Friday, July 21, 2017

The Right Way To Deal With Protesters Who Disrupt Speakers

Your right to "peaceably assemble" and to protest is not permission to deny speakers their rights to speak, or listeners their rights to hear the speakers.  At least one school not only recognizes this fundamental fact, but is acting on it:
Claremont McKenna College this week announced disciplinary measures, including lengthy suspensions, against seven students who were part of a mob that blocked an audience from hearing a pro-police speech by Heather Mac Donald last April.

The crowd, spurred on by Black Lives Matter, forced Mac Donald to give her speech via livestream, even as protesters tried to drown her out. It was an outrageous infringement of Mac Donald’s right to free speech — and the right of other students to hear her. It was also another despicable example of what passes for acceptable political protest on far too many campuses.

Claremont McKenna hit three students with full-year suspensions, two with one-semester suspensions and two with conduct probation. It gave deans at other Claremont campuses evidence of violations by their students and urged them to act. Four non-students were suspended from on-campus privileges.
Wouldn't it be great if our public universities--I'm talking to you, UC Berkeley--would do the same?

UpdateRelated:
The prominent leader of a militant left-wing group was arrested earlier this week on charges stemming from a violent brawl last year between white nationalist groups and counter-protesters.

Yvette Felarca, 47, was taken into custody in Los Angeles on Tuesday on charges of inciting and participating in a riot, and assault likely to cause great bodily injury, the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office said Wednesday. The charges come after an eight-month investigation.

Felarca, whose name in public records appears as Yvonne Capistrano Felarca, has been identified as the leader and spokesperson for the anti-fascist group By Any Means Necessary.

She is among several people arrested this week in connection to the wild skirmish that broke out at the state Capitol in June 2016 when more than 300 counter-protesters confronted about 30 members of the Traditionalist Worker Party, which has been called a white nationalist group.

Felarca, who is a middle school teacher in Berkeley, attended the Capitol protest and gave television interviews after the melee. She was captured on video hitting a member of the TWP and calling a man a Nazi before punching him in the stomach repeatedly while shouting for him to “get the f*** off our streets.”  (Boldface mine--Darren)

1 comment: