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Police Disperse Bush Protesters with Pepper Paintballs
help_cecil_help writes "The AP has this story on how Bush protesters in Jacksonville Oregon were dispersed by local police using 'pepperballs.' The Jacksonville City Administrator described the projectiles as 'like a paintball filled with cayenne pepper'."
wether you support Bush or not this is fascism.
The police didn't start firing pepper balls until people in the crowd started pushing them.
Is it excessive? Definitely. But rather than calling this fascism, I'd call this hyper-sensitivity by law enforcement, probably mostly due to the constant terror warnings and the much higher than normal tension over this election.
Fascism? No. This is a bunch of cops who would rather inflict than be inflicted upon. I highly doubt either candidate would tell the cops to do this!
From the article:
Yeah, most cities have noise ordnances. And: You start pushing them, they get worried about their safety, and respond. An earlier protest didn't get the news coverage, so I assume there were no pepper bullets fired there. Just a bit of a mob mentality (two opposing sides yelling at each other - it'll get heated!), and a few self-preserving cops.Nothing to see here. Move along.
Geez, is this guy made of tissue paper and popsicle sticks? Or is the reporter being a little melodramatic?
Another story from the same event. There were three women that were kicked out of the gathering and threatened with being arrested for wearing obscene tee-shirts to tht event. What did the tee-shirts say?
7 12.htm
"Protect our civil liberties"
http://www.bend.com/news/ar_view%5E3Far_id%5E3D18
From Bend.com news sources
Posted: Thursday, October 14, 2004 10:24 PM
Reference Code: PR-18712
October 14 - MEDFORD - President Bush taught three Oregon schoolteachers a new lesson in irony - or tragedy - Thursday night when his campaign removed them from a Bush speech and threatened them with arrest simply for wearing t-shirts that said "Protect Our Civil Liberties," the Democratic Party of Oregon reported.
The women were ticketed to the event, admitted into the event, and were then approached by event officials before the president's speech. They were asked to leave and to turn over their tickets - two of the three tickets were seized, but the third was saved when one of the teachers put it underneath an article of clothing.
"The U.S. Constitution was not available on site for comment, but expressed in a written statement support for "the freedom of speech" and "of the press" among other civil liberties," a Democratic news release said.
The Associated Press and local CBS affiliate KTVL captured Bush's principled stand against civil liberties in news accounts published immediately after the event.
The AP reported:
Three Medford school teachers were threatened with arrest and escorted from the event after they showed up wearing T-shirts with the slogan "Protect our civil liberties." All three said they applied for and received valid tickets from Republican headquarters in Medford.
The women said they did not intend to protest. "I wanted to see if I would be able to make a statement that I feel is important, but not offensive, in a rally for my president," said Janet Voorhies, 48, a teacher in training.
"We chose this phrase specifically because we didn't think it would be offensive or degrading or obscene," said Tania Tong, 34, a special education teacher.
Thursday's event in Oregon sets a new bar for a Bush/Cheney campaign that has taken extraordinary measures to screen the opinions of those who attend Bush and Cheney speeches. For months, the Bush/Cheney campaign has limited event access to those willing to volunteer in Bush/Cheney campaign offices. In recent weeks, the Bush/Cheney campaign has gone so far as to have those who voice dissenting viewpoints at their events arrested and charged as criminals.
Thursday's actions in Oregon set a new standard even for Bush/Cheney - removing and threatening with arrest citizens who in no way disrupt an event and wear clothing that expresses non-disruptive party-neutral viewpoints such as "Protect Our Civil Liberties."
When Vice President Dick Cheney visited Eugene, Oregon on Sept. 17, a 54-Year old woman named Perry Patterson was charged with criminal trespass for blurting the word "No" when Cheney said that George W. Bush has made the world safer.
One day before, Sue Niederer, 55, the mother of a slain American soldier in Iraq was cuffed and arrested for criminal trespass when she interrupted a Laura Bush speech in New Jersey. Both women had tickets to the event.
"Well we actually didn't shoot them before we shot them with cayenne pepper balls."
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
Politicians and elected officials would never hurt anyone. And they must respect the individual and the minority group because to do anything else would hurt their chances of being re-elected. ...Unless, of course, Public Choice theory is correct and the bureaucrats are actually just humans like everyone else, looking out for their own self interest.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
You can tell I didn't eat enough at lunch as my first thought was "That would be good with some melted Monterey jack..."
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I've personally seen this happen before, during Critical Mass (an event where a large number of bicyclists essentially take over the streets). The police were keeping an eye on the situation, and 99% of the participants were well-behaved. Then a few people broke the law (ran a red light) and suddenly the police began chasing people down, yanking them off their bikes (which were tossed onto a flatbed truck) and arresting a few who protested the unfair treatment.
At this particular protest, there may have been a few hotheads in the front (there usually are) who decided to push the police. Then the police (who were probably just waiting for an excuse anyway) treated the whole crowd as potentially hostile, instead of just the agitators. Did the police over-react? I'd say yes. But I wasn't at that protest, so I can't say for sure. My advice is, if you are holding a protest, always have someone who is some distance away film the entire event. Heck, have several, from different vantage points. That way, if the police aren't justified in their actions, you have the proof right there, and proper steps can be taken.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
So Republican slashdotters: go and tell your party that an independant voter won't even consider your cantidates because of this. Change this from within because they certainly aren't listening to us external voices.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
if the protesters rampaged its ok for the cops to fight them. a peaceful protest is ok, except there
was a ban on protests (i'm not sure if protests need to be signed up and need court-approval in the US).
I've been playing paintball for 10 years, 3 of which I spent working in the business, and the one thing the sport stresses the most is safety.
At normal playing velocities, a paintball will just feel like a firm slap when it hits your skin. However if one hits you in the eye, you'd better learn to walk with a white cane, because you're going to lose the use of that eye. This is why players wear a mask at all times unless off the field. Even assuming the police were trained to fire low in order to avoid hitting someone in the face, there's still the fact that paintballs aren't accurate past about 40 feet, and firing into a milling crowd would only make that worse.
Also note that I said normal velocities. I doubt the police had their markers set that low, since a few paintballs hitting you at 250 to 280 feet per second is not going to deter anyone. More likely they'd be set to at least the mid 300's, at which point they easily tear holes in clothing, not to mention the skin underneath.
Paintballs may sound nice and safe, but if they're used against people who aren't properly protected then it's only a matter of time before someone is permanently blinded.
The protestors were lucky the police weren't firing grenade launchers.
I protested the first Gulf War in Klamath Falls, and while the police weren't out in force, pro-Bush (I) protesters were there with shotguns- and the next night I skipped the protest to do homework only to hear my roommate's watercolor peace sign pulled off the door. When I opened the door, I got a ring in my eye and 7 stiches.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
1) Did the police put themselves in a situation where pushing was likely by getting closer to/more mixed up with the crowd than they needed to? "Come on... I dare you..."
2) The crowd probably wasn't in a First Amendment Zone anyway.
Credo sim. - I think I am.
I have never, ever seen anything like the reflexive hostility of this administration to normal political opposition. This Bush should expect it; he got into office on a hugely controversial court decision and with fewer votes than his opponent, and has proceeded to embark on an extreme right-wing program targetting access to and even information about birth control, gutting of pollution regulations and the doctoring of scientific information on government websites to conform to a partisan agenda.
Nothing can excuse this. Nothing. And then we read about the arrest and harassment of people whose only act is to register their discontent with the acts of the President, over and over and over.
I have few beefs with the President over the most controversial of his actions, over in a hot, tired and dusty land far away... but the rest of this stuff threatens the very soul of America if it is allowed to continue. So the only thing I can do is to vote the rascal out, as a lesson to him and any who would follow him:
Thou shalt not abridge the freedom of speech, or of the press, or tell falsehoods about the conclusions which our taxpayer-financed research has given us, or let anyone contaminate my air and water for the bonuses of the corporate executive class. Not In My Name.
(And that goes for anyone pandering to the postmodern PC idiotarians on the other side too; throw sops to them, and you've declared yourself my enemy.)
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Where is the Artilleryman Napoleon Buonoparte when you need him?!
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I can hardly wait until we can spread American freedom all over the world.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Instead, like said above, they decided to take it out on everyone. I can see where past thoughts would have said to stop the entire protest because it could errupt into something very large. But, the police could have arrested the few perps and allowed the rest to go on. Anyone at the protest, who would have seen the people pushing their luck, probably would have supported the arrests and spread the word throughout.
Problem is that Americans see on TV how fast a crowd of peaceful people protesting can errupt into a mob of car-pushing, fire-lighting persons. Probably without even thinking, and going on what they have seen in the past, the police made the wrong decision.
It is time that police organizations around the country start to re-think the idea of crowd control. From the RNC to this situation, we have too much policing and not enough protesting.
The biggest security hole sits between the keyboard and chair.
-Andrew McAllister
Have you ever BEEN in a protest? There are always people who just want to fuck things up and make a scene.
Yes, like Bloody Sunday, where the word of the paratroopers *totally* justified the 27 people they shot, 13 of which were killed... Police PR tactics typically play the "blame the victm" game, which i'm just saying is fallacious, and generally untrustworthy.
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
Apparently, you didn't get the new version of the NewSpeak dictionary.
Fascism - The idea that protecting civil liberties (the right for Bush and his supporters to assemble at the hotel of his choosing) from people who would take them (those who would physically block Bush's right to assemble at the hotel, and attack the police) is a good thing. Also, the idea that having terrorists who are known to be terrorists freely roam the country without survelliance is a bad thing.
Tolerance - A crowd of young protestors show their tolerance by throwing rocks and pushing police officers and preventing others from peacably assembling. Reporters show their tolerance by reporting the incident casting the protestors as innocent angels and the police as brownshirts. Others can show their tolerance by burning swastikas into Bush supporter's lawns with grass killer or by burning campaign signs. Shooting at campaign offices is also a good way to show tolerance. Forcibly entering a private office and assaulting its inhabitants is also a good way to show tolerance, as long as it is a Bush-Cheney office. However, freeing 40 million Muslims from tyrannical rule is not tolerance. Appointing a record number of minorities to key cabinet positions is not tolerance. And most of all, implimenting an act (NCLB) that forces and funds schools to make changes so that minorities succeed is also not showing tolerance.
Brownshirt - A brownshirt is any campaign volunteer for a political party, as long as that party's name begins with an "R" and ends with "epublican". If they are peaceful, cooperative, and kind, that just means that they are one of the top echelon of brownshirts, and will probably kill you in your sleep or take your social security check away.
Vote Fraud - Acts committed by people who try to inform others who is and is not allowed to vote and who try to purge the voter roles of duplicates, illegal immigrants, people who have moved, and felons. Also, any vote for Bush is a fraud, but any vote for Kerry is not, by definition.
Evil - By definition, evil is President Bush and his party. Everything else is inherently good.
Ex. "Invading Iraq to depose a tyrant and set up a democracy is evil, but bombing Serbia for the same reasons is good."
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Incidentally, pepperball.net appears to be a manufacturer and seems to be informative in how these may be applied. 350-380 fps is the nominal pepperball muzzle velocity.
[From FAQ] All PepperBall launchers can target accurately at distances up to 30 feet.For PAVA (Capsaicin II) area saturation, projectilescan be broken against a hard surface such as a car or wall at distances up to 150 feet.
In other words, they can still be effective even if you don't aim for the target individual.
[Training FAQ] PepperBall projectiles can be shot at point-blank range, although the kinetic impact will be slightly greater at close range. Suspects can be accurately targeted up to 30 feet away with the enough kinetic impact to shatter the projectile and leave a welt or bruise. PepperBall projectiles should never be aimed at a suspect's eyes, face, throat, and spine. Instead, aim below the neck at the suspect's torso or center of mass area.
There are multiple other statements that the pepperball is safe at point blank range. (what exactly "safe" means, I will leave to the reader's judgement.)
You are probably right; it's only a matter of time before someone bends down and gets hit in the eye. Then again, same thing for rubber bullets. Note that most riot control weapons are called "less lethal weapons," because they always have the potential of causing serious bodily injury if placed (in-)correctly. The difference with pepperballs is that you can still incapacitate your target if you hit the ground in front of them or the wall behind them.
It appears that pepperballs can be considered as a way of saturating the air of the target zone with a strong irritant. This option is completely unavailable in paintball (or with rubber bullets), and so really this method appears no worse than rubber bullets (or even hoses with water [since people will get knocked down].) I would also argue that a misplaced baton to the face would also cause permanent damage.
Please, it was paintballs. They didn't club the people, no bullets were fired into the crowd, not even rubber bullets.
Seriously, when a large protest group starts getting out of hand, what do you want the police to do? Stand by and watch while vandalism happens or people get hurt?
Pepper paintballs gets the crowd to disperse while not causing any harm. Allowing the crowd to get out of hand and hurt others would be irresponsible.
While the idea of getting shot by one of these doesn't sound that appealing, I would like to know:
Not that I'd use these in a paintball game, but this could be an interesting addition to the home defense arsenal.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
In Soviet Russia... well, the same thing happens.
These pepperballs were used in Miami last November at the FTAA Ministerial protests. Police fired a whole lot of these things at protestors from guns like these - not at all unlike a normal paintball gun. They apparently can only be shot a short distance, but police would fire a whole lot into the crowd at once. Wounds generally look like this or this - red welts with a small chemical burn surroundinng it, but it isn't any consolation for this guy who got one in the face.
i would chalk this up to the police begin stupid. since political emotions are really high right now. i find it really hard to believe bush (or kerry should roles be reversed) or his people would tell the cops to start peppering people, for this very reason, it will get reported.
the cops started to move the crowd for 'security reasons', i am sure. one cop was probably green and got jittery.
i have seen cops stand there and ignore people screaming at them during new years parties or when the local team wins a huge game. i have even seen them wrestle down the few trouble makers and let everyone go about there business. sometimes the crowd gets dispersed w/ pepper/gas. usually once some morons flip over a car or something.
what are cops going to do? let property get destoyed or pepper some people.
in summary, more likely jittery cops than political.
always mosh clockwise
...for the benefit of our "President". I'm trying to be suprised, but I just am not.
Why treat our own people any different then what we are doing to the rest of the world.
Portland IMC
I always turn to Indymedia when looking for coverage about a protest...
Ceci n'est pas un post
From TFA: "Jacksonville City Administrator Paul Wyntergreen said the protest was peaceful until a few people started pushing police. Police reacted by firing pepperballs, which he described as projectiles like a paintball filled with cayenne pepper. Two people were arrested for failing to disperse. There were no reports of injuries."
Police were pushed, then responded or: "He [Richard Swaney] said he was walking with the crowd away from the inn when he was hit in the back with three separate bursts, one of which knocked him down. He felt a stinging sensation he thought was rubber bullets and smelled pepper. "I don't think I moved fast enough,'' said Swaney. "I can't believe this happens in the United States. It was very peaceful. I think this is the way tyranny begins.''
The two statements don't exactly jive, and both one could say are biased--a protestor who got hit in the back while walking away and the city administrator. Who to believe? At best the city administrator's account is accurate and we have hypersensitivity by the police. If the city administrator's account is wrong and the protest was peaceful then we have something worse. Unfortunately we have no account from an objective, independent third observer to decide the matter.
here's more info on the balls.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
...is where can I get some pepper paintballs?
Which is not to praise the Weathermen or any of the leftist nutcases of the time, but I'm talking about what the people in the government do with the power they're supposed to be using on my behalf.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
why the hell would the Jacksonville police have pepper paint balls?
Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming, Four dead in Ohio
This parrot has ceased to be!
The U.S. government is FAR more corrupt than people want to believe.
Here is a list of 3 movies and 35 books that say that the Bush administration is corrupt: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
Table of U.S. Parties and Economics
Government data shows Democrat and Republican spending patterns.
And what's with the epithet? I never even met Kenny!
Sustainability and energy independence essay
...the protest was peaceful until a few people started pushing police. Police reacted...
The correct reaction would be to grab the person who pushed and arrest him/her.
This takes the few violent individuals out of the general protest.
Instead, the cops reacted by shooting at everyone.
Just a bit of a mob mentality (two opposing sides yelling at each other - it'll get heated!), and a few self-preserving cops.
Rather, cops who know they won't face repercussions for excessive use of force and have seen one too many Rambo movies.
The town is highly regulated, historic, and is home to a far above average percentage number of police officers.
Being a resident less than 20 miles away, I'm not at all surprised at the non-violent protests, or Bush's willingness to use cayenne pepper balls on harmless civilians. This area really looks like "bush country", lots of open fields and people who's jobs depend on the timber industry, but the economy has gone downhill and we have a reasonably sized university in the area.
And here was I imagining the police armed with these [Amazon link].
#exclude <ms/windows.h>
Once,
Again the editors of Slashdot are biased against Bush.
If you RTFA is does not say Kerry supporters were hit by pepper balls.
It says protestors, which could have just as easily been Bush supporters who were there protesting the fact that Kerry supporters were protesting.
Per the article there is no way to tell who got hit. Just that it was 'protestors'.
My guess is that anybody who happened to be around the gatherings may have got hit....
---- Go ahead, mod me down, I'll just post it again and you lose your mod points.
These are PROTESTS. They're outside. There are lots of people there. Didn't anybody bring a fucking video camera?
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Wow, two troll moderations for saying something every U.S. citizen should know!
Oh yeah, because that wouldn't give the rest of the crowd a flimsy excuse to act like even bigger cocks and escalate the situation further. That NEVER happens at protests...
It all comes down to whether you believe that there are a few problem cases or almost all are problem cases. I believe that there are a few, you seem to believe that most of them are problems.
Oh shit! Look out! It's a mild irritant designed to disperse large and unruly crowds before they get out of hand by making it slightly uncomfortable to stay in the same place! NAZIIIIIIIIIS!
Let's try to keep the Nazi chatter under control, okay? Thanks.
How old are you? Twelve? Thirteen?
40
I have an idea. Let's throw YOUR BITCH ASS into the middle of 500 people that disagree with each other and see how YOU react when you get pushed around.
Been there, done that. Germany in the 70's. I was military and we had hundreds of people protest us. We were assigned to keep people out of one of our sites. We did it without any conflicts even though we only had our squad at that site. It's actually very easy to do, if you follow the training.
Do you sit back and let the situation escalate into violence or do you take steps right then and there to make sure that doesn't happen?
Like I said, you remove the problem cases and leave the rest of them alone. As long as they don't try to break through, they can sit and sing as long as they want.
You're a fucking liar if you say you don't end it right there if you can.
No, I've just had more training and practical experience dealing with protests. The majority of the people, in my experience, are calm and reasonable. It's only when the cops over-react that they become problems.
What's more important, enforcing some random law, or protecting the ideals and virtues of democracy? I imagine there are some laws from time to time which trump democratic action, from time to time, but I can't accept that as a general, default, rule. And when you look at this specific case (as posited by the poster, and now yourself) that a noise ordinance justified shooting people voicing their political views in the shadow of a visit by the President, there is no rational justification for the law trumping democracy. None.
Bingo. We do not want to become a country where the most minor of laws becomes an excuse to assault our own non-violent citizens exercising their basic Constitutional rights.
Some pushed, but the cops fired upon people who did not push.
The right to peacefull protest is enshrined in everything we are about.
I would like something a little better than just the written word of the mainstream press that something happened. The AP has been doing alot of silent retractions on stories lately. The most infamous when they falsely reported that a republican rally had booed President Clintons good health.
This election has raised the question of the honesty of the press to a new level, while I am loathe to recomend curtailing freespeach the current libel/slander laws are clearly insufficient to curtail abuse. Perhaps Something like an honesty bond or bounty is neccesesary to keep the process honest.
Speaking as a nearby resident, I think it happened pretty much as described in the articles. And there have been many smaller reports of police going too far that day, including threatening to arrest some schoolteachers for wearing shirts that said "protect our civil liberties" to the Bush speech.
A government which is abiding by the law would be firing and prosecuting the Secret Service agents and police officials responsible for these outrages, rather than institutionalizing the violation of civil rights under color of law. A government which abuses the power of arrest to "protect" the President from seeing people who disagree with his policies is not a government which is abiding by the Constitution, and to allow it to remain in office one day longer is to place all rights in jeopardy. The bastard has violated his oath of office (so much for his claim of "keeping his word"), and voting him out is the duty of everyone who holds the Constitution to heart.
Which, unfortunately, isn't all that many people these days.
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there are a lot of sensational reports of events like this.
what were the protesters doing prior to this, ie throwing rocks, about to riot. etc
i honestly havent seen a report to say that. so i dont know, but i usually find it hart to believe that the police saw a bunch of bush protesters and couldnt wait to shoot them with pepperballs. (or were commanded too)
all it takes is one officer to PERCIEVE a threat, for all hell to break lose. thats pretty key when understanding an action like this, one officer feels threatened and uses appropriate force for that situation. the problem starts when everyone else gets into it.
The person was knocked down because he was hit by a projectile coming from a shotgun.
Rubber bullets, bean-bag bullets and these "paint balls" are all fired from standard shotguns because that is the only type of firearm that will handle these projectiles.
Why do you think these types of systems are called "less lethal" and not "non lethal"? Because they can kill. Can being the key word in that sentence. Usually they just bruise. I'm waiting for the bean bag type to tear and fire bean-buckshot.
Get your Unix fortune now!
The results are already pre-decided. The use of Diebold voting machines ensures that votes against Bush are discreetly and randomly dropped to a level where it might appear Bush won on razor-thin margins...
And then there's the supreme court which will make sure Bush is appointed President once again if things go wrong...
Welcome to the begining of the death of freedom and democracy.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2004/1016/local /stories/02local.htm
I'm always reminded of the paper I wrote on the World Bank and IMF riots in Seattle and DC - specifically on the topic of riot control.
4 7581.s tm
/.'ers hundreds or thousands of miles away are not really in the position to say whether or not the situation calls for it.
"The Battle of Seattle" happened because there were inadequately trained cops confronted by a huge number of unruly protesters. They _didn't_ take steps to crack down on the situation, and things spiralled rapidly out of control.
A good account from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5
The part to take away from there is that, indeed, some people come to these events for violent reasons.
Compare this to DC. In DC, the situation was almost as intense, but the cops raided a bunch of organizations the day before, and made quite a few arrests on the first day. While this was of dubious legality, DC didn't experience massive rioting, either.
In case you didn't follow my logic, "excessive force" can often prevent an unruly protest from turning into a full-blown riot. No, this is not a blanket statement intended to justify everything the police do - but
Now, the measures taken here don't compare to Seattle or DC. I've seen the cops shooting pepperballs at people who were rioting after the Maryland-Duke game, and while they hurt, they're hardly going to permenantly injure people. Bullhorns don't work for this sort of thing, and pepper balls are a damned sight better than nightsticks and fire hoses.
Most likely, the cops got shoved around a bit and over-reacted. I am sympathetic to the protesters, but the cops are always put in a bad situation by these sorts of events, too.
Crying "FASCISM!" because some county cops were scared and probably somewhat badly trained is laughable. No one even got hurt, for crying out loud!
This is no Kent State, in other words. Not even close.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Don't forget that this is the town the President was spending the night in. It is understandable that the police/secret service would take action at the first small sign of trouble to avoid a much larger problem if things got out of hand.
If they really wanted to create a ruckus, they should have worn shirts simply saying "Preserve, Protect and Defend the Constitution of the United States" to a Bush rally.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I'm coming to the conclusion that peaceful protesting is completely ineffective.
The police can do things like this, the media doesn't have to report it, and in the end it has zero political impact.
We need to do more Gandhi style protesting where we go out and wilfully break the law and get arrested.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
But I have heard a lot more fuss about people being forced to sign a loyalty oath at Bush events than anything similar at Kerry events. In addition, most of the people who protest at Bush events are forcibly removed and immedately arrested. Now this might have more to do with security than muzzling them, but it's still disturbing.
If you don't protect freedom here, how are you possibly going to do it in Iraq and elsewhere?
Demonstrations are out and there are several good reasons for it.
Demonstrations do not make your voice heard, at best it makes the organizers voice heard briefly before the media passes onto other news. That is unless someone takes advantage of you to stage violence, in which case your voice is completely obliterated and your intentions raped. If you want to make a difference talk to someone with an open mind and without using the same old soundbytes.
Demonstrations equals groupthink and there is nothing people out to make trouble love better but hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of fools to hide among. Attending any demonstration marks you as a useful fool to whoever needs them.
People are naive if they do not understand that there are people out there who view all of the candidates as their enemies and who will do all in their power to increase hatred and frustration. It doesn't take more than a handful to manipulate a large group, gossip and hatred and a small spark at the right time. Their aim is called violent revolution and they are the true facists. So if you are democratic please for the sake of all calm down and treat your opponents politely.
People demonstrating should be aware that they are extremely likely not to know everything that is going on behind the curtains of the demonstration. I've had temporary military police rights in preparation for a legal demonstration outside a military base. There was classified information about possible infiltration among the demonstrators of people committed to sabotage and illegal entry of the base. We had live ammo in the clip (not chambered) and got rehashed on the standard procedures for how to open fire. We were extremely on edge for good reasons and very happy that nothing transpired, we would have fired.
Demonstrations is just about the least effective and respectful form of voicing your opinion, you are not convincing the other sides and any neutrals are as likely to be disgusted or affronted by you than anything else.
If demonstrations continue to evolve in their current direction it will be outlawed with bipartisan approval or it will continue towards civil war and the facists have won round one, your future, your choice.
I was at the Rally. First you had to go to the republican party headquarters to get them, and they said it was to be a republican event. *Everyone* knew they were not allowed to protest in the rally. The rupublican party has every right to set any rule they want when they are renting a place to have a rally.
I got a friend to pepper spray me once to see what I does the most interesting thing was the taste it was really nice helped to take my mind of how my eyes were feeling which were feeling pretty bad.
Also have seen two friends one of them was the person who pepper sprayed me use CS gas on themselves that is truly nasty stuff but funny to watch someone us it on themselves, pepper spray is mild in comparison.
before any karma Whore calls BS my friend gets this stuff from Poland which from the story's he's told me has practically no limitation on the sort of weapons you can buy. He just walks casually walk through customs although he hasn't done this since 9/11, he really doesn't want to be caught aboard a plane with Taser, cosh, pepper spray or whatever he is bringing back this time. He now posts them to himself and is polish Citizen as well as British which i think helps.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
"The right of the people peaceably to assemble" is also part of the first amendment. You do not have the right to go in and cause trouble at a private function. It's only public to the point that the press is allowed in. It seems to me that alot of people on here have tunnel vision when it comes to first amendment rights. I guess this is slashdot though...
Well, my friend Madge has been flying over the Midwest recently and she says she can see the camps. That's right, the camps. Bush isn't going out of office without a fight. Ariel Sharon and Dick Cheyney are playing little W like a grand piano. And if he loses, they aren't giving up without a fight. Every good Christian man, woman and child is going to dragged out to those camps. Have you ever seen The Siege? Well, we're going to being living it soon. This is what happens when Big Oil makes up threats of these "terrorists" just so they can send our brave men and women into the killing fields of Iraq to get more oil. This is all scary shit.