Protest comes home, literally
The trouble with demonstrating outside of politicians' private homes.
“Horseshoe theory” posits that the farthest of the far left and right have more in common with each other than with the political center.
(comic via James Mellor)
Tankies, anarchists, Proud Boys and neo-fascists get very, very angry when you suggest this, which is why I make a point of suggesting it as often as possible.
A disturbing article in the Los Angeles Times explains how left- and right-wing agitators have have moved on from protesting in public places and near government buildings, and are adopting a common tactic: setting up shop at the private homes of elected politicians and even civil servants.
For government officials from Los Angeles to Seattle and beyond, 2020 was the year that political protests came home to roost.
Demonstrators repeatedly ditched traditional venues, such as government buildings and big commercial streets, to chant, fulminate and sit-in outside the front doors of officials including Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti,Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey and the county's director of public health, Barbara Ferrer.
When Sacramento’s mayor and city manager got the same treatment in 2020, the city responded like many of its peers nationally: quietly letting the protesters have their way, in the hope of avoiding violent encounters with police.
That approach ended on the last Sunday of March in California’s capital, at a planned protest outside City Manager Howard Chan’s suburban home. It triggered a massive police response and denunciations from civic leaders, business organizations, a statewide federation of civic officials and even civil rights groups.
“No more," said an open letter signed by Mayor Darrell Steinberg, his eight fellow City Council members and about 60 other individuals and organizations. “A small group of people willing to embrace violence to advance their ill-defined agenda cannot be allowed to put our city leaders and their families at risk in their homes. Protest at City Hall, not outside someone’s bedroom.”
[…]
Over the last year, groups on the left and right have taken protests to officials' front steps, targeting not just thick-skinned career politicians but more obscure appointed bureaucrats. Last year, conservative antimask protesters showed up at the home of Dr. Nichole Quick, Orange County's chief health officer, displaying a banner depicting her as Adolf Hitler. The doctor resigned days later.
In Sacramento, the more restrained outcome outside Chan's house felt like a victory to the city's establishment, allowing reasonable dissent and perhaps taking a small step toward restoring a more traditional notion of what constitutes "the public square."
Yet friends of the protesters called it an overreaction and said "home visits" will remain a tool in their arsenal. Skyler Henry, a Sacramento musician sympathetic to the "Sactivists," said two-faced public officials are fair game for such tactics, whether they are city managers or Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a moderate Democrat from Arizona who recently voted against a minimum wage increase.
“You should be terrorized for the rest of your life. You should never be able to leave your house, if that is how you are going to use your position to govern," Henry said of Sinema. "The same thing sort of applies with the mayor and city manager of this city."
Do what we say and no one gets hurt. A few twists and turns in this left-wing woman’s life, and she might have been storming the Capitol with the other pro-Trump putschists.
Later in the story, another “activist” gives the game away and admits that they’re protesting at Chan’s home for the purpose of intimidating him:
Podcast host Dave Kempa said Chan, Steinberg and other city officials “have blood on their hands for years of gross negligence toward our unhoused neighbors and a constant, obstinate refusal to hold our police force responsible for their violence.”
Kempa and his three fellow podcasters mocked the notion that the property damage done at the mayor’s house amounted to “violence.”
“They are describing injuring landscaping as violence,” said Flojaune Cofer, a nonprofit healthcare administrator. “I don’t view that as violence. I view that as intimidation. I view that as property damage.”
"Voices" commentators, including Henry, all agreed that Sacramento's top leaders appear oblivious to the suffering of common people and shouldn't sleep easy as a result.
“You don’t feel comfort, ever again, until you start ameliorating the pain of the people,” said Kempa, a freelance journalist.
This is a tactic that might be at least somewhat defensible in a black-and-white world with absolutely no shades of gray, where righteous and good policies are completely obvious and can be easily distinguished from evil ones that kill people, and where governments have completely unlimited resources and can do absolutely anything and everything.
Here on earth, politicians and civil servants have no choice but to weigh competing interests, decide what resources are to be allocated to whom, and to tell people that, unfortunately, you don’t always get what you want. It’s difficult and stressful work at the best of times. It’s even worse when a bunch of yahoos are targeting your family home.
At the very least, you’re going to turn even more good people away from public service because it’s just not worth the hassle. Even worse, innocent family members and neighbors could be targeted, injured or even killed. But what is that to the fanatic, so sure that he or she knows The True Pathᵀᴹ and that anyone who hasn’t disassociated from The Enemyᵀᴹ is complicit?
I would be very wary of laws preventing people from protesting at officials’ homes - that kind of thing inevitably leads to overreach by law enforcement - but when people glibly talk about doing this they should be called out on it. One slip-up on social media and the mob could be at your home.
In the wake of the Daunte White shooting by police in Minnesota, most people on social media expressed their outrage and horror. But in any comment section or thread of Twitter responses, you always get some people saying that if the person killed by police had just followed their orders, this wouldn’t have happened.
Here’s the thing: they’re probably right.
Police officers are tasked with enforcing the laws, and they are given the power to detain people suspected of violating them - and to use reasonable force against them if they resist. Maybe someday we’ll be living in a utopia where there is no police and we’ve e̶x̶e̶c̶u̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶l̶a̶s̶s̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶i̶t̶o̶r̶s̶ eliminated all crime through enlightened policies, but for now, police are here to stay, and their authority should be respected. If and when they make mistakes, the time to challenge that is in court.
But…
There is a flip side to the power we give to police, and that is that law enforcement officers are expected to do their jobs fairly, competently and within the bounds of the law.
That means police officers shouldn’t be quick to pull their guns on a uniformed military officer and scream threats at him on the pretense that he didn’t have a license plate. Or keep their knees on the neck of a suspect in obvious physical distress, to the point where it kills him. Or - in a recent Canadian example - repeatedly punching a suspect who is already on the ground.
Or, in this case, not using a gun when you meant to use a Taser:
Brooklyn Center, Minnesota police shared a police body cam video of the encounter between officers and 20-year-old Daunte Wright, who was shot and killed during a traffic stop on Sunday.
Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon said at a press conference that he believed the officer accidentally pulled their gun instead of a taser.
“As I watch this video and listen to the officer’s commands, it is my belief that the officer had the intention to deploy their taser but instead shot Mr. Wright with a single bullet,” Gannon said. “This appears to me, from what I viewed, and the officer’s reaction in distress immediately after, that this was an accidental discharge, that resulted in the tragic death of Mr. Wright.”
Gannon said that officers are trained to carry handguns on their “dominant side,” and tasers on their “weak side.”
The video shows police handcuffing Wright, who then tries to re-enter his car. The officer can be heard shouting “taser” several times, while taking out a gun and shooting Wright. “Oh sh*t, I just shot him,” the officer can be heard saying immediately afterwards.
In the heat of the moment, would I always be sure I’d grabbed the correct weapon? No. But I am not a police officer.
From the body camera video, it looks like the officer had the gun in her hand for several seconds before she fired a shot. And some people on Twitter who actually know about this stuff - yes, they exist - say that a Taser feels completely different from a handgun or revolver. It is also made in a different color, and worn on the other side of the officer’s body.
I am not sure a criminal offence was committed by the officer - a similar case in California resulted in an involuntary manslaughter conviction, but I don’t know if the same provision is on the books in Minnesota - but it looks like absolutely shocking negligence at the very least. And there has to be some accountability for it.
People have a duty to follow a law enforcement officer’s instructions - but that only works if the officers are holding up their end of the deal. No one can reasonably expect police to never, ever make mistakes, but they sure as hell shouldn’t mess up this often. And authorities shouldn’t be waiting until damning videos go viral before they take action.
The AstraZeneca vaccine risks in perspective:
Some Canadians are now refusing to take the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 because of safety concerns. If they don’t want it I wish they’d give me a call, because I would take it in a heartbeat.