I think you need to be wiling to straight up call these people pieces of shit. No more excusing people for having these views. No more saying it’s about some other thing like “economic anxiety”. No more worrying about them feeling bad.
There’s a notion that we need to be more civil… and in some cases, that’s certainly true. Having differing political views does not merit abuse.
But participating in, or defending, or ignoring things like racism? That deserves to be punished. Not legally, but economically and socially. Don’t work with such people if you can help it. Don’t give them jobs. Don’t do business with them. Don’t buy their products. Don’t buy the products of people who support them.
It’s not easy. There’s no button you can push to make them go away.
I don’t think it’s against the 1st Amendment for a mayor to condemn this shit in the strongest possible terms, and for citizens to condemn him (in this case) for obvious willful blindness as to the motives behind these demonstrations.
I also think that it’s the duty of people of good will in that town to counterdemonstrate in defense of the school’s students.
You realize that analogy is loooong dead and was used to arrest a man for protesting a war right?
I can only assume you are fine with being arrested for protesting the next war. Thankfully the SCOTUS ended up disagreeing with that idea, time and time again, so you’re safe, even if you don’t want to be.
Not even remotely. If he had said, “It’s sad and terrible, but it is their right to do it,” he would’ve been fine. He instead acted like what they were doing was a good thing and played the Both Sides card.
Wasn’t really the point, even if it wasn’t the best example. The point was that saying it doesn’t matter what people say because they didn’t actually do anything is a crappy argument. There are situations in which things you say can and should get you arrested.
I think he needs to go beyond just “sad and terrible.” He needs to say something like “It’s hard to believe that anyone in this day and age still has these idiotic attitudes on race, and they should be ashamed of themselves.”
You’re willing to give up your most fundamental right to the government. Which is stupid, especially when you consider who is currently running the government and how these things have played out in countries that do it. Enjoy being arrested for making fun of foreign dictators.
I mean, the amount he denounces it is a matter of opinion, but also irrelevant since he didn’t remotely denounce anything and instead encouraged it. I’d settle for him saying anything negative rather than subtly wording it like these racist fucks are heroic.
Such as? I can think of threatening physical violence but I am not even sure that is illegal unless you actually get in someone’s face making the threat.
Read about the limitations the US government has put on free speech during war time, and tell me they didn’t abuse the hell of it. The government having the ability to decide what is illegal is scary as hell.
I am cautious with trying too outlaw certain words, or speech, but driving around, surrounding people, intimidating them there is a line there. And you can’t really fix racism by forcing people to hide it because, as we can see, as soon as they elect a leader, it just all comes out. They need to be fired, shamed, and forced to either fight racism or be exposed as a supporter of it. There is no in-between.
And you are not willing to give up the tiniest sliver of the freedom we have to protect people from being taunted, belittled, called slaves, being told they shouldn’t attend a particular school because of the color of their skin, etc. because of some slippery slope argument?
The schools should be safe for everyone, but because no one will seriously look at our laws, some of the officials don’t know what to do because they want to fix bullying but then they hit these claims of freedom of speech.
Kids shoving flags under some kids nose… doesn’t seem like speech to me. That’s pretty close to assault.
Nope. Enjoy going to prison for saying something like “all white people are racist” or whatever.
Or mocking Trump.
It might be considered a threat, which isn’t protected. Also schools don’t have to protect that sort of thing anyway. You can’t walk down the halls screaming racial slurs. A school can expel/suspend you for a lot less.
Well it happened in LA too and that’s a diverse city.
Which is not surprising because this sort of thing happens all the time. Just wait until you get accused of stealing something while trying to return something… with a receipt, and it’s not opened.
