True. I'm meaning more "take a one month government-sponsored class to learn about safe methods of protest, the relevant regulations on sound amplification, and what words are deemed too profane for putting on a sign, in order to obtain your Protester ID Card."
I've always wondered, what happens if there's no organizers and a bunch of people just sorta independently agree to show up together somewhere and tell all their friends by word of mouth? Is the first person who tweeted "Let's all go protest!" held accountable as the organizer, or what?
Having seen the other extremes, eg Westboro attacking mourning families, I'll take the UK's interpretation of freedom. It includes the idea that other people have a right to go about their business without busybodies with no standing getting in the way.
Edit: I also wouldn't claim the UK always gets it right, but sometimes balancing those ideas —rights to speech, privacy, and to exist unimpeded— isn't simple. Nasty artefacts like super-injunctions feel stifling, people arrested for online speech sometimes a little too far, but I'd still take it over many alternatives.
The reason for that is because you can fuck off with the persistent harassment of those who come to get abortions, including by "praying", that is, hanging around near the clinic trying to guilt-trip pregnant women. You're completely free to fuck the fuck off away from the area and bow your head disapprovingly. You're also free to think whatever you like inside the designated safe zone so long as you're not being demonstrative about it. Anyone who's deliberately come near to the clinic in order to visibly pray is picketing it. Having a grievance about this as if it was thought policing is dishonest.
If it were a fish and chips stand there'd be no problem with picketing, praying, or most other nonviolent, non-threatening demonstrations that didn't get in somebody's way. You could make it your full-time job to protest every fish and chip stand in the country without issue. It _is_ thought policing, since the only crime is protesting the "wrong" thing.
Maybe it's still fine to ban that sort of protest, but let's call it what it is.
Harassment, yes. To get an equivalent situation, you need to eat a fish supper to avoid monumentally unpleasant life changes, and the looney fringe of the dominant religion, in cahoots with some of your friends and relatives, wants to call you a murderer for eating that fish supper. Then they don't limit themselves to publishing their views, they hang around the fish and chips stand acting sad and concerned. This is not a constructive discussion or public debate, it's coercion.
Pretty sure that the US, UK and Europe fixed that back in the 90s, during the anti-globalization protests.
Ever since the Democratic Party established in 2004 that you could designate "Free Speech Zones" where the constitution would be in effect, and literally put bars around them, it was an inevitability that people living in US vassals that have never had strong speech protections would lose it all. The US sets the standard for a written absolute free speech right, but makes bad speech its biggest enemy and covertly finances censors overseas to lobby against free speech protections.
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Random person on internet:
> Has anyone heard about the protester pen set up at the Democratic convention?
> It's constructed with mesh, chain link & razor wire to contain any DNC protesters - not after they've been rounded up by police for unlawful activity - but to house them while they are protesting!
> "U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock called the barbed-wire pen "an affront to free expression'' and "irrefutably sad'' but necessary because of protesters' antics in New York and Los Angeles."
> Demonstrators who want to be within sight and sound of the delegates entering and leaving the Democratic National Convention at the Fleet Center in Boston this coming week will be forced to protest in a special "demonstration zone" adjacent to the terminal where buses carrying the delegates will arrive. The zone is large enough only for 1000 persons to safely congregate and is bounded by two chain link fences separated by concrete highway barriers. The outermost fence is covered with black mesh that is designed to repel liquids. Much of the area is under an abandoned elevated train line. The zone is covered by another black net which is topped by razor wire. There will be no sanitary facilities in the zone and tables and chairs will not be permitted. There is no way for the demonstrators to pass written materials to the convention delegates.
