Things came to a head shortly after 4 p.m., as the 1,500 or so marchers reached the foot of the Brooklyn-bound car lanes of the bridge, just east of City Hall....Now, there's a controversy about arresting the people who were further back. To some of them, it seems, it looked like they were being given permission to march on the bridge roadway, and then the police captured the whole group with orange nets. Or so the protest folk say.
Where the entrance to the bridge narrowed their path, some marchers, including organizers, stuck to the generally agreed-upon route and headed up onto the wooden walkway....
But about 20 others headed for the Brooklyn-bound roadway, said Christopher T. Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who accompanied the march. Some of them chanted “take the bridge.” They were met by a handful of high-level police supervisors, who blocked the way and announced repeatedly through bullhorns that the marchers were blocking the roadway and that if they continued to do so, they would be subject to arrest.
There were no physical barriers, though, and at one point, the marchers began walking up the roadway with the police commanders in front of them – seeming, from a distance, as if they were leading the way....
UPDATE: The number has been revised up to 700.
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128 comments:
They're complaining about getting arrested? Oy, what a sorry lot of protesters. Next time they should just stay home.
You think the authorities are allowing something, then you get arrested for it. I guess the protestors got the same treatment Wall Street executives do!
They have been seeking a confrontation and they somewhat got one.
Next time should the PD bring a couple of judges and juries too so that they can arrest or mace the proper people?
Ah, for the good old days, when this sort of thing would be handled by a company of cossacks.
What happened to Palladian and Crackee.
Go Badgers.
Tits.
resistance is futile
I think this warrants a "so what?"
Wisconsin Cheerleaders have new uniforms.
I like them. Lots of Red, little White.
Madison Madness spreads to New York City and even to here in Albuquerque.
These people are just totally inane; don't even know what it is they want or why.
One of the refs in The Wisconsin Game is really old.
How does he do it?
Tits.
Shouldn't the police have just pushed them into the water?
They should have been allowed to launch themselves off the bridge in protest.
...with no rescue crews waiting beneath.
They should just let them march in the road way. If they get hit by cars, the marchers should be ticketed for being at fault. The motorists should be allowed to sue the marchers- or their estates.
OK, so were these the geniuses who wanted to protest the cops but got lost?
They really need to go back to the 60s and get their money back.
And what Tyrone said.
PS They're going to try the same thing in DC in a couple of weeks. I have a feeling the cops there just won't be in the mood.
Around the same time, Michael Moore was seen breaching out of the East river below, with MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell atop him, camera trained back upon the protestors and their righteous cause.
This is what Democracy looks like.
Who's bridge?! Our bridge!! At least until we block traffic and get arrested by the cops. And why do all the cabbies looked pissed off at us? Don't they understand we're doing this for the worker.
One of the very odd things about Manhattan is that there's no reason (anymore) for the dense mass of financial and marketing companies that all park there.
I wonder if this protest will open any executive eyes to the virtue of distributed systems. Goldman Sachs could operate out of trailers in Williston. Why doesn't it?
I want to do Wisconsin's QB.
@ Hagar These people are just totally inane; don't even know what it is they want or why.
You mean insane, right?
Goldman Sachs could operate out of trailers in Williston. Why doesn't it?
Because Williston isn't fabulous. What's the use of being a bigshot at Goldman Sachs if you're stuck in a trailer out in the middle of nowhere?
Some of the protesters are children of the 60's. Some of them are children of children of the 60's but ther're all children. And they'll never grow up till the money runs out.
Hey Jason (the commenter) you got Instied.
Aren't these the same winners who announced the other day that they were occupying Manhattan? They should consider themselves lucky that they were arrested by police. That would not have been the response had an organized group declared an occupation of a major city in a state of which I was governor.
glenn said...
Some of the protesters are children of the 60's. Some of them are children of children of the 60's but ther're all children. And they'll never grow up till the money runs out.
September of next year seems about right.
In the morning I heard on the No Agenda Podcast ( www.seanhannity.com ) that the police had asked them not to use bullhorns to address the crowd and they complied.
What kind of pussy ass protest group is this that just says "Yes, officer." O for the bygone 60's..
No Agenda had some audio of Michael Moore speaking. Since he would not use a bullhorn, he would say a sentence and then pause so the crowd could repeat it.
Sort of like the call and response in some church services.
Most bizarre.
They also tried to march on a police station. Why? I guess because the NYPD has so much to do with financial markets and international trade.
But they took a wrong turn and got lost.
I wonder if the organizers of the protest are actually agents provocateurs trying to make the protesters look like a bunch of silly incompetents.
They are doing a good job either by design or incompetence.
John Henry
I'm naked right now....and I am horny.
Matters not if there was a protest. They have right to petition the government, not the bridge.
If medical, fire, or police personnel must pass to respond to life and death situations and it is blocked by stupid hippies, Taze every one of them until they get out of the way.
Traffic flow in major metropolitan areas is not only imperative to business, it is imperative to Life and Limb.
I was at the so called occupy Chicago this afternoon. It was pathetic. It looked like a camp for the homeless. There were about fifty people. It was so pathetic there was no media or cops around.
This is some nationwide movement alright.
How embarrassing to be captured by an orange net.
What, Bloomie and Janette Zadik-Kahn didn't offer them bike rides across the bridge?
The pepper-sprayed tears of lazy leftist protestors taste so sweet. Actually spicy and sweet like Buffalo Wild Wings "Asian Zing" sauce . . .
Back in the old days, they would just give them a bus ticket to a camp run by some religious nut.
One of the very odd things about Manhattan is that there's no reason (anymore) for the dense mass of financial and marketing companies that all park there.
Actually that's less true today than it was a decade ago. With high frequency trading a few microseconds can mean millions of dollars one way or the other for market traders. Light only travels about a thousand feet in a microsecond.
The president of the United States told them to do it.. or was he only commanding blacks?
AOL's and Ariana Huffington's HuffingtonPost seems to be supporting this anti-corporation protest.
Snort.
When you've set out on purpose to be part of a mob, it's a bit rich to whine about being deemed part of the mob.
But but but ....in Madison they don't get arrested or anything!
Not fair!
I'm telling Mom!
Actually I think some of these morons used to work in my company.
I am now going to #occupymybed. In solidarity with [insert cause here] I will not #occupymypajamas.
Spillage
The cops got these "wall street" protesters OUT of the park where they were "housing themselves."
And, they locked the gate.
Of course, NO ONE WHO WORKS on Wall Street was there, today. It's Saturday. Even little cubbyholes that serve food ... are closed during the weekend.
Things will "open" on Monday. Probably starting at 5AM or 6AM.
Wall Street's streets are OLD. Winding. And, not built for cars. Built at a time people arrived by subway. Or on horses.
Anyway, it closed the bridge to car traffic for awhile. Because the police nrought in their vans. And, then really big buses ... to arrest people "wholesale."
Which means the park is free of its tramps.
Not quite Woodstock.
Not quite a story, either. Except for kids who couldn't live without having a police record.
The "inconveniences" only show up later ... when perhaps they go out looking for real work?
No. I wouldn't want to be caught in the database they are in.
They should consider themselves lucky that they were arrested by police. That would not have been the response had an organized group declared an occupation of a major city in a state of which I was governor.
Strict originalojamism interpretation of course.
This confirms everything liberals fear about conservative civil liberties. There ain't no such thing.
Well, the country is working exactly as the majority of voters want, otherwise the voters would change it.
So what are these people demonstrating about again?
They don't like Democracy?
(Sorry, I should have known the answer to that.)
This confirms everything liberals fear about conservative civil liberties. There ain't no such thing.
Garage, tell that to your god-king and his fleet of missile launching drones. Extrajudicial assassinations r us!
They were an unremarkable mix of everyone, grandmas, kids, adults of all ages, bouyant energized and determined but without the slightest hint of violence or malice. They were 8 or 10 across — their path cordoned off by police who were well-mannered and not at all threatening — and I thought they’d be done after 5 minutes or so but they kept coming for over 15 minutes. There were thousands but I don’t know how many. There were no evident leaders, just a few who steered the crowd and kept it moving and called out chants and the nearby marchers would respond and then chant would fade until another chant was called.
[...]
The police were removed, across the street mostly, but were heavily present, although there was no feeling of malice at all. Instead it seemed to be a gentle equilibrium.
“How long will you be here” I asked a dude handing out food. He was incredibly articulate and intelligent in a rough approximating way about the nuances of contemporary finance and had no answer to how long. He didn’t know. Until they were satisfied, was his basic response.
“What are your demands? What will make you leave the square?” I asked a young guy who said he was a college student — calm, confident, relaxed and articulate, working the information booth — who said he’d been quoted in Time Magazine and in several European media. They are trying to figure that out, he said, but it will probably coalesce around three things. 1. Prosecution of the bankers for their role in the crisis; 2. Restitution of Depression-era laws like Glass-Stegal; 3. Money out of politics.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/matt-stoller-boston-fed-avoid-engaging-with-any-demonstrators.html#comment-483417
To some of them, it seems, it looked like they were being given permission to march on the bridge roadway, and then the police captured the whole group with orange nets. Or so the protest folk say.
I want to know more about these orange nets. Is it like the old saying, "thow a net over 'em"?
Dirty Harry patrolling the Tenderloin district...
Dirty Harry Callahan: These loonies. They ought to throw a net over the whole bunch of 'em.
Gonzales: I know what you mean.
This confirms everything liberals fear about conservative civil liberties
Which civil liberty does "occupying Wall Street" fall under?
Back when I got out of the service and pinned on a badge in 1971 we had a somewhat more vigorous way of handling these boneheads.
What's with the Black Liberation flag at the front of the parade? I thought it was "Occupy Wall Street" day but apparently it's just "General Airing of Grievances" day. If there was a flag that symbolized, "Hey, asshole downstairs, turn your damn subwoofer down before I have an aneurism," I'd be marching, too.
And since Progressives love using bridges as metaphors, what can we make of the Brooklyn Bridge?
If I remember, it began as a private enterprise before going quasi-public with the New York state assembly giving financial backing and loan guarantees to principle investors (Solyndra anyone?). Eventually the semi-public New York Bridge Company was formally dissolved (after rampant political malfeasance and out of control cronyism) by the Assembly, the bridge was finished 13 years after groundbreaking with cost overruns of 200%, and then an elephant parade went across to prove its structural integrity.
I don't know. If I were trying to make capitalists look dumb and government look responsible, competent, and forward-thinking, I would choose a different bridge to cross.
Having seen the NYPD swinging their night sticks on more than one occasion, I have two words of advice when dealing with NYPD cops: "Be polite."
Their moms are gonna be, like, totally pissed off.
Coke said, "apparently it's just "General Airing of Grievances" day."
Sounds like an early celebration of Festivus. Now let's move on from Airing of Grievances to Feats of Strength, Cops vs protesters.
Interesting that no tea partiers have been arrested or sprayed with anything by police. I wonder what the difference is?
It's probably that no tea partiers have had the misfortune to run into that particular jerk cop. Sorry, Garage, I meant "heroic member of a public-employee union".
"Back when I got out of the service and pinned on a badge in 1971 we had a somewhat more vigorous way of handling these boneheads."
What a tool.
@ Levi Starks ... resistance is futile.
Or as the Most Rev Al Sharpton said "resist we much".
"The pepper-sprayed tears of lazy leftist protestors taste so sweet. Actually spicy and sweet like Buffalo Wild Wings "Asian Zing" sauce . . ."
It's obvious you love Big Brother, you so enthusiastically applaud his physical assault on citizens engaged in non-criminal behavior. If this were Stalinist Russia, I'm sure you would be an eager informant on all your neighbors...a real toady.
Cook doesn't know whose side he's on, the socialist protesters or the socialist crony capitalists.
Then there's the enforcers of socialism, the cops. All good socialist nations require force to succeed. Until they collapse anyway.
Why no love for them, Mr. Cook?
They make your whole fantasy possible. Without the boot on the neck, socialism dies quickly.
So in a big way, you're applauding them, even as you decry them.
Awkward position, but there it is.
Pogo, don't bother trying to be clever if you can't achieve it.
Not being clever; you miss my point.
Your conundrum is a puzzle to me. You seem, like other purveyors of utopianism, willfully ignorant of what you're asking for.
You demand an authoritarian state to smash the individual will. Yet you refuse to see it. Why is that?
So these protesters are merely protesting the results of their stupid stupid demands.
All of this brouhaha will be over monday when the protestors go back to work---oh--wait
It's obvious you love Big Brother, you so enthusiastically applaud his physical assault on citizens engaged in non-criminal behavior.
Robert Cook obviously doesn't know anyone who was ever rushed to a hospital and depended on roads clear of hipster shitheads.
Pogo,
You should let it go as I have yet to meet a single socialist who understands the basic concept that anything and everything the govt. does is backed up with the threat of force.
In their world everybody just decides on their own to give vast sums of money to corrupt govt. officials, there is absolutely no coercion.
Actually, come to think of it, I have yet to meet a single socialist who understands that increasing govt. control increases govt. power. But having gone to law school I quickly got used to hearing people decry big brother in one breath and then call for massive regulation in another.
Sod off, swampy!
Back when I got out of the service and pinned on a badge in 1971 we had a somewhat more vigorous way of handling these boneheads.
What a credit to the badge you must have been. Professionalism in law enforcement has really improved since any bonehead vet could pin on a badge and crack skulls. The TV show COPS helped show the the difference between a guy with a badge and a professional and accountable police force.
Ah Althouse. If you can't join em (and you never can), deconstruct them.
Tyrone, I love Dr Zhivago too. Just not the same scene that you do.
The Walter Middy revolutionary fantasies of the coffeehouse leftists are a hoot.
Nice, triangle man showing his love and respect for servicemen.
Hey wait, I thought that cops were the Hero's of the Union. Or is that only when they allow the protestors to break the law?
NOw, remember, lefties: The Narrative requires that:
Dozens or hundreds of arrests of Marxoid demonstrators calling for violent revolution and extra judicial jailing of business people equals PEACEFUL 1ST AMENDMENT DEMOSTRATION OF CIVIL RIGHTS BY THE CARING POPULACE.
No arrests of demostrators quoting the US Constitution and wanting government to live within its income equals FASCIST BROWNSHIRT RACISTS TRYING TO BRING BACK SLAVERY AND TRANSFAT.
The founding fathers were IDIOTS when they put the right to free speech and the right to peacefully assemble in the very first amendment. Pretty sure they didn't mean those rights were extended to people who disagree with conservatives.
Pretty sure they didn't mean those rights were extended to people who disagree with conservatives.
Did conservatives have the protesters arrested?
Come on MayBee, everybody knows what a hotbed of conservatism New York City is.
They were arrested by the Peoples Heros: Policemen who are members of the Sacred Employees Union. How can you blame conservatives?
What are you babbling about Garage?
Are you mad that I am accurately describing the typical lefty rent-a-mob protestors politics?
They certainly have the right to talk about installing a totalitarian regime to punish their class enemies, but they aren't free from being mocked for their pathetic efforts at bringing it about.
And if they try to bring their violent revolutionary fantasy to fruition, thye will certainly learn a thing or two about the 2nd Amendment, won't they?
Meade sweetie, LOOK, there's another protest!!
It's in Manhattan and they're all moonbat hippies.
Get on a plane. Quick. You're not doing anything.
Go and get some raw video for me to edit. Fetch.
Go on now, git.
Here, take my credit card.
Over at boingboing.com, which is very pro-demonstrators, someone left this comment:
In response to those pretending not to understand the purpose of Occupy Wall Street, here's a simple, and short list:
1. Place a fee on all Wall Street transactions and tax capital gains the same as income
2. End corporate personhood and overturn the flawed Citizens United decision
3. Get big money out of politics through substantive campaign finance reform
4. Jobs through investment in the public sector and infrastructure, not tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.
Please, whenever you see someone claiming OWS has no coherent agenda, copy and paste this list. Short, simple messaging is important.
This is the coherent goal. Which means it isn't about civil rights or some great cause. It's a very distinct political agenda based on partisan political solutions.
It's also extremely clear that the coherence of the debate is pretty warped even if they want to make it sound clear. They literally can't, it seems, protest the actual cause of the problems they face. They can't protest Barney Frank, or other Democratic leaders who helped facilitate the banking crisis. They can't, it seems, protest Obama. So they have found this really curious approach to inflicting their political cause upon the city.
It's strange. It's strange because they don't know how to confront their own actual leaders on the issues, because they only know how to demonize bankers or Republicans.
And it's strange since they seem entirely blind to government corruption, so blind that I absolutely see them as being 'pro' government corruption.
These demonstrators want to take your money, give it to their politicians, so that their politicians can pad the bank accounts of their cronies.
And I'm not sure why I should support pro-corruption demonstrators.
Sure, they talk about campaign finance. But they will blindly support the corrupt politicians who profited from all the supposed causes these protestors are against. Who needs campaign corruption when the graft is flowing aplenty?
And in other news today, leftists in New York City staged a massive protest against the lefty administration for being soft on Wall Street contributors to the Democratic party.
Conservatives, get your popcorn, sit back and watch. This is going to be a fun show.
"The founding fathers were IDIOTS when they put the right to free speech and the right to peacefully assemble in the very first amendment."
Just as you can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater (unless there is one, of course), you can't.....(come on GM, think about this one; if you don't, we may have to occupy the street you live on and see if you mind not getting to work, having fire protection, etc. We'll be very peaceful about it).
Quayle, do you have link to a news story about that? If that's true, I might still disagree with the protestors, but I'd respect them for being more consistent
Well done, Paddy O.
Also... am I the only one who thinks that a policy of using physical means to undermine a symbol of American finance and business in New York is a bit, well, bad imagery?
A few points to Paddy O.
1. If you get rid of corporate personhood, on what basis would you tax corporations?
I could support the one, if you abolish corporate taxes all together and only tax people.
2. What if I don't' want to work building infrastructure or in the public sector? Why should those things be favored?
3. Can you tell me why you believe that government investment is better, more wise, or smarter than private investment in anything?
The horrendous "investments" being made by the DoE are with other people's money. Nobody at the DoE gets hurt anywhere near as bad as a VC or PE money manager would, if they made an equally stupid investment.
Don't you think the capital group with actual skin in the game will always make the more efficient investment?
4. Let a thousand Solyndras bloom.
Quayle, good questions.
Since I don't agree with the protestors, I can't come up with, or at least don't want to try, good responses.
Your points, however, go exactly to my point that this isn't a clear moral protest with obvious civil rights agenda.
This is a political protest based on political aims, pursued through physical intimidation.
Are you mad that I am accurately describing the typical lefty rent-a-mob protestors politics?
No, what I'm saying is your idea of civil rights depends entirely who those rights go to. I'm pretty sure you would advocate gassing lawful protesters, if you thought they were lefties. But if 700 tea partiers were arrested it would be a completely different story. That's my point.
Garage. No one has moved to stop the days long protest at Wall Street. The arrests came because the crowds decided it was OK to march down the middlemipof the Brooklyn Bridge, spontaneously and without permit. You are either dense beyond words not to distinguish this or are making a point you cannot articulate.
The story so far: Garage said that my comment (that the bad guys "should consider themselves lucky that they were arrested" and that mere arrest "would not have been the response had an organized group declared an occupation of a major city in a state of which I was governor") "confirms everything liberals fear about conservative civil liberties." Challenged by other commenters as to which civil liberties were at issue, he responds, as we might expect: "The founding fathers were IDIOTS when they put the right to free speech and the right to peacefully assemble in the very first amendment."
The problem with that, Garage, is that there is no protected right to assemble, as you acknowledge; the right is to peacefully—well, peaceably, but we're not here to split hairs—assemble. When an organized mob declares that it has occupied a major American city, however, it is no longer a peaceful assembly. The act is itself, eo ipso, an act of force, even if the individual participants are individually conducting themselves in a seemingly peaceful manner. US v. Cruikshank explained the office of the clause well: "citizens [may] meet peaceably for consultation in respect to public affairs and to petition for a redress of grievances." The self-declared hostile force occupying parts of Manhattan is manifestly not "meet[ing] peaceably for consultation in respect to public affairs and to petition for a redress of grievances"; the protesters who occupied the Wisconsin capitol were not, and a fortiori when a group does the same thing but adds to it an explicit declaration that it is an occupying power.
If liberals fear that conservatives respect only those civil liberties that are in fact protected, and look dimly on the exercise of those rights—still less deformed versions pressed as ersatz versions of those rights—in ways that endanger public safety and the good order of society, I dare say their fear is well-founded. Whether there is anything in that for a reasonable person to be afraid of, on that we will have to disagree.
Of course, they did! The police waited for "critical mass." They waited for a Saturday, when regular workers couldn't jump out of office buildings. Or have these hyenas jumping into office buildings.
They got 700 of them.
Easy to enter all of this stuff in a database ... no lawyer will access. It's probably now part of "Homeland Security."
And, the police arrested the HARD CORE.
Those kids, once released, have no place to sleep at night. Because Battery Park has been locked up.
I guess you can say the Police Arrested The Park. And, chained it shut.
The arrests came because the crowds decided it was OK to march down the middlemipof the Brooklyn Bridge, spontaneously and without permit.
It looks like cops steered and herded these people onto the bridge, it wasn't even planned from anything I read.
garage mahal said...
"But if 700 tea partiers were arrested it would be a completely different story. That's my point."
No it wouldn't. It would be exactly the same. And I do mean "exactly": If there were seven hundred hypothetical tea partiers who were dense enough to declare themselves an occupying force in Manhattan, and who were disrupting the intercourse of the city, I would imagine that after the police bowed to the New York Fishwrap's demands for action—oh, I guess that part's different—they would whine about the violation of their rights just the same as the lefties are now. In neither instance would I be very sympathetic to the claim. There's something fundamentally deficient in people who see dictatorship in ovo in the maintenance of public order; that was true of the left's paranoia during Bush's presidency, and it's true of the paranoid section of the right during Obama's presidency.
It looks like cops steered and herded these people onto the bridge, it wasn't even planned from anything I read.
Why did these revolutionaries allow themselves to be herded onto a bridge they didn't want to go on?
When an organized mob declares that it has occupied a major American city, however, it is no longer a peaceful assembly.
Just like that huh? When some sort of declaration is made, your rights end? That's seriously fucked up and I think you know it.
How can a few thousand "occupy" a city of 1,500,000 people anyway? There are 30,000+ cops alone.
Garage. 700 tea party members breaking the law at the same time? Yes, and 300 dwarfs breaking pole vault records and twenty liberals agreeing that George W Bush was a great president. Absurd and unthinkable. And, yes, the cops "herded" all these so-smart liberals on a path they didn't want to take instead of rounding them up on Wall Street. You have a deep paranoia coupled with weak logic.
They got arrested for impeding traffic on the bridge, not "peacefully assemble". The protesters' right to air their petty grievances does not trump other citizens' right to use the bridge. Surely this is simple enough for even you to understand, garage.
garage, you are putting words in my mouth and then arguing with your own words and attributing it to me.
You are being dishonest, especially with your accusation that I would tolerate rioting by anyone, or that the Tea Party folk have ever acted like spoilt brat lefty protestors that routinely break laws and resort to physical intimidation by a mob, if not outright violence. Your moral equivalence argument is false.
You post up untrue caricatures of me or my words and then you do battle with them, imagining that you are addressing my points.
So, apologise or fuck off.
Once corporate personhood is ended will we have to stop ascribing human motives, like greed, to them? Will we have to stop drawing invidious comparisons between their incomes and the incomes of persons?
garage is arguing with the lefty talking points echoing in his head.
And yes, when a peaceful protest turns into a marching mob that violates others rights to travel freely in the USA by blocking bridges or streets or sidewalks, then yes, they are outlaw; they aren't being peaceful anymore, they have crossed the line.
You need to learn to respect other peoples rights, garage.
Lefties do not get a special pass from the Constitution simply because they think they are so important.
Or, are you OK with some rightwing bullyboys blocking your access to whatever simply because they have a grievance with someone else?
garage wrote:
"No, what I'm saying is your idea of civil rights depends entirely who those rights go to. I'm pretty sure you would advocate gassing lawful protesters, if you thought they were lefties. But if 700 tea partiers were arrested it would be a completely different story. That's my point."
That's exactly right. Intellectual honesty is hard, perhaps impossible, to find on either side.
Jason (the commenter), in the second post of the thread, wrote:
"You think the authorities are allowing something, then you get arrested for it. I guess the protestors got the same treatment Wall Street executives do!"
This becomes an immediate contestant for stupidest comment of the year on this blog. A frontrunner. Which is saying a lot.
Or, are you OK with some rightwing bullyboys blocking your access to whatever simply because they have a grievance with someone else?
It doesn't matter what I think. It matters what the laws of the land that govern us say. How have righties become so clueless on civics? Can Big Gov just call a Tea Party rally a "mob", kettle them in netted Orwellian "free speech zones", and mace anyone they feel like in the face?
"Can Big Gov just call a Tea Party rally a "mob", kettle them in netted Orwellian "free speech zones", and mace anyone they feel like in the face?"
No. But they sure want to take all their money, give it to their friends, impose a distinct economic morality, and entirely berate most Americans into submitting their whole livelihood to the control of government.
The Left doesn't think police should take away civil rights from American citizens.
The Right thinks that bureaucrats shouldn't take away rights from citizens either.
Oddly enough, the Left is very pro-authoritarian when it comes to behind the scenes bureaucratic assaults on civil rights, thinking the government should be involved in everything.
Their motto is "You don't know me, son, so let me explain this to you once: if I ever kill you, you'll be unconscious. You'll be facing away from me. And you'll be unarmed."
garage mahal said...
"[Simon said that 'when an organized mob declares that it has occupied a major American city, however, it is no longer a peaceful assembly.] Just like that huh? When some sort of declaration is made, your rights end? That's seriously fucked up and I think you know it."
As I already indicated, the declaration amplifies and clarifies the problem, but it doesn't create it. What creates the problem is the fact of occupation: Hence, as I mentioned before, the protesters who occupied the Wisconsin capitol had exceeded the rights protected by the Constitution. Idiots who stood around outside waving signs: Engaging in protected behavior. Idiots who invaded and physically occupied the capitol: Engaging in unprotected behavior. (For the first time, one imagines, from the look of them.) When a mob expressly declares its intent to be an occupying force, especially when it's organized, the question becomes even more simple, because then it isn't necessary to try to find the line between peaceful assembly and something more sinister. Imagine a protest that walks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the Capitol, with the pre-arranged consent of the police. So long as they are walking, their activity is protected. If they happen to come to a halt, and simply stay put for several hours, it may be difficult to know whether they are protected. If, however, the organization leading the march announces their intent to occupy the District of Columbia and cause maximum disruption to the city, that difficult line drawing is needless, the conduct is clearly unprotected, and the police can remove them at will. The first amendment protects a right to communicate, singly or in groups; it does not protect a right to disrupt.
Law is full of lines, even if locating them precisely proves tricky in some cases. Nevertheless, it should be obvious that once one has engaged in protected behavior, that doesn't provide shield guaranteeing protection for all behavior. One may be engaging in fully protected behavior and yet cross the line into unprotected behavior. For example, stipulating that a picket line on a public sidewalk is protected activity, physical occupation of the plant by striking union members is not a protected activity. The union members cannot move from the sidewalk to the plant and then claim that because they would have been protected had they stayed where they were, they must also be protected now because the occupation is simply a continuation of or organic growth out of the protected activity in which they were engaging before.
It really is cute seeing all the faux revolutionaries getting their panties in a twist on Twitter right now.
The bums blocked traffic and got arrested and now they are suddenly martyrs for democracy?
Oh well, I suppose now they'll finally be able to find NYPD HQ.
On a separate note I would like to point out that it is quite entertaining seeing people who championed the bailouts suddenly claiming that Wall St. stole our money.
garage mahal said...
"It doesn't matter what I think. It matters what the laws of the land that govern us say."
Yeah, but the problem is that the laws of the land that govern us don't say what you think they do. ;)
"How have righties become so clueless on civics?"
Unfortunately, many Americans of whatever political inclination are clueless about basic civics. We ought to ask how that came to be so. It used to be that education was primarily a function of the family, but after public schools took it over, parents gradually dropped out of the picture; there came to be an assumption that education was primarily the function of schools, and that educators knew best what should be taught and how. Parents deferred, and assumed the kids were getting what was needed. And for a while, that was arguably true. But sometime in the last forty years, something went wrong, across the board but especially in regard to civics. We ought to ask why civics became a redheaded stepchild in schools. We ought to ask why children are no longer expected to do rote memorization. We ought to ask who was in charge and whose agenda is served by people knowing less about the Constitution. We ought to ask what happened to education in this country and who did it.
But I don't think you're going to like the answer to those questions, Garage.
Hence, as I mentioned before, the protesters who occupied the Wisconsin capitol had exceeded the rights protected by the Constitution. Idiots who stood around outside waving signs: Engaging in protected behavior. Idiots who invaded and physically occupied the capitol: Engaging in unprotected behavior.
There was nothing illegal in occupying the Wisconsin Capitol, until they made it illegal by making up a new law. How times have changed in just a couple of years. Tea Party rallies were never called idiots with signs, or angry mobs, were they? The small government mantra suddenly becomes "big government knows best" when it's cracking down on people you disagree with. Remember when the ACLU was pretty much the only legal agency sticking up for Rush Limbaugh? The concept is pretty simple to understand. You could be next.
garage continues to conflate illegal activity with legal activity and then complain that others legal activity is being defended. Anybody blocking access to anything without proper authority is committing an illegal act. Their motivations do not matter, nor do their motivations excuse lawlessness.
It isn't "speech"; its' "conduct", nor is blocking roadways and violating others rights to freely travel "peaceful". It is, rather, an attempt at mob rule.
All the tapdancing does not change this. Leftists since the 1960s had become masterful at portraying lawless conduct as "excercising their civil rights", when it was only attempts at intimidation by a mob.
More and more people are having their eyes opened up to this manipulation and it is having less and less of an impact, regardless of even the State Run Medias attempt to depict these "occupations" as some sort of counter Tea Party mass uprising, when it is the usual pack of leftoid malcontents and union/astroturf rent-a-mob goons.
The game is up, leftoids.
GM,
The Tea Partiers bathed and didn't block traffic.
Good intentions don't render you immune from the law. The TP recognized this, the current crop of leftist protesters don't appear to.
TPers were called all sorts of nastier names, garage, don't act like it didn't happen or that it was only fringe leftwingers doing it. But, they never acted like the arrested leftiods acted and that is the difference you will refuse to acknowledge or address.
Garage. There was nothing illegal about occupying the Wisc capiyal because noone would have thought that a mob would infest the area for months on end. I am sure that the original law assumed, wrongly, that people did not behave in that way. Andnwhen they discovered they did behave that way they changed the law. This is how it works.
You exhibit the very stereotypical baby boomer ethic. It infringes upon your freedom if you cannot do exactly as you please.
Garage:
"There was nothing illegal in occupying the Wisconsin Capitol, until they made it illegal by making up a new law."
I'll defer to your familiarity with Wisconsin law, but it would seem to me that mass occupation of a public building, a practical denial of service for those attempting the normal public intercourse of the space and violent intimidation of lawmakers, is unattractive and illegal. If I had been in Governor Walker's shoes, I wouldn't have prevaricated on sending in the boys in blue, I'd have sent the girls in green.
"How times have changed in just a couple of years. Tea Party rallies were never called idiots with signs, or angry mobs, were they?"
Yeah, they were. Some of them were idiots with signs. A few of them were angry, and although I'm not familiar with any examples, I'm sure that some may have acted poorly. But whether or not their signs were idiotic or their behavior bad, they were certainly called such. Skim the archives of Kos, FDL, etc. They were called racists, too, don't forget the racism.
"The small government mantra suddenly becomes 'big government knows best' when it's cracking down on people you disagree with."
You can only really maintain that by caricaturing what conservatives want, although I readily concede that one sometimes sees tea partiers who are an autocaricature. Look, when government acts reasonably to carry out its traditional functions, I don't think any conservative has a fundamental problem with that, at least in the abstract. Small government doesn't mean lopping off functions randomly until government is smaller than a dogmatically preset size; it means restricting government to those things that are the traditional and proper function of government. The maintenance of law and order is a traditional (even essential) governmental function.
Perhaps part of the problem is that libertarians and conservatives are conflated by the left. It may be true that our libertarian brethren are in a bit of a pickle on this one, but the common failure of the left and libertarians to recognize the traditional authority of the state in maintaining order is, to tell the truth, not the concern of conservatives.
If you want to catch the tea party in an incoherence, you can point to the Troy Davis execution, when people who insist that government isn't competent to deliver the mail had no problem with governmental competence to kill a man.
"Remember when the ACLU was pretty much the only legal agency sticking up for Rush Limbaugh? The concept is pretty simple to understand. You could be next."
I could be next for what? I could be arrested the next time I join a mob attempting to occupy New York? I should hope that I would be if I was stupid enough to participate in such a thing!
Michael said...
"[Garage] exhibit[s] the very stereotypical baby boomer ethic. It infringes upon your freedom if you cannot do exactly as you please."
Lord Acton put it well: Freedom is “not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.” Rocco Pezzimenti, The political thought of Lord Acton 134 (2001) (quoting The Rambler, January 1860, at 146). Fr. Corapi was surely not the first to notice that since the 1960s, we have seen a determined effort to change the meaning of freedom from this to instead denominate license.
I could be next for what? I could be arrested the next time I join a mob attempting to occupy New York? I should hope that I would be if I was stupid enough to participate in such a thing!
I can think of a million things Big Gov could and would do to you if given the chance. The left is just as guilty as the right is on this. I just find it a bit startling that the right gives the government unquestioned authority to do whatever it wants to restrict the First Amendment so freely.
I can think of a million things Big Gov could and would do to you if given the chance. The left is just as guilty as the right is on this. I just find it a bit startling that the right gives the government unquestioned authority to do whatever it wants to restrict the First Amendment so freely.
Are you suggesting that the First Amendment permits groups of protesters to shut down public roads and thoroughfares at their discretion, with no restrictions whatsoever? Because that is what these noobs got arrested for.
@Simon
What if the Gov announced there are several new strict rules pertaining to practicing your religion? What would you tell people that disagreed? Shut up and get inside your netted off free speech zone if you have a beef and accept whatever new rules unequivocally? Fuck that. It's why I think the left may have to try to strike some sort of alliance with libertarians, as awkward and difficult as that may be. We already meekly live in a quasi police state. Who is even trying to push back against that?
garage mahal said...
"I can think of a million things Big Gov could and would do to you if given the chance."
Likewise—which is a good reason to restrain the size and scope of government, and to divide it into spheres that are mutually jealous of their prerogatives, no? The best answer to the dangers of big government is to not have big government, to restrict government to those functions that are traditionally and properly exercised by government and which cannot be achieved with greater efficiency by private actors.
"I just find it a bit startling that the right gives the government unquestioned authority to do whatever it wants to restrict the First Amendment so freely."
I find that idea startling, too—who here has advocated "giv[ing] the government unquestioned authority to do whatever it wants to restrict the First Amendment so freely"?
garage mahal said...
"What if the Gov announced there are several new strict rules pertaining to practicing your religion?"
That depends on what the rules are. I would imagine that the first thing that would happen is that about a thousand federal lawsuits would be filed. But if we suppose a rule that would satisfy the Smith standard—since it's tough to evaluate the law Ireland is contemplating demanding a breach of the seal of the confessional, let's say a reenactment of prohibition without any exception for sacramental wine (but see Lukumi Babalu Aye v. Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520, 561 (1993) (Souter, J., concurring)—that hardly puts the Church in a novel position. Christianity was illegal for centuries under the Roman empire, yet the Church still existed and functioned, still evangelized, still celebrated the Mass, still administered the sacraments, still thrived—subject to periodic spasms of imprisonment and martyrdom. She has survived worse done to her by better. Such a law would be argued against publicly, and, to the extent necessary, will be ignored.
"We already meekly live in a quasi police state. Who is even trying to push back against that?"
Of course we don't. I have a theory that this is why the left was against liberating Iraq: They couldn't understand the plight of people who live in a real police state because they believe that this is a police state, and this is a pretty good life, so how much sleep could one really lose over the plight of people whose situation was basically like our own? They had Saddam, but we had Bush, and if we were coping under a basically identical situation, why shouldn't they? The answer is simply that the comparison is absurd.
Nobody told me there was a Granfalloon convention in NYC.
If the police don't stop you from being an idiot, then you're innocent?
I anxiously await a murderer arguing that since no cop was there to tell him/her to not murder somebody, then it was the police's fault.
Would the police slip on a banana and accidentally brain them with a billy club?
gm: The founding fathers were IDIOTS when they put the right to free speech and the right to peacefully assemble in the very first amendment.
How does one PEACEFULLY occupy anything?
I also LOVE seeing so many people, of whom WELL more than half voted for Obama in 08 and will do so again in 12, calling for campaign finance reform for the one guy who ignored the laws as entirely as humanly possible in that regard.
When some sort of declaration is made, your rights end?
When the declaration is to be not peaceful, to later claim "we were totally peaceful" is hard to believe.
Tea Party rallies were never called idiots with signs, or angry mobs, were they?
...in what world do you reside?
Simon, it's nice to have you here. I am not a lawyer, and I like and understand your explanations.
Simon wrote:
"I have a theory that this is why the left was against liberating Iraq: They couldn't understand the plight of people who live in a real police state because they believe that this is a police state, and this is a pretty good life, so how much sleep could one really lose over the plight of people whose situation was basically like our own? They had Saddam, but we had Bush, and if we were coping under a basically identical situation, why shouldn't they? The answer is simply that the comparison is absurd."
This passage is ridiculous enough that it needs to be quoted so that people can see: here, here is a representative comment by a commenter regarded by many on this blog as someone with something to say. It is comical and sad at once.
I have no doubt this commenter really believes that he is identifying real people's real thoughts. "I have a theory." Hahahahahahahahahahaha.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Nice, triangle man showing his love and respect for servicemen.
My comment had nothing to do with servicemen.
Thanks, JAL! :)
it is not a good thing what type of impression we are giving others ...
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