Post #3924724

@lagrandecedre@mastodon.social @pinhman@humanwords.party It's not about left or right. It's about whether they're seriously harming the public in order to try to force their way on everyone. If a protest is getting between an ambulance and a patient or hospital, I don't care how vilely rightist or righteously leftist their cause is. Deliberate broad-scale multi-day sleep deprivation as collective punishment for inconvenient public policy is one of many indefensibly harmful things the convoy did which necessitated them being stopped by force. "The medium is the message," which, applied to protest, means, if your tactics entail a population-scale equivalent of bodily violation, your actual message (regardless what the chants or posters say) is no different than the message of someone tying a victim down to do to them whatever they wish. You don't get to try to force your way on others and still maintain any moral legitimacy crying foul when others force you not to do so. Coercion is justifiable only to prevent coercion or greater harm that itself is not done only out of necessity to prevent the same. And relative to that standard, your cause is irrelevant. Plenty of extremely large protests actively coordinate with first responders to prevent harm, select routes and timing to minimize harm (especially harm to those least involved in what's being protested), and otherwise conduct themselves ethically. The convoy was not that. It was an abuser in mob form—a mob which, not coincidentally, comprised a disproportionate share of abusers.