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‘Not acceptable in a democracy’: UN expert condemns lengthy Just Stop Oil sentences
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024
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There is no such thing as an illegal protest. That is a concept made up by the people being protested against so that they can squash it. Protests are not supposed to be "convenient". They are not supposed to be comfortable or nice or pretty. They are supposed to force people to face the issue and band together to bring about real change.
That's not how it works. There is no country where protesting in the middle of the street without a permit is legal. There absolutely is something like illegal protesting, and what Just Stop Oil did was one example. Protests are about being seen, not causing inconvenience or even danger. You are not above the law just because you're protesting. Getting a permit and demonstrating outside the white house would have been the correct way to go about this.
The only people who banded together as a result of this protest were angry drivers banding together to remove the nuisance, and climate deniers who got radicalized by the rage, seeing Just Stop Oil protests.
It's one thing not to like illegal protests and a different one to equate them with anarchy. I understand that the term "anarchy" is often used as a synonym to "lawlessness" but in reality it is a movement that aims to eradicate societal hierarchies and replace them with horizontal organizational structures.
Also as I'm sure you know, law is not set in stone, it does change. Many things that are legal now, were illegal in the past. Sometimes in order to influence lawmakers we need to do illegal stuff, like non-violent disruptive protests.
If you want to change the law, you contact politicians, sign petitions, protest in a way that doesn't prevent emergency vehicles or public transport from reaching their destinations, and you vote during election. If that isn't enough, you run for office. Doing illegal stuff isn't justified at all.
Your 8-hour work week was achieved by "illegal protests" among other things. Getting rid of the divine right of kings was "illegal".
Setting the world on fire is somehow not "illegal" though.
That's appropriate when you're trying to change certain things, not everything. When you're trying to get civil rights or anything else that the higher ruling class doesn't want you to have, it can and usually does necessitate illegal and violent protesting and uprising.
Of course what you describe is a way of doing things. What you say and what I said are not exclusionary. People can have both legal and illegal approaches on the same topic. Sometimes it is justifiable on moral grounds to break the law, and many countries recognize that need in their constitutions.
If the protest isn't illegal, you aren't protesting, you are having a parade.