Blocking Traffic While Protesting Could Become Felonies in FL | Hacker News Reader

Blocking Traffic While Protesting Could Become Felonies in FL

forbes.com

20 pointslando231912 comments

One more thought: I wonder how this will play with Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law.

A provision of the protest law does not make a driver liable for injury or death if fleeing a mob. What if a person is in the path of a car fleeing? Does that individual have the right to shoot at the driver if he/she feels threatened?

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in South Florida where there are a number of communities (Black, Cuban, Venezuelan) that have staged protests in recent years.

A common tactic — used prior to protests this summer — is to get a line of cars stretching across all lanes of I-95 and driving slow to cause traffic backups. I wonder if these will be grouped in with the “on foot” protests.

Seems like an easy enough problem to resolve. Just suspend the license of anyone whose vehicle has been involved in a blockade for five years and then seize and auction off the vehicles themselves. Protesters defending the vehicles can be considered participants in the blockade and arrested then fined accordingly.

In the United States, most public spaces are streets or surrounded by streets. This law would make it nearly impossible for protestors to exercise their first amendment rights. Step one foot outside of the park in which you were protesting? Felony.

my first thought was about blocking mobile phone traffic or at least something related to data ^^

Seems unconstitutional.

It would be helpful if you supported your argument a bit here: why do you think it is unconstitutional?. The government imposes a lot of limits on protesting. And most of the key bullet points have analogs that are legal, such as minimum jail sentences.

\* I don't support these laws and it's pretty clear that they are going to be selectively enforced on Democratic protestors only.

Right to Protest vs Right of travel and safety...

Stop blocking others path

Meta-comment.

I realize it's a poetic, not meaningful, artifact, but

I find it illustrative of where we are that at this moment that this headline is buried half way down page 2,

but Firefox allowing someone to fill out forms is the number one article.

May the remaining Gods take mercy.

Incidentally, De Santis is also attempting to relieve drivers who strike protestors of any liability.

Since BLM and related protests started, right wing/white nationalist/fascist drivers have driven into protestors and injured or killed 60+ of them (https://www.google.com/search?q=60+protestors+struck+by+cars)

DeSantis is of course signaling.

I don't know if you can say that all of the people who have been involved in these incidents are fascists. During the first outbreak of protests in Austin my car was surrounded when they went onto the frontage roads heading for I35. I knew the side streets well enough to get out of there but, if they had started hitting my car or trying to pull me out for whatever reason I would have sped off too. I had no intention of getting caught up in the protests they had just started and happened to be on the route I was taking.

MAYBE people would not be running over these MOBS if they weren't afraid of being shot at or dragged out of the car and beaten to death. https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/06/30/man-is-shot-he-drives...

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