Agenda - Council Work Session - 03/23/2021

Home

10/22/2020 David Schultz: The ethics of protests at people's homes — Twin Cities Protests, especially loud, long, repeated, or with large crowds, can be threatening, and if residents or neighbors have no means to escape, these protests have turned from legitimate expression of views into forms of intimidation. Even the liberal Justices Brennan, Marshall, and Stevens, who dissented in Frisby, contended that there are valid time, manner and place restrictions on speech, and a careful balance of expressive rights must be struck with efforts to protect privacy, captured audiences, and prevent intimidation. Contending rights must be balanced, and in some cases limited restrictions on residential protests should be upheld. There is a critical difference in the protests in front of the private residences of police officers versus the governor's mansion in Minnesota. The latter is a public building with a public official. He is fair game for protest, however uncivil but peaceful it may be, and a different balance may need to be struck here that weighs more in favor of the protestors. There is an additional problem with protests at private homes, at least as they have emerged recently. The demonstration at the home of Minneapolis officer Bob Kroll also targeted his wife. Bob Kroll's wife is not Bob Kroll. There is an incredible amount of sexism in attributing the views of a husband to his wife, whether the attribution is positive or negative. We are all individuals and should be judged on basis of who we are as individuals, not by association. But even if that protest had focused only on the officer, it subjected all parties in the household, including children and also perhaps immediate neighbors, to unwarranted intrusions on their privacy under circumstances where they had limited opportunity to escape speech they did not wish to hear. If the whole purpose of the protests at a private residence was in fact to trap people in their homes, then this was not speech but intimidation. Some will argue that the protest intrusions here were justified in the name of abating racism. Others will contend that criticizing these protestors is racist. Both assertions are wrong and misdirected. Abating racism and righting the wrongs it has caused do not justify committing other wrongs or trampling on the rights of others, no matter how noble the cause. If today it's racism, tomorrow another perceived greater good may justify similar tactics, perhaps even for a cause you do not endorse and against people whom you do. Finally, criticism of these tactics is not racist. It is an argument to respect rights and to suggest that there may be more effective and focused ways to make a SUBSCRIr https://www.twincities.com/2020/08/30/david-schultz-the-ethics-of-protests-at-peoples-homes/ 3/4