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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

> Nobody would be trying to disperse crowds if everyone was peaceful.

That's not really true. There is an area between "lawful protesting" and "rioting" that's usually called civil disobedience. Civil disobedience as usually understood is peaceful, but it's also by design inherently disruptive.

In Austin, TX protestors blocked the main highway through the city. That was obviously incredibly disruptive, but many people believe the city police's forceful response of shooting less-lethal rounds relatively indiscriminately into the crowd was the exact type of response people were protesting against. A large group of trauma doctors in Austin wrote a paper arguing against using these types of rounds for crowd control due to the horrific injuries they treated: https://www.statesman.com/news/20200816/beanbag-rounds-cause...

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In my mind civil disobedience, as an ethical concept, is about refusing to comply with one or more laws that you believe to be unjust. Disregarding the Jim Crow laws seems to be the "textbook" example in this regard.

So blocking a road in order to draw attention to some other incident of injustice isn't about how the law about blocking roads is unjust, nor is it even about the some other unjust law. In your example the protest was about the George Floyd killing in which the police officers were rather quickly charged with a crime.

The protesters in your example are indeed "protesting" but I don't think that their tactics are an illustration of civil disobedience, as I understand it.

So if we are to excuse protestors for breaking laws I think there needs to be a different ethical argument that must be made. And that argument has to tackle the problem of which crimes can be excused: disorderly conduct, assault, arson, vandalism, theft/looting, manslaughter? And perhaps it matters how that disobedience is directed? For example, torching the police vehicle of the police force that is implicated in the injustice seems different to me (but still not necessarily excusable) than torching the police vehicle in a city thousands of miles a way from the incident, or than looting your local Best Buy.

For those of you who feel like these types of protests are ethical/warranted/justified, I would ask, what is the limiting principle? What would represent the protesters going "too far"? When would it be appropriate to say enough is enough? When is it no longer protesting and is just criminal behavior?

I would add that another component of civil disobedience is a willingness to accept the consequences, to be arrested without violence or any resistance. I should have included that in my original comment.

> to be arrested without violence or any resistance.

Again, why are people insisting on redefining words because they don't like their meaning? Chaining yourself to a physical structure like a building or tree, and going so far as to make cutting those chains difficult, is one of the prototypical examples of civil disobedience. The whole point is to make it difficult for police to arrest and remove the protestors in those situations.

I would argue that those are examples of non-violent approaches. Another tactic is to "play dead" so that the protesters have to be physically carried away, tedious and time consuming.

But those tactics are very different than what is going on and I think it is quite easy to distinguish between that sort of thing and rioting.

Honestly, this is kind of like putting your hand inside the mouth of a crocodile and then complaining that you have been bitten. Or if you start insulting/harassing and physically blocking someone and then start complaining that you were punched as a result.

I would consider civil disobedience something more like as a policeman to refuse to disrupt a peaceful protest, or illegally publishing data (consider Aaron Swartz, Alexandra Elbakyan, Edward Snowden, or Chelsea Manning), or someone like Oskar Schindler.

This definition of is ridiculous to me, implying that only the privileged few (policemen, those with specific knowledge) may be civilly disobedient.

The entire intent is for the masses, with no qualifications whatsoever, to make themselves heard in a way that cannot be ignored.

I am not implying that. For example a worker in a gun manufactory can be civilly disobedient too by not showing up, slacking off, or intentionally making arms of subpar quality.

Edit: I am talking about wartime labor mobilization. In addition the government owns gun manufactories too.

> to make themselves heard in a way that cannot be ignored.

You are stepping away from just civil disobedience then. Riots, sieges, or a full scale revolution fit that description better.

> For example a worker in a gun manufactory can be civilly disobedient too by not showing up, slacking off, or intentionally making arms of subpar quality.

You can't just redefine words to suit your fancy because you don't like what the word actually means. That example you give is literally 100% not what civil disobedience means. Civil disobedience by definition means defying government, not your employer.

I feel like you're being intentionally obtuse. Civil disobedience is protest against a government, and is usually assumed to be non-violent. Look at Wikipedia, pick any result out of Google. Blocking a highway is classic civil disobedience, in line with making a human chain and blocking access to government buildings.

Equating these acts with "siege" screams bad faith to me, I feel like every example you've given is intentionally misleading or missing the point.

If I blocked someone from getting in their driveway and shouted insults at them, I think getting punched would be reasonable. I am not a professional conflict resolver.

Police, on the other hand, are our paid civil servants. It is their job to remove passion and emotion from the interaction and to deescalate potentially dangerous situations. They have a duty to respond sub-proportionately in a way that resolves conflict unless their life is in danger.

Time and time again we see police responding by escalating tension, passion, and violence. This is a spectacular failure of their duty and huge breach of public trust.

Certainly, I agree that it would be better if they attempted to arrest these who block the road rather than shoot at them.

A crocodile is a vicious wild animal. And in your analogy... the police are the crocodiles?

Sorry for being facetious, but the whole point is that people expect police to have some self-control (unlike an animal) and behave better in these situations. If you're a cashier, and a customer is yelling at you, berating you, taunting you, etc. you're expected to try to remain calm and attempt to de-escalate the situation - certainly you're not supposed to attack the person. If anything, police should be held to an even higher standard than this.

> And in your analogy... the police are the crocodiles?

No, I would feel safer with a crocodile around actually.

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