Seattle small business owners don't support abolishing police, plan to sue city

[Tis_Bearself]

The business owners planning to sue Seattle over the Capitol Hill disruptions include a gay Middle Eastern man, Mexican restauranteurs, and a tattoo parlor. I hope they all get a big settlement and that it hits the city in the pocketbook hard enough that cities won’t let these ridiculous Occupy-type situations go on and make a mess for entire neighborhoods until people start dying and they finally close it down.

Abolish the Police? Those Who Survived the Chaos in Seattle Aren’t So Sure - The New York Times

 

[ThinkingSapien]

ridiculous Occupy-type situations go on and make a mess for entire neighborhoods until people start dying and they finally close it down.

I can’t say such a strategy can never be effective, but I’ve not seen it effective in modern times. I understand the Sit In Movement; engagement of non-violent civil disobedience in a specific act that was in every way representational of the change being requested.

I feel like (this is just my feeling, not fact) that the occupy movements are mimicking thebsit in movement. But I have not seen where it has affected change.

For the occupy movements that I am familiar with, they end up degrading to a lawless area in which injuries, vandalism, and sexual assaults occur while emergency workers are unable to respond.

 

[Regular_Atheist]

Of course they don’t.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

For the occupy movements that I am familiar with, they end up degrading to a lawless area in which injuries, vandalism, and sexual assaults occur while emergency workers are unable to respond.

Exactly, this is how they always end up.
I can see the appeal for mayors letting it get to the really bad point where the vast majority of constituents will agree with the decision to shut it down, using force if necessary. The problem is that many people who live and work in the area of these messes are not only inconvenienced, but actually menaced before it gets to this point.

The protest organizers will always blame some outsider group for coming in and ruining the “peaceful protest”. In this case, the BLM folks are blaming “white antifa” for all the violence, looting etc. This seems kind of ridiculous to me because if whoever is organizing the alleged peaceful protest can’t get rid of these outside elements on their own, then that’s a clear signal to me that either they’re in over their head and shouldn’t be doing a protest of this type/ on this scale/ at this location, or they actually don’t want to get rid of the alleged outsiders, if they are even outsiders to begin with.

I know Occupy protests and the like have their roots in things like the long history of protesters camping on the National Mall. It should be noted that the protests that camped on the Mall were largely unsuccessful in meeting their goals and also that the Mall is not that close to anyone’s businesses, houses, apartment buildings etc. College campuses are another spot where protests are often removed from other people’s shops, offices, and housing (apart from possibly campus dorms). Having your sit-in on or very close to populated city blocks where people normally expect to drive their cars, go to work, patronize restaurants etc is something else again, especially when your actions are depriving the legitimate residents and tenants of first responder assistance.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It’s a liberal city. They’ll come up with some silly substitute for the cops; some kind of community organizer types who will provide them with political support. So it will be a “twofer” . But they’ll have cops too, they just won’t call them that.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

I know Occupy protests and the like have their roots in things like the long history of protesters camping on the National Mall

There is one of those coming up next month.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

It would be more hardcore if they did it this month when the Mall is basically a giant steaming overheated swamp.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

The protest organizers will always blame some outsider group for coming in and ruining the “peaceful protest”. In this case, the BLM folks are blaming “white antifa” for all the violence, looting etc. This seems kind of ridiculous to me because if whoever is organizing the alleged peaceful protest can’t get rid of these outside elements on their own, then that’s a clear signal to me that either they’re in over their head and shouldn’t be doing a protest of this type/ on this scale/ at this location, or they actually don’t want to get rid of the alleged outsiders, if they are even outsiders to begin with.

I think it is a general problem that when there is a large group of people invited to participate in something that there is going to be a low success rate in achieving conformance in behaviour. This isn’t limited to demonstrations and protest. With organizations when this occurs there are some options to separate the org from the action, such as disciplinary action or separating the offending people from the organization (ex: if an employee does something that makes a company look bad, the company can fire the person). With non-centralized movements there is no official body to make decisions on group membership, declarations, or regulate behaviour. Nor is there any single source of truth for what actions are part of the movement are not and what people are officially insiders and outsiders.

Having your sit-in on or very close to populated city blocks where people normally expect to drive their cars, go to work, patronize restaurants etc is something else again, especially when your actions are depriving the legitimate residents and tenants of first responder assistance.

There was a local protests some decades ago in which the participants in the protest got onto the Interstate, arranged their vehicles parallel to each other, and drove at the minimum legally allowed speed during rush hour. I don’t know what, if anything, the protest accomplished beyond annoying some people.