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[Got]

So just like voter fraud. That is, the likelihood and incidence being so low that it's a minuscule blip on a radar the size of an ocean. Yet people are more that willing to sign up for more draconian laws curtailing civil liberties on a 'just in case' basis.

the sad truth is, most of humanity are just simple people who desire zero conflict in their lives, and will sacrifice most everything to keep it simple. that's why radicals are radical. they elevate us as whole and force the weak ones to advance as well.

 

[commedieu]

Okay, then I will admit that I was wrong on the matter.

...

Very hard to believe that someone your age has no concept of how emergency systems work. So much to be so passionate about denying protests over.

Very hard to believe.

 

[NOLA_Gaffer]

...

Very hard to believe that someone your age has no concept of how emergency systems work. So much to be so passionate about denying protests over.

Very hard to believe.

People shouldn't be denied the right to protest, not at all. If anyone has somehow taken that away from my posts that's not at all what my intentions were.

It just seemed dangerous to me for everybody involved to be blocking major highways, both the protesters and those being blocked.

 

[kinggroin]

Most people, especially with how convenient everything is nowadays, don't want to be bothered by other people's problems and will exhibit behavior that solidifies that. We live in a society of willin low resistance just so we can be a liiiittle bit more comfortable.

 

[Already Torn]

People shouldn't be denied the right to protest, not at all. If anyone has somehow taken that away from my posts that's not at all what my intentions were.

It just seemed dangerous to me for everybody involved to be blocking major highways, both the protesters and those being blocked.

I thought you just admitted that it's not actually dangerous :/

 

[NOLA_Gaffer]

I thought you just admitted that it's not actually dangerous :/

I'm explaining my initial thoughts.

 

[Heavy_D206]

I thought you just admitted that it's not actually dangerous :/

A crowd of people on a major highway where large automobiles are traveling at speeds of 60+ miles per hour is dangerous no matter how you look at it. There's a reason freeways don't have sidewalks.

 

[leroidys]

The Constitution allows time, place, and manner restrictions on speech under certain conditions outlined in Ward v. Rock Against Racism (narrowly tailored, content neutral, alternative channels for speech, etc.)

A well-drafted bill limiting speech on busy freeways would probably meet the Ward test. The ACLU will sue whatever state enacts these bills and we will find out eventually.

Y'all need to pace yourselves, it's just the first day.

Context? The Washington proposal that you posted about has nothing to do with freeways.

 

[Got]

Protesting is inherently a dangerous activity as it disrupts the status quo and puts people on edge. It's meant to be annoying and aggressive.

 

[timetokill]

The original thread title was "Republicans move to criminalize protesting in 5 states and counting..." which is inflammatory and inaccurate. The headline on the article was "Republican lawmakers in 5 states propose bills to criminalize peaceful protest" which is also inflammatory and inaccurate.

Barring the anti-union bill from Michigan, the common thread is disruptive protests, particularly those that block freeways. I can change it to "disruptive protests." Or if you have another thread title in mind that accurately describes the story you can let me know.

Works for me. I just didn't want people to think it was ONLY about freeway protesting as discussion was starting to center on that in particular, whereas some of the other items are just as chilling or more. Thanks, Cyan!

 

[Messofanego]

I disagree with several of these measures, but the protesting on highways and major intersections is not, in my opinion, peaceful protest. This puts innocent people at risk.

Ambulances have been stopped in the middle of emergency trips by that. People relying on the police that are stuck in traffic are affected. People losing their jobs because they cannot get to work and their families suffering unduly.

I'm all for freedom of protest. Just do it literally anywhere else. Running out into 55+ MPH traffic endangers yourself and innocent drivers - and while i think it's obviously going to get your issue a lot of visibility, when you're endangering people you go from peaceful protest to violent protest.

It's not just an inconvenience to die in an ambulance on the highway. It's not just an inconvenience to accidentally kill someone who ran out in front of your car on the highway. It's not just an inconvenience to get killed because you had to slam on the brakes when traveling 50+ MPH.

If you believe in interpreting the 2nd Amendment as allowing restrictions and limits, then it's hypocritical to believe the same cannot be said for the 1st. Freedom of Assembly and Freedom of Petition are not to be taken lightly. But the core of this country's ideals of personal freedoms has always been that your rights end where they infringe on others.

RIP Nana Ruth

I had read a story indicating it had, but upon researching it now the sources are admittedly not the most reliable. Nonetheless, you can obviously see the potential for an event like this to occur, right?

Huh, very interesting...

 

[Adcon]

Screw them. The laws won't pass and they can't stop us from protesting. We won't stop.

 

[BrownieBrownBrown]

This is what you asked for America.

 

[Messofanego]

Eh i would hate commuting to work and going home then to be stuck on a freeway....

Welcome to LA. Or the M25. Just another day, another block. This time, it'd actually be for a good cause.

It worked for for the civil rights movement. Protest are about disruption and not necessarily making people like you. When they cover the civil rights movement they leave out that the public wasn't happy with what was happening.

MLK Would Never Shut Down a Freeway, and 6 Other Myths About the Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter

NOTHING HAS CHANGED

People on NeoGAF been using the exact same language as people who hated the protests for civil rights.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a disruptive consumer boycott that sought to use the power of black consumers to hurt the bus company and force the city to address black demands. The Birmingham, Ala., campaign that King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference waged in 1963 was a campaign of mass civil disobedience designed to overflow the jails and cripple downtown businesses and city function. Key to the work of many civil rights organizations, from SCLC to the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was mass civil disobedience because they understood that injustice would not be changed without disrupting civic and commercial life.​

.

The civil rights movement made most Americans uncomfortable. From presidents to ordinary citizens, many regarded it as “extremism.” People regularly called MLK and Rosa Parks communists and traitors, not just in the South but also in the “liberal” North, for their critiques of police brutality and their support of housing and school desegregation. Although our public imagination focuses on Southern-redneck racism, both Parks and King came to see the white “moderate” as key to the problem. As King wrote from a Birmingham jail in 1963, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens' Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice […] who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.’”​

.

Parks spent many decades grappling with how hard it was to be a “troublemaker,” and with the stigmatization and punishment of black people who dissented endured. She noted how those who challenged the racial order as she did were labeled “radicals, soreheads, agitators, troublemakers.” Politically active for two decades before her bus stand (and four decades afterward), Parks despaired for years before the boycott that no mass movement was emerging.

“Such a good job of brainwashing was done on the Negro,” Parks observed, “that a militant Negro was almost a freak of nature to them, many times ridiculed by others of his own group.” She struggled with feeling isolated and crazy, writing how she felt “completely alone and desolate, as if I was descending in a black and bottomless chasm.”​

.

The majority of the American public did not support the civil rights movement while it was happening. In May 1961, in a Gallup survey, only 22 percent of Americans approved of what the Freedom Riders were doing, and 57 percent of Americans said that the sit-ins at lunch counters, freedom buses and other demonstrations by Negroes were hurting the Negro’s chances of being integrated in the South.

Lest we see this as Southerners skewing the national sample, in 1964, a year before the passage of the Voting Rights Act, in a poll conducted by the New York Times, a majority of white people in New York City said the civil rights movement had gone too far: “While denying any deepseated prejudice, a large number of those questioned used the same terms to express their feelings. They spoke of Negroes’ receiving ‘everything on a silver platter’ and of ‘reverse discrimination’ against whites.” Nearly half said that picketing and demonstrations hurt black people’s cause. In 1966, a year after Selma and the passage of the Voting Rights Act, 85 percent of white people and 30 percent of black people nationally believed that demonstrations by black people on civil rights hurt the advancement of civil rights.​

Hating freeway protests is bipartisan, liberals hate them too!

 

[leroidys]

After the huge turnouts yesterday, I fully expect state Republicans to double down on this.

 

[SlipperyFishes]

But you're then making your voices heard to the wrong people. If the protest is something government-related, how is making me late to work helping your cause? Make your voices heard to those people in government that can affect what you're trying to change.

Dominoes. You also learn about things that are important to your fellow citizens and/or friends.

Or you can admit that you don't give a shit about race, gender and other serious issues that people are rightfully afraid of now and stop concern trolling.

 

[KHarvey16]

After the huge turnouts yesterday, I fully expect state Republicans to double down on this.

I don't think any of the proposed measures would have impacted any of the marches yesterday.

 

[Ether_Snake]

- North Dakota has a bill that allows drivers to not be charged with anything if they hit and kill a protester "accidentally"

So when there's a protest, they can just get in a big truck and hit the accelerator?

 

[Link]

So when there's a protest, they can just get in a big truck and hit the accelerator?

In the Middle East, it's terrorism; in the US, it's freedom.

 

[RCSI]

At first my thoughts on criminalizing freeway protests was mixed, but the march yesterday and what Messofanego posted changed by views on this (along with other years of observations, stories, and history). Without the movement that goes beyond the visible civil lines, the message will not be heard and the system will not break. The systemic racism that still exists is only exposed because people break that system to expose how uneven our society is built.

 

[Gutek]

We should be in the streets every day.

 

[leroidys]

I don't think any of the proposed measures would have impacted any of the marches yesterday.

That's not my point.

 

[UberTag]

We should be in the streets every day.

There may come a time when we'll have to be.
Until then, stay engaged and follow the actions... action #1 being to contact your senator.

 

[Derwind]

In the Middle East, it's terrorism; in the US, it's freedom.

I agree, the mental gymnastics that one has to undergo to justify running over another human being "accidently" if they are conveniently protesting the State & Government is amazing.

It's like it's only okay to protest when it involves the 2nd ammendment and nothing else.

Human rights? Nope.
Environmental Protection? Nope.
Civil Liberties! NOOOOPE.

Guns? Well that's just a patriotic duty!

Well, I mean if you happen to be a White, Middle-aged Male that is. Otherwise, those protections don't apply.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

The more I think about it, the more that North Dakota bill disturbs the fuck out of me.

The sociopath who came up with it needs help.

 

[Strike]

Dissent is patriotic.

 

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

The more I think about it, the more that North Dakota bill disturbs the fuck out of me.

The sociopath who came up with it needs help.

It should, it basically gives people a license to kill.

 

[Link]

It should, it basically gives people a license to kill.

So do Stand Your Ground laws and a ton of states have them now. Republicans don't give a shit.

 

[TalonJH]

Welcome to LA. Or the M25. Just another day, another block. This time, it'd actually be for a good cause.



NOTHING HAS CHANGED

People on NeoGAF been using the exact same language as people who hated the protests for civil rights.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a disruptive consumer boycott that sought to use the power of black consumers to hurt the bus company and force the city to address black demands. The Birmingham, Ala., campaign that King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference waged in 1963 was a campaign of mass civil disobedience designed to overflow the jails and cripple downtown businesses and city function. Key to the work of many civil rights organizations, from SCLC to the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was mass civil disobedience because they understood that injustice would not be changed without disrupting civic and commercial life.​

.

The civil rights movement made most Americans uncomfortable. From presidents to ordinary citizens, many regarded it as “extremism.” People regularly called MLK and Rosa Parks communists and traitors, not just in the South but also in the “liberal” North, for their critiques of police brutality and their support of housing and school desegregation. Although our public imagination focuses on Southern-redneck racism, both Parks and King came to see the white “moderate” as key to the problem. As King wrote from a Birmingham jail in 1963, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens' Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice […] who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.’”​

.

Parks spent many decades grappling with how hard it was to be a “troublemaker,” and with the stigmatization and punishment of black people who dissented endured. She noted how those who challenged the racial order as she did were labeled “radicals, soreheads, agitators, troublemakers.” Politically active for two decades before her bus stand (and four decades afterward), Parks despaired for years before the boycott that no mass movement was emerging.

“Such a good job of brainwashing was done on the Negro,” Parks observed, “that a militant Negro was almost a freak of nature to them, many times ridiculed by others of his own group.” She struggled with feeling isolated and crazy, writing how she felt “completely alone and desolate, as if I was descending in a black and bottomless chasm.”​

.

The majority of the American public did not support the civil rights movement while it was happening. In May 1961, in a Gallup survey, only 22 percent of Americans approved of what the Freedom Riders were doing, and 57 percent of Americans said that the sit-ins at lunch counters, freedom buses and other demonstrations by Negroes were hurting the Negro’s chances of being integrated in the South.

Lest we see this as Southerners skewing the national sample, in 1964, a year before the passage of the Voting Rights Act, in a poll conducted by the New York Times, a majority of white people in New York City said the civil rights movement had gone too far: “While denying any deepseated prejudice, a large number of those questioned used the same terms to express their feelings. They spoke of Negroes’ receiving ‘everything on a silver platter’ and of ‘reverse discrimination’ against whites.” Nearly half said that picketing and demonstrations hurt black people’s cause. In 1966, a year after Selma and the passage of the Voting Rights Act, 85 percent of white people and 30 percent of black people nationally believed that demonstrations by black people on civil rights hurt the advancement of civil rights.​

Hating freeway protests is bipartisan, liberals hate them too!

Exactly. Black history month is coming up and sadly all that will be taught is the nice stuff edited down into MLK made a speech and everyone said, "that's a good argument" and happy ending. People hated the civil rights movement because it inconvenienced America.

 

[IISANDERII]

Fuck all of them, a direct threat to actual democracy. The fact that they're not facing resignation is terrible.

There have been many "direct threats to actual democracy". And not just threats but many things which have been followed through on. So much so, that the US is no longer a democracy and hasn't been for years.

 

[Raylan]

This is what you asked for America.

Yep. After blocking highways attacking people and smashing shit, I knew it would happen.