Too much, methinks 4 September 2004, 09:59

Folks protesting the Grand Old Party have kept cypher from provisioning himself in The Big Apple.

Have we never looked back after Seattle in 1999?

Ahem, in my day, protesting was something you did with your kids. From a boycott of South African wines when I was 7 or 8 to my college years of taking back the night, I am very familiar with peaceful protest.

From the Walk for Peace (age 10 to 19) we would draw would-be spectators in with cheers. No violence, no arrests. Though when my stepsiblings and I had a disagreement over how to build our sandcastle at the beach, one stridently peaceful mum gave us hell.

The closest thing to the protest marches I took part in in my youthful years is Edmonton’s Silly Summer Parade. But with no WOMEN, UNITED, WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED!, NO MORE PATRIARCHY, NO MORE SHIT!, HEY HEY, HO HO, PATRIARCHY HAS GOT TO GO! or HEY THERE MISTER GET YOUR BODY OFF MY SISTER!

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I object

  1. # And then like 1444 days ago Darren James Harkness goes:

    The problem, of course, is that most of the protesters were protesting peacefully... There are many stories of people obeying police orders to stay on the sidewalks, then being arrested anyways. In fact, quite a few people arrested in NYC weren't even protesting—they were tourists in the wrong place at the wrong time (and still charged for it), or they were journalists covering the protests. And a good portion of the protesters switched from protesting the RNC to protesting the deplorable conditions the arrested were kept in and the fact they were being held, against court order, without charges.

    — Darren James Harkness · 1444 days ago · #

  2. # And then like 1444 days ago Pam goes:

    Activists have been quietly getting arrested (not for civil disobedience) and their rights violated in the US for ages (dunno about Canada). Now that it is “ordinary people" (or the kids of somebody important) getting the same treatment, this is an outrage?

    — Pam · 1444 days ago · #

  3. # And then like 1443 days ago Darren James Harkness goes:

    I don't think the outrage is that people are getting arrested. I think it's that people are being arrested: a) while obeying police orders, and behaving in an orderly manner b) without provocation c) and not read their Miranda rights d) without being charged for an offense, or being told what their offense is e) being refused medical attention while being held f) being denied access to legal counsel (the National Lawyer's Guild had to initiate legal action to get access to their clients, and even then they were refused access) g) held past a reasonable amount of time for habeous corpus, and h) held conspicuously until the end of the event they are protesting, despite repeated court orders for their release. It's pretty clear that this wasn't the standard "let's round up the hippies" type of action.

    — Darren James Harkness · 1443 days ago · #

  4. # And then like 1442 days ago omoshiroi goes:

    they got away with it at the so-called WTO "riots", I don't see why they wouldn't get away with it here.

    — omoshiroi · 1442 days ago · #

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