12 ms·

You're talking to one right now. So let's discuss. My view is that everyone has the right to protest whenever and whatever. And you can also as part of your pr

You're talking to one right now. So let's discuss. My view is that everyone has the right to protest whenever and whatever. And you can also as part of your protest show a little bit of civil disobedience, like break a few windows, burn a fire can, chant loudly through the night keeping everyone awake, or block some roads. Something to really get people to pay attention and really listen to what you have to protest about and see how serious you take the matter. But after people did notice you, and did listen, and after they've asked you to please stop your civil disobedience now and continue your protest within the laws, if you still continue with civil disobedience, well it is normal for the government to then follow up with threats of consequences, like tear gas, handcuffs, jail time, fines, account freezes, etc. And if you still refuse after the treats, then it's normal for the government to follow through with it after all that, and force you to now obey the civil laws. This I feel is true of all protests, may I agree or not with the protesters. You can continue to protest, but you can't be breaking the laws forever. We can't have people block the biggest commercial boarder between Canada and US all year long because they're protesting. Once the message has been heard, if people didn't care, it means you don't have support, and you kind of have to accept that. You can keep protesting normally hoping to slowly build more and more support, but you can't keep civil disobedience going on until you get support, because that's starting to get closer to coercion.

NhanH 5y ago
You made a lot of hidden assumptions in both of your replies so it’s a bit hard to response. But let me try one: if I claim that they can’t use physical force because they (the government) didn’t have the popular support and risk facing overwhelming violence escalation, what is your response to that? (I’m not saying that it is the case, more to question some of your assumptions in this situation) > if you still continue with civil disobedience, well it is normal for the government to then follow up with threats of consequences, like tear gas, handcuffs, jail time, fines, account freezes, etc. More to the point, the government are free to follow up the threat in a court case in front of a judge, and the fact that they didn’t is the problem
- ladallada 5y ago
  > if I claim that they can’t use physical force because they (the government) didn’t have the popular support and risk facing overwhelming violence escalation, what is your response to that? I'm not sure I'm following 100% your question, but I think you mean what if the government is so unpopular that the country is close to a revolution from its citizens? This doesn't really makes sense to me in a liberal democracy like Canada. Every few years, the citizen get to replace the government with another if they're unhappy with the current one. The opposition are able to have a vote to cast out the current prime minister if they want. The governor general, at any point, if it senses the people are no longer favorable to the government can kick off a new election as well. On top of that, the government is using force within the established limits of the laws and Charter of Rights of the country that are already pre-agreed upon, and the force it is using is itself in order to enforce the laws of the country from being broken, which is kind of its job as a government. > More to the point, the government are free to follow up the threat in a court case in front of a judge, and the fact that they didn’t is the problem I'm not really following your point? The government is also allowed to enforce laws, and they can later be trialed. Police does this all the time, they will intervene and perform an arrest, and the trial in front of the court happens after. They are also free to enact the Emergency Act in the case of an Emergency as they did. The funds from bank accounts are frozen, not taken. What will happen next is they will either be released, or a court case can start and decide what to do with the funds.
  - NhanH 5y ago
    > I'm not sure I'm following 100% your question, but I think you mean what if the government is so unpopular that the country is close to a revolution from its citizens? I meant that they didn’t have the popular support to shut down the protest (I was not talking about the general popular support to the government as a whole, but just this specific issue). In the previous post, you were assuming that the protest does not have popular support and I wonder if that assumption is correct. The specific methods used to shutdown the protest matter a lot. The police are free to arrest them or impound their vehicles. Freezing the bank account is not a standard course of actions, which you seems to think are similar to arresting. Even in the case of arresting, the police can’t even hold you for more than a few days unless they can find a prosecutor to file some charges against you. They were free to use a plethora of methods to stop the protests, the complaint a lot of people have is they didn’t use other methods, and choose something that a lot of people consider immense overreach.
sebow 5y ago
> You can continue to protest, but you can't be breaking the laws forever. One of the reasons the right to protest is a fundamental one is because laws are made by people, for people, in the service of the public good and well-being of the citizens. If the people protest against the laws then that's their right, the people and their will is above the law, the law is not above the people's will as a whole. This is almost universally true, and you cannot make the argument of 'shutting down the right to protest' on the pretext of breaking a law, because protests are ultimately motivated on laws or policies being changed.Nobody protests forever.
- ahtihn 5y ago
  > If the people protest against the laws then that's their right, the people and their will is above the law, the law is not above the people's will as a whole. It's not the people's will as a whole though. It's a tiny minority of people that are protesting.
  - sebow 5y ago
    That's arguably true, though I'm also skeptical of any official numbers. The protests are not homogeneous at all: on one hand you have seemingly long convoys that are made up of small number of people, there are also very dense on-foot protests, it's somewhat hard to make an accurate estimation. Still, making a statement doesn't require a majority.Usually if 0.5%-1% or more of the population starts protesting, the governing body responds, (or at least it should imo, having potentially more than 2-3% of the population actively involved in a political manner it's not a good sign: politicians don't want people too closely involved). This however vastly depends on the country, the culture, the people.Protests are also not accurate representations of the electorate.
pclmulqdq 5y ago
I am not the person you were originally responding to, but I believe that this protest has been handled in a particularly poor way. The commercial border crossings were all opened in nonviolent fashion by the police before the emergencies act was passed. The only remaining protest, which seemed to honestly be the most effective group, was the one in Ottawa. By many accounts, they did not get anyone in government to actually listen to them: Trudeau's government refused to speak with the protesters, and instead went into hiding until they could figure out how to use force to get these people to leave. If Trudeau had eaten crow and published his plan for lifting mandates, they may well have dispersed. What seemed to occur instead was that the LPC (in conjunction with the NDP and the CBC) used disinformation to circle the wagons and make excuses for a dramatic escalation in force, while refusing to publish a plan for the lifting of mandates. Contrast that with the BLM protests recently, where you saw a lot of dialogue between the government and the protesters and a relatively peaceful dispersal of the protest. Make no mistake, "account freezes" are not a normal consequence of protest, even of violent riots. The Canadian government is also talking about similar things like revoking licenses, removing insurance, killing peoples' pets, and selling peoples' trucks and keeping the excess beyond what they need to cover fines. For all of these discussions, the Trudeau government is rightly being panned as tyrannical and dictatorial. The "win condition" of civil disobedience is usually to get some imagery of the police or the government doing something really brutal in response to your protest. Trampling a Native American elder with a horse (and then lying about nobody being hurt and then lying about someone throwing a bike) and freezing normal peoples' bank accounts are pretty solid win conditions for this particular protest. By that standard, the Canadian truckers have been heard loud and clear around the world, and they don't need to keep it up, but they did need to stay until the government responded with violence.
- oalders 5y ago
  > killing peoples' pets Citation needed.
  - pclmulqdq 5y ago
    Here you go: https://twitter.com/OttawaBylaw/status/1494306645274509316?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1494396657915641856%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es3_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politifact.com%2Ffactchecks%2F2022%2Ffeb%2F22%2Ffacebook-posts%2Fno-ottawa-didnt-threaten-punish-protesters-killing%2F https://twitter.com/OttawaBylaw/status/1494306645274509316?r...
afiori 5y ago
You describe protests as is they were an election campaign, with a well defined resolution mechanic and oriented to the public. they are not the target audience of a protest is the people in power, they build on public opinion and wield it as a show against those in power. also this can happen in many way, it could be a parent chaining themselves in front of town hall or an orderly march. also a blockade does not sound like civil disobedience, in the face of these restriction civil disobedience would be not following the restrictions and opening anyway. (in civil disobedience you generally break only the laws you are protesting against)

NhanH 5y ago

You made a lot of hidden assumptions in both of your replies so it’s a bit hard to response. But let me try one: if I claim that they can’t use physical force because they (the government) didn’t have the popular support and risk facing overwhelming violence escalation, what is your response to that? (I’m not saying that it is the case, more to question some of your assumptions in this situation) > if you still continue with civil disobedience, well it is normal for the government to then follow up with threats of consequences, like tear gas, handcuffs, jail time, fines, account freezes, etc. More to the point, the government are free to follow up the threat in a court case in front of a judge, and the fact that they didn’t is the problem

ladallada 5y ago
> if I claim that they can’t use physical force because they (the government) didn’t have the popular support and risk facing overwhelming violence escalation, what is your response to that? I'm not sure I'm following 100% your question, but I think you mean what if the government is so unpopular that the country is close to a revolution from its citizens? This doesn't really makes sense to me in a liberal democracy like Canada. Every few years, the citizen get to replace the government with another if they're unhappy with the current one. The opposition are able to have a vote to cast out the current prime minister if they want. The governor general, at any point, if it senses the people are no longer favorable to the government can kick off a new election as well. On top of that, the government is using force within the established limits of the laws and Charter of Rights of the country that are already pre-agreed upon, and the force it is using is itself in order to enforce the laws of the country from being broken, which is kind of its job as a government. > More to the point, the government are free to follow up the threat in a court case in front of a judge, and the fact that they didn’t is the problem I'm not really following your point? The government is also allowed to enforce laws, and they can later be trialed. Police does this all the time, they will intervene and perform an arrest, and the trial in front of the court happens after. They are also free to enact the Emergency Act in the case of an Emergency as they did. The funds from bank accounts are frozen, not taken. What will happen next is they will either be released, or a court case can start and decide what to do with the funds.
- NhanH 5y ago
  > I'm not sure I'm following 100% your question, but I think you mean what if the government is so unpopular that the country is close to a revolution from its citizens? I meant that they didn’t have the popular support to shut down the protest (I was not talking about the general popular support to the government as a whole, but just this specific issue). In the previous post, you were assuming that the protest does not have popular support and I wonder if that assumption is correct. The specific methods used to shutdown the protest matter a lot. The police are free to arrest them or impound their vehicles. Freezing the bank account is not a standard course of actions, which you seems to think are similar to arresting. Even in the case of arresting, the police can’t even hold you for more than a few days unless they can find a prosecutor to file some charges against you. They were free to use a plethora of methods to stop the protests, the complaint a lot of people have is they didn’t use other methods, and choose something that a lot of people consider immense overreach.

sebow 5y ago

> You can continue to protest, but you can't be breaking the laws forever. One of the reasons the right to protest is a fundamental one is because laws are made by people, for people, in the service of the public good and well-being of the citizens. If the people protest against the laws then that's their right, the people and their will is above the law, the law is not above the people's will as a whole. This is almost universally true, and you cannot make the argument of 'shutting down the right to protest' on the pretext of breaking a law, because protests are ultimately motivated on laws or policies being changed.Nobody protests forever.

ahtihn 5y ago
> If the people protest against the laws then that's their right, the people and their will is above the law, the law is not above the people's will as a whole. It's not the people's will as a whole though. It's a tiny minority of people that are protesting.
- sebow 5y ago
  That's arguably true, though I'm also skeptical of any official numbers. The protests are not homogeneous at all: on one hand you have seemingly long convoys that are made up of small number of people, there are also very dense on-foot protests, it's somewhat hard to make an accurate estimation. Still, making a statement doesn't require a majority.Usually if 0.5%-1% or more of the population starts protesting, the governing body responds, (or at least it should imo, having potentially more than 2-3% of the population actively involved in a political manner it's not a good sign: politicians don't want people too closely involved). This however vastly depends on the country, the culture, the people.Protests are also not accurate representations of the electorate.

pclmulqdq 5y ago

I am not the person you were originally responding to, but I believe that this protest has been handled in a particularly poor way. The commercial border crossings were all opened in nonviolent fashion by the police before the emergencies act was passed. The only remaining protest, which seemed to honestly be the most effective group, was the one in Ottawa. By many accounts, they did not get anyone in government to actually listen to them: Trudeau's government refused to speak with the protesters, and instead went into hiding until they could figure out how to use force to get these people to leave. If Trudeau had eaten crow and published his plan for lifting mandates, they may well have dispersed. What seemed to occur instead was that the LPC (in conjunction with the NDP and the CBC) used disinformation to circle the wagons and make excuses for a dramatic escalation in force, while refusing to publish a plan for the lifting of mandates. Contrast that with the BLM protests recently, where you saw a lot of dialogue between the government and the protesters and a relatively peaceful dispersal of the protest. Make no mistake, "account freezes" are not a normal consequence of protest, even of violent riots. The Canadian government is also talking about similar things like revoking licenses, removing insurance, killing peoples' pets, and selling peoples' trucks and keeping the excess beyond what they need to cover fines. For all of these discussions, the Trudeau government is rightly being panned as tyrannical and dictatorial. The "win condition" of civil disobedience is usually to get some imagery of the police or the government doing something really brutal in response to your protest. Trampling a Native American elder with a horse (and then lying about nobody being hurt and then lying about someone throwing a bike) and freezing normal peoples' bank accounts are pretty solid win conditions for this particular protest. By that standard, the Canadian truckers have been heard loud and clear around the world, and they don't need to keep it up, but they did need to stay until the government responded with violence.

oalders 5y ago
> killing peoples' pets Citation needed.
- pclmulqdq 5y ago
  Here you go: https://twitter.com/OttawaBylaw/status/1494306645274509316?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1494396657915641856%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es3_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politifact.com%2Ffactchecks%2F2022%2Ffeb%2F22%2Ffacebook-posts%2Fno-ottawa-didnt-threaten-punish-protesters-killing%2F https://twitter.com/OttawaBylaw/status/1494306645274509316?r...

afiori 5y ago

You describe protests as is they were an election campaign, with a well defined resolution mechanic and oriented to the public. they are not the target audience of a protest is the people in power, they build on public opinion and wield it as a show against those in power. also this can happen in many way, it could be a parent chaining themselves in front of town hall or an orderly march. also a blockade does not sound like civil disobedience, in the face of these restriction civil disobedience would be not following the restrictions and opening anyway. (in civil disobedience you generally break only the laws you are protesting against)