[dungdongdang]

If the large crowd is told to disperse by government agents, you are no longer a peaceful protester. You are free to protest, but you are not free to protest at any location at any time. If once told to move, you do not, you can, and were always able to be removed by use of physical force.

The reason these peaceful crowds are told to disperse, is they are often not peaceful, they leave much damage to regular citizen's and business property behind, and it's not your call whether the crowd poses a danger to my car parked on the street, or my place of work. It's up to the law enforcement assessing risk of the crowd causing damage, and if they think it will, even if they have not, they have to disperse. Like when the crowd starts ignoring the fact that cars drive on the streets trying to get home from work, and starts walking through and blocking traffic. Or even leaving a pile of trash and destroying the lawn of public or private property, which I have to pay to restore with taxes.

Does your peaceful protest stay on the sidewalk? Does it carry its trash to the nearest garbage can instead of dropping it on the street? Does it destroy zero property and wait for the walk sign at intersections? Because if not, the issue is not with the protest. It's with the things you are doing which are not peaceful, to people not part of your peaceful protest.

I was moving apartments during one of these "peaceful" protests in Chicago. At that point, they weren't burning buildings and destroying stores yet. It took me 12 hours to move 2 minivan-loads of stuff. My brother was helping me. When the police tried to get people to clear the roads, the people did not. Instead, they threw a bunch of flamable shit in the parking lot where regular people's cars were, and destroyed those cars. Because the cops tried to clear the road so people, on the last of the month, could move their shit into the new apartment. after working a full day. and having to work the next day. after having 2 hours of sleep.

by the way, when my brother got home, his girlfriend's shitty old car was broken into and needed to be repaired. good thing she was unemployed and couldn't pay for it, otherwise it might have cost $200 instead of the free ducktape + plastic bag combo.

peaceful for you does not mean peaceful for everyone. and the cops, and the feds, are there to make it peaceful for everyone - not just you. when told to disperse, so people like me can simply live our already stressful lives, you refuse to, you are no longer peaceful, and should be thrown into a van and removed. and if that takes tear gas, I'm cool with that, just like you're cool with completely fucking up my life.

let me ask you this: forget protests. regular workday, mid-afternoon. a group of people decide to just start walking in the middle of the road dropping garbage everywhere and won't leave. what do you think should happen to them? nothing? does the group being large make it ok?

[jadell]

I'm tired of this argument that any order given by law enforcement should be assumed to be a legal order and one should just comply or face consequences. That would have such a chilling effect on the exercise of rights. Cops don't like what you're saying? Even if they have no legal reason to prevent you saying it? Just demand you disperse and now they can beat you, arrest you, ruin your life with impunity.

Oh, they happened to be wrong? Well, that's for the courts to decide later. Meanwhile, you've already been beaten, arrested, possibly lost your job, missed important events with your family, etc.

The whole idea that people should just comply with LEO commands and let the courts figure out later if the LEO were wrong completely misses the fact that the consequences for the LEO being wrong in their issued commands are trivial compared to the consequences for most people in complying with those commands.

[dungdongdang]

and statistically none of what you describe happens, so the only way you're tired of it, is if you make stuff up, or take the .001% of cases and pretend that's all of them.

if you are blocking every road in the middle of the day, that is illegal. we have sidewalks for you. it's not "any order" - you're breaking the law, and are warned not to.

as far as police being wrong with a suspect - that is not for the courts to decide. that is decided immediately. and the procedure for that, is when they think you may be an armed suspect, for you to follow the order to get into a position safe for them, so they can verify your identity. not to keep standing there talking and refusing to lay down and put your hands on your head. because if they do have the correct suspect, he can take out his gun and kill them. if you don't comply, absolutely they force you to, and you are charged with not complying.

and if you look at all of those cases you're raging about, no - the suspects did not comply like they have to by law. yes, there are a dozen cops over the last decade that literally murdered someone, in the whole country. there are 12000 cops in my city alone.

[ceejayoz]

> If the large crowd is told to disperse by government agents, you are no longer a peaceful protester.

There is no “except large groups” exemption in the First Amendment.

[dungdongdang]

And there is no "large groups" exception to walking in the middle of the road blocking traffic.

Free speech does not allow you to break other laws. Your freedom stops when it destroys the freedom of your fellow man.

[ceejayoz]

That’s an entirely different claim than the one I am highlighting as incorrect.

[dungdongdang]

Your claim is made by taking a sentence out of context - context which says the reason they are told to disperse is that they are breaking the law. You made up a strawman, and are highlighting it as incorrect. I never made the claim you are highlighting as incorrect. Only you did. So you could prove it incorrect. Good job, very good argument you had with yourself, and you won it.

FYI, people don't twit in twitter. In real language, we speak in sentences, not a single sentence, to communicate an idea. The narrative doesn't end with the first period.

[TheCoelacanth]

> If the large crowd is told to disperse by government agents, you are no longer a peaceful protester.

This is the US, not China. People have the right to protest in large crowds. Some wannabe fascist telling you to go away does not make a protest non-peaceful.

[maxlybbert]

I’m bemused to see reports about the police overreacting to peaceful protests, followed by a sentence or two acknowledging that fires were set at those same protests.

[IAmEveryone]

There have been quite a few protests lately. Some of them involved vandalism, especially on the first day. In Portland over the last few days, there was some fireworks and a few trash cans were burning.

But the vast majority of protests were entirely peaceful. And and even greater number of individual protesters have done nothing wrong.

The police doesn’t get to shoot you in the head because you look like the people they saw on the news doing something wrong half-way across the country.

And even actual criminals aren’t fair game to police violence. This isn’t some gang war between equals. The police is expected to be better than that sort of revengeful sadism.

[maxlybbert]

Here’s a great example ( https://apnews.com/edd4ebdd7a245e568da69db38aea04db , third paragraph):

“[The mayor] put on a pair of goggles someone handed him and drank water but did not leave his spot at the front of the protest and continued to take tear gas as the demonstration raged — with protesters lighting a large fire between protective fencing and the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse amid the pop-pop-pop sounds of the federal agents deploying tear gas and stun grenades into the crowd.”

The federal officers are officially assigned to protect that courthouse. They built a fence but people still managed to build a large fire on the wrong side of the fence. It looks like the officers have a good reason to want the crowd to disperse, although I’m not sure that it’s a great idea to use tear gas so close to a fire. Unfortunately, as I understand it, if the crowd refuses to leave and tear gas has been ruled out, the remaining options are all very violent.

[dungdongdang]

"But the vast majority of police were entirely peaceful. And and even greater number of individual officers have done nothing wrong."

by the way, peaceful to you is not peaceful to me. when I'm driving home from work and literally every road is filled with people on the road, and I am unable to get home till midnight - you are not peaceful, and you are breaking the law. when you refuse to clear the road and let me come home so I can sleep before the next day at work starts, I'm glad to pay for the tear gas and the rubber bullet that hits you in the head. you clearly don't care about my well-being, so I not only don't care about yours - I want physical harm to come to you.

this is why assemblies outside get a permit, and a designated route to follow. so the majority of people, who are not a part of your rage party, can get routed around and live their lives. you choose not to follow the social contract with the rest of society - I see zero issue with police not following the social contract with you. you have escalated the situation, so expect an escalation from the people you're "peacefully" harming - the majority of people.

[jschwartzi]

A lot of the problem here is that there are two groups at the protests: police brutality protestors, and assholes who just want to watch the world burn.