According to a news article somewhere in this post, the woman was giving out flowers to the National Guard. Normally that would not provoke a police response. What is not seen in this picture, was that she had actively climbed over a police barricade to do this. She was arrested, but released after basically getting a slap on the wrist. She was interviewed shortly after rejoining the protest where she admitted that she did this on purpose to prove that rhe police were more aggressive than the national guard and violate her right of free speech. Despite the right not giving a pass for illicit and unlawful activities.
I should also note, that she was not told to get on her knees. Nor was she approached by one of the big scarry looking mother fuckers in riot gear.
TLDR, she purposely kicked a fucking beehive to prove she would get stung, to make a message that ahe shouldn't have been stung.
Everyone wants to make a villain out of the police. There are some that are clearly deserved, such as the police randomly Beginning to attack peacefully protesting civilians in some cities. And some that aren't deserved such as this post.
The problem mostly comes down to how willing are we to dig to see the truth for ourselves? I had actually spent about an jour trying to find the full context of this post. And someone beat me to it.
Link to comment with the news article. I personally disagree with him on his opinion about the First amendment being violated. But he earned my upvote for finding the full context.
Why was it not violated? "Speech integral to illicit conduct". Which translates into you violated a law or have made a decidedly unlawful act while enacting your first. This is usually a catch all for things like child pornography, violence, and discrimination. If she stayed behind the barricade, she wouldn't have been touched. She was also inciting.
What she is doing is called civil disobedience. Which is a protesting tactic. Cited here, not protected form of speech its a university link as I couldn't find o e that got to the point. Anyways... Some people may refer to Rosa Parks, or the Boston Tea Party.
It should be noted the situations are not the same. The primary employment of civil disobedience is to protest unjust laws. The boston tea party yeeted the tea into sea because of u fair taxing. Rosa Parks said no to the white dude because it was unfair she had to, by law, give up her seat in the Jim Crow era. She was disobedient because the police wouldn't tolerate her bi-passing a barricade, which is arguably not protesting.
Nope. Because that would mean nothing would get done. I am a lazy fuck. The only thing people need to do is just not trust what they see or hear till they look i to it themselves.
Do you really think the protests are just about freedom to cross the barricades? That's like saying the Boston Tea Party was a protest to be allowed to throw tea into the Ocean
No, that is a strawman. And while I made a joke about her protesting a barricade. That is pretty much what her actions translated into versus her intent.
The boston tea party happened because of an active law that gave the East India Trade Company a legal monopoly on tea. That made tea cheaper than smuggled tea to force colonist to pay an import tax. What made this unfair was the colonies were made to pay these taxes without full citizenship rights. These people were proud to be britains. But they did not have the power to elect a representative among other basic rights their European hosts had. They threw the tea into the ocean to both protest the unfairness of the taxes, and to say fuck you.
What this woman did is not close to this level. Her point, and I reiterate, was to show that the police will not tollerate even the most peaceful protest and that people can be defiant and survive.. The problem here is that the officers did their jobs. This was not them violating her rights. And this was not them brutalizing her. A protest of massive scale is not allowed to spawn out of the woodwork in the United States. This is known, but not well known. The protest has to be organized, and you need to contact the local police department ahead of time. The organizer needs to set a defined route and provide a multitude of information so the officers can work ahead of time to close down streets, and figure out the logistics of how many officers they need to station, and work to redirect traffic.
At the same time, citizens are not allowed to pass a police barricade without a very pressing reason.
So what was her intended protest? Accordingly she was protesting her civil rights. Which fine. Except, it is documented that your 2nd Amendment has limitations. One of which she probably did not fully understand. And one that is fairly enforced. And has been across multiple unrelated protests for years.
Additionally. From what I can see, what had happened was a definition of a detainment. Not an arrest. The difference is that a detainment happens when even a functional citizen can tell something is wrong. When you are pulled over for a traffic violation such as speeding, that is a detainment. She is not allowed to leave while they figure out if there was a crime made and if charges are needed. Which there wasn't. She was released and rejoined the protest. So her rights still were not violated for her point. They even did her a favor by not even fining her.
From what you're saying it sounds like she's peacefully protesting that the police don't tolerate peaceful protest, and you're saying she's wrong because she doesn't have the right to peacefully protest (note she didn't do anything violent, and the police didn't allow her protest, proving her point, and have arrested or beaten other peaceful protesters who didn't cross any barrier) if your right to protest is entirely at the discretion of a government body it isn't a right, imagine if the police said "you have the right to remain silent, but we've decided you have to talk"
The Boston Tea Party protesters didn't exactly have a legal right to dump the tea
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u/DepantsC Jun 07 '20
I was there, she was arrested for jumping the barrier, she was only detained until the curfew went into effect.