Like Occupy wall street when loads of people were arrested just for assembling.[1]
Of course, there's always the classic "arrested for resisting arrest" [2] too.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/19/naomi-wolf-arr...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeDsO5R8Xr0
Even when you know the law, and follow it very closely, you can still be arrested.
I understand that not everyone shares this understanding. I also understand that not everyone agrees that such restrictions are reasonable.
My understanding is that around 2000 people were arrested[1] for peacefully assembling. It wasn't 2am, and they were not sacrificing any humans.
In the case of Naomi being arrested that I posted above, she very clearly knew the sidewalks are public, and she was very clearly not breaking any laws, and was arrested anyway. Of course charges were later dropped, because the Police very well knew they had nothing on her.
So when the Police in the USA don't like your perfectly legal use of 'right at assemble' they arrest you, fingerprint you, make sure you get a record and are out of the way for a while, then just kick you out the back door when they're sick of you.
That doesn't sound so great to me.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street#Arrests
How public officials get "punished" is one of my biggest issues. We are right now holding them to a lower standard whereas we should hold them to a much higher standard. If a public official, especially in law enforcement, commits a crime it's a much bigger problem because it undermined the entire system beyond just the crime itself. This should result in draconic punishments for even small crimes.
As I understand it, protests work by putting stress on a system in order to force change. In cases where the protest overt actions such as police brutality or discrimination, it may only be necessary to provoke a response and then rely on the injustice of the response to apply pressure. E.g. when black people in the Civil Rights movement insisted on their rights and were met with violence it made it impossible for society to ignore the injustice of the system.
However, when trying to change policy or overall behavior it is often necessary to apply pressure by outlasting the other side. An example would be striking workers trying to outlast management.
Since protests, and social movements in general, rely on momentum, and constant pressure, kicking protesters out even temporarily undermines the ability to successfully protest.
is over a specific unjust action it may only be necessary to provoke a
It seems to me that for issues such as police brutality, discrimination, or unjust laws it's possible to have successful protests that are relatively short term. That is because the strategy is to purposefully to provoke a response that society won't tolerate (e.g. during the Civil Rights movement where black people would insist on their rights knowing that they would result in violence and thereby demonstrate the injustice of the system).
However, it seems to me that movements that o
In a similar vein, possibly the most successful and iconic protests in American history (the Million-Man march, the Freedom Riders, the Memphis sit-ins, etc) during the Civil Rights movement did so precisely because they disrupted everyday life (like sitting at a diner, riding public transit, getting to work).
For a protest to be successful it has to be provocative and disruptive. Peaceful means without violence, it doesn't mean without provocation.
If you disagree with this, do you also think that having the road blocked by a Klan rally should be considered peaceful?
To counter this you could make at least one concrete link between your list of potential concerns to the OP's comment about Occupy.
The article cited in the comment I responded to claimed that a person characterized as arrested for political views was arrested for blocking a public right-of-way.
The primary reason I did not list this above is because it functions as an open invitation to endlessly debate if the public right-of-way was blocked or not, how relevant or legal related laws are, and so on. That would have been, in my opinion, not a useful, interesting, or substantive discussion. Almost every party involved would have attended having already decided what was true and ready to argue it forever.
So I skipped it in favor of a more subtle point - restrictions are both allowed and accepted.
They make it awful to be arrested and detained, and know the case will be dismissed but that doesn’t matter.
https://www.russellsage.org/publications/process-punishment-...
Note that the city won the most notable lawsuit that was filed: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/occupy-brook....
That said, a number of other lawsuits were never ruled on, but rather settled out of court: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/occupy-wall-street-nyc-reaches-...