Protesters do not have an untrammelled right to be disruptive; others in society do not have an obligation to facilitate or tolerate that disruption
Go on then, polite member of society who doesn't understand the point of protests. I'm looking forward to your counter-protest that will not disrupt anything, will largely go unnoticed, be super polite but still be a huge success and change the status quo.
I'm not saying that protesters shouldn't be disruptive, I'm saying that they don't have a right to be disruptive. If you believe that your cause is just, then you have to accept responsibility for the consequences of your actions. Disrupting a conference may well be a more effective way to highlight your grievance, but you don't get to play the victim if the organisers throw you out or refuse you entry. You have a right to protest, but that right does not supersede the rights of other people to go about their lawful business. The alternative to that balancing of rights is nothing more than mob rule.
Yes, this is what modern protests do not understand. Of course they don't have the right to protest however they want. That's why Martin Luther King was arrested some 29 times. Many of the protesters I talked to in other movements all want to be protected from arrest or any harm to their well-being. In other words, they don't want to push their protest into civil disobedience.
People risk their livelihood and lives to protest because they think something is is wrong enough that it needs to be changed that desperately.
People today will complain all day about Amazon and Jeff bezos but ask them to cancel their Amazon prime subscription? No way!
Just look at what Sam Hussain and Max Blumenthal, the reporters, did the other day, and that should give people an idea of civil disobedience.
What FOSDEM is saying is that they don't want civil disobedience, only protests. And they want to set the rules for the protest. So FOSDEM is turning into the state.
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Go on then, polite member of society who doesn't understand the point of protests. I'm looking forward to your counter-protest that will not disrupt anything, will largely go unnoticed, be super polite but still be a huge success and change the status quo.
I'm not saying that protesters shouldn't be disruptive, I'm saying that they don't have a right to be disruptive. If you believe that your cause is just, then you have to accept responsibility for the consequences of your actions. Disrupting a conference may well be a more effective way to highlight your grievance, but you don't get to play the victim if the organisers throw you out or refuse you entry. You have a right to protest, but that right does not supersede the rights of other people to go about their lawful business. The alternative to that balancing of rights is nothing more than mob rule.
Yes, this is what modern protests do not understand. Of course they don't have the right to protest however they want. That's why Martin Luther King was arrested some 29 times. Many of the protesters I talked to in other movements all want to be protected from arrest or any harm to their well-being. In other words, they don't want to push their protest into civil disobedience.
People risk their livelihood and lives to protest because they think something is is wrong enough that it needs to be changed that desperately.
People today will complain all day about Amazon and Jeff bezos but ask them to cancel their Amazon prime subscription? No way!
Just look at what Sam Hussain and Max Blumenthal, the reporters, did the other day, and that should give people an idea of civil disobedience.
What FOSDEM is saying is that they don't want civil disobedience, only protests. And they want to set the rules for the protest. So FOSDEM is turning into the state.