant that not leaving of your own volition after being asked by event security to do so might be considered trespassing.
And private event security at a private event is within their rights to remove anyone they want to for any reason, inclusive but not limited to a ticketed member of the crowd disrupting the event.
But uniformed police enforcing that restriction for the disruption in and of itself would likely be considered state regulation of speech. Even uninvited disruptive speech at a private event is not for the state to regulate.
Now some are under the belief that Secret Service protection places a candidate ina special class and cite this law but while that defines “restricted buildings or grounds” as inclusive of any location being visited by “any person whom the United States Secret Service is authorized to protect under section 3056 of this title or by Presidential memorandum, when such person has not declined such protection” the restriction from disruption is limited to that which “impedes or disrupts the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions.” A rally does not qualify.
The disruption of a political rally itself is while wrong and stupid not against the law. Even as NAL that seems very clear.
The woman was not shouting. She was standing there quietly and seemed to be getting along well with the people around her. It was when she was pointed out that the mob turned on her.
The yellow star is by no means out of bounds. There is no fudge room, no “Well gee, maybe”. That is what Trump is saying.
According to this account,the staff asks anyone intent on disrupting the event to leave before Trump ever speaks. As soon as they begin to try to disrupt the event they are trespassing. It’s just that trespassing is usually not enforced unless people refuse to leave. So they are used to getting away with it.
Another crime they are committing is disorderly conduct, here is the New York law as an example:
The felony riot laws look like they would also apply to the people who protested outside in Chicago, if Illinois has similar statutes.
The yellow stars were a blatantly obvious attempt to communicate a message. That message was offensive to the attendees, was counter to the message that the event was organized to convey, and caused a disturbance.
The idea that she was kicked out for what her shirt said is pure propaganda and manipulation. That’s just not what happened.
You are free to characterize it that way, many people find the comparison ludicrous. The Klan hoods, Nazi salutes, yellow stars, and race baiting are all very insulting to the attendees of the rallies. They have every right to forbid them and kick people out for displaying them.
Of course they have the right to ask her to leave. But she wasn’t being “disruptive” until she was pointed out.
Do you find the comparison ludicrous? I have a hard time seeing how Muslim database does not equal yellow star. Perhaps you can explain it to me.
The insulting message is what was disruptive.
He just “refused to rule out” a database, which isn’t advocating, and a database isn’t a requirement to wear something enabling the public to identify one’s religion (which, incidentally, many Muslim women already have enforced on them by intense social pressure).
The comparison is over the top, but it’s an important issue and I do not object to people using the imagery as a form of protest if they find it appropriate, in locations they are actually allowed to be. I also understand that most Trump supporters do not appreciate being called Nazis and Klan members.
We find Trump’s insulting message disruptive. By your logic, we are justified in denying his freedom of speech.
So the message was “politically incorrect”?