Protests and police on campus

[marshwiggle]

Any action that prevents normal, necessary activity from continuing until the protesters leave is extortion, and needs to be treated as such.

This basically amounts to not supporting protest (or strike) at all. If the only acceptable protest (or strike) is an invisible one that causes no disruption whatsoever, then it's not much of a protest (or strike) at all.

So if I'm upset that my boss didn't give me a raise, can I blockade the doors to her kids' daycare (with her kids inside)  until she changes her mind?

If voters are upset at an election results, can they blockade a railway, port, or major highway until it gets overturned?

That's okay--it's a position that's available in ideological space. But we shouldn't pretend that that's not what it is, or that it's somehow a 'moderate' position. It involves significant curtailment of the rights to free speech and assembly, and in ways clearly unsupported by the judicial record in most democracies.

Speech and assembly aren't the issue; but behaviour that would be illegal for purely monetary gain shouldn't become legal just because it's for moral or ideological reasons.
 

[dismalist]

Any action that prevents normal, necessary activity from continuing until the protesters leave is extortion, and needs to be treated as such.

This basically amounts to not supporting protest (or strike) at all. If the only acceptable protest (or strike) is an invisible one that causes no disruption whatsoever, then it's not much of a protest (or strike) at all.

So if I'm upset that my boss didn't give me a raise, can I blockade the doors to her kids' daycare (with her kids inside)  until she changes her mind?

If voters are upset at an election results, can they blockade a railway, port, or major highway until it gets overturned?

That's okay--it's a position that's available in ideological space. But we shouldn't pretend that that's not what it is, or that it's somehow a 'moderate' position. It involves significant curtailment of the rights to free speech and assembly, and in ways clearly unsupported by the judicial record in most democracies.

Speech and assembly aren't the issue; but behaviour that would be illegal for purely monetary gain shouldn't become legal just because it's for moral or ideological reasons.
 

It boils down to: Who owns the street? The street is free for the brown battalions? Surely not.

You'd be surprised how restrictively the right to assemble can legally be handled. You can't just cause inconvenience. Police permits are required for some actions. Here are some details from the ACLU

[Liquidambar]

It boils down to: Who owns the street? The street is free for the brown battalions? Surely not.

You'd be surprised how restrictively the right to assemble can legally be handled. You can't just cause inconvenience. Police permits are required for some actions. Here are some details from the ACLU

Thanks for the link.  From there...

Your rights are strongest in what are known as "traditional public forums," such as streets, sidewalks, and parks. You also likely have the right to speak out on other public property, like plazas in front of government buildings, as long as you are not blocking access to the government building or interfering with other purposes the  property was designed for.

From this, I infer that protestors wouldn't have the right to block access to the state-owned building where I teach, nor to be so loud that teaching was impossible in my classroom.  However,

Shutting down a protest through a dispersal order must be law enforcement's last resort. Police may not break up a gathering unless there is a clear and present danger of riot, disorder, interference with traffic, or other immediate threat to public safety.

That sounds like the police couldn't break up a protest even if it's loud enough to interfere with classes.  What happens then--the protestors would be going beyond what they're allowed to, but it wouldn't reach the point that police should intervene?  If protestors were blocking the building enough to cause a safety problem, police could break up the protest, but what if they're just making everyone late to classes?  It seems like the safety aspect would depend on knowing how full the building is and thus whether people could evacuate quickly enough in an emergency.

My curiosity is purely academic, since my campus doesn't have much of a protest culture.  My grad school did, but most of the protests occurred in a favorite central plaza.  I never had difficulty getting to my office or working even though my building was right next to the plaza.

[Wahoo Redux]

Didn't hear anything about police arresting the Ivy League students who were protesting against the Tigray war in 2020-2022, which killed a half million. Or the students who have been protesting against the civil war in Sudan, which has killed ~ 20,000 and displaced ~ 8 million. Or the students who have been protesting Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has killed about a half million so far, and has involved the rape and torture of civilians, as well as the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russian hinterlands.

Why are the students protesting against the war in Gaza so special?

The standard answer is that Israel is an important ally in an oil-rich and unstable part of the world.  It makes the news.  We have many people who have relocated here from Israel and Muslim countries.  They also make the news with their extremism.  Africa? 

I am embarrassed to admit that I know nothing of these other wars.  I am sure they are in the news if I look for them, but they are certainly not headline getting.  As for Ukraine, I don't think there is a lot of controversy about our role in that conflict. 

[marshwiggle]

It boils down to: Who owns the street? The street is free for the brown battalions? Surely not.

You'd be surprised how restrictively the right to assemble can legally be handled. You can't just cause inconvenience. Police permits are required for some actions. Here are some details from the ACLU

Thanks for the link.  From there...

Your rights are strongest in what are known as "traditional public forums," such as streets, sidewalks, and parks. You also likely have the right to speak out on other public property, like plazas in front of government buildings, as long as you are not blocking access to the government building or interfering with other purposes the  property was designed for.

From this, I infer that protestors wouldn't have the right to block access to the state-owned building where I teach, nor to be so loud that teaching was impossible in my classroom.  However,

One very interesting point:

Counterprotesters also have free speech rights. Police must treat protesters and counterprotesters equally. Police are permitted to keep antagonistic groups separated but should allow them to be within  sight and sound of one another.

"Anything you can do, I can do." I imagine the obnoxious protesters would be deeply offended at someone doing the same things to them.

[Langue_doc]

Live Updates: N.Y.U. Orders Protesters to Disperse as Tensions Rise at U.S. Colleges

[Hibush]

Some of the students seem to be engaging in the time-honored protest ritual of staying put and chanting while getting arrested for trespassing (charges that will be dropped). That exercise has not been productive  in the past, so I don't expect it to be at Yale or Columbia.

Any action that prevents normal, necessary activity from continuing until the protesters leave is extortion, and needs to be treated as such.

Just being in the way is not going to meet the threshold for extortion. They have to threaten force. They also have to want something, but that is not the case for impeded passers by.

Interestingly, my handy legal dictionary also notes that extortion includes when "under the color of office, a public or private authority .., abuse{s} their authority."  In that case, the campus administrators and police have to be careful about threatening to knock heads the old fashioned way.

[secundem_artem]

Time to turn a fire hose on these fools and give 'em a good soaking.

I can well imagine people having a well thought out level of support for either side.  But people who are so smugly full of righteous certainty that theirs is the only just cause get no sympathy from me.

[Parasaurolophus]

I was being, as my immigrant Arab Muslim wife would put it, facetious.

There haven't been protests against wars in Ethiopia, Sudan, or Ukraine. Gaza is a cause célèbre.

The standard answer is that Israel is an important ally in an oil-rich and unstable part of the world.  It makes the news.  We have many people who have relocated here from Israel and Muslim countries.  They also make the news with their extremism.  Africa? 

Crucially, Israel is a client state which receives enormous subsidies from the United States--along with the very weapons they are using to willfully murder Palestinians and annex their land, and not to mention the extensive diplomatic cover the US has given them at the UN. That's just not true of Ethiopia, Ukraine, or Sudan. It's entirely appropriate to try to exert pressure on one's own government when that government (1) is so heavily (if indirectly) involved, and (2) has the diplomatic power to affect the conditions in question.

Remember, also, that public officials in Texas have to swear an oath to Israel. That alone shows that the relationship between the two countries is not the usual kind of thing between foreign countries.

So if I'm upset that my boss didn't give me a raise, can I blockade the doors to her kids' daycare (with her kids inside)  until she changes her mind?

That's a non sequitur, and you know it.

In the case of a strike, what you can do is band together with the other employees who are upset and refuse to work--or to allow replacements to work--until the management negotiates with you. You can block access to the workplace to encourage others not to undermine your strike (though you obviously may not physically remove anyone who wishes to cross your picket line). If it's just you, you're shit out of luck. If it's a couple hundred of you, the boss had better listen.

If voters are upset at an election results, can they blockade a railway, port, or major highway until it gets overturned?

Sure. And, as you know from past discussion, I'm absolutely happy to extend the same courtesy to the other side, even when I think their cause is moronic. And that's because I firmly believe in the right to free speech (although, again, you'll recall that I'm not a Millian absolutist).

[dismalist]

If voters are upset at an election results, can they blockade a railway, port, or major highway until it gets overturned?

Sure. And, as you know from past discussion, I'm absolutely happy to extend the same courtesy to the other side, even when I think their cause is moronic. And that's because I firmly believe in the right to free speech (although, again, you'll recall that I'm not a Millian absolutist).

Sure, but free speech is a distraction here. It's about who owns the street. Power settles the argument. Annie, get my gun.

[kaysixteen]

All this is true.   Doesn't mean that Israel isn't a settler colonialist state, though.

[Wahoo Redux]

All this is true.   Doesn't mean that Israel isn't a settler colonialist state, though.

Don't forget the Biblical connection, however.

[marshwiggle]

All this is true.   Doesn't mean that Israel isn't a settler colonialist state, though.

There is a very big can of worms which this opens. It's well established archeologically that in parts of North America, (for instance), at  times different indigenous groups have occupied a particular region. Often these occupations were centuries apart, and it's not clear what happened to the earlier groups. When there are questions about who "owns" artifacts from those earlier groups, the most recent indigenous group to have inhabited that area usually claims responsibility for them. But how is that claim any more legitimate that the claim of whoever currently occupies the area, indigenous or not?

Also, as some commentators have pointed out, in the UK, the *"indigenous" occupants are the white people, and immigrants are the "settlers".




(* And if you really want to get picky, the Welsh would have the most "indigenous" ancestry, since "welsic" was what the Anglo-Saxons called the indigenous Britons, which, ironically, means "foreigner". They were driven west as the invaders came from the continent.)

[Langue_doc]

Didn't hear anything about police arresting the Ivy League students who were protesting against the Tigray war in 2020-2022, which killed a half million. Or the students who have been protesting against the civil war in Sudan, which has killed ~ 20,000 and displaced ~ 8 million. Or the students who have been protesting Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has killed about a half million so far, and has involved the rape and torture of civilians, as well as the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russian hinterlands.

Why are the students protesting against the war in Gaza so special?

The donors, the donors. Weren't they responsible for the resignations of the presidents at Harvard and UPenn?

Minouche is probably on the way out as well.

Columbia's President May Face a Censure Resolution
The university senate is expected to vote as early as Wednesday on a resolution censuring Nemat Shafik, a reaction to her testimony before Congress and the arrests of student protesters.

In the meantime, the protests continue here in the city and also at other universities.

Universities Struggle as Pro-Palestinian Demonstrations Grow
Dozens were arrested Monday at N.Y.U. and Yale, but officials there and at campuses across the country are running out of options to corral protests that are expected to last the rest of the school year.

[spork]

I was being, as my immigrant Arab Muslim wife would put it, facetious.

There haven't been protests against wars in Ethiopia, Sudan, or Ukraine. Gaza is a cause célèbre.

The standard answer is that Israel is an important ally in an oil-rich and unstable part of the world.  It makes the news.  We have many people who have relocated here from Israel and Muslim countries.  They also make the news with their extremism.  Africa? 

Crucially, Israel is a client state which receives enormous subsidies from the United States--along with the very weapons they are using to willfully murder Palestinians and annex their land, and not to mention the extensive diplomatic cover the US has given them at the UN. That's just not true of Ethiopia, Ukraine, or Sudan. It's entirely appropriate to try to exert pressure on one's own government when that government (1) is so heavily (if indirectly) involved, and (2) has the diplomatic power to affect the conditions in question.

[. . .]

The USA also heavily subsidizes Egypt's military, as part of the Camp David Peace Agreement. In an excellent example of making America great again, ammunition fired at Egyptian pro-democracy demonstrators in January 2011 was manufactured in the USA with U.S. taxpayer money. Didn't see any Ivy League campus protests about that. Although I can list numerous other examples (looking at you, Saudi Arabia, killing Yemenis with your American weapons), but I won't.

Hamas, or what's left it of it, has managed to persuade, with the connivance/laziness of mainstream U.S. media outlets, a chunk of Ivy League college students that American white vs. brown race politics maps exactly to the Palestinian-Israeli situation. Score one for American ignorance.

As for tent encampments and whatnot at places like Columbia, last I checked those campuses are private property. Interfere with business operations, suffer the consequences. Back in the Vietnam War era, getting arrested was the whole point of protesting. I guess not anymore. Students spending their time not being students have to be protected from the emotional harm of being held accountable for their actions.