5 ms·

> Get arrested, don't show up at work, get fired (totally legal: it's an at-will state!), lose your health insurance, can't pay rent, eviction, now your former

> Get arrested, don't show up at work, get fired (totally legal: it's an at-will state!), lose your health insurance, can't pay rent, eviction, now your former landlord wants you to pay for your own eviction… Yes, actions have consequences. You have a right to protest, but if your method of protest has a law breaking component to it and you are arrested for that law you broke, there could be downstream consequences to your action. The very same thing can happen for any reason you may chose to break a law. Activism doesn’t give you a law breaking pass. > How is blocking traffic extreme? Would you do this on the regular just for the fun or utility of it? > The problem is political will. Doesn't matter how many people want universal suffrage…. Is that the problem? Seems to me what you are describing as a lack of “political will” is really your own impatience. > No artwork was destroyed, or even damaged. (If anything, art was created.) Yeah I am sure that striking the protective safety glass over the Velázquez painting 10x with hammers just to test to make sure it wouldn’t break and destroy the painting before they reinterpreted the masterpiece with their bold warholian-pollock style.

wizzwizz4 3y ago
You don't need to break the law to get arrested. But the powers-that-be can just pass a law that makes protest illegal, and then what? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65542558 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65542558 (For clarity: while Amnesty International calls the bill "draconian",[0] the UK has not made all forms of protest illegal for all people. A government could, and many have,[1] but the UK government has not. And while the Met has some pretty serious issues, there's nothing even remotely like the police-violence-against-protestors stuff you see in the US (e.g. Stop Cop City). Indeed, the police in the UK – even the Met – are usually doing their jobs properly! See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67398933 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67398933 for a slightly-less-cherrypicked example of Met officers making arrests at a protest.) In the US, many police departments use chemical weaponry – a war crime, if used in war – on unarmed civilian protestors. If you're following the rules, if you're behaving as you would “on the regular”, it's not a protest. Regarding climate change, of course people are impatient! We have no way to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere, so every month spent waiting is a month where things get permanently worse. It'll be hundreds of years before things start approaching the conditions of the average living person's childhood, and that's if we stop everything now, quickly enough that people will die from lack of infrastructure. [0]: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/campaigns-blog/public-order-bill-explained https://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/campaigns-blog/public-order... [1]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/freedom-of-expression/protest/#map https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/freedom-of-expression/...
- kcplate 3y ago
  An asteroid could hit the earth tomorrow too. Tossing out a bunch of hypotheticals doesnt convince me of anything as plausible and or likely.
  - wizzwizz4 3y ago
    How's this for a hypothetical? https://www.icnl.org/post/news/analysis-of-anti-protest-bills https://www.icnl.org/post/news/analysis-of-anti-protest-bill...

wizzwizz4 3y ago

You don't need to break the law to get arrested. But the powers-that-be can just pass a law that makes protest illegal, and then what? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65542558 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65542558 (For clarity: while Amnesty International calls the bill "draconian",[0] the UK has not made all forms of protest illegal for all people. A government could, and many have,[1] but the UK government has not. And while the Met has some pretty serious issues, there's nothing even remotely like the police-violence-against-protestors stuff you see in the US (e.g. Stop Cop City). Indeed, the police in the UK – even the Met – are usually doing their jobs properly! See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67398933 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67398933 for a slightly-less-cherrypicked example of Met officers making arrests at a protest.) In the US, many police departments use chemical weaponry – a war crime, if used in war – on unarmed civilian protestors. If you're following the rules, if you're behaving as you would “on the regular”, it's not a protest. Regarding climate change, of course people are impatient! We have no way to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere, so every month spent waiting is a month where things get permanently worse. It'll be hundreds of years before things start approaching the conditions of the average living person's childhood, and that's if we stop everything now, quickly enough that people will die from lack of infrastructure. [0]: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/campaigns-blog/public-order-bill-explained https://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/campaigns-blog/public-order... [1]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/freedom-of-expression/protest/#map https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/freedom-of-expression/...

kcplate 3y ago
An asteroid could hit the earth tomorrow too. Tossing out a bunch of hypotheticals doesnt convince me of anything as plausible and or likely.
- wizzwizz4 3y ago
  How's this for a hypothetical? https://www.icnl.org/post/news/analysis-of-anti-protest-bills https://www.icnl.org/post/news/analysis-of-anti-protest-bill...