Quote:
Originally Posted by baddog
Isn't the right to protest against the government the only thing protected by the Constitution? It has been a while, but I do not recall any mention of the right to protest against businesses.
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You wouldn't be correct with that thought.
Abortion clinics are not the govt, but they are protested regularly. The westboro baptist tards are not protesting the govt, they are protesting funerals as anti gay extremists. You can also consider a workforce "strike" and their picket lines a form of protest that is focused at a business and protected by your rights to do so.
You have the "right" to protest what ever you want to protest in a peaceful manor and in public places. The biggest problem with the OWS movement is the sheer numbers of people protesting in an extended manor. By extended I mean they are taking up their protest in a sense 24/7 by turning parks into improvised campgrounds.
There is always going to be issues when there are that many people around for extended times. So I'm sure we will end up seeing more and more clashes and unfortunately if the Police keep trying to put down the protest by force I'm sure sooner or later things will get much uglier from the side of the protestors in retaliation.
America as a whole has a pretty good track record of being pretty civil with it's protest and have had very few riots in the last 50 or 100 years compared to even other western countries in Europe and so forth.
However I'm pretty sure regardless of who is right or who is wrong or whom started it.. if Police continue to escalate then the protestors will eventually fight back somewhere. The Oakland police have already upped the ante for every protest currently going on around the country by their actions. This means protestors will be more on the edge with any police action which is kind of a self feeding problem.
There is always resistance to force, the city would have been better off to suck face and try to accommodate the protestors. Rather than think they would solve anything with brute force. The police have essentially escalated the protest at this point, which will only cause further flash points.