excellent point
So the big news here in San Francisco is that the big anti-war protests cost the City $3.5 million. And in cities around the country, similar protests ran up big bills. This fact is being used a) to turn public opinion against protestors, and b) write new laws making punishment for civil disobedience costly for the protesters.
Here’s what deeply irks me about this line of thinking (you know, besides the HUGE Constitutional problem of legislating against free assembly and free expression): The costs they are totalling up are not the cost of the protests, but the cost of the City’s paranoid reaction to the protests.
Read more from the bittershack: The Price of Dissent.
This bothers me too. I’ve heard Portlanders complain that the anti-war protestors cost a city already in economic turmoil too much money. The main cost cited in news reports is police overtime. Like Brooke, every single time I attended a rally, there were far more cops than needed. It was ridiculous.
Friend of Chuck said,
May 30, 2003 @ 10:03 am
I don’t see the money as a problem. The problem for me was that while these people were protesting they were taking up a lot of resources and perhaps opening up terrorist opportunities. Do they have the right to protest? Absolutely, and it should not be abridged in any way. But just because you have the right to do something doesn’t always make it RESPONSIBLE to do so. Plus, the Vietnam experience (which just paralyzes liberals from even rationally debating aything involving war) did show, from later discussions with the enemy, that these types of protests during wartime really did provide aid and comfort to the enemy and probably cost American lives. before the war is one thing, while it’s going is quite another.
Edward.T.Green said,
April 13, 2007 @ 9:12 pm
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