6 ms·

We have a word for "blocking infrastructure" as a form of protest: civil disobedience. I'm sympathetic to (some) of the aims of the protesters but I think they

by slibhb 5y ago

We have a word for "blocking infrastructure" as a form of protest: civil disobedience. I'm sympathetic to (some) of the aims of the protesters but I think they've made their point and should go home. Still, this move by Trudeau seems like an overreaction considering there's been little/no violence.

JamisonM 5y ago
Civil disobedience as I support it is a non-violent action. A lot of people cite these protestors as "non-violent" but there have been many incidences of protestors attacking or intimidating residents as well as intimidating the police to resist enforcement actions so I don't regard the current occupation in Ottawa as meeting that threshold. I think that anyone following closely would have to concede that police conduct and the lack of enforcement is a product of the threat of violence, but I certainly concede that it might be the case that immediate enforcement /might/ result in nonviolent resolution - it just seems very unlikely.
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  Can you name a protest of this size that hasn't had a little bit of violence?
  - JamisonM 5y ago
    The funny thing about the occupation of Ottawa is that it is very small! There have been many protests on parliment hill itself with ten times the headcount without incident. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/photos-climate-strike-ottawa-1.5300353 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/photos-climate-strike-...
    - _-david-_ 5y ago
      I missed a qualifier about the length. That protest appears to be a day. Most day rallies have no issues. It starts to have issues when they start to be a week or more. I would also note that some in this thread are claiming shutting down streets are violence. That protest shut down multiple streets.
      - JamisonM 5y ago
        Can you offer an example of a protest you would consider comparable? Obviously shutting down streets for hours or a day is not "violence" but preventing people from enjoying public roadways for 17+ days in their own neighbourhood is a violation of their liberities. Just the same a single day horn-honking protest would not be the same as weeks unending. But language-lawyering about the word "violence" isn't really the point anyway, this is more about the right to protest being in tension with the rights of nearby residents and workers to live peacefully.
        _-david-_ 5y ago
        As far as I know every protest that was a week or longer had some sort of real violence (not just road closures) so you can probably just choose any protest and compare it. I am not very familiar with Canadian protests, but Occupy and BLM are the biggest examples of large multi day protests that I can think of and both had some level of violence. At what point does shutting down a street go too far? 1 day, 2 days, a week? It seems somewhat arbitrary to me, and that is what I was trying to convey. I think any obstruction of a road is an inconvenience. Does that mean it is too much of a tension and is causing me to not be able to live peacefully? I don't think so. I would also say that the point of the protest is to inconvenience people. If the truckers blocked roads in the middle of the Yukon nobody would care. The reason they are doing it in Ottawa is because it is capital and because it is populated. I guess I wouldn't have as much of an issue if there was a clear standard, but as far as I can tell there isn't.
        JamisonM 5y ago
        I think that we can rely on the courts to assess the situation and make an assessment, you can't codify into law the exact criteria. There are always tensions between rights, some combination of the laws, the courts, and the compliance and tolerance of the public has to settle on a decision on a case-by-case basis. I think OWS is a good example, they got a lot of publicity and staged long term protests and demonstrations that indeed inconvenienced people, in a two month occupation there certainly was some disruption but I would invite you to compare the two events closely and I think you will see that this Ottawa situation is quite different both in the level of disruption and the quantity of arrests. Of course in Canada we have lots of great examples of roads being blocked in isolated areas because of logging and pipeline protests, they draw a lot of the comparisons because despite their impact being very limited in terms of the people effected they are cleared out much more violently than has occurred in any instance here. Fairy Creek is something you can look into, the RCMP happily arrested journalists covering the protest crackdown in a gross violation of civil liberties and the rule of law. I think if your impression of the protests in Ottawa is that they have simply "shut down a street" you should look into it in more detail. (For example the mayor tried to negotiate a deal to get the trucks to stop overnighting and honking in residential areas but failed to get it to stick, that's not related to blocking off one street downtown.) I know a few people that have been hassled on the street in a manner that resulting in them regarding the area unsafe and not a public space for them anymore.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  I'm not following these protests closely, but aren't you going to have a minority of violent people in any protest? That's just the nature of argry, large groups. If that's your bar for "violent protest", then it's trivial for anyone to disrupt any protest by injecting interlopers to try to trigger an explosion. There's evidence that undercover police tried to instigate violence and looting in the BLM protests. Couldn't that be happening here too?
  - JamisonM 5y ago
    I agree that in any large group there can and will be agitators, but given the dug-in nature of the Ottawa protest it is reasonable to consider the relationship between the lack of enforcement, the relatively small number of participants, and the intimidation that has occurred (as testified to by the OPS). I think it is lost on most people not following closely that the day-to-day protest headcount is quite low, easily under 1,000 people, probably well under 500. Any normal crowd control policing unit could disperse such a small group, the police do not do so despite many instances of having done so and clear legal authority to do so.
ALittleLight 5y ago
One thing I've never understood about protests of the "you've made your point" variety is what they're supposed to do. I'm thinking of the Women's March and things like that, where there's a scheduled day and people walk around and then they are done. What is that supposed to do? It's less of a protest and more of a parade in my opinion. The trucker protest, on the other hand, I can understand what it is supposed to do. Make people uncomfortable, block critical infrastructure, force the government to do what you want. But, if truckers just leave, then we're back to "What's the point of this?"
- oneplane 5y ago
  A protest is a sign of disagreement, and a signal for change... not a "We are a small, non-representative but loud group. Now give us what we want." If the point of a protect is go 'get your way', it's essentially a crappy "Might makes right" play. Might as well not vote, ignore all the rules etc. Society doesn't work if you pick-and-choose at scale.
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    Civil rights protests against segregation, for example, would see protesters filling up or blocking restaurants that would refuse to serve black customers. Basically - you won't serve black people, we will put you out of business. Sometimes the police would come and arrest people, and that would win sympathy for the protesters, because even people who thought "Maybe black people shouldn't eat be allowed to eat at restaurants" might feel pangs of sympathy at seeing people arrested for just sitting at a restaurant counter. Now, you can say "The trucker protest isn't as important as civil rights" but that's just a "You shouldn't be protesting" argument. Racists thought civil rights protesters shouldn't be protesting too. If the protesters believe their cause is actually important then it makes sense to protest. But, it only makes sense to protest in ways that are likely to result in changes. Symbols are fine, but empty symbolism isn't enough for something you think is really important.
    - lariati 5y ago
      Exactly and the vast majority of people were racists at the time who I am sure did not agree with the protests. Something has gone wrong though with this trucker protest because people should have already been arrested. LBJ wasn't granting himself power to deal with civil rights protests. IMO now it is going to turn into some kind of Canadian Reichstag fire. Some headline like 2/3rds of Canadians want the government to make sure there is never another Reichstag fire is just a matter of time.

by slibhb 5y ago

JamisonM 5y ago

Civil disobedience as I support it is a non-violent action. A lot of people cite these protestors as "non-violent" but there have been many incidences of protestors attacking or intimidating residents as well as intimidating the police to resist enforcement actions so I don't regard the current occupation in Ottawa as meeting that threshold. I think that anyone following closely would have to concede that police conduct and the lack of enforcement is a product of the threat of violence, but I certainly concede that it might be the case that immediate enforcement /might/ result in nonviolent resolution - it just seems very unlikely.

_-david-_ 5y ago
Can you name a protest of this size that hasn't had a little bit of violence?
- JamisonM 5y ago
  The funny thing about the occupation of Ottawa is that it is very small! There have been many protests on parliment hill itself with ten times the headcount without incident. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/photos-climate-strike-ottawa-1.5300353 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/photos-climate-strike-...
  - _-david-_ 5y ago
    I missed a qualifier about the length. That protest appears to be a day. Most day rallies have no issues. It starts to have issues when they start to be a week or more. I would also note that some in this thread are claiming shutting down streets are violence. That protest shut down multiple streets.
    - JamisonM 5y ago
      Can you offer an example of a protest you would consider comparable? Obviously shutting down streets for hours or a day is not "violence" but preventing people from enjoying public roadways for 17+ days in their own neighbourhood is a violation of their liberities. Just the same a single day horn-honking protest would not be the same as weeks unending. But language-lawyering about the word "violence" isn't really the point anyway, this is more about the right to protest being in tension with the rights of nearby residents and workers to live peacefully.
      - _-david-_ 5y ago
        As far as I know every protest that was a week or longer had some sort of real violence (not just road closures) so you can probably just choose any protest and compare it. I am not very familiar with Canadian protests, but Occupy and BLM are the biggest examples of large multi day protests that I can think of and both had some level of violence. At what point does shutting down a street go too far? 1 day, 2 days, a week? It seems somewhat arbitrary to me, and that is what I was trying to convey. I think any obstruction of a road is an inconvenience. Does that mean it is too much of a tension and is causing me to not be able to live peacefully? I don't think so. I would also say that the point of the protest is to inconvenience people. If the truckers blocked roads in the middle of the Yukon nobody would care. The reason they are doing it in Ottawa is because it is capital and because it is populated. I guess I wouldn't have as much of an issue if there was a clear standard, but as far as I can tell there isn't.
        JamisonM 5y ago
        I think that we can rely on the courts to assess the situation and make an assessment, you can't codify into law the exact criteria. There are always tensions between rights, some combination of the laws, the courts, and the compliance and tolerance of the public has to settle on a decision on a case-by-case basis. I think OWS is a good example, they got a lot of publicity and staged long term protests and demonstrations that indeed inconvenienced people, in a two month occupation there certainly was some disruption but I would invite you to compare the two events closely and I think you will see that this Ottawa situation is quite different both in the level of disruption and the quantity of arrests. Of course in Canada we have lots of great examples of roads being blocked in isolated areas because of logging and pipeline protests, they draw a lot of the comparisons because despite their impact being very limited in terms of the people effected they are cleared out much more violently than has occurred in any instance here. Fairy Creek is something you can look into, the RCMP happily arrested journalists covering the protest crackdown in a gross violation of civil liberties and the rule of law. I think if your impression of the protests in Ottawa is that they have simply "shut down a street" you should look into it in more detail. (For example the mayor tried to negotiate a deal to get the trucks to stop overnighting and honking in residential areas but failed to get it to stick, that's not related to blocking off one street downtown.) I know a few people that have been hassled on the street in a manner that resulting in them regarding the area unsafe and not a public space for them anymore.
anonporridge 5y ago
I'm not following these protests closely, but aren't you going to have a minority of violent people in any protest? That's just the nature of argry, large groups. If that's your bar for "violent protest", then it's trivial for anyone to disrupt any protest by injecting interlopers to try to trigger an explosion. There's evidence that undercover police tried to instigate violence and looting in the BLM protests. Couldn't that be happening here too?
- JamisonM 5y ago
  I agree that in any large group there can and will be agitators, but given the dug-in nature of the Ottawa protest it is reasonable to consider the relationship between the lack of enforcement, the relatively small number of participants, and the intimidation that has occurred (as testified to by the OPS). I think it is lost on most people not following closely that the day-to-day protest headcount is quite low, easily under 1,000 people, probably well under 500. Any normal crowd control policing unit could disperse such a small group, the police do not do so despite many instances of having done so and clear legal authority to do so.

ALittleLight 5y ago

One thing I've never understood about protests of the "you've made your point" variety is what they're supposed to do. I'm thinking of the Women's March and things like that, where there's a scheduled day and people walk around and then they are done. What is that supposed to do? It's less of a protest and more of a parade in my opinion. The trucker protest, on the other hand, I can understand what it is supposed to do. Make people uncomfortable, block critical infrastructure, force the government to do what you want. But, if truckers just leave, then we're back to "What's the point of this?"

oneplane 5y ago
A protest is a sign of disagreement, and a signal for change... not a "We are a small, non-representative but loud group. Now give us what we want." If the point of a protect is go 'get your way', it's essentially a crappy "Might makes right" play. Might as well not vote, ignore all the rules etc. Society doesn't work if you pick-and-choose at scale.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  Civil rights protests against segregation, for example, would see protesters filling up or blocking restaurants that would refuse to serve black customers. Basically - you won't serve black people, we will put you out of business. Sometimes the police would come and arrest people, and that would win sympathy for the protesters, because even people who thought "Maybe black people shouldn't eat be allowed to eat at restaurants" might feel pangs of sympathy at seeing people arrested for just sitting at a restaurant counter. Now, you can say "The trucker protest isn't as important as civil rights" but that's just a "You shouldn't be protesting" argument. Racists thought civil rights protesters shouldn't be protesting too. If the protesters believe their cause is actually important then it makes sense to protest. But, it only makes sense to protest in ways that are likely to result in changes. Symbols are fine, but empty symbolism isn't enough for something you think is really important.
  - lariati 5y ago
    Exactly and the vast majority of people were racists at the time who I am sure did not agree with the protests. Something has gone wrong though with this trucker protest because people should have already been arrested. LBJ wasn't granting himself power to deal with civil rights protests. IMO now it is going to turn into some kind of Canadian Reichstag fire. Some headline like 2/3rds of Canadians want the government to make sure there is never another Reichstag fire is just a matter of time.