Diane @ 21

Too many of us can’t afford that kind of action.
Too many of us don’t have the time available, because time off from work is money we won’t have for food and rent and transportation.
Too many of us are contingent workers or can be fired for any reason our bosses can get past the corporate lawyers.

And this is a reason to not consider a strike???

Logic like that would have resulted in the stillbirth of the United Mine Workers.

The very reasons you give for not taking part in something like this are what led to people dying and being injured in labor struggles throughout the thirties and forties. The ownership class loves it when someone else becomes a member of the club as long as that person has just enough to get by on so that the job now becomes a complete necessity and the thing now onwed, probably a house, becomes the lodestone that drags the worker under the boss’s thumb.

I’m not trying to be mean-spirited or unfeeling, I understand what it is like to have to work every single day at a job you hate with no end in sight and a paycheck away from destitution, but that situation won’t change by itself and the Democrats and Republicans give a shit about whether or not you ever even get close enough to get a whiff of the American dream as evidenced by the wonderful Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005.

Arabs say hyeanas steal babies. I can believe that.

Well, Kirk, you have got me thinking further.
Still don’t know what I’ll ultimately (?) decide.

And thanks to all who joined in this respectful discussion of our different perspectives on the appropriate place and manner for public protests.

Thanks especially to Christy for her tolerance of my very different opinion on this matter.

I’m also appalled that anyone threatened you for carrying out your official (non-elected) duties.

I’ve been physically assaulted once and threatened on numerous occasions in the public psych clinic in just two years – always for failing to act as a soft drink dispenser for the patient’s prescription drug of choice. The most recent charmer kicked his tiny companion dog in front of me and then towered over me screaming when I told him my office was no place for violence.

Complaining about me – protesting me – is one thing.

Threatening me is another – and it illegal, if it comes as retaliation for my official duties.

Christy, I would never support any form of physically threatening statement at someone’s office or home, and I genuinely regret you were threatened physically. (and that I have been assualted and threatened… I won’t be in that clinic much longer).

If I saw DiFi or Pelosi – both of whom refuse to meet anti-war constituents – pushing a grandkid around the Ferry Plaza in a pram, I’m quite comfortable reminding Grandma – in conversational tones – that her blood-soaked cowardice deprived hundreds of thousands of other grandmothers the same pleasure.

And do it all in “cooey that’s a good baby” tone for the little one.

Raise my voice? Nope – detracts from my message, and would bother the babe.

Follow someone around a market? Nope – I’m trespassing on private property.

But threaten – never.

I wish law enforcement in the Pacific Northwest shared your concern about threats to public figures – when the public figure is an enviro, the rural sherriffs laugh in our faces.

So I have many practical reasons – in addition to my own values – to never support anyone making threats of personal injury in public protests (or any other context – includig foreign policy).

In my experience, those who have arrived at forest protection/ anti-globalization protests and made such threats or encouraged others to physical violence ultimately proved to be working for or informing for law enforcement.

Because they are presumed to be infomers/provocateurs and because what they advocate is wrong, those advocating any form of violence agaist persons have been, are, and will be excluded from any experienced organizer’s protests.

So the sort of “property-line” edge protests I advocate (here and elsewhere) is non-violent, non-threatening, conducted on public property – and intended to use legal means to make adults so emotionally uncomfortable they decide to make different choices.

Speech, pure and simple.

And – precisely because it is socially objectionable – precisely the form of public assembly and speech most needing Constitutional protection.

Because home-adjacent protests are unpopular speech.

Unfortunately, I think the sad truth is many of the targets would find ways to stop it, even short of resorting to the courts. Gated communities, for example, as someone mentioned above. And hiring their own personal goons. Look what happened to the guy who tried to ask George Allen a question last year (not the macaca thing, an incident where Allen’s thugs threw the questioner on the ground.)