This morning Morning Feature will dig deeper into issues related to free speech. Yesterday we discussed cases of “public forum” free speech. Today we look at free speech at political events. (More)
The Tuesday Digging Deeper Morning Feature surveys an ongoing news topic through multiple sources to invite in-depth conversation. Please check back over the coming days for additional comments. This week’s Digging Deeper topic is free speech.
Yesterday we looked at a news story out of Seattle where a local group wanted to place controversial issue advocacy ads on the sides of the King County Metro buses and the outcry was such that the county cancelled the ad contract. The ACLU filed suit on behalf of the organization whose ads were cancelled.
I encourage you to read yesterday’s Morning Feature and the excellent conversation that ensued if you missed it.
The Seattle case is a “public forum” free speech case. The general First Amendment principle is that speech in a public forum (ads on a city bus, use of public broadcast facilities) can be limited by fees (ad costs, fee to use broadcast facilities), but the limits must be “content neutral.” That means government can’t choose which messages to allow in a public forum, except to prohibit non-protected speech such as pornography, incitement to riot, etc.
Today we are going to turn to a different type of protected free speech … free speech at political events.
This topic will be front and center as we move into the 2012 primary season and then into the 2012 general election next year.
The protest zones at political events are “time, place, and manner” free speech cases. The general First Amendment principle there is that government can make reasonable limits on the “time, place, and manner” of speech: visitors at the Capitol can’t walk up and demand to speak at the House podium, students can be told to keep quiet during classroom lectures, etc. The greater the general public’s access to the forum (e.g.: a town square or city park), the greater the government’s burden to show its “time, place, and manner” restrictions are reasonable. And again, the restrictions must be “content neutral;” you can’t allow supporters to chant and hold signs next to an official while forcing protesters to stand a mile away.
The Skokie Parade
Neo-nazi parade in Skokie Illinois:
In 1977, the ACLU filed suit against the Village of Skokie, Illinois, seeking an injunction against the enforcement of three town ordinances outlawing Neo-Nazi parades and demonstrations. Skokie, Illinois at the time had a majority population of Jews, totaling 40,000 of 70,000 citizens. A federal district court struck down the ordinances in a decision eventually affirmed by the Supreme Court.
In his February 23, 1978 decision overturning the town ordinances, US District Court Judge Bernard M. Decker described the principle involved in the case as follows: “It is better to allow those who preach racial hatred to expend their venom in rhetoric rather than to be panicked into embarking on the dangerous course of permitting the government to decide what its citizens may say and hear … The ability of American society to tolerate the advocacy of even hateful doctrines … is perhaps the best protection we have against the establishment of any Nazi-type regime in this country.”
The George W. Bush Years
At events attended by President Bush and other senior federal officials around the country, the Secret Service has been discriminating against protesters in violation of their free speech rights, the American Civil Liberties Union charged today in the first nationwide lawsuit of its kind.
“”There is nothing more American than raising your voice in protest, and there is nothing more un-American than a government that attempts to hit the mute button when it doesn’t like what it hears,”” said Witold Walczak, Legal Director of the ACLU of Greater Pittsburgh and a member of the national ACLU legal team that filed today’s lawsuit.
The ACLU said it had seen a significant spike in such incidents under the Bush Administration, prompting it to charge officials with a “pattern and practice” of discrimination against those who disagree with government policies.
Nominating Conventions
2004 Democratic National Convention – Security:
During the convention, U.S. Capitol Police, the U.S. Coast Guard, and other governmental organizations took many security measures to protect the participants of the Democratic National Convention.[6] Security measures included bomb-sniffing dogs, 7-feet high metal barricades, a ban on corporate and private flights at the Logan airport, along with the shutting down of Highway 93.
One of the most controversial “counter-terrorism” measures was the declaration of a designated free speech zone for protesters, limiting where and when protesters could exercise their first amendment rights. Protesters through the American Civil Liberties Union mounted an unsuccessful lawsuit for the right to protest outside of the designated free speech zone, which the group claimed was unconstitutional.
2004 Republilcan National Convention – Security:
Like the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officially declared the 2004 Republican National Convention a National Special Security Event (NSSE). As such, the United States Secret Service was charged with employing and coordinating all federal and local agencies including the various bureaus of DHS, the FBI, and the NYPD to secure the venue from terrorist attacks. Expected security expenditures reached $70 million, $50 million of which was funded by the federal government.
The city employed an active beat of 10,000 police officers deployed as Hercules teams—uniformed in full riot gear and body armor, and equipped with submachine guns and rifles. Commuter and Amtrak trains entering and exiting Penn Station were scoured by bomb-sniffing dogs as uniformed police officers were attached to buses carrying delegates. All employees of buildings surrounding Madison Square Garden were subjected to thorough screening and background checks.
Protests at 2008 nominating conventions and lawsuit filed:
Political activists and legal groups are preparing to file multiple lawsuits against the cities and police departments of Denver and St. Paul because of their treatment of convention protesters.
Police used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse protesters outside the Republican convention last week. Political activists and legal groups are preparing to file multiple lawsuits against the cities and police departments of Denver and St. Paul because of their treatment of convention protesters. (Times Online/UK)The groups say protesters demonstrating against the war in Iraq and other issues in both cities were mistreated and their civil rights were violated.
The National Lawyers Guild of Minnesota is preparing multiple suits against authorities in St. Paul on behalf of protesters, according to the group. They say protesters were illegally detained and their First Amendment rights were violated.
“Over the course of the week people here in the Twin Cities saw a level of police repression that was unheard of for us,” said Jess Sundin, a spokesman for the Coalition to March on the RNC [Republican National Convention] and Stop the War. “But I was very impressed that people came out anyway and demonstrated tremendous strength and conviction.”
As a reminder, here are a few definitions from yesterday: What is freedom of speech?
Freedom of speech in the United States is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and by many state constitutions and state and federal laws. Criticism of the government and advocacy of unpopular ideas that people may find distasteful or against public policy, such as racism, sexism, and other hate speech are almost always permitted. There are exceptions to these general protection, including the Miller test for obscenity, child pornography laws, speech that incites imminent lawless action, and regulation of commercial speech such as advertising. Within these limited areas, other limitations on free speech balance rights to free speech and other rights, such as rights for authors and inventors over their works and discoveries (copyright and patent), interests in “fair” political campaigns (Campaign finance laws), protection from imminent or potential violence against particular persons (restrictions on fighting words), or the use of untruths to harm others (slander). Distinctions are often made between speech and other acts which may have symbolic significance (flag burning).
A public forum, also called an open forum, is open to all expression that is protected under the First Amendment. Streets, parks, and sidewalks are considered open to public discourse by tradition and are designated as traditional public forums. […] Public forums cannot be restricted based on content.
Free speech zones (also known as First Amendment Zones, Free speech cages, and Protest zones) are areas set aside in public places for political activists to exercise their right of free speech in the United States. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law… abridging… the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The existence of free speech zones is based on U.S. court decisions stipulating that the government may regulate the time, place, and manner—but not content—of expression.
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Here are some questions to get us started, not in any order and not intended to be all inclusive:
1. What is the proper balance between safety for elected officials and public access to promote their point of view?
2. What is a reasonable enforcement zone? What is an unreasonable enforcement zone?
Please share your thoughts and additional links in the Comments.
With the heated rhetoric enflaming passions and guns being allowed at political rallies, the question of how to handle security for our politicians while balancing free-speech rights will be a tricky one.
I do not want President Obama to put himself in any danger. Yet I want people to have a right to protest his policies. For example, I think we should be out of Afghanistan and I do not agree with the ratcheting up — aka “surge” — there over the past year. The “surge” should have been in brainstorming a way out. People protesting the war should be seen by the politicians whose minds they want to change.
I am not a constitutional scholar, but it seems to me that the George W. Bush years will be studied for years to come in free speech classes. The limits he put on access were over the line in my opinion. Although in some ways protesting Bush would have done no good since he really lived in a bubble of “I am the great and powerful W”. He would more likely have thought that a t-shirt saying “Stop the Lies” was aimed at someone else than to bring it into his consciousness and reflect upon it.
I really have no problem with “time, place and manner” restrictions, as the “peaceably assemble to petition” part is often ignored by protesters. I’ve been a protester and I admit it.
Currently one of our local universities has a problem with religious types who would, if not contained in designated free speech zones, harass and insult students all over campus.
Similarly, we clearly need those zones outside family planning clinics.
But we need to describe zones that are within a useful area of protest.
As for Shrub and company using that law to keep protesters so far away the TV cameras never even saw them… that’s beyond a reasonable restriction. Way beyond.
The limiting of protest to reasonable zones prevents the utter disruption of business being conducted, and is necessary. Just how far away is necessary, and how much intimidation nees to be applied, is another question.
When Shrub came to our area, people were excluded for the T-shirts they wore protesting any of his policies. A T-shirt is not a disruption. Such things shouldn’t be prevented unless the person him/herself acts disruptively.
Knotty question.
Exactly. A t-shirt is not a disruption but it is an indication of your political leaning. In my opinion, that is what they were banning and that should never be allowed to happen.
Ban me for what I do if it is over the line. Not for my politics.
I both agree and disagree with this part, winterbanyan:
As Naomi Wolf explains here, public protest has been made largely ineffectual precisely because officials keep protesters from stopping traffic. Wolf argues that peaceably interfering with business is exactly what made public protest a politically effective tool in the past. (You’ll have to watch her argument there; embedding is disabled.)
Good morning! ::hugggggs::
I agree with what you say, but with a caveat. Protestors kept women from entering family planning clinics. Protestors in my youth entirely shut down my college and disrupted classes. Two successive semesters, classes and final exams were cancelled. Protestors marched right into classrooms in the middle of classes, made their statements and left.
It became impossible to get an education. The weird thing was most of us students agreed with the protestors.
I’ll point out one other thing, this time in support of Wolf: I looked into organizing a protest on Wall Street a couple of years ago. You would not believe the huge amount of hassles involved. It went far beyond reasonable to entirely quashing protest:
You had to provide transportation into the city and directly to the protest zone. And then you had to provide it back out.
You had to provide a sufficient number of ambulances and paramedics for the anticipated crowd.
You had to designate the area of protest so the police would know what streets to close.
You had to provide exact figures for the number of protestors in advance.
All of this before you could get your parade permit, which would take months. Any of those restrictions sound reasonable. The cumulative effect is to silence protest.
I agree that President Bush abused the First Amendment routinely. Supporters were allowed to flock around his speeches, but protesters had to gather in a “free speech zone,” often a half-mile or more away. That is clearly not “content neutral.”
And for all the right-wing braying about criticism of Gov. Palin and others, we should recall what White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect was canceled: “Americans need to watch what they say, watch what they do.”
For another example of “time, place, and manner” restrictions, consider the limits commonly applied to Fred Phelps and his Wichita church group when they appear to protest at funerals. They are usually kept well away from the grieving families. Is that reasonable and content neutral? I think so. How about you?
Good morning! ::hugggggs::
The Fred Phelps issue seems simple because he and his group are so disgusting with their message, their tactics and their choice of venue.
But disgusting is not one of the criteria for limiting free speech. I wish there was a better way to end Phelps’ crusade short of letting God “kill all the fags”. Every time one of his cases goes to court (and he invariably wins) it is simply more publicity for him.
I agree that disgusting is not a criterion for limiting free speech. But I think the “time, place, and manner” limits usually applied – keeping Phelps and his people out of the grieving families’ sight and hearing – are reasonable …
… so long as the same limits are applied for political action groups who come to support the families. And they should be. A funeral is a time for a family to grieve, not a time for others to grind political axes.
Good morning! ::hugggggs::
This goes to something that DBunn said in yesterday’s comments. We really need to be part of an “invisible social consensus as to acceptable behavior”. Civil discourse starts with some filters on our behaviors that say “this is the wrong time and the wrong place”. If you can’t make your point in the right venue, maybe your point is not such a great one.
Oh, really? What about that pesky Constitution, Ari? There are lines that cannot and should not be crossed, but our right to make our objections known to our representatives, peacefully, is not something we should have to “watch.” Ugh.
As for Fred Phelps, well, I’d be happy if they’d put him under house arrest, but much as I dislike his exercise of his right, it is his right. Keeping him away from grieving families is a sensible restriction. He still gets on the damn TV.
I remember discussing the Fred Phelps case before it went in front of the Court (re: SCOTUS) with my Constitutional Law Professor, who is an advocate for animal rights.
We both agreed that it was a very tough case for the Court to decide, especially our current court. However where he would fall slightly in favor of restricting Phelps, I favored upholding it.
That said using imagery or allusion to direct violence or threat of violence, instead of the hate being spewed by Phelps, I think should NOT be protected. Moreover I tend to disagree with those who called it a slippery slope. The amount of violence in our society, from video games, to movies, to political rhetoric is overwhelming at times. Putting up a specific list of people, putting crosshairs over their name/location and saying we’re targeting them should not be protected in any form. Nor should a public official advocating ‘Second Amendment Remedies’ if the people don’t get what they want.
Finally, I will yield the floor to George Carlin’s original 7 dirty words skit in terms of violence in American Society. “A wise man once said that I’d rather my child see two people making love than two people killing one another. What would happen if we replaced the word F*** with the word Kill in all those old movie cliches we grew up with?”
*Shakes head* Of course I can’t believe we as a society through our courts censored that skit, and we are unable to bring ourselves to censoring the violent commentary nowadays.
Thanks Jan
You’re welcome, JBF. Thanks for stopping by.
Mayor Bloomberg’s reaction to the protestors at the 2004 Republican National Convention was the nadir of his mayoralty. From the ridiculous — forbidding protestors to assemble in Central Park because the grass would be trampled — to false arrests (later thrown out) Bloomberg demonstrated a very heavy authoritarian hand.
The Internets had a lot of material on the false arrests and the ghastly conditions that the protesters were held in. It seems that the penalties for protesting and exercising your free-speech rights can be high. A friend of mine went to a WTO demonstration in Washington some years ago and she was clubbed by a police officer while drawing a spiral of life on the pavement.
“Americans need to watch what they say, watch what they do.” Seems to only apply when the POTUS and the government is in R’s hands = IOKIYAR. Wrong answer, Ari. Just because you don’t like what someone says doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to say it. IDIOT!
It was ok to disrupt Dems when they were discussing HCR…..now it’s our turn. For those of you with R’s for representatives….time to step up. Here in Ohio, King John may be able to hide but the state reps can’t hide for long. This is a recipe for bad government which is I guess the point of R’s. That which you can’t destroy, you disable.
As you know, I am not a fan of “the Founding fathers”. They got a lot of stuff wrong but the First Amendment and putting it first, they got that one exactly right.
Thanks again
The Republicans have a different view of the constitution depending on which side of its protections they are on.
Wow, that is so right Jan LOL!
Security is a very broad excuse to hassle people.
In the summer of 05 I was parking my motor home at our family’s lake cabin in southern Minnesota. I drove over to Mankato to have something checked at a dealership. I had an appointment for 9am. On the way back to the cabin I was stopped along with every other motorist on a divided four lane state highway. Bush was speaking to a closed rally some 12 miles off this highway at 5 pm that day. I was totally questioned about where I had been, where I was going and what I thought of Bush. They inspected the outside of the motorhome and had mirrors on long poles to look underneath it.
I was polite but totally taken aback. When they asked for permission to search the inside I pulled out my phone and said I wanted to call my attorney as this was so far beyond reasonable security that I felt like we were short steps away from a total police state. After a bit more polite questioning they let me proceed. The local police and state troopers told me they were just “following orders.”
I was stunned by this whole thing. I watched the news that night. No protesters were allowed into the “invitation only” event. Locals were royally POd that traffic had been stopped everywhere around the city and people were subjected to the same routine I was.
All this in the name of security. It was bizarre. I still get agitated writing about it now.
I agree, addisnana. There’s reasonable security, and then there’s just hassling people. The Secret Service, sometimes working with the FBI and/or local authorities, generally do a pretty good job of identifying and investigating potential threats. It’s not perfect – no security can be – but it’s kept all of our presidents alive since 1963. And it was invisible for most Americans, even if you lived in a city where the president was visiting, unless you happened to be within a few blocks of the site.
President Bush pushed “security” beyond the bounds of reason, to where entire communities ground to a halt and everyone in the area was treated like a suspect. That ratchets up the public sense of threat and fear, which may be good for authoritarian conservatives but isn’t so good for the rest of us….
Good morning! ::hugggggs::
Good for you for questioning their right to search your vehicle. I am not sure I would have had the courage to resist. The visuals from the 2004 Republican Convention in New York where people simply out for a walk were herded into detention facilities with protesters (legal protesters) are too strong.
The fear of what law enforcement can do “just because” serves as a strong intimidation factor.
Letters to the editor were focused on this for a couple of weeks. I wrote a letter to the Chief of Police and the head of the State Troopers reminding them that they were there to protect and serve citizens as well as visiting Presidents and that they needed to question the orders they were given. Some of the loudest protests came from the truckers whose schedules were disrupted big time.
It was such a wide security zone that even Republicans thought it was too much. 🙄
I am very familiar with the so-called protest zones, having attended protests against the Iraq war. During one event when Bush was in town for a big fundraising event prior to the 2004 election, protesters were cordoned off in this plaza away from the hotel and the road used to ferry the beautiful people to the event. We were surrounded on three sides by police. There were people with telephoto lens taking pictures of the protesters. These aggressive photographers refused to name their organization or provide credentials. You could stand there with your sign, packed into a tiny area, away from view of the politicians and their big money benefactors, while being photographed and surrounded by police.
A small group of protesters decided to leave the designated area and march down the streets of Chicago to the nearby Michigan Street shopping area. They were carrying signs and chanting. All who did not immediately drop their signs and disperse were arrested before the impromptu march made it a few blocks.
I attended some very large demonstrations against the Vietnam war back in the day, including several in DC. There was a smaller police presence, no constraints on movement, and no feel of intimidation. Now, 35 years later, a small crowd of a few hundred protesters was treated like a major threat to national security.
Contrast this with the Tea Party Republicans disrupted town hall meetings with members of Congress, the harassment gauntlets many representatives faced as they entered the Capitol building before the critical HCR vote, gun-toting loons at appearances by President Obama, and so on. It is ironic that it was easier to protest healthcare reform than an unjustifiable war of aggression that is expected to cost us over 2 trillion dollars by the time the festivities end.
I have to laugh at this, DWG:
Why did a picture of Barbara Bush pop into my head? 😉
In my mind one problem with no longer having a way to demonstrate against government actions that we disagree with is that without the protests it makes it appear as though we all agree.
I disagree vehemently with wars of any sort. If there is no one visibly protesting them and no independent media reporting, am I alone?
The asymmetry in protest visibility is also manipulative. It suggests that broad opposition to healthcare reform and policies enacted by Dems in general while making it seem there is no real opposition to wars of aggression, torture, and other aggressive acts of foreign policy.
Conservatives have an interesting (privileged) view of free speech. When they protest, they are heroic and demand no constraints. When policies supported by conservatives are under attack, the protesters are unpatriotic, criminal, and require disproportionate security response.
Here is a small scale example of the hypocrisy of conservatives when it comes to free speech. At the local farmer’s market in Indiana where my son attends college, there was a band of about 7 tea party republicans passing out fliers demanding repeal of the healthcare bill and promoting “energy independence” (drill, baby, drill). The protocol for organizations attending the market was to set up a table in a designated area. These clowns not only occupied the table, but then had a few folks standing in front of the local Democratic Party table, blocking access. This group of very white trash also loudly mocked someone passing out materials promoting permaculture methods.
Among other things I think it partly deals with the national myth that things back then were a quieter more peaceful time and there was a lot less violence all about. It’s not unlike the National Myths we have surrounding WW2.
The problem is that they are just that, Myths, and not true. But in our current society, we all ‘go along with it’ (I realize not all but a majority of Americans do, if simply because they are silent about it), because it means when our party that we support comes to power then they also can’t march and assemble.
While it is true, as Winter said above that the marches were highly disruptive, the argument can definitely be made that those disruptions highlighted issues as a nation that we had ignored or put off for too long. It leaves me wondering if it’s possible to find some sort of happy medium of disruption and marching, while still not overly interfering with semesters worth of education et al.
Yes DWG. This included spitting on Congressmen who are black, last year. Then the conservative cover up and excuses began with “well we don’t know whether it happened” (fill in the blank because a black man says it did). This is supposed to be a country where we should be able to “agree to disagree without being disagreeable”. Guess not.
Completely ridiculous!
Or how about Rand Paul operatives stomping on a female protester for carrying a sign mocking Paul as a employee of the month for Republicorp? The Paul campaign first denied knowing who perpetrated the stomping, then the smear campaign began against the woman as a paid agitator for Moveon and criminal (she was arrested at a protest at the BP staging site in New Orleans). Paul was in no danger of anything other than being mocked, yet violence by Paul campaign staff was treated as excusable beyond dropping stomper Tim Profitt from the campaign.
I know, that was so terrible. But okey dokey, “it’s her fault”, this is the way of the oppressor…these kind of tactics. He got elected anyway.
This event happened less than three weeks before the election, but had no effect on his polling numbers and he was elected by the large margin. If anything, the event seemed to have a backlash effect for Conway’s campaign even though Lauren LaVelle had no link to his campaign. The act of aggression by Tim Profitt, one of Paul’s county organizers, and Mike Pezzano, a prominent Tea Party member, was spun as a staged event by Republicans as if LaVelle somehow suckered these men into roughing her up to embarrass the Paul campaign.
Everything that happened in that campaign, curiously enough, had a backlash effect on Conway. It was almost as though the meme has been set in the state media before the general election even got underway. 😯
I found that aspect particularly puzzling. It did feel like the deck was stacked even though the Republican deregulation of everything, including the coal industry, had failed to produce prosperity in KY but they decided to double down on stupidity.
For a big baby like Rand Paul who has had the world handed to him on a silver platter, that is probably enough.
I forgot that incident. It is a great example of different rules for Republicans.
The security guards were justified in detaining the protester who stepped out of the crowd and thrust a sign at Sen. Paul’s limo. They both took her to the ground and rushed Paul into the event venue. Up to then, no problem. She hadn’t done anything illegal and neither had Sen. Paul’s security team.
Then Tim Profitt stepped on her head. There was no excuse. It was clear the woman was not a threat to anyone, especially not Sen. Paul, who was already inside the venue. Profitt was not even part of the security staff; he was just a county campaign coordinator. He had no reason to get involved.
That’s why Profitt was charged with fourth degree assault. He pleaded not guilty and a pretrial appearance was scheduled for January 11. I could find no more recent news on the case.
Good afternoon! ::hugggggs::
I wish there were never a need for protest demonstrations.
Oh man, bad start. Any comment on law or policy that begins with “I wish… ” is likely to have a short and difficult life 🙂
This whole topic of protest demonstrations is exceedingly tricky. On one hand, they have clearly been useful and necessary at times, as with the civil rights and anti-war demonstrations of the 60s. On the other, they can be abused, as the RW discovered in the 80s with their anti-choice demonstrations at family planning clinics. In the latter case, the violent passions of a minority have effectively taken over and become de facto policy re women’s access to reproductive choice, despite the “official” laws to the contrary.
What do demonstrations demonstrate, anyhow? Is it the moral rightness of a cause, and the number of people who share that view? Or are they just a measure of how passionately some people believe their personal version of reality, and how far they’re willing to go to insist that they get their way?
No matter how wise, just, or necessary a given government policy may be, we can be sure that somebody, somewhere, absolutely hates it, and is prepared to go to any lengths to demand it be changed. Those dissenting somebodys can’t be allowed to fill up the political space and crowd out the processes of small-d democratic governance. To the extent that protest demonstrations have become normal political speech, it seems to me that there has to be a mechanism to allow them to be channeled off to the side somewhere, in either time or space, so that government can conduct business, and political leaders and the citizenry have opportunities to interact without disruption and outside the framework of protest.
Are you suggesting that we should no longer have political protests: that street demonstrations have essentially ended their usefulness?
I know that those who protested in the big protests of the 60s and 70s are probably past the age where it is convenient (unless they have porta-potties on the parade route). However, nowadays the Glenn Beck Rally That Drew a Few Dozen is being used to show “overwhelming” support for the right-wing point of view. If we give up the counter-demonstrations does it just help make it look like they are the only voice and therefore, by default, correct?
The porta-potties remark is just so true. I’m at that age.
There was a difference back in the 60s and 70s: protests were relatively fresh and new, because there’d been very little of it since before WWII. People were astonished by it, and astonished by the numbers of people involved. Indeed, one of the things we felt we were reclaiming was the right to “peaceably assemble and petition”.
We’re no longer astonished. Maybe that has diluted the efficacy of street demonstrations.
There is certainly a question of the efficacy of protests now. The media only cover the sensational ones, and ignore the sensible calm ones. If you don’t get media attention, you get no one’s attention, really, not even the attention of politicians.
There were 10,000 people who marched for healthcare reform in Washington about a year ago. The only place I heard about it or saw it was on the HCAN website. About the same time, only my partner and I showed up at the Federal Courthouse to wave signs supporting reform.
The Teabaggers got attention because they were outrageous. The guy who wears a gun to a political rally gets at least two minutes of air time.
So if we march, who is listening? On the other hand, maybe if we got a whole lot more people together than a measly 10,000 at one place at the same time….
The short answer is, No, I’m not suggesting that.
Besides the necessary and effective civil rights and anti-war demonstrations from the 60s that I cited in my comment above, I can think of quite a few more recent examples of “good” demonstrations. The world-wide protests against the start of the Iraq War come to mind; also the anti-war protest during the 2004 GOP convention in NYC, the Icelanders protesting their government’s collusion in the recent financial crash, and many others.
You are, however, correctly detecting an aversion on my part to demonstrations as a primary mode of political speech. This has been growing in me for decades, and may merely be further proof that I’m becoming a grouchy old man by whom the world increasingly has passed 🙂 Or maybe it’s because, as the years have accumulated, I’ve had more occasion to directly participate in governance in assorted small ways, and have come to see demonstrations (or what we might call the “demonstrator’s mind-set”) as a hindrance to building an effective, well grounded consensus in support of actually-possible solutions.
Several factors have contributed to my personal aversion to demonstrations as a primary tool. 1) The fact that demonstrations can just as easily be used for wrong causes, as with the anti-choice and anti-HCR demonstrators. 2) The ignorant, nutty, negative, attention-seeking, and/or immature attitudes and behavior, which I consider to be counter-productive, that I have witnessed among people on “our side” at demonstrations in support of good causes. 3) My perception that demonstrations are (often, not always) a sort of power play, seeking to force acceptance of a set of demands that, if valid, ought to be adopted for other reasons than force, and if not valid, ought not to be adopted at all.
Having said that, I will now make some arguments in favor of demonstrations. Sometimes the governing entity gets kind of out of touch. They can be ignorant of conditions on the ground, forget who they are supposed to serve, get bogged down in group-think, get stuck in factional stalemates, become outright corrupt, etc. A well-intentioned person trying to work on the inside can’t make much headway in an environment like that without some stimulus from outside, and popular demonstrations can provide that. To put it bluntly– it allows the well-intentioned insider, who normally is ignored, to say to the entrenched powers, “Look, you can either deal with me in a serious way, or take your chances with that mob outside.”
Well, I can’t propose any grand, always-true resolution to the eternal political choice: to demonstrate or not to demonstrate. I do cop to a personal bias that is somewhat demonstration-averse, and to a personal preference or ambition to be the guy you can talk to, rather than the one who will get in your face with non-negotiable demands