People live in their homes. They work in their offices.
When you want to protest a public official, you go to his office or a legislative building. If you’re going to his home, you’re harassing his family. Now there might be circumstances where that kind of harassment is justified. Say if you’re protesting Mussolini, but it’s an escalation and it is harassment. It’s not peaceful.
Sen. Josh Hawley says ‘Antifa scumbags’ terrorized his family’s Virginia home. Protesters say they held a peaceful vigil. — Washington Post
Police: Protesters outside Sen. Hawley home were ‘peaceful’ – AP
2020 has seen more debates about the definition of “peaceful” than any other year in quite a while.
Non-violent and peaceful are not the same thing. You can scream at someone from 2 feet away and be non-violent in the process. Peaceful requires a higher standard. If you come to someone’s home with a megaphone at night, you’re not peaceful, you’re stalking and harassing them.
That’s a common sense metric.
Here are the local cops redefining “peaceful” to include illegal acts.
Officers who responded to the scene found that the “people were peaceful,” said Master Police Officer Juan Vazquez, a spokesman for the Town of Vienna Police Department.
Vazquez said the protesters had been violating several laws, including a Virginia code about picketing in front of a house, a town ordinance about making noise in front of a home and a littering code. But he said the officers explained the violations and “everyone just left.”
“There were no issues, no arrests,” he said. “We didn’t think it was that big of a deal.”
Aside from the harassment and the violations of the law, it was “peaceful”.
I’m going to assume that this would not be the legal standard for an ex-boyfriend stalking a woman. Nor should it be the standard for harassing legislators or public personalities, by anyone, from any party.
Leave a Reply