Tamil Protests downtown

[Ramako]

I'm not arguing jurisprudence, nor am I making an appeal to free speech. I'm just trying to point out that you can't draw some arbitrary line between places where it's okay to peacefully demonstrate and places where it's not.

What's the difference between shutting down University Ave for a protest and shutting down the Gardiner? Elevation, I guess.

You can indeed draw a line. But you're right... it's not arbitrary. And that's exactly why we have law and jurisprudence; for that very reason.

The law regarding free speech is all about where that line should be. Ignoring that is like trying to add numbers without a + function.

The law actually employs complex tests so that judges can properly answer questions like the very one you just posed (What's the difference between shutting down University Ave for a protest and shutting down the Gardiner?) in a logical and principled manner.

In fact there is a landmark Supreme Court case (City of Montreal v. 2952-1366 Quebec Inc.) about determining whether speech in a particular location is protected or not. In that case the issue was a club blasting music onto a public road.

 

[Ramako]

See, but there's a visible and obvious line there. Violence versus non-violence. Violent demonstrations are never okay. Non-violent? Often are.

You're exactly right. Violent speech is automatically not protected. But just because it's not violent, does not necessarily mean it's protected speech. The protest was still an illegal act and extremely unsafe. I strongly doubt that it would be considered a protected mode of speech

'Hostage' is an overstatement, and only applies in the sense that every public protest is a kind of 'hostage situation'. They're saying "we won't stop protesting until X changes." It's inherent to the very act of protesting.

That's not true at all. Protesting in a public park or a street doesn't substantially impede anyone else's freedom. Protesting on an enclosed and elevated highway, and thus forcing people to be stuck on the highway, is very much an interference with the rights of others. It's no different than grabbing someone and throwing them in a pen for 6 hours.

They didn't just want attention. They wanted to created a disruption. Not all protests are disruptive.

 

[GraphicMatt]

They didn't just want attention. They wanted to created a disruption. Not all protests are disruptive.

I'd argue that protests that create no disruption at all are ineffective protests. If I'm not being loud or in your way, why would you bother to care about me or my issue?

 

[Ramako]

I'd argue that protests that create no disruption at all are ineffective protests. If I'm not being loud or in your way, why would you bother to care about me or my issue?

Being loud does not disrupt someone else's rights (within reason). Keeping them stuck in a confined space for several hours most certainly does.

 

[Whoaccio]

I'd argue that protests that create no disruption at all are ineffective protests. If I'm not being loud or in your way, why would you bother to care about me or my issue?

Because the protester should be able to make the issue's case, like how just about every other issue gets solved. You can't annoy a society into agreeing with you.

 

[nfitz]

Now before you build another straw man, I'm not saying that shutting down the Gardiner equates to shooting up a school. What I am saying is that holding a city hostage, which was very much their stated intent, goes far and beyond simply holding a protest.

Tell me how closing the same highway for 6 hours, that was closed the previous weekend for 18-hours for repairs, and the weekend before that for 60-hours, is holding a city hostage? Was Miller holding the city hostage by repairing the highway the previous 2 weekends?

No, of course not. So stop being silly. You simply want protest to not inconvenience you. That's not how it works.

The truth here, is that your convenience is not important, when compared to the deaths of thousands of people.

 

[Epi]

Perhaps if Bob Rae were our prime minister something would have happened, but then again he's been pretty silent about it all lately, probably because he knows it's not going to help him politically to speak out when these protesters are making themselves look so bad in Toronto:

http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779445&ts=2009-03-03 20:00:35.0

 

[nfitz]

Yes, that would be interesting. Ignatief was prepared to take the personal hit to stop what was happening on Sunday. Rae could do something ...

But why isn't Harper off to Sri Lanka on some kind of peace mission? American leaders do this all the time. Sri Lanka is somewhere where Canada has some respect, and can make a difference (and I'm not thinking militarily here). As opposed to Afghanistan, where the average villager hasn't even heard of us.

 

[Ramako]

Tell me how closing the same highway for 6 hours, that was closed the previous weekend for 18-hours for repairs, and the weekend before that for 60-hours, is holding a city hostage? Was Miller holding the city hostage by repairing the highway the previous 2 weekends?

No, of course not. So stop being silly. You simply want protest to not inconvenience you. That's not how it works.

The truth here, is that your convenience is not important, when compared to the deaths of thousands of people.

When you close down the highway for maintenance you notify drivers. Here drivers were not notified. Those drivers were essentially stranded were hours. Additionally, if people had been made aware that the Gardiner would not be open, as they would be during maintenance closures, they can modify their route accordingly. However, if the major artery in and out of the city is suddenly ground to a halt without any prior notice, people have no time to modify their route accordingly, and so the city traffic gets backed up for kilometers. When drivers are made aware ahead of time that the Gardiner will be shut down, you don't see such massive back ups and delays because people can plan ahead. Stifling all traffic in a city is definitely a big impediment to people's businesses and lives. Furthermore, the city itself had to devote a substantial police force to ensuring that people and children didn't get run over on the Gardiner. You can bet that is a strain on the city.

There nothing silly about it. Perhaps you should stop trivializing the costs imposed on the city and its people. Some of us have jobs to get to. Some of us have bills to pay and mouths to feed. Some of us have important appointments to meet. Some of us pay taxes. Yeah, it sucks that people are dying somewhere in the world, but that gives you no right to seriously interfere with the lives of innocent people minding their own damn business.

 

[kEiThZ]

Their conduct was also indefensible. They essentially ran on to the freeway jeapordizing themselves and motorists. They walked through stranded traffic banging on cars. They aasaulted police officers, destroyed their bikes and damaged other public property. How is any of that supposed to help the Canadian public understand their issue?

 

[kEiThZ]

Yes, that would be interesting. Ignatief was prepared to take the personal hit to stop what was happening on Sunday. Rae could do something ...

But why isn't Harper off to Sri Lanka on some kind of peace mission? American leaders do this all the time. Sri Lanka is somewhere where Canada has some respect, and can make a difference (and I'm not thinking militarily here). As opposed to Afghanistan, where the average villager hasn't even heard of us.

There has been a lot of behind the scenes planning. However, much of what we can do requires the fighting to stop. It would also require a balanced view of the conflict, which those protesting would not appreciate. They are protesting to save the tigers not the tamils. There is a difference.

 

[Hank]

Tell me how closing the same highway for 6 hours, that was closed the previous weekend for 18-hours for repairs, and the weekend before that for 60-hours, is holding a city hostage? Was Miller holding the city hostage by repairing the highway the previous 2 weekends?

This argument is simply obtuse. There is an obvious difference between the government (ie the body that owns the highway) shutting it down legally, with notice, for necessary repairs, and a protestor group occupying it without notice or legal right for a demonstration whose sole (immediate) goal is to inconvenience people (and I realize, of course, that they have what they would consider to be higher goals that they hope will be realized as a result of the inconvenience...that doesn't negate the fact that their immediate goal is to spread their message through inconvenience). If you can't see that there is a clear difference between these two types of road closures, then there really is no point in debating this with you any further.

It isn't even so much the notice issue, though. Even if the protestor group announced ahead of time that they were planning to (illegally) occupy the highway, it wouldn't make it right, and it wouldn't put it on the same level as a government closure for repairs. Drivers put up with repair-related closures because they know that the highway would fall down otherwise, and they also put up with a very few other closures (the breast cancer run or whatever else it is that shuts down the highway occasionally) because they know that they are legally sanctioned. If the government chose to let Tamil protestors shut down the highway for an evening, then people may still be annoyed but their beef would (or at least should) be with with government, not the protestors.

Is there any time that I would consider a protest group to be justified in blocking the gardiner? Probably. If there was rioting in the city, if a military group had siezed power in Canada, if there was a large enough problem that could conceivably be helped by the protest, then maybe. None of these are the case here, however.

The goals of these protestors are laudable, but their methods aren't.

 

[golodhendil]

Yes, that would be interesting. Ignatief was prepared to take the personal hit to stop what was happening on Sunday. Rae could do something ...

But why isn't Harper off to Sri Lanka on some kind of peace mission? American leaders do this all the time. Sri Lanka is somewhere where Canada has some respect, and can make a difference (and I'm not thinking militarily here). As opposed to Afghanistan, where the average villager hasn't even heard of us.

Why isn't Obama off to Sri Lanka on a peace mission? Heck, why doesn't Ignatieff go over there and make an inspection? If having higher level officials there actually means anything, at least we have a cabinet minister there last week. I have yet to see something similar coming from the US.

Also, very interesting that even though both NDP and Conservatives have also been in touch with the Tamil groups throughout the past protests and this particular one, the Liberals would be the ones to come out first so eagerly to explain their "crucial" role. Very smart PR.

 

[kEiThZ]

I don't see what the Liberals have to gain. The rest of Canada's South Asians don't harbour much sympathy for the Tamil cause (having been victims of the LTTE themselves...rarely mentioned is their incitement in southern India) and Ignatieff's statements could well cost him votes with that larger vote bank. Next, what other choice do Tamil Canadians have other than the Liberals (and maybe the NDP)? I doubt many of them would vote Conservative after they banned the LTTE.

I am waiting to see what they do next. I wonder how their defenders react when they block GO lines or perhaps disrupt traffic enough that someone dies in an ambulance.....and that's not far fetched. I heard a doctor call in yesterday saying he got stuck on the Gardiner after he was paged to the ER.

So where's the line drawn? When does their right to protest supersede the rights of patients, the safety of motorists, or the safety of police officers?

 

[kEiThZ]

Seriously though ... it doesn't matter what it is; nothing justifies a government massacring it's citizens.

And nothing justifies using hundreds of thousands of civilians as human shields to avoid direct combat with the enemy. Nor is there any justification for killing civilians on the other side.

There's two sides to every story. If we are going to discuss the conflict, let's discuss it in its entirety not just the last few days, weeks or months and not just the issues of one side. How about we start by discussing how the LTTE killed off every other Tamil dissident group and how they killed Sinhalese civilians?