[beremaki]

What gilets jaunes or blocking whatever have anything to do with violating parliamentary rights ? Or making protests of disappointment (edit: disapproval) illegal everywhere the president go ?

What can anyone do about a president that abuses its power ? This is a basic democratic issue and I am pessimistic because a lot of people like you just don't seem to get it, so we won't address that and when it is going to be too late it will be too late.

You might like or trust the current government but what about the next one ?

[pif]

> making protests of disappointment illegal everywhere the president go

France is big enough. Having to avoid a few square kilometres around the president will leave you plenty of space to organize your protest.

[Beldin]

You mean like "free speech zones" - which seems to be defined as zones in the US where you do have freedom of speech. (Yes, I'm wondering "what about the rest of the land area" as well.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone

[soco]

Next law: protest as much as you want but out of sight. In your own cellar maybe? Ok that was sarcasm, but the very point of a protest is to be visible. Same with all Last Generation or such protests: if they had simply marched on some side street, nobody would talk about them today.

[pif]

> the very point of a protest is to be visible.

And that's why the public space must be made available for protesters, it's part of the life of a sane democracy. Public space and free press are sufficient if you have a point that matters to other people.

But if you feel the need to hijack another event in order to get people's attention, maybe you don't have a valid point to start with?

[wholinator2]

I would argue the conclusion to that isn't that they don't have a valid point, but that the people cannot be sufficiently motivated, or that they are unsure how to protest effectively, or that they are unaware that disrupting often leaves people feeling disrupted, that feeling disrupted is not a positive feeling, and that associating Negativity with a movement too many times can really hurt it in the long run. Just look at the cultures idea of PETA in the USA.

[soco]

I argue that PETA succeeded to bring into the official discussion other, more moderate organizations, thus effectively moving "the cause" forward at the expense of their own organization. Probably that was not their goal, but from a 10.000 feet it looks like achieving that. I think the same goes with the "eco terrorists", they may get slaughtered in the process but ecology gets on everybody's tongues. Again not sure they are planning it like this or it's just a side effect.