Yon snowflakes doth PROTEST too much, methinks.
Durham County’s sheriff wants a 48-hour notice for protests in his county. Sounds reasonable. It gives time for first responders to get their ducks in a row and ensure the safety of everyone in the vicinity of the protest is ensured. Hell, even that leftist-owned nightmare New York City requires permits. But, of course, the whiny social-justice bitches are not happy:
The next time residents of Durham County, North Carolina, feel the itch to spontaneously express political feelings on public grounds, they’d better hope somebody had the foresight to ask permission two days earlier.
Yeah. Otherwise a spontaneous taking-to-the-streets MIGHT be construed as rioting.
MORE:
The Durham County Commission opened the new year with a proposal to require 48 hours’ notice before any demonstration on County-owned land. “In order to ensure the safety of all involved in and near demonstrations on County grounds prior notification is required if the group will be 50 or more individuals or has the potential of 50 or more individuals,” the rules before the commission on Tuesday state. “If notification is not given within the stated requirements or if a spontaneous group exceeds 50 individuals, the County Manager or his/her designee may determine that those participating in the demonstration on County grounds are trespassing and may request that participants be removed by law
enforcement.”
Activists in the area made headlines in August when they pulled down a statue of a Confederate soldier prominently displayed near a county building. The impromptu demonstration came two days after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, led to the death of a local anti-racism protester when a rally attendee mowed down dozens of peaceful marchers with his car.[…]
Peaceful marchers? Um,NO. Attacking people with baseball bats whom you disagree with doesn’t count as “peaceful” in my book. Oh, and imagine how much more peaceful the protests might have been if there had been some advance warning and some structure involving the activists and the police.
If the KLAN wants to march through a predominantly-neighborhood, I am all for giving local cops all the time they need to prep for that situation. I would guess that scenario could get quite ugly and unsafe.
MORE:
[…] The following week, rumors spread of a Charlottesville-style neo-nazi march on symbols of North Carolina’s slave-state heritage, prompting locals into the streets en masse.
WHO spontaneously takes to the streets? (By the way, those “rumors” were likely started by the same people who ended up taking to the streets. Klansmen are crazy, but I suspect they are not crazy enough to march through the People’s Republic of Durham.)
[…] After those tumultuous days in August, county sheriff Mike Andrews wrote an open letter urging commissioners to tighten rules for street protests. If the new proposal is approved, it would be the first time Durham has required citizens to seek permits for protests — a common rule, though one which police officials often decline to enforce when an unpermitted assembly is deemed peaceful.
The proposal does not explicitly call for police to forcibly break up unpermitted marches, as Andrews proposed in his letter. But it does include open-ended language signaling cops would be empowered to get aggressive in such circumstances. It says that “all city ordinances and state statutes should apply” to such demonstrations — invoking a category of local rules that would give men like Andrews carte blanche to handle truly spontaneous mass demonstrators however they pleased.[…]
*All state and city statutes should apply to leftist rabble? Outrageous !!!* Okay. Here comes an attempt at justification:
The Durham County tussle over how the justice system should react to a First Amendment assembly where property gets damaged offers a small-scale replica of a fight playing out in other venues around the country.
Hundreds of protesters rounded up and arrested on Inauguration Day still face felony charges in a Washington, D.C. court this winter and
spring, as federal prosecutors argue that the black-clad marchers are just as guilty of rioting as the individuals within the group who broke shop windows and set trash cans alight. Police were similarly indiscriminate with pepper spray and handcuffs outside a Trump rally in Arizona over the summer, and after a St. Louis police officer was acquitted on homicide charges this fall. […]
Wearing the same uniform? You’re teammates. In football, if one player screws up, the whole team gets penalized. Not just the offender.
[…] Street protests governed by a mix of old-school nonviolence and new-age anarchist tactics have become a crucial political tool over the past few years. In 2010 and 2011, the Tea Party and Occupy movements revitalized physical expressions of political disaffect.
Don’t even try that. Occupy nuts break stuff and stink up the place. Tea Party activists bring the kids and pick up the trash when they’re done.
MORE:
Since then, national politics have been reshaped by a wide range of physical resistance movements from Black Lives Matter protests to the long-running and initially successful Dakota Access Pipeline blockade on Indian land in the Dakotas. More recently, radical leftists united against the resurgent fascist tendencies of the Trump movement have sought to disrupt or prevent public appearances by right-wing hatemongers.
Conservative-minded officials have embraced confrontation in response to the rise in mass mobilization tactics. Some lawmakers have even tried to make it legal for drivers to run down pedestrian protesters who block roads.
[…]
Actually, the bill dealt with protesters who block traffic “spontaneously” and then try to sue or charge someone who may accidentally sideswipe them trying to drive by. * But what’s a little truth among, um, “friends”?*
Once again, assaults on public school teachers are on the rise. And these people are trying to figure out ways to make it harder for the police to keep order.
In Europe, water cannon are sometimes used to break up violent and unruly demonstrations. I suspect the fire hoses of a pumper truck would serve the same purpose. They could have done a lot to prevent damage and injury in Charlottesville and could have saved the historic monument in Durham. They would be particularly effective in weather that we have now. When they start attacking people and damaging property, very strong measures need to be taken against such hooligans.
In case you forgot, fire hoses were used on Civil Rights activists here in the U.S. in the 1960s. Somehow I doubt that municipalities here want to revive those optics.
It makes better optics than allowing thugs to wantonly attack persons and property. However, I would agree with you that a peaceful demonstration where no persons or property are attacked should not be suppressed.
every time either goverment or public property is destroyed, prison time, not just jail time, prison time, because ‘we the taxpayer have paid for this propery and if they replace it will have to pay again. I’m elderly and still working and the workplace is a battle ground sometimes, if you work with the public, and I’m tired of having my money taken and given to such low lifes. The men need to grow some balls and put these lawbreakers in prison.
“The men need to grow some balls and put these lawbreakers in prison.” – where we will pay for their room and board.
Prison is a deterrent. If you think prison is a nice place, then please commit an act to put yourself there.
Those communist scumbags who destroyed the historical monument in Durham need long prison sentences, followed by lengthy parole in which they will have to pay the cost of replacing it.
IF these people are truly “scumbags” (which I don’t believe), then prison would probably be an upgrade.
Kill the right for to assemble and do it in the name of freedom of expression.
I don’t think anyone is saying THAT. Permits for protests are not a radical idea. Protests take a lot of forms. There are the Charlotte riots and the toppling of the Durham statue. Lives were at risk in both. Property damage happened at both. You also get people laying down in traffic and blocking traffic with their bodies. Then, there is the peaceful picket line about a rezoning matter or a court case. Letting public safety officials know in advance can limit the possibility of people getting hurt or property getting damaged while people are “expressing” themselves.