Protestors Being A Public Nuisance Discussion

[Katganistan]

Thinking back over the last half century, I can't think of a single time I've been inconvenienced by protestors. I've been inconvenienced by roads and pavements being barricaded off multiple times by sporting events and celebrations, Royalty and senior politicians visiting, a couple of times by racist cunts marching, and once by a really big religious procession.

I'm in agreement with you here. When I was a kid, my parents needed to take me to the hospital and were unable to get there for quite a while because of A PARADE blocking crosstown traffic.

That significantly inconvenienced us far more than any protests.

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Okay guys, look. I haven't slept for 4 days. Only with the assistance of 43 energy drinks and the copious insufflation of tri-ethyl-methorphalimyde-8 (invented in China last week, the DEA hasn't gotten around the banning it) have I managed to finish compiling the absolutely exhausitive list of every right, liberty, and justice won by protesters who asked politely and stayed out of everybody's way and never caused any disruption.

Honestly I feel guilty about posting it because the sheer size of it is likely to crash NationStates for another 5 days, but here it is:



























And that's the list.

[Australian rePublic]

Protests are supposed to be disruptive. They are, properly formulated, a threat to whatever they are protesting against - a demonstration of organizational and political power that says 'look at how many of us there are and how pissed off we are'. Without that implicit threat of mass political action or even mass violent action, protests are entirely toothless and can be easily ignored. And that's if it's even possible to separate a protest from disruption - sufficiently large protests are, even if they are as scrupulously polite as the OP wants, by their nature disruptive. A peaceful protest planned in advance with the police will still block traffic, after all.

All in all a boring boomer screed better saved for Facebook where it can get lots of likes from angry moms who got delayed 15 mins on the way to little Timmy's soccer practice.

Oh, I can fully understand that the squeaky wheel grts the grease, I know from experience, I've once been the squeaky wheel at a company that was acting unscrupulously, and when I drove their customers, they called the cops on me and the cops said I was in the right, but there's a difference there- you can be a nuisance to whoever you're protesting against, within reason, there is a point where it becomes unreasonable, but don't disrupt the general public. There is a difference between being a public nuisance and protesting. Protest all you want, but don't disrupt the general public who are trying to go about their lives

[Drongonia]

It's a pain in the arse. It shouldn't be illegal, but Police should have the power to at least move you on from whatever site you're causing a nuisance to. If you want to protest, go out and protest at Parliament, or at your local council/MP's office. What's sitting on the motorway going to do except for pissing me and other people potentially sympathetic to your cause off?

Protests are supposed to be disruptive. They are, properly formulated, a threat to whatever they are protesting against - a demonstration of organizational and political power that says 'look at how many of us there are and how pissed off we are'. Without that implicit threat of mass political action or even mass violent action, protests are entirely toothless and can be easily ignored. And that's if it's even possible to separate a protest from disruption - sufficiently large protests are, even if they are as scrupulously polite as the OP wants, by their nature disruptive. A peaceful protest planned in advance with the police will still block traffic, after all.

lol at this argument. It only takes one person, or a mere handful, to shut down something like a motorway. For example, these protests which shut down a major motorway and brought half a capital city (albeit a relatively small one) to a standstill were comprised of ~15 people. That is not an example of mass/popular political action.

[Australian rePublic]

It's a pain in the arse. It shouldn't be illegal, but Police should have the power to at least move you on from whatever site you're causing a nuisance to. If you want to protest, go out and protest at Parliament, or at your local council/MP's office. What's sitting on the motorway going to do except for pissing me and other people potentially sympathetic to your cause off?

My point exactly. Although, it's quite hard to move someone on when they've glued themselves to the road and refuse to move. That's the point where it becomes illegal. At least here in Australia, at least in my experience, most cops are reasonable enough to work with you if you're willing to work with them

[Drongonia]

My point exactly. Although, it's quite hard to move someone on when they've glued themselves to the road and refuse to move. At least here in Australia, at least in my experience, most cops are reasonable enough to work with you if you're willing to work with them

It's much the same here in New Zealand. In all honesty if you glue yourself to the road, that's a simple case of "you should have thought about that" - because there's only a few ways your hand is coming off of that tarmac, none of them particularly painless.

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It's a pain in the arse. It shouldn't be illegal, but Police should have the power to at least move you on from whatever site you're causing a nuisance to. If you want to protest, go out and protest at Parliament, or at your local council/MP's office. What's sitting on the motorway going to do except for pissing me and other people potentially sympathetic to your cause off?

My point exactly. Although, it's quite hard to move someone on when they've glued themselves to the road and refuse to move. That's the point where it becomes illegal. At least here in Australia, at least in my experience, most cops are reasonable enough to work with you if you're willing to work with them

A year and a half ago your cops were arresting people just for being outside. Not protesting, not being in the way, just walking around outside.

[Drongonia]

My point exactly. Although, it's quite hard to move someone on when they've glued themselves to the road and refuse to move. That's the point where it becomes illegal. At least here in Australia, at least in my experience, most cops are reasonable enough to work with you if you're willing to work with them

A year and a half ago your cops were arresting people just for being outside. Not protesting, not being in the way, just walking around outside.

That's also bad. You can be against two things simultaneously.

[Australian rePublic]

My point exactly. Although, it's quite hard to move someone on when they've glued themselves to the road and refuse to move. That's the point where it becomes illegal. At least here in Australia, at least in my experience, most cops are reasonable enough to work with you if you're willing to work with them

A year and a half ago your cops were arresting people just for being outside. Not protesting, not being in the way, just walking around outside.

Well, that's disgusting. It's not a black and white issue, there is nuisance, you have the right to public assembly and the right to protest, but there are limits. For example, there were a woman who was arrested for silently praying in her head in front of an abortion clinic, which is an absolutely aberrant abuse of power... Wait a minute... A year and a half ago? What the Covid restrictions like at the time?

[The Alma Mater]

My point exactly. Although, it's quite hard to move someone on when they've glued themselves to the road and refuse to move. That's the point where it becomes illegal. At least here in Australia, at least in my experience, most cops are reasonable enough to work with you if you're willing to work with them

A year and a half ago your cops were arresting people just for being outside. Not protesting, not being in the way, just walking around outside.

You forgot the "actively helping to spread a deadly pandemic" in your "just walking outside" part.

[The Lone Alliance]

You forgot the "actively helping to spread a deadly pandemic" in your "just walking outside" part.

Unless you're protesting, because protesting automatically makes you immune to the deadly pandemic. Unless you're protesting against being arrested for walking outside.
Really the amount of mental gymnastics the media had for protesting in 2020 was kind of sad.

Walking around outside = Endangering the lives of millions stop the spread
Protesting against being arrested for walking outside = Endangering the lives of millions stop the spread
Protesting against being brutalized by police for walking outside while Black = Completely safe
Really it made no sense, your cause being just doesn't make you any more or less safe from a virus.

In hindsight, What's depressing was so many of the Anti-Lockdown people were so stubbornly right wing they didn't even once think to attempt that maybe they should support BOTH protests and often times they took the opposite view, so you don't like the police harassing you for being outside but it's completely okay for cops to beat a black guy to death? If both groups had joined their protest it would have been far harder to simply spin it off into a "Left versus Right" thing, the MSM would have had a harder time saying that the Anti-Lockdowners were all "Evil monsters trying to kill all mankind" if they were holding up signs against police brutality. Then again I also think some of the anger for the BLM protests actually were anti-lockdown protests on top of being BLM protests.

But anyway to get back on topic, I think there's a fine balance to be made with a protest, you have to be an attention whore but you cannot be an attention whore to the point where everyone starts to reflectively hate your cause, especially if your cause is already extremely niche. Like if there's a climate activist protesting that they will stand on a street corner and scream until everyone in the planet gives up all technology, people will just invest in earplugs and wait for them to eventually lose their voice because their cause is never going to happen.

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A year and a half ago your cops were arresting people just for being outside. Not protesting, not being in the way, just walking around outside.

You forgot the "actively helping to spread a deadly pandemic" in your "just walking outside" part.

Except for the fact that outdoor transmission is near non-existent unless one is in a densely packed and stationary crowd. And also that enforcement of this policy by its nature increases the spread of the virus, seeing as a police officer cannot ticket or arrest somebody without getting close to them.

Worldwide, there must indeed be at least a 5 figure number of people dead from corona who wouldn't have been if they had just been left alone while being outside, most of them several meters away from any other person at all times.

The stupidity is staggering if you think about it, back at the start of the pandemic I heard once about cops in the UK patrolling the countryside to stop people from having outdoor picnics several miles away from anybody else.

Now I know this isn't the covid thread but I will round back to the topic at hand by concluding that police are rarely ever reasonable when they're following the unreasonable orders of their unreasonable superiors.

Remember Occupy? Remember the Berkely cop who pepper sprayed protesters just sitting down on the ground? They weren't in anybody's way, they weren't disrupting shit. Did you ever see the video of the George Floyd protests were the police were marching down a suburban street shot a tear gas cannister at people sitting on their own front porch?

The vast majority of violence and disruption in protests originates from the state.

[Perikuresu]

Look, I'm not gonna go debate about the amount of disruption a protest does or whether it is necessary for a protest to be disruptive (although both can vary per protest ig) but I'm gonna say that disruption is fine just as long as you don't piss off most of the public because they're just gonna go against your cause just to spite you

[Ifreann]

Often? How often? How many instances are there of this phenomenon?

Countless. The entire recycling movement for example, was created by the plastic industry, to redirect responsibility for plastic waste from producers to consumers.

The recycling movement was never "protesters who target the public at large".

[Haganham]

Countless. The entire recycling movement for example, was created by the plastic industry, to redirect responsibility for plastic waste from producers to consumers.

The recycling movement was never "protesters who target the public at large".

Good, you've accepted the premise of my argument and are now just quibbling over definitions.

[Ifreann]

The recycling movement was never "protesters who target the public at large".

Good, you've accepted the premise of my argument and are now just quibbling over definitions.

Your claims remain unsupported, as the one example you have offered is not applicable. You say there are countless instances of this happening, so you should not have any difficulty producing some.

[The United Penguin Commonwealth]

Only “rich” tradition is hierarchy (as ALL scholars agree)!

This is wrong and the very introduction of this article seems quite biased. Hierarchies suck, but I know of no left-wing state, party or other organization that has no hierarchy of some sort. It's about how you think hierarchies should be designed and legitimized that can make a difference between political ideologies. Anyway, the non-extremist right-wing has always been conservative, the definition of conservative changing with times and places.

actually, the wiki article is surprisingly accurate. many leftists do support hierarchies, but they don't see them as desirable or infallible. a core idea of capitalism, for example, is that success in business is indicative that you are "better" than those who failed and that those who failed deserved it. the logical extension of this is that any tampering with the markets is tampering with the hierarchy and the "natural" order of things.

[Emotional Support Crocodile]

Climate change is going to be a real nuisance.

[Ifreann]

Climate change is going to be a real nuisance.

We should arrest weather events that block traffic.

[Zouayne Shyce]

Climate change is going to be a real nuisance.

Why? Just buy AC equipment, a yacht and a couple of guns.

[Australian rePublic]

Look, I'm not gonna go debate about the amount of disruption a protest does or whether it is necessary for a protest to be disruptive (although both can vary per protest ig) but I'm gonna say that disruption is fine just as long as you don't piss off most of the public because they're just gonna go against your cause just to spite you

Exactly!

[Australian rePublic]

In my honest opinion, there should be a difference between say, blocking an ambulance to protest gas and blocking a normal car. That ambulance may have to actively save a person. That car may just be coming home from work. While I'd be surely annoyed if I was in that car, I feel as if there should be a line. Now where this line is drawn is the big question. I feel as if where it should be drawn is where someone is in a situation where what's being blocked can save their life, IE Ambulances, Fire Engines, and Police officers. Yes you still have the right to protest AT their offices/stations, but you still let them through if there is an active ongoing emergency/risk to public safety.

Protesting is an act that requires people to be disruptive, and it can do both good and bad. Yet that doesn't mean you can't get pissed when they deface something. You're entitled to your opinion, they're entitled to theirs, you have to respect it, even if you find it stupid, or their methods stupid.

And what if the person in that car has diarrhoea? And what if the person in the car is driving their wife to hospital? (My dad had to drive my mum to hospital earlier this year as she was on the verge of death). And what if the person in the car is late for a flight? Or maybe that person is late to go to work, as they work shifts? Also, why is it acceptable to annoy someone coming home from work? What has that person done to deserve that? Why is that fair for them? Someone who's dead tired from working a 14 hour shift and can't go home and sleep because of your stupid protest. Go protest against those who cause the problem. If you care that much about the environment, go block Leo Decaprio's access to his yacht or whatever. Leave the general public, who are just trying to live their lives, alone. You have the shits with the government, so you block Bob on his way home from work, when he just wants to go home, have a nice meal and see his kids? Why block Bob? What has Bob done to deserve it? What do you want Bob to do about the problem you're trying to solve? You have inconvenienced? Bob, now what? Seriously, now what? Bob is inconvenienced, now what? Now what? What has been achieved by doing that? You've proven your ability to inconvenience people, but what have actually achieved by doing that? Why does Bob have to be inconvenienced because you're too stupid to go after the people who actually causing the problem? And what if it's not Bob but Martha? What if Martha is heavily pregnant and has enough trouble going to and from work without people disrupting her? But then again, why address the people causing the problem, when you can be a nuisance to those who can't do anything about it? Cowards

[Uan aa Boa]

And what if the person in that car has diarrhoea? And what if the person in the car is driving their wife to hospital? (My dad had to drive my mum to hospital earlier this year as she was on the verge of death). And what if the person in the car is late for a flight? Or maybe that person is late to go to work, as they work shifts? Also, why is it acceptable to annoy someone coming home from work? What has that person done to deserve that? Why is that fair for them? Someone who's dead tired from working a 14 hour shift and can't go home and sleep because of your stupid protest. Go protest against those who cause the problem. If you care that much about the environment, go block Leo Decaprio's access to his yacht or whatever. Leave the general public, who are just trying to live their lives, alone. You have the shits with the government, so you block Bob on his way home from work, when he just wants to go home, have a nice meal and see his kids? Why block Bob? What has Bob done to deserve it? What do you want Bob to do about the problem you're trying to solve? You have inconvenienced? Bob, now what? Seriously, now what? Bob is inconvenienced, now what? Now what? What has been achieved by doing that? You've proven your ability to inconvenience people, but what have actually achieved by doing that? Why does Bob have to be inconvenienced because you're too stupid to go after the people who actually causing the problem? And what if it's not Bob but Martha? What if Martha is heavily pregnant and has enough trouble going to and from work without people disrupting her? But then again, why address the people causing the problem, when you can be a nuisance to those who can't do anything about it? Cowards

Your OP was all about the importance of consistency. On that basis how do you feel about parades, marathons, sports, events, and other more common reasons for roads being temporarily blocked?

[Australian rePublic]

And what if the person in that car has diarrhoea? And what if the person in the car is driving their wife to hospital? (My dad had to drive my mum to hospital earlier this year as she was on the verge of death). And what if the person in the car is late for a flight? Or maybe that person is late to go to work, as they work shifts? Also, why is it acceptable to annoy someone coming home from work? What has that person done to deserve that? Why is that fair for them? Someone who's dead tired from working a 14 hour shift and can't go home and sleep because of your stupid protest. Go protest against those who cause the problem. If you care that much about the environment, go block Leo Decaprio's access to his yacht or whatever. Leave the general public, who are just trying to live their lives, alone. You have the shits with the government, so you block Bob on his way home from work, when he just wants to go home, have a nice meal and see his kids? Why block Bob? What has Bob done to deserve it? What do you want Bob to do about the problem you're trying to solve? You have inconvenienced? Bob, now what? Seriously, now what? Bob is inconvenienced, now what? Now what? What has been achieved by doing that? You've proven your ability to inconvenience people, but what have actually achieved by doing that? Why does Bob have to be inconvenienced because you're too stupid to go after the people who actually causing the problem? And what if it's not Bob but Martha? What if Martha is heavily pregnant and has enough trouble going to and from work without people disrupting her? But then again, why address the people causing the problem, when you can be a nuisance to those who can't do anything about it? Cowards

Your OP was all about the importance of consistency. On that basis how do you feel about parades, marathons, sports, events, and other more common reasons for roads being temporarily blocked?

There's a difference there, because these things are planned weeks in advance with multiple layers of approval process, and all disruptions should be taken into account. Having said that, however, if these things happen too frequently AND/OR aren't planned well enough, then yes, they do become pains and shouldn't be allowed to happen

[Australian rePublic]

Thinking back over the last half century, I can't think of a single time I've been inconvenienced by protestors. I've been inconvenienced by roads and pavements being barricaded off multiple times by sporting events and celebrations, Royalty and senior politicians visiting, a couple of times by racist cunts marching, and once by a really big religious procession.

I'm in agreement with you here. When I was a kid, my parents needed to take me to the hospital and were unable to get there for quite a while because of A PARADE blocking crosstown traffic.

That significantly inconvenienced us far more than any protests.

That's really bad. Who the fuck planned that? That's just poor planning!