"We intend to prevent you and your family from leaving your home" - by what means do these protestors feel acceptable? Verbal? Staring intimidatingly? Pushing his wife back as she crosses the property line? Punching his child? Drawing guns?
When you explicitly state, and act, with the intention to prevent people from leaving their own home, effectively placing them in a state of house arrest, then sorry, your protest is no longer any more peaceful than the force implied by that house arrest.
Hiding behind "raising awareness in the neighborhood" is a disingenuous sham that exposes a duplicity. What relevance has "representative parliamentary democracy" to your argument other than to make you feel martyred?
Remember, you are actively threatening a family that you will not let them leave their home, there is a distinct, and real, fear of how far you will go to do so. For all your "blocking busses, and breaking one window" (carefully emphasized to minimize), there's the Seattle WTO protests and everything in between, and a distinct set of people who -will- resort to violence that constitutes a non-zero threat to this man and his family's well being that you wave away as nothing.
At least have the courage of your convictions and stop pretending it's just some people "raising awareness".
When you explicitly state, and act, with the intention to prevent people from leaving their own home, effectively placing them in a state of house arrest, then sorry, your protest is no longer any more peaceful than the force implied by that house arrest.
Hiding behind "raising awareness in the neighborhood" is a disingenuous sham that exposes a duplicity. What relevance has "representative parliamentary democracy" to your argument other than to make you feel martyred?
Remember, you are actively threatening a family that you will not let them leave their home, there is a distinct, and real, fear of how far you will go to do so. For all your "blocking busses, and breaking one window" (carefully emphasized to minimize), there's the Seattle WTO protests and everything in between, and a distinct set of people who -will- resort to violence that constitutes a non-zero threat to this man and his family's well being that you wave away as nothing.
At least have the courage of your convictions and stop pretending it's just some people "raising awareness".