Free-speech debate distracts from what’s really grating about protests
No comparison between raucous anti-vaxxers and civilly disobedient local weather protesters
I was fairly amazed at Joan Vennochi’s use of fake equivalencies in her column “When do protests cross the line? It can count on your politics” (View, Jan. 20). She compares the raucous anti-vaxxers, led by public servants who place the community at possibility by refusing to get vaccinated, developing community disturbances exterior Mayor Michelle Wu’s household with climate improve activists engaged in civil disobedience.
Local climate activists, some of whom I have represented when they have been arrested, are dedicated to peaceful civil disobedience, in the tradition of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela. Their commitment to their bring about acknowledges civility and the civil legislation. They are willing to accept the penalties of currently being arrested for their beliefs as component of their protest. In contrast, the absence of civility of the anti-vaxxers in entrance of the mayor’s household and in other places demonstrates a deficiency of comprehending of civil disobedience and general public discourse. They claim safety of the Initially Modification as entitlement to their incivility and disrespect for the law.
The 1st Amendment does not defend all speech. It does not safeguard prison threats of physical violence to the mayor. It does not safeguard racial bigotry, directed at the mayor’s Asian ethnicity. Nor does it entitle the anti-vaxxers to engage in criminal habits these as disturbing the peace, disorderly carry out, and trespass — prison expenses that normally are the foundation for the arrest of weather alter protesters and other demonstrators on the still left, this sort of as the Occupy motion. In truth, the far more perceptive evaluation I would have anticipated from Vennochi is the stark contrast among true civil disobedience and the riotous, unruly conduct of the anti-vaxxers.
Andrew Fischer
Brookline
The author is an attorney.
Take into consideration how a formerly tranquil community is becoming influenced
We reside close to Mayor Michelle Wu’s property in Roslindale. While, admittedly, there is a absolutely free-speech concern regarding the noisy protests heading on outside her residence, there are other variables to take into account.
We moved to our residence in 1984 and have seen our near-knit neighborhood improve much better and superior with each individual passing year. When a sister of ours (then 79 a long time aged) who life with us was hit by a automobile in Could, our neighbors rallied all around our relatives with remarkable guidance, which has aided immensely in her extended and ongoing restoration.
1 of our neighbors can hear the protests from her bed room, where she lies sick, awaiting a kidney transplant that hardly ever seems to appear. This female is not the only one particular influenced by the sounds. It is the lack of empathy and kindness toward the persons of an complete neighborhood that detracts from any sympathy and willingness we could have had to hear to the reasoning of the protesters.
No one’s intellect is changed, so absolutely nothing fruitful is completed by these techniques, which belong at Town Corridor, not in our formerly tranquil neighborhood.
Janice and Stephen Babcock
Roslindale