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So the actions of a single individual can change the nature of the entire protest? That line of thinking seems to incentivize the use of agent provocateurs.

by hiatus 3y ago

pc86 3y ago
Who better to make sure the protest is peaceful than the folks doing the protesting?
- 93po 3y ago
  Who better to destroy constitutional rights than a plain clothes cop with a $15 laser?
  - pc86 3y ago
    So what's the answer? 1A doesn't protect non-peaceful protests. There's no court in the world that would classify lasers used in this manner as peaceful. "Oh it's just some pig doing it, not the real protestors" is such an intellectually lazy response and most of the time it's false anyway. If you want to have a peaceful protest I will be the first one to support it whether I agree with the end goal or not. But the people running these things have an obligation to see that they remain peaceful.
    - 93po 3y ago
      The answer is protest is an invaluable tool for a functioning democracy and if the government has the power to explicitly state which square footage of a city that people have the right to protest in, then we’ve lost the right to protest. Police forces use unconstitutional and unlawful force all the time. Should we disband the police every time that happens? Should we force all police to leave the area in the first instance of that happening?
    - SauciestGNU 3y ago
      My answer is that police have no business deploying aerial assets to perform surveillance of protests. Cops aren't in the air to intimidate people then they're not gonna get shined.
    - salawat 3y ago
      >But the people running these things have an obligation to see that they remain peaceful. See, I class that as a DDoS on a protest if you're going to cut carte blanche for law enforcement to play agent provocateur though. They should be passive and uninvolved in en trying to coerce a resolution, or we should accept that a kettled protest gains legitimacy, and by extension, justified use of violence if it's the police who push it over the edge. It's like Union-Busting, and the recent NLRB ruling. If LE has to start pulling dirty tricks, then maybe the protesters had a point.

So the actions of a single individual can change the nature of the entire protest? That line of thinking seems to incentivize the use of agent provocateurs.

by hiatus 3y ago

So the actions of a single individual can change the nature of the entire protest? That line of thinking seems to incentivize the use of agent provocateurs.

pc86 3y ago

Who better to make sure the protest is peaceful than the folks doing the protesting?

93po 3y ago
Who better to destroy constitutional rights than a plain clothes cop with a $15 laser?
- pc86 3y ago
  So what's the answer? 1A doesn't protect non-peaceful protests. There's no court in the world that would classify lasers used in this manner as peaceful. "Oh it's just some pig doing it, not the real protestors" is such an intellectually lazy response and most of the time it's false anyway. If you want to have a peaceful protest I will be the first one to support it whether I agree with the end goal or not. But the people running these things have an obligation to see that they remain peaceful.
  - 93po 3y ago
    The answer is protest is an invaluable tool for a functioning democracy and if the government has the power to explicitly state which square footage of a city that people have the right to protest in, then we’ve lost the right to protest. Police forces use unconstitutional and unlawful force all the time. Should we disband the police every time that happens? Should we force all police to leave the area in the first instance of that happening?
  - SauciestGNU 3y ago
    My answer is that police have no business deploying aerial assets to perform surveillance of protests. Cops aren't in the air to intimidate people then they're not gonna get shined.
  - salawat 3y ago
    >But the people running these things have an obligation to see that they remain peaceful. See, I class that as a DDoS on a protest if you're going to cut carte blanche for law enforcement to play agent provocateur though. They should be passive and uninvolved in en trying to coerce a resolution, or we should accept that a kettled protest gains legitimacy, and by extension, justified use of violence if it's the police who push it over the edge. It's like Union-Busting, and the recent NLRB ruling. If LE has to start pulling dirty tricks, then maybe the protesters had a point.