Yet again, assaults on police, and a superbly controlled and moderate response by Seattle officers.

@1 why were police there at all? There was no violence before police showed up, just exercise of First Amendment rights. Why do the police consistently escalate these events?

The Federal Building is severely vandalized and will take weeks to clean up.

That new Florida policy is cool and is common sense. Anyone who thinks otherwise has no empathy. Hopefully this will go nationwide and put an end to mobs blocking freeways and streets and terrorizing drivers.

@3 it's a reaction to a court ruling the person who ran over Heather Heyer was not acting in self defense, so it's basically a governor trying to overrule the courts on a legal issue. I guess that's "cool" in the same way Trump refusing court orders to return unlawfully deported people from El Salvador is "cool," which is to say not at all.

If there are 99 protesters with carefully-thought-out messages written on their signs and a list of cogent reasons why they oppose the goals and methods of ICE, and one protester who lights a dumpster on fire, which image makes the evening news? The clever sign? The interview with a thoughtful spokesperson for the cause, clearly stating their position? Or the burning dumpster?

So who and what sets the tone and messaging for the national movement? If you answered "burning garbage is now our de facto national spokesperson" you are beginning to understand.

Thank you SPD for protecting Seattle citizens from the violent antifa protest cretins. If you use your entire supply of pepper balls, hit me up with your GoFundMe account and I'll help buy more.

The golden card idea is brilliant. If we can sell 7.2 million gold cards, we can eliminate the debt. That's still 3 million fewer people than Biden allowed in. We also get the assurance that these immigrants know how to make a living.

Don't people of color make up a large percentage of Southern Baptists? I thought the Democrats supported the black community.

That's a shame that Olympus Spa has a court order to ignore truth and reality. Women should be able to relax at the spa without having their safety and privacy put at risk.

Governor DeSantis is so awesome. If you block someone from driving away, you get run over. FAFO baby!

Dr. Robert Malone literally pioneered the use of MRNA vaccines so he is clearly entitled to be on a vaccine committee. I'm sure the other members appointed by RFKJ have equally impressive credentials.

Where is the right to commit arson protected in the Bill of Rights?

@2, Police being there is a Jedi mind trick that causes protesters to lose their free agency and will? They can CHOOSE to engage in lawful, 1st Amendment protected speech if police aren't present, but lose the ability to keep making that CHOICE if police are there?

What are you? Two?

@2 are you really pushing the narrative that if the police weren't there the protestors would not have built a pile of crap to block all the exits by stealing/damaging property from surrounding businesses, spray painted everything in sight / vandalized the federal building and create a massive mess downtown by lighting things on fire? You are wonderfully naive if you think that is true.

Just a reminder, these people could care less about immigrants. Its the same crew that looks for confrontation so they can have an excuse to pull the same stunts over and over again.

"This is the first time that a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner has crashed—a fact that absolutely no one is taking comfort in."

I am sure that those stock traders that speculatively shorted the stock, are overjoyed.

"No one" is an overly broad term.

Police are always starting shit. They show up and people fight back, and then the media focuses on whatever images they can so they can ignore the actual reason for the protests. But police involvement and the reaction is ultimately a distraction from the main problem, which is Trump's illegal and over-broad mass deportation campaign. Protesters are right to oppose that agenda and call for the end of attacks on immigrants and the abolition of ICE.

Many of the commenters here, marinating in bad media or just plain pro-fascist, will ignore the underlying issues and try to frame this into their mendacious worldview. But the rest of us know the score--this fascist regime is coming for all of us and it's right to fight back.

@8 I'm saying police could avoid allegedly having things thrown at them by not deploying to forcibly stop First Amendment activity. I'm saying, per media reports, even SPD acknowledged the protests were peaceful until the point police tried to shut them down. So the police CHOICE to try to shut them down was the but-for cause of the protest allegedly becoming violent (per usual).

@6 No; more like "Southern" as in "Southern Strategy".

https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-denomination/southern-baptist-convention/

Republicans coming up with novel ways to legalize homicide was every square on my bingo card for 2025

@12, Police showed up and forcibly stopped no 1st Amendment protected activity prior to unlawful acts being initiated from amongst the protest and under cover of the protest.

The police REACTIVELY shut the protest down in response to PROACTIVE unlawful acts initiated by people present at the protest:

Fireworks were thrown at the police, which is the crime of assault.
Garbage cans were moved into the street which is littering and creates reasonable suspicion that crimes with those cans is about to occur. (e.g. littering, theft, vandalism, arson, obstructing the roadway or sidewalks). Reasonable suspicion is not grounds to arrest, it is grounds to detain and investigate whether the party in question is in the act of committing those crimes.
Tables and chairs were taken from a terrace of a building which is theft.
People got on the roofs of a bus shelter, which is criminal mischief. The shelters get damaged and broken by that since they are not designed to hold human weight.

Prior to those illegal acts, police made no efforts to disperse the crowd.

So again, do protesters have agency or not to choose to go beyond what is protected by the 1st Amendment into what is unlawful?

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/cal-anderson-protest/

Did other members of the protest group, not doing unlawful things, call out or identify those doing those things so that the police could differentiate those acting unlawfully from the lawful protesters, so police could prevent further unlawful acts, which is their job, leaving dispersing the protest as the only remaining option to stop the criminal acts occurring under cover of the protest? Nope.

Agency. Free will. Apparently when cops show up, agency is lost by lawful and unlawful protesters alike.

Driving over a protester who is blocking you from leaving a dangerous area where antifa rioters and looters are present is self defense, not homicide.

You drew a lousy bingo card which is going to be awfully difficult to complete.

"Cool New Florida Policy: Gov. Ron DeSantis told The Rubin Report that Floridians can hit protesters with their cars if you need to flee for your safety."

That is not new, or unique to Florida:

You may use deadly force to protect yourself, or others in your presence, from serious physical injury or death (RCW 9A.16.050 (1))
In active resistance to felony being perpetrated on you. (RCW 9A.16.050(2))
Against a burglar. (ibid)

I think any of those things would qualify as being "in danger."

Will The Stranger issue a correction?

“my right to not be mildly inconvenienced supersedes your right to live”
-typical small government conservative

Not sure what you’re talking about because I woke up to every square on my bingo card being complete

@18, See @17. Operative words from The Stranger post, attributed by them to DeSantis, were, "in danger."

Also can’t believe some conservative christians have made it their mission to overturn the marriage equality ruling. Just yesterday I was assured that opposition to personal choices that are of no consequence or concern to anyone else was not a core “conservative” value. Love to have a “limited government” that inserts itself into people’s personal lives as long as those people are not me, right boys?

@15 I have neither the time or inclination to rebut all your incorrect legal assertions, but after your tortured analysis of the interplay between robbery and burglary statutes I doubt anyone takes them seriously anyway.

Also from your article: "Officers, many with bicycles, had mostly been making their presence known by forming tight lines to demonstrate control and a readiness to advance."

In Florida you're allowed to run someone over for doing that. To quote BabyBack: "FAFO baby!"

"For the low, low price of $5 million, you too can have Trump’s Gold Card, an obviously corrupt path to citizenship in the US that looks like a tacky ripoff of the Amex Gold Card."

The Stranger, and its commenters, are constantly offering commentary that the U.S. should be more like Europe in its public policies and laws.

It's a ripoff of the immigration policies of Greece, Portugal, Italy, and Spain, not Amex.

It is a ripoff of the immigration policy of Quebec (the Feds in Canada have given Quebec permission to have their own, subject to certain Federal limitations).

Is The Stranger asserting that Quebec, Italy, et. al., are corrupt?

Seems pretty quiet over here...
Where are all the usual suspects who lied yesterday and claimed that the "protests" (riots) were "nonviolent"?
LOL were yall some of the 8 that got arrested?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigrant_investor_programs

Weird, I posted that a long time ago and it just showed up

"If you accidentally find yourself in the middle of our protest it's fair game for us to surround and destroy your vehicle and even attack you for being such a fascisty-fascist and there is nothing you can do about it." - Typical Anti-American Leftist

Reporting by the PBS Newshour (hardly right wing media) has questioned COVID lockdowns, using the WHO's own 2019 study on how costly, and of questionable disease preventing efficacy, lockdowns were likely to be.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/authors-of-in-covids-wake-on-their-criticism-of-the-governments-pandemic-response

@18 - “my right to not be mildly inconvenienced supersedes your right to live”

If you block my free passage, I probably won't run you over and kill you, but if I'm in my car, I'm most likely driving around looking for a place to take a shit (unless I am near my home). You see, I have to shit, A LOT. Sometimes very explosively. It's a medical thing.

If my free passage is blocked, I will exit my car and shit directly on as many of those blocking my way as I can, and since my shits are often explosive ones, I'm aiming for their faces. You have been warned.

Only 1317 days left of Trump's Fullbright and other shenanigans.

Only the Progressive Left continuing to drive working class voters to the MAGA, stands in the way of Democrat's victory in 2028.

@28, Now your just posting shit on the internet. Who knew?

https://logwork.com/countdown-h5o4

Americans are a stupid bunch, especially the old white people. Start a fire - especially if it’s the American Flag - the old people freak out, and the entire point of the protest is lost. They're receptive to the anger because they don’t like “Mexicans”, and because they confuse their own impending mortality with the health of society. Anger is the drug that sustains them.

I particularly enjoy the anti -ANTIFA ones. Does that make them PROFA?

(dear Papa Vel Du-Ray was in ANTIFA from 1941-46, and Mother Vel Du-Ray was an ANTIFA “fellow traveler” from 1943-1945. I’m glad they’re no longer here to see what a mess we’ve made of their country. Republicans are horrible people.)

Educators were wrong about the effects of school closures on children's social development and educational attainment.

Health experts dismissed warnings that social isolation would worsen mental health and drug abuse but supported the lock downs anyway.

They also assured us that mass vaccination was completely safe and would prevent new Covid infections.

The politicians tried to convince us Covid came from eating jungle meat even though a BSL level 3+ laboratory studying Covid viruses was located just miles away.

The left wants us to trust the expert class, but on every single facet of Covid management the experts were wrong. Not just a little wrong. They were completely wrong.

Meanwhile, plenty of local yokals who were conveying perfectly accurate information were banned from social media at the request of the White House.

The Covid reckoning has really just begun. The expert class should be trembling.

@23 Violence involves acts against people, not property. Vandalism and looting are crimes against property, but they are not violence. Lighting a dumpster on fire is not violence. So the accurate description was that the protests were non-violent until the police decided to get violent.

@3, 6:

We all already know what horrible people you are and here's further proof: condoning vehicular assault just because someone "feels threatened" by flesh and blood human beings while safely encased within two tons - or more - of steel, plastic, glass and rubber. You're both a disgrace to humanity.

@34 - the folks who write dictionaries for a living disagree with you. Acts of force intended to damage property are violence. Unless you have a degree in linguistics you really should defer to the experts on this one.

@35 - I'm actually a kind and loving person. You are a horrible person for excusing attacks on personal property and potentially the occupants thereof.

@6 You're thinking of National Baptists (historically Black) or American Baptists (mainline, historically abolitionist and somewhat racially diverse). The Southern Baptist Convention is overwhelmingly white, which is not surprising given its explicitly pro-slavery origins.

@21, Making a tight line around protesters with bicycles causes them to lose their ability not engage in criminal activity? What are you, two?

The police, or any government employee or official, has as much right to be on the public street as anyone else, in an official, or unofficial capacity. That is not an infringement on First Amendment Rights.

What percentage of First Amendment protests in Seattle have at least one criminal act occurring at them in Seattle? Would it not be negligent policing to not go to an event where the occurrence of criminal acts is frequent?

As far as being able to use deadly force to protect yourself from serious physical injury or a felony, here is Washington's short statute (which is not different in substance from other state's statutes) in it entirety since you don't trust my analysis:

"Homicide is also justifiable when committed either:
(1) In the lawful defense of the slayer, or his or her husband, wife, parent, child, brother, or sister, or of any other person in his or her presence or company, when there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design on the part of the person slain to commit a felony or to do some great personal injury to the slayer or to any such person, and there is imminent danger of such design being accomplished; or
(2) In the actual resistance of an attempt to commit a felony upon the slayer, in his or her presence, or upon or in a dwelling, or other place of abode, in which he or she is."

Here is Washington's Burglary Statute:

"(1) A person is guilty of residential burglary if, with intent to commit a crime against a person or property therein, the person enters or remains unlawfully in a dwelling other than a vehicle.
(2) Residential burglary is a class B felony. In establishing sentencing guidelines and disposition standards, residential burglary is to be considered a more serious offense than second degree burglary."

Here is Washington's Robbery statute:

"(1) A person is guilty of robbery in the first degree if:
(a) In the commission of a robbery or of immediate flight therefrom, he or she:
(i) Is armed with a deadly weapon; or
(ii) Displays what appears to be a firearm or other deadly weapon; or
(iii) Inflicts bodily injury; or
(b) He or she commits a robbery within and against a financial institution as defined in RCW 7.88.010 or 35.38.060.
(2) Robbery in the first degree is a class A felony."

The latter two are totally different crimes. What happened to the nanny started as a burglary and then ceased being that and became a robbery, which is a different crime.

Since they don't require civics in most American high schools anymore, burgled people, or victims of theft, often say, "I was robbed."

You would think that the people who write for a publication that regularly post about it, would be more informed than the average high school grad.

The former is a mere property crime. The latter is a violent crime against a person. Equating the two is highly disrespectful and dismissive of her experience.

@34, The acts you describe were criminal. You omitted one: Throwing fireworks at police. That is assault.

The police have the right to use reasonable force to disperse a crowd that does not do so when lawfully ordered to.

The police, OR ANYONE ELSE, have the right to use reasonable force to take someone into custody, and deliver them either to the police or a court. RCW 9A.16.020:

"The use, attempt, or offer to use force upon or toward the person of another is not unlawful in the following cases:
(1) Whenever necessarily used by a public officer in the performance of a legal duty, or a person assisting the officer and acting under the officer's direction;
(2) Whenever necessarily used by a person arresting one who has committed a felony and delivering him or her to a public officer competent to receive him or her into custody;
(3) Whenever used by a party about to be injured, or by another lawfully aiding him or her, in preventing or attempting to prevent an offense against his or her person, or a malicious trespass, or other malicious interference with real or personal property lawfully in his or her possession, in case the force is not more than is necessary;
(4) Whenever reasonably used by a person to detain someone who enters or remains unlawfully in a building or on real property lawfully in the possession of such person, so long as such detention is reasonable in duration and manner to investigate the reason for the detained person's presence on the premises, and so long as the premises in question did not reasonably appear to be intended to be open to members of the public;
(5) Whenever used by a carrier of passengers or the carrier's authorized agent or servant, or other person assisting them at their request in expelling from a carriage, railway car, vessel, or other vehicle, a passenger who refuses to obey a lawful and reasonable regulation prescribed for the conduct of passengers, if such vehicle has first been stopped and the force used is not more than is necessary to expel the offender with reasonable regard to the offender's personal safety;
(6) Whenever used by any person to prevent a mentally ill, mentally incompetent, or mentally disabled person from committing an act dangerous to any person, or in enforcing necessary restraint for the protection or restoration to health of the person, during such period only as is necessary to obtain legal authority for the restraint or custody of the person."

Civics that you should have gotten in high school, but probably didn't.

@35, Are you safe if you have been kidnapped? Unlawfully imprisoned?

RCW 9A.16.050(2), which was democratically passed by our legislature, allows the use of deadly force in active resistance to any felony.

Some states don't allow the use of deadly force in active resistance to any felony. The ones that don't specifically list kidnapping as a justification for using deadly force.

Are you anti-democratic? If you are against democratic standards governing public conduct, are you pro dictator or pro fascist. You would get along well with Trump at the very least since he too wants to apply standards other than those in law.

For lefties taking to the streets, the question of whether doing so will invite violence may hinge on the mythic vibe/flavor of the environment/crowd; Civil Rights era King style justice marches, Hamilton Hall student occupation, disciplined Marxist "general strike" demonstrations, or, as in the case of Cascadia, Sorel/Bukharin anarcho shenanigans.

Last year, I saw many peaceful road side groups for Palestine by aging hippies around Port Townsend, all while UW was reenacting the worst aspects of 1968.

Somehow, ANSWER was quite successful in staging large nationwide anti war protests without much violence during the Bush years. The price of admission was a smattering of Hammer and Sickle flags as per founding principles.

In the summer of 2020, every flavor was out on the streets of Seattle, until, in one of the fascinating sociological phenomenons, the white affluent progressive population discarded the lot while embracing the most radical...our beloved BLM. The dramatic events which ensued were a direct consequence.

Early Social Revolutionies were the first to recognize and apply lessons from the nascent field of psychology, specifically crowd psychology. For a spell, they owned mass politics, and with it the streets. Then along came the Deuce. Playing in the streets and not seeing shiny black boots is now a rarity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUARwmLBk8o

Your regular reminder that fascist and “anti-democratic” are not synonyms, and people openly dissenting to existing laws is a normal, healthy practice in any society, democratic or otherwise. If dissent was anti-democratic then nearly every major event in US history from the revolutionary war to the civil rights movement would fall under this umbrella.

“Do you disagree with the law?? That was passed democratically??? Well then, you’re no different than Trump!” It takes work to be this stupid.

@41 "For lefties taking to the streets, the question of whether doing so will invite violence may hinge on the mythic vibe/flavor of the environment/crowd; Civil Rights era King style justice marches..."

MLK was beaten and jailed, and the FBI launched a covert op to try to convince him to kill himself. Protests have always "invited violence" from the authorities regardless of the behavior of the protesters.

@40 "If you are against democratic standards governing public conduct, are you pro dictator or pro fascist. You would get along well with Trump"

There you have it folks, Rosa Parks was a Trump-like fascist according to the stupidest person on here.

@45, Rosa Parks was demonstrating, and willing to go passively to jail, to change a public standard.

That is different than insisting that the existing public standard not be applied to you, or someone else, because you don't like it, and it hasn't been changed yet.

@41, Protesting to change a standard is democratic.

Protesting to have an existing, democratically enacted standard ignored, because you don't agree with it, is anti-democratic.

Applying a different standard for evaluating criminal conduct other than the democratically enacted one, to declare something criminal, is anti-democratic.

Insisting on application of the rule of law, as it exists today, even if you disagree with it, is democratic, because it supports what was democratically already decided. One can also simultaneously state that the rule of law needs to be changed going forward. That is democratic. It is undemocratic to insist that what has been democratically decided, and is in place, be thwarted.

The whole point of majoritarianism, is that the majority gets to determine what the rules are for those that didn't prevail in the majoritarian debate over the law. The majority prevails, and everyone else gets to suck it up, until they are in the majority on any given law.

Just inspected the handiwork at the Federal building. Standard fare. Some black clad blokes were lingering, admiring last night's efforts. A middle aged guy is quietly taping up a shattered window. The dudes are quite grandiose in their telling - self deputized to fight the baddies until revolution comes.

Meanwhile, the big news - hotel staff are reporting "many" check ins downtown by federal agents. As the little girl in Poltergeist famously declared, "They're here!"

The circus has arrived. Everyone knows the script.

What kind of people are gonna pay $5 mil for US citizenship--Arab sheikhs, Mexican drug lords, Russian oligarchs? Are the MAGAs gonna be cool with the foreign languages and customs they bring with them?

Also, Trump pulled another TACO today and now says we have to keep immigrant farmworkers and hospitality workers in the country. Makes sense for a guy who has employed illegal aliens at his golf courses and hotels, but again, is this what MAGA wants? You guys were cheering for mass removals regardless of status and saying ALL of them had to go.

@46, what in the fuck are you talking about. Comte called two commenters a disgrace to humanity for their opinions and you accused him of being anti-democratic, pro-dictator, no different than Trump. He didn’t even say anything about the law or its application. He just shared his opinion about someone’s character.

You need to learn how to disagree with people without turning it into a moral test that everyone but you fails. Sometimes people just have different opinions about things. Incredible to think someone as old as you needs to hear this.

Disappointing to see the "FUCK ICE" and "ACAB" graffiti along the protest route. I'm not crazy about the federal building getting vandalized either (we will all pay to fix that), but the businesses that were affected are just innocent bystanders in all this. I don't understand why they have to be targeted.

@12, @34: "So the accurate description was that the protests were non-violent until the police decided to get violent."

JUST YESTERDAY, you guys all got completely punked by the 'protests were not violent until the police showed up' li(n)e, when you could have simply watched not one, but two, videos of a woman getting harassed and assaulted by black-clad dudes outside the federal building. And now you're back at it again. (Watch those videos: she even asks where the cops are while the black-clad 'protestors' chase her.) You simply won't do the learning, not even after getting punked that hard. Amazing.

(Even if facts randomly show your line is correct this time, it's not your fault. You did try to push the same lie. Again.)

@51 ya we got "punked so hard" by just one, not two, video of a woman being told to go away and then asserting that she'd been assaulted, although no actual assault was shown on the video. Punked SO hard

@49, If you are substituting a standard for use of deadly force that society has democratically elected, rather respecting it and using it because it has been democratically determined, even while you disagree with it, and would like to see the democratic society change it, you are, by definition, acting against the rule of law that has been democratically determined.

Comte's standard for when its allowable to use deadly force is not the one that is democratically enacted. I

You can't claim to support democracy while opposing the application of the law in judging criminal conduct, as it has been democratically elected.

You don't have to agree with the majority in a majoritarian system. You do have to use and abide by the legal standards they have set, until and unless that majority changes that standard, or a new majority changes it after an election. By the current legal standard, its perfectly permissible, and not horrible, to resist an in-progress felony against a person with deadly force.

Kidnapping is taking or confining someone against their consent. It's a felony. If your car is surrounded and you being confined in it and in a location not of your choosing against your consent, you may use deadly force. That has been democratically decided.

@53 "Kidnapping is taking or confining someone against their consent. It's a felony. If your car is surrounded and you being confined in it and in a location not of your choosing against your consent, you may use deadly force."

This is so obviously wrong and stupid. No judge or jury in the world would ever find that a person was "kidnapped" so as to authorize use of deadly force because pedestrians were blocking their car. You cannot possibly believe this.

The "Anarchy!" sketch by the " Whitest Kids U’ Know" comedy troupe, which is actually the best, and funniest, depiction of what would happen if Seattle-style "anarchists" got what they want. Watch it and weep, Archies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLBospQs9Hk

@52: "...although no actual assault was shown on the video."

Whatevs, dude. They touched her without her consent, and tried to take her telephone away. That's assault, and attempted theft, under Washington State law.

For someone who has stated that just being a "Nazi," (a term you refused to define, even when asked to do so) justifies felony assault, you can't seem to recognize even misdemeanor assault for having the "wrong" beliefs, even when provided with two videos of exactly that happening. Pick a lane and stay in it, 'k?

53, again, by this completely idiotic argument, mlk was an anti-democratic dictator or whatever, as is anyone expressing disagreement with existing law. People are just sharing opinions that differ from yours. Deal with it, loser.

@56 does repeating your counterfactual assertions make you feel like you won the argument?

@57, MLK both lobbied to change the law, while complying with it.

He and his supporters submitted to arrest. They never argued in court that the laws of the day did not apply to them or should not be enforced or applied to them. They argued that the laws of the day needed to be changed.

They marched, fully expecting to be arrested, charged, and judged under the laws and standard in place at the time.

They argued for changing the Democratic laws and norms, while submitting to the laws as they existed. E.g. If you sit at a segregated lunch counter, the penalty is arrest, trial, possible fines, and potentially incarceration. They never challenged the imposition of the price that the democratically enacted laws of the day exacted.

The civil rights protesters of the 1950's and 1960's never sought to stop, or be given a pass on the laws of the day with their conduct, they sought to change the laws and standards of the day. They didn't seek to be judged by a standard other than that which democratically existed at the time. This is my choice, now judge me by the democratically existing standard for my actions.

@60, They also never sought to have Bull Connor, Governor Wallace, or other segregationists adjudicated by any standard other than what was in law at the time.

They called them out as racist, segregationist, and other moral terms that applied, but did not seek to have them arrested or charged for those things, because society had not made that a violation of law at the time. Once there was Federal Law in place that prohibited segregation, then and only then, did they seek to have people charged with violating that law.

@58: Did you not watch the videos? Or did you not understand what you saw?

White Seattle performative rioting leftist progressive liberal activists snatch an American Flag off of a Latino and burn it, and he objects. LOL!

Way to go white Seattle "activists", nothing is more cringe than you are. The fact that you don't realize how cringe you are is part of why I call you naive failures:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/1la2mls/thoughts/?sort=old

Typo in #62, I meant to write "to burn it". The wypipo Archies were not successful in their attempt, partly because they were ultimately and stereotypically wimpy, and backed down from the strong Latino man's resistance to his American flag being burned at the attempted force of the white Archies. LOL

Check your "White Privilege" indeed!

Literally nothing in the world is more cringe than a white Seattle leftist/liberal/progressive

59 no one is trying to stop the law (????), people are just expressing opinions about it, that’s literally it. Also mlk broke the law a bunch of times and wrote extensively about the difference between what’s legal and what he believed to be just. I would ask if you can figure out how that is highly relevant to this discussion and the point that has been hand-delivered to you multiple times now but we all know the answer to that question don’t we.

Rest easy as Chuck Schumer will issue a stern tweet condemning the beat down of a U S Senator for daring to question the Trump regime!

Yikes pheebs. Tell me you are okay with vehicular manslaughter without telling me you’re okay with vehicular manslaughter

All of these nimbys and pearl clutching supposedly liberal Seattleites need to understand that the majority of the rights we have today that make Seattle liberal in the first place come from civil unrest and protesting. And when you couple that with police, it almost always results in some sort of violence (usually instigated by police and then exacerbated by civilians responding to it, almost always less equipped in the first place). It’s not always pretty but it is literally the fabric of this country and what we believe in.

If you don’t like it, look away I guess. But everything you hold dear started as a fight for that right. Sucks that it delays your ability to get to you acupuncture appt but it’s more important than you and your daily schedule

@68: Thanks for the snide condescension, but we liberals understand all of that pretty well. What you need to understand is the difference between what Dr. King did, what Pride did, and what stuff like the pointless nonsense at the federal building does. One of those things is not like the others, and it's time for the Stranger and its (rapidly dwindling number of) supportive commenters to recognize this.

@32: Disparaging your own race and age, just to sound hip among lib elites, is such cringe.

@35: When the mob has surrounded and is on top of the car, angrily trying to break in, anyone would feel threatened. With this law, anarchists and terrorists would think twice about engaging in such violence, and that's a good thing - and a plus for humanity.

The mistake "the left" always makes - and this goes back at least a century - is that they let themselves get infiltrated by either right-wing thugs or "anarchists", which are nominally a creation of "the left", and then the actions of those people get blamed on the more liberal side, which discredits them with the conservative element of the population (conservative insomuch as they don't like property damage)

Labor struggles, anti-war protests, and contemporary protests for issues such as the death of George Floyd. They are always infiltrated. It's a tactic as old as the hills.

For as much as the left loves their purity tests, they don't apply them when it comes to protests.

Very few black people showing up for any ICE protest across the country. I wonder why? Oh that's right, now I remember why.

@71 "When the mob has surrounded and is on top of the car, angrily trying to break in"

Has this been a real problem? DiSantis rhetoric is most likely to just result in additional Heather Heyers (regular protesters being mowed down by andry reactionaries), in other words to * increase * violence.

Why is it, speaking_up, dear? You mustn’t hold back on us.

@74: That was different situation. The car wasn't surrounded and attacked by a mob, but drove into the crowd in an unprovoked attack.

@76 right, I'm saying civilian cars don't really get attacked by protest mobs, what's more likely is some asshole will intentionally drive into a crowd because they don't like the message then disingenuously claim "self defense" based on DiSantis' rhetoric.

@39, 40 Kidnapping is a crime against a person, therefor it is violence. As for the asshole throwing fireworks at the cops, yes, he or they were being violent, That does not change the fact that the majority of people for most of the protest were non-violent.