Then again most of their "concerns" are fringe with no grassroots support. Some I'm sure just use it as a reason to smash things. Pelosi can go stand in the middle of them and see what real "anarchy" is all about.
This is quite possibly one of the biggest misconceptions and, in many cases, outright lies about protests of this kind. The publicly spouted narrative goes that the folks who show up to protests are all batshit crazy anarchists just there to throw rocks and make trouble. What doesn't get a lot of air time is that most of these people have entirely legitimate gripes they're protesting, like, I don't know, the fact that trillions of dollars of taxpayer money around the globe is being spent to prop up and even reward the very perpetrators of the current crisis.
But no, they wouldn't be protesting that. They're all just a bunch of "anti-capitalists" there to make trouble.
The reality on the ground actually is quite different. For every yahoo out there throwing rocks, 99% are peaceful marchers, protesting a legitimate gripe.
But ever since Seattle going to protest at one of these shindigs is pretty much useless. Why? Because Seattle scared the bejeezus out of the organizers because people in the streets actually succeeded in disrupting the meeting. Ever since then there's been ridiculously massive overkill on the part of various governments, to the point that we should all be ashamed of the lengths that our governments have gone to stamp out free speech.
For example, I lived in Calgary when the G8 summit was being held in Kananaskis (as Cikomyr was talking about earlier)
The money spent and manpower dedicated to ensure that the G8 leaders would never even get so much of a whiff of protest was ridiculous. Calgary and surrounding area was saturated with security, police, army you name it. Several infantry companies (I don't know how many) were out prowling around day and night. One of the local municipal airports got taken over for the Army to stash their helicopters and mobile air defense platforms were setup all over the place. Our special forces (called Joint Task Force 2) were apparently deployed in the countryside to peg any Al-Qaida ne'er do-wells that would try and infiltrate the conference.
During the G8, my girlfriend and I were out for a daytrip in the rockies. On the drive back into town, we basically got stopped dead in the middle of the transcanada highway.... traffic was backed up for miles. After sitting there for quite some time, eventually we started moving again very, very slowly. As we inched forward, we finally got to see the cause of all the commotion.
At the turn off from the highway towards Kananaskis (were the G8 was being held several miles away) There was a group of maybe 100 protesters. They were in the ditch, holding signs, not causing any ruckus.
Surrounding them, were literally 1,000 security and army (with helicopters overhead) making sure that this crowd of unruly anarchists didn't try and funny business.
It was both sad and funny at the same time, that during an event like this the government was so terrified of any public dissent that they were so willing to throw out many of the basic tenets of a democratic society with free speech in order to "maintain order" from the group of evil protesters who just wanted to express themselves.
Now the new thing with all of these events is a gimmick to make it look like we're not trampling on people's rights by creating "free speech zones", which is usually a parking lot many miles away from the actual event wherein protesters can gather and scream into the wind at their hearts content.
The idea that we even need a special zone entitled "free speech area" is a shame in and of itself.
Now, this is what I'd REALLY like to know about.....
With all of these townhall meetings in the States, there were several folks who showed up packing heat..... some folks with handguns, some with AR-15 rifles, all to simply exercise their rights. Even (and in some cases especially) when the President was there.
What would happen if one of the protesters went to a peaceful march at the G-20 carrying his AR-15 rifle? Would the police respect his right to bear arms, or would they freak out and scream that the protesters are armed and start shooting?
On the news this morning, video of hippies---and that’s no exaggeration, hippies; very dirty ones, too, from the look--dismounting from an ancient school bus were unloading an even more ancient moving van, full of plastic tubs and boxes. Is anyone going to inspect those cartons?
Hhhmm.... I wasn't aware that there was a law in the U.S that opens hippies to exemption from their basic rights and freedoms against unlawful search and seizure.
