"I think these were bad tactics. I don't think that they changed very many minds. In one sense it was a victory because it forced Wyden to cancel the Town Hall."
Benjamin Ben-Baruch, protester
The protesters proved they could destroy a public event.
They should have been arrested and removed.
The Medford police failed to maintain order.
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| Shouting protester |
Today's post is a follow-up on yesterday's special report. I described the takeover of Senator Ron Wyden's Town Meeting by pro-Palestine protesters. About a dozen people stood up as Wyden began to talk. They began shouting and reading scripts promoting Palestine and condemning Israel and Wyden. Wyden tried to talk and hear from the audience of about 100 people, to no avail. The protesters kept shouting.
The big thing that happened was that the Town Hall was called off. People saw something undeniable: Pro-Palestine protesters who were willing to be aggressively rude and selfish got their way. They have veto power over public discourse.
A second thing that happened was that people saw that a strong police presence in the room was not effective. It certainly looked like disturbing the peace and trespassing to me. The meeting had a purpose and rules regarding who drew the lucky ticket to speak. The protesters ignored those rules and took over. I saw audience members standing and confronting protesters, shouting at them to sit down. My sense is that the meeting could start to see fights and people injured. Several of the protesters carried cameras, perhaps anticipating an arrest. None came. The authority figures in the room chose to shut down the Town Hall, thereby avoiding a conflict, rather than restore order by removing people who disturbed it.
There is a legal problem with removing the protesters. Were we seeing freedom of speech, or people preventing it? Was this disturbing the peace? Trespassing? Were fragile people at risk of being injured if fights broke out?
After the meeting I heard complaints from attendees. The protesters weren't trying to persuade the audience. They were trying to disrupt.
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| Ben-Baruch |
I spoke with two protesters after the meeting. Ben Ben-Baruch said he questioned the tactics but not the cause. He recognized that the tactic angered and frustrated the audience.
Ryan Navickas justified the disruption of the protest as a drop in the bucket compared with the "genocide" being carried out by Israel.
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| Navickas |
My own view: The protesters should have been allowed to disrupt things for maybe five minutes, then arrested and removed.
The democratic process is under attack in America. Failure to maintain order around political speech does not advance freedom and democracy. It undermines it. The anarchists and hooligans who joined in the George Floyd/BLM protests in the long summer of 2020 hijacked peaceful protests. Portland police and prosecutors should have identified illegal acts and arrested, prosecuted, and jailed the people they saw doing those acts. The January 6 protesters inside the Capitol were attacking police officers, vandalizing, and threatening Members of Congress. Those are crimes.
My sense is that the Wyden-event protesters should have been removed by law enforcement. A peaceful public meeting was being disturbed by people who became trespassers when they failed to follow the meeting rules; reason enough. The meeting was becoming unsafe amid the confrontations; another reason. The processes of democratic government would have been preserved. Moreover, local law enforcement would have demonstrated that they can maintain order to protect democracy. That did not happen. That is a bad look.
What would be a good look?
--- Senator Wyden completing his Town Hall.
--- The mayor of Medford or its police chief explaining the actions of the Medford police in restoring order, saying that the police acted because we follow the law to protect democracy and the safety of our citizens.
--- The protesters, following release from custody, saying they were willing get arrested to make the point that they disagreed with American policy with Israel.
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10 comments:
Israel is hardly a third world country, yet the U.S. has given it $12.5 billion in military aid to use in its destruction of Gaza, resulting in the death of 39,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children. Israelis may believe it to be justified, but there’s no good reason for us to be a party to it. Protesters are trying to awaken America’s conscience but considering that half the country is ready to coronate a criminal, I’m not sure it has one.
In Portland, the police have been demoralized and demotivated by what happened during the protests in 2020. Despite widespread criminal activity by some protesters, including assaulting police officers with commercial grade fireworks and attempts to burn down a federal courthouse and the police union building, the police got no support from local government officials for doing anything to enforce the law. Instead, they got widespread condemnation, and “defunding“. As a result, many police officers decided the safest thing to do was to step back and not do their jobs with any kind of initiative.
So now in Portland, crime and social disorder is out of control, and the city and county government have belatedly woken up and are trying to get their demotivated and diminished police forces to actually do something. Whether or not that will succeed is an open question.
Perhaps police inaction in Medford is an example of this same phenomenon.
I was disappointed when they cancelled the meeting and left, only to find out it was reconvened. They could have announced that they were going to wait it out and I would have hung around.
I personally wasn't upset about the protesters, and I didn't see the point of risking public safety for a Town Hall meeting, so I thought it was the right call.
Otherwise I thought that it was kind of pointless to be making a fuss in sleepy ole Medford, but hey...free speech.
Be careful what you wish for. There may be an issue you feel so strongly about that you are willing to disrupt a public meeting and risk a trip to jail. These protesters knew that risk and maybe even welcomed it. Let’s not go back to situations like the 1968 Chicago Dem convention.
I'm disgusted by these protesters who think their rights take precedent over others.
Their disruptions are not new and they are not changing any minds.
Had I been there I would have shouted them down, take away their ability to disrupt.
I'd bet they are funded by antidemocracy groups, such as the GOPee.
No, this is not free speech. It is disorderly conduct.
No, Michael, the police in Medford have not been defunded, and neither were they in Portland. But in spite of intensified recruitment efforts, departments are shrinking in many cities, perhaps because of all the firepower Republicans have made available to the bad guys. It's made the job too risky.
The police budget in Portland, Oregon was cut by $15 million in 2020, as the liberals running the city responded to the events surrounding George Floyd’s death.
A couple of years later, they pulled their heads out of you-know-where and added some funds back. But by then, all sorts of crime and disorder was out of control, which is still the case.
My civics teacher often used to tell the class, "Your rights end where my nose begins."
There have been occasions at Portland's City Council where meetings have been disrupted by shouting and yelling, leading to the council adjourning and reconvening after the chamber was cleared. The council's decision was that those who were asked to leave were given the same amount of time they took from the meeting, but the remaining citizens were not allowed to express their opinions. Therefore, when they tried to reenter, they were stopped at the door. If their behavior was anything other than speaking or shouting at that point, they would be subject to arrest.
In 2020, the Portland Police budget was cut by $15 million to $225.5 million. A year and a half later, it was increased to a record $249 million. That’s a far cry from “defunding.” Gun violence in Portland, like the gun violence everywhere, is more related to all the lethal firearms so easily available to any crackpot, thanks to the merchants of death and their GOP.
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