I condemn it as a fascist action and believe all Americans have the right to protest. Locking them up in a fenced in area is wrong. I believe that protesters complaints should be addressed. If they are wacky they will have an opportunity to prove it on mass media. That would hurt their cause. if the complaints are legit ,then they will attract new members. It is the American Way…or was
Well, when your side does something, it’s a shocking assault on individual liberty and freedom. When my side does it, it’s a minor restriction neccesary for the greater good.
I’ve found that formulation is generally the case.
Me and 3000 of my friends want to hold a peaceful protest on the stage inside the convention center. We will stand peacefully wherever the speakers want to stand and speak, wherever the cameras are pointing, and wherever the microphones are.
That’s okay, right?
Apparently what you and I consider access is just a little different. Shall I amend it to non-interference? Don’t prevent the event from happening, just make your own voice heard.
Anyway, Weirddave, howzabout you go ahead and call out Democrats, while Democrats will call out Republicans. Fair enough? I don’t see why one side should be expected to call out their own.
Further, has anyone griped about the RNC’s policy but not the DNC? Feel free to bring up double standard charges when that happens.
I think there is definitely a double standard at play here on the SD on issues like this.
That said, I think that people have the right (the RIGHT) to free assembly and that as long as they break no laws they have the right and even the duty to protest…whether they be Democrats, Republicans or Hottentots. If it’s in a private venue then the protesters still have the right to assemble and protest outside of that venue…again, as long as it’s a peaceful and lawful assembly.
-XT
Just because I celebrate my girlfriend’s birthday doesn’t mean I have to celebrate other people’s birthdays. I can still acknowledge that other peoples’ birthdays are important, but just because I don’t celebrate those, doesn’t mean I cannot celebrate my girlfriend’s.
In the end, the OP is complaining that other people are not sufficiently fervent about one situation. He hasn’t even shown that the people who oppose free speech zones at Republican conventions are supporters of free speech zones at Democratic conventions. (In fact, I’m still curious as to whether he supports free speech zones in toto!) He’s simply complaining that people who oppose free speech zones in general are not loud enough for his taste on this particular issue.
I’m sorry, but that doesn’t qualify as hypocracy.
Let Republicans who want to protest free speech zones complain about Denver, and Democrats who want to protest free speech zones complain about the Twin Cities. There’s nothing wrong with that.
First of all, the whole “here’s something that happened, and you all are (or will be) reacting one way, even though something else that happened a while ago that is similar but on the other side of the fence caused you all (as a group) (as I remember it) (with no cite) to react another way” is just a stupid and pointless way to start a dialog, as I have ranted on at greater length
here and here.
That said, there are a couple of important things that should be discussed:
(1) Who was making these decisions? The DNC? The management of the venue? Or the police?
(2) I don’t have a precise memory of the incident from years ago that seemed so Orwellian (although a lot of it had to do with the name “free speech zones”), but as I recall, people were being divided into zones based on their political opinions, ie, Bush supporters got to stand in front and watch the event, whereas protesters go shunted into the FSZ. There’s a HUGE difference betwen “we’re not letting anyone stand around in front of this building at all because of security concerns” and “people who like us get to stand here, people who don’t get to stand over there”.
(3) Finally, actions taken by a private organization (ie, the DNC) are subject to a different level of review than actions taken by the government, although of course anything involving the president is a gray area (as is, to a certain extent, any action taken by a major political party).
show me where you have the right to disrupt someone else’s interests. Free speech involves the right to talk, discuss and otherwise exchange ideas. It has nothing to do with the right to be heard or annoy others. I have no right to force you to listen to my views. you are free to do so but I can’t compel you. I should be able to walk down a public street without a bunch of screaming monkeys spitting in my face. We have laws governing communal peace and they in no way infringe on the ability to exchange ideas.
I have seen no evidence of any double standard. Until today, I was unaware that the Dems were planning these kind of restrictions. I condemn them as forcefully as I condemned the actions by the Pubs four years ago. To somehow equate my silence heretofore to tacit approval of restrictions by the Dems is stupid.
Peaceful protest that does not interfere with access to the venues should not be prohibited by either party. That includes shielding attendees from the signs or shouts from the protesters by quarantining protesters in so called “free speech zones”. The whole country is a free speech zone, and no political party has the power to limit that.
I think the implication is that the Democratic Party is more interested in presenting an image. They’re giving the homeless tickets to movies, the zoo etc… in an effort to clean up the city. The Republicans may be doing the same thing, I don’t know. but it’s all about image. Not having a bunch of disgruntled wackadoo’s in front of your convention is certainly the image preferred by both parties.
The law says they can’t spit, but you have no right to walk a public street free from their vocal protest. Don’t like it? Stay home.
When this came up during the 2004 election there were plenty of GD and Pit threads about it (or referencing it). As I said, I think there are a lot of issues on this board where people allow their partisan view point to dictate where they stand on a given issue…to give a counter argument, think of some of the dual standards applied to President Clinton.
That you rise about if and come down the same on this issue speaks well for you Fear. I’m not going to bother doing a search, but I wonder if all those who blasted Bush on this in 2004 will do the same thing now that the shoe is on the other foot…and whether those who support McCain will blast him if he does the same thing.
Guess we’ll see…
-XT
Yes, in the sense that I have no problem with there being a designated area for protesters at an event like the RNC or the DNC to congregate and peacefully protest. This area should be reasonably close to the entrance to the event (and I realize that’s an inexact statement-close enough for the attendees of the event to see and hear them and for them to get media coverage), not two football fields away in an axillary parking lot behind all the media trucks. There’s a difference between protesting and disrupting. Protesting is fine and desireable. Disrupting is neither.
I’d like to see this fleshed out a little more. You could be onto the answer.
This is what I find disingenuous. You are willing to condemn behavior that is not in evidence, yet you aren’t willing to make the effort to provide that evidence. It is a conclusion that somehow, everyone *knows * liberals are hypocrites, so there is no need to support that claim. Nice touch though, throwing in the Republicans as an afterthought.
This is quite possibly the stupidest accusation of hypocrisy in human history.
Yes, it’s equally bad. The closest you can come to calling hypocrisy is to point out that nobody has started threads on it yet.
Did you start threads on it in 2004? If you didn’t, given that you started this one, you’re exactly as hypocritical as the folks who started the threads in 2008 and not now.
I’m having trouble imagining a lamer accusation.
Daniel
shrug I’m lazy. I remember the threads and the furor over this issue on this board during the last election. I’m not excited about the subject to bother going out to search the board for all the instances of threads started or references in other threads about this subject. It’s really not all that important to me to drag out every participant in those threads and quote them and put them on the spot about how they feel this time around…certainly not to simply entertain you because you have forgotten those threads or are to lazy to go look it up yourself (member that you are) if you are all that interested in it.
Well, first off, I didn’t say anything close to ‘liberals are hypocrites’…that’s YOUR strawman of my position. Secondly, if your intention was to goad me off my lazy ass to dig up all this info for you to ‘prove’ that there were a lot of threads and discussion about this last time around all I can say is…it would take a better man than you to get me to do that kind of work for something like this.
Thanks but no thanks. Maybe someone else would like to play.
Why thank you. I thought it gave a nice ‘pox on both your houses!’ touch…which is exactly what I intended, since, you know, I think both Dems AND Pubs are partisan hypocrites. But I appreciate that my meager efforts are noted so warmly by the likes of you Fear…
(that will teach me to give you a compliment, ehe?)
-XT
Hurrah! Every sentence as if I’d written it myself, only better.
In the interest of knowledge, this “free speech zone” appears to be the doing of the City and County of Denver, and - if I still lived there - I’d be screaming bloody murder about it to my elected officials.
Here’s the only one I could find, for those who are excited.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
IOW, it may be perfectly fine for demonstrators(pro and anti) to be a different distance from one venue for a major party’s convention than from another. The controlling factor for me would be the venue and the safety/traffic considerations of the city. There are places where there is a public park right across the street from city hall(as in my city, Dallas) and it would be fine for a protest to be there, in plain view of everything. There are other places where city hall is smack in the middle of a business district with no surface area nearby which would allow a reasonable gathering of people without causing safety concerns. Thus they must protest somewhere else.
The problem with “free speech zones” was that they were selectively enforced based on what the speech was. Someone who was pro-Bush was allowed to line up along the street and shake hands as he walked by. Someone who was anti-Bush was sequestered behind a chain-link fence quite some distance away.
If the city officials and the event planners have put together protest zones for both conventions, we’d need insight into the reasons they chose those zones. Public safety would be an absolutely legitimate reason. I find “multiple football fields” pretty farfetched though. I don’t know downtown Denver, but I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be space at INVESCO field at Mile High to set up some barricades to allow orderly traffic to flow, but still give protestors somewhere to stand near the entrances. In specific, using the satellite view, the Southern entrance, Western entrance, and East South-East entrances all look like they have greenways leading up to them and could be narrowed to allow a few rows of protestors without compromising traffic flow substantially. Maybe have an “overflow protest zone” further away, but I’d like to see an explanation of why these spaces can’t be used for protestors.
Similarly, the site of the RNC, the XCel Energy Center in St. Paul MN has some grassy knolls nearby which would be good for protestors, mainly on the North and West sides. They actually have less available space it seems than the DNC. The roadways run closer and there are lots of trees which would block signs or other protest methods. A line of barricades down half a walkway wouldn’t impede traffic that much in either space though.
If they don’t have good reasons for splitting the protestors from the main sites like this, then sure, lambast them.
As MaxTheVool pointed out, it was the differing treatment of pro- and anti- messages which caused most of the furor about free speech zones a few years back. Limiting demonstrations to keep traffic flowing and not interrupt the event was accepted as reasonable by most. Allowing some types of demonstrators access and some not, based purely on the content of their demonstrations, was the problem.
Enjoy,
Steven