Date: Nov.

29, 2011 How To Protest and Handle Protestors Being American means you have the right to protest. You have the right of free speech, it is in the Constitution. Now, the Supreme Court has, again and again, affirmed that right and they have also affirmed your right not to be impeded in public places while you exercise that right. Of course, there are safety issues, there are hygiene issues and, most off all, there are demonstration (crowd) issues with violence. However, none of the pitfalls outweigh the one single Constitutional right to protest on public property. All across this country that right is being assaulted, confronted, battled and pushed aside for what are, seemingly, good reasons. The NY Police quote a dollar-per-day burden on public taxpayers (as if the protestors are not the public as well). The Oakland police up the violence with riot gear, tear gas, pepper spray and baton charges and then cite the wanton destruction of the public peace. Can everyone please stop and think for a second? Are these anarchists? Nope, these are the flowerpower left-wing, these are elderly people wanting to know why their pensions are gone. These are not your hippy Black Panther regiments. Do these protestors have guns and weapons? Nope. Are they hurling anything except insults at the suited few who dare pass by? Oh, sure, later when the protest has been prodded into defense and that 5% of crowd-bred violent members takes control, they hurl bottles and bricks, but just who started the battle? Who showed up in body armor, plexi shields, shotguns ready, pepper spray in handy fire-extinguisher bottles for ex-soldiers and retired pensioners? Now, if the police, the upholders of the law, would allow a little dollar accounting to change their focus... These aging do-gooder liberals are mostly a peaceful lot. If cities have a legitimate concern on police expenditure and budgets especially when police methods are full force, full battle gear, full riot mode on overtime, then why not find a way to spend less of the public taxpayers money? Instead of $1,000,000 a day policing the hygiene problem in a city park, how about spending $5,000 a day on public port-a-potties? How about negotiating with the demonstrators and allow them proximity to those they want to insult? How about encouraging them to clean up (once they have somewhere to go) and place barriers to allow the demonstrators a circuit around the financial district, keep them moving, orderly, good citizen protestors? How about a soup kitchen instead of tear gas? Soup is way cheaper than tear gas. The alternative is to create a pressure cooker, allowing the most radical to seize command and, in response to the visible threat of battalions of heavily armed police, gravitate to violence.

Sticks and stones... should not be the polices defense against legitimate, Constitutional, words can never hurt me.