At 09:23 AM 2/7/2003 +0000, Roger Wesson (in response to a whole bunch of
others) wrote:
Charles Sdunek wrote:
At 09:45 PM 2/6/03, you wrote:
He gave me some line about how I was taking part in an illegal protest
and my presence was a hazard to public safety.
Illegal protest??? assembly, even to protest is our right....so long as
it is nonviolent. Boy it ticks off the authorities when people do it though.
Too right they don't like it! The government here tried to prevent an
anti-war rally scheduled for Saturday in Hyde Park in London, saying the
protest would 'damage the grass'. The organisers threatened to hold the
rally in the Mall, outside Buckingham Palace, instead. The government
decided Hyde Park's grass would be OK after all.
We really have to keep an eye on the governments we elect!
Part of the reason 'they' dislike it is simple. Regardless of the
political leanings (and implied or professed virtue) of the group
protesting, any mass rally has the possibility of descending into chaos,
violence and brutality because of crowd or herd mentality. No human is
immune to it, no matter what their political stripe, and the trigger that
moves a crowd from peaceful to violent is often chaotic, and therefore
unpredictable in advance. (In this regard, crowd behaviour is a fractal
system, which can be 'tipped' from one state into another by a very minor
event.)
Every cop I've ever met (and I've had several friends on the Edmonton
Police Service) has zero problem with peaceful protests, but all are wary
of this tendency for individuals to lose their inhibitions and become
mindless in a herd. Chalk it up to our lizard forebrain (which most cops,
sadly, are all too familiar with...).
Garth
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