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Comment by banannaise | Hacker News Reader

"Blocking traffic" is at this point a tired trope. Any sort of disruptive action is described as "blocking traffic", which is somehow framed as a form of violence. (My favorite version is when people argue that it is a form of unlawful detention akin to kidnapping.)

This would be more accurately framed as "parking illegally", which is the sort of thing for which you occasionally get a ticket placed under your windshield wiper, not the sort of thing for which armed, masked agents violently arrest you.

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Purposely moving your car in front of law enforcement officers' cars to prevent them from arresting a suspect is in fact obstruction. This is not "violence", but you will be arrested if you do this. If you resist arrest, you will be forcefully arrested/apprehended. If you then attempt potentially life-threatening physical harm to the officer you will likely be met with deadly force.

There are two different things at play, and it's important to be clear about them:

- Legal protest. Standing out of the way, yelling, singing, signs, etc. 100% protected, only subject to reasonable crowd control (by the local LEA), eg to move people off the roadway.

- Civil disobedience. Intentional non-violent violations of the law. Intended to slow/disrupt government activity. You are breaking the law to make a point, and should be willing to accept the consequences. The violations are almost always minor, with at most a week or two in jail and a fine. Law enforcement has a legal obligation to apply proportionally in the enforcement, if they are non-violent then little or no force is acceptable in detaining or citing the protestors.

>If you resist arrest, you will be forcefully arrested/apprehended. If you then attempt potentially life-threatening physical harm to the officer you will likely be met with deadly force.

Translation: you'll be summarily executed if the officer vaguely feels "threatened"

You can call it whatever you like, it's going to happen, and you know it will. You have the choice to not throw your life away by fucking with ICE and trying to aggravate and harass them on purpose, and to not become a clickbait internet video of someone getting shot for being stupid.

All of this conveniently ignores the question of whether the ICE agent's act was legal or ethical, and is bordering on victim blaming. And the record, I am against the women's behavior. I just think the ICE agent's response was totally disproportionate, and that we shouldn't be killing people for such activities. I'm also against stealing, but that doesn't mean I'm going to cheer if a shoplifter gets summarily executed by a cop, or think "the shoplifter has the choice not to throw their life away by not screwing with the cops" is an acceptable excuse for the cop's behavior.

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