On the other hand, if they veer into a bridge that might cause traffic delays (Brooklyn), at least a few out of the hundreds can be proven with camera footage as being in the wrong. More importantly, if protesters spit, shove and otherwise harass powerfulRepublican politicians as they’re trying to celebrate their wealth at RNC, odds are some will be convicted. Many protests also fumble when participants indulge in drugs and alcohol as the Occupy Wall Street campout was doomed for this reason rather than any logistical difficulty with living outdoors. It is also pretty typical for the FBI and other agencies to suggest terrorist plots to wannabe protesters. The FBI agent meets a gullible (perhaps intoxicated) kid and proposes making some bombs to show the capitalists some heat. The kid then proceeds to agree to said plot, and might attempt to shop for the components, and this is when he (I haven’t seen any girls fall for this) is arrested and charged with terrorism. So, the lesson: if you meet a middle-aged guy who’s stoked about blowing something up, tell him to go and do it himself.
Perhaps the saddest conviction, for me, is that of the Greenpeace demonstrators that put a giant Obama banner on Mt. Rushmore: who was harmed by the banner? If they had spray-painted the monument, I’d agree that’s destruction of art, but the banner was taken down by Park Services within an hour.
Attempts to suppress a large crowd with mace, batons, and occasionally never-before-seen deafening noise machines frequently leads to injuries or even deaths of the protesters, but the protesters frequently start shoving or tossing items back at the police. If any police officer ends up with broken skin, these damages count as assault and the numbers of such injuries is always reported precisely in the news. The numbers of damaged protesters are always a matter of speculation, though speculation would suggest that nearly all those arrested by police are in some way assaulted as handcuffs are reported to cause pain and bruising on the wrists long after the encounter, and the police nearly always shove protesters down to the pavement first rather than politely asking them to turn around to get cuffed.
How do Obama, Bush and Trump compare in terms of the number and type of protestors? The two largest protester arrests took place in or at the end of the first terms of the Obama (1,252 over pipeline) and Bush (1,806 at RNC) presidencies. After this protest, Obama rejected proposals both for the Dakota and Keystone pipelines, which are now being revived by Trump. Bush did not adjust his policies despite the anti-Republican, anti-war, and pro-environment protests that he faced. Then again, the bulk of the other major protests in the Obama era were against Wall Street and rampant, unbridled capitalism put on welfare with infusions of government grants and loans as it was imploding under the weight of its own corruption. Trump is currently repealing the legislation against financial crimes and the like that Obama did manage to squeeze into place, but the changes were not significant enough for an apparent difference in the American corporate culture before and after Obama. There weren’t any major immigration protests for Obama (even though immigration policies were pretty similar to Bush’s), while Trump and Bush seem to be intent on agitating migrants, so this population is desperate enough to be arrested for their rights in Republican administrations. There was also a spike in peaceful and riotous protests over police brutality and slaughter of unarmed or unthreatening young men of color during Obama’s term, perhaps because this segment of the population voted for Obama with the expectation that he would be able to skew the system so that they would be less disenfranchised.
Could a president more intent on fixing the problem of unjustified deaths of suspects have managed to create policies to bring this about? If he had, perhaps there would not be the thousands of arrests at demonstrations shown in my summary diagram. Police are the ones arresting demonstrators, and it’s their brutality or sense of righteousness that can change these statistics.
The problem might also be that some groups (that represent the opposite extreme) deliberately place a few violent or vandalizing protesters in the mix of otherwise civilized marchers to bring about an altercation that would be cause for mass arrests.
Democracy Now reports that “according to one count, as many as 4.6 million people took part in the global day of action.” And since Democracy Now’s reporters have been in the middle of many of these protests, I think their estimate is to be believed. Out of these 4.6 million protesters, around a couple million were in the US, and of these only 230 were arrested in a single 4-block area of DC. In comparison, there were 500 marchers in Oakland in 2011 and 409 of them were arrested. Thus, the Inauguration protesters are to be applauded for their very civil, polite and nearly un-corruptible protest. Fox News has been reporting that “liberals” suffered a “complete meltdown” since the Trump election, but this is far from the truth as if 4.6 million people suffered a “complete meltdown” while protesting… there would not be much of DC left standing.
I hope these conclusions and statistics will help those of you who plan on protesting to do so responsibly and effectively.
Sources of Information
“Listing of US Civil Unrest Incidents”: Armstrong Economics
“Global Civil Unrest: Contagion, Self-Organization, and Prediction”: PLOS
Insurance Information Institute’s “Top 10 Most Costly U.S. Civil Disorders”
Collective Violence, Democracy and Protest Policing:
Suppressing Protest: Human Rights Violations in the U.S. Response to Occupy Wall Street