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Comment by mywittyname | Hacker News Reader

This is the risk in protesting. Authorities have never been nice to protestors. Protesting has always carried the risk of assault and the loss of livelihood, wealth, freedom, or life. So before protesting, you need to ask yourself if what your protesting for is worth it.

The state is fucking powerful. After all, the state is the one in charge of checking the state's power. If you piss off enough people, or merely the wrong people, you may discover that your rights only extend so far as other people are willing to protect them. The difference here is that most protestors are punished via ass-kicking, seizure of personal belongings, a few nights being humiliated in a jail cell, and a bunch of fines.

The people whose lives were interrupted by this are pissed off and out for blood. And Trudeau is going to give it to them, and be heralded as a hero while doing so. Especially after the perceived police incompetence in the matter (by failing to dole out the standard ass-kicking-jail-fine punishment).

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I live in Ottawa. This was not a protest, it was an 21 day occupation, blocking the city core and removing citizen's ability to sleep in their own homes due to the constant excessive noise, (often at ear-damaging levels) or leave without harassment. Businesses in the area could not open.

So to compare these occupiers with typical protestors does not make sense. Talking with other locals, the last time someone could remember a non-peaceful protest in Ottawa was around the beginning of the Iraq war, aside from when about a dozen BLM protestors occupied a single intersection overnight and were all arrested on day 2 of their attempt to keep the intersection shut down.

[Here's a popular viewpoint from the left about protests](https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1334184644707758080?lang=en).

If protests were "comfortable", then there would be no pressure for the government to do anything. The point of a protest is to make enough noise (heh) so the government is forced to react.

Look at protests like Euromaiden, or the recent protests in Kazakhstan with 200+ dead. If the Ukrainian people didn't protest at the levels they did, and occupy Kiev for as long as they did, would the government have done anything? I don't think anyone in Kiev was sleeping when people were building barricades and engaging in deadly firefights with the Ukrainian police & army.

I don't hold that exact viewpoint, so I don't feel the need to defend it.

There's varying levels of "uncomfortable", and a question of who is being made uncomfortable.

If a protest is permanently damaging the hearing of regular people who are not in positions of leadership for 21 days straight, and subjecting them to significant harassment, some of them a botched arson attempt, and a whole litany of other assaults as have been documented in Centertowne Ottawa, I would argue it is more akin to holding them hostage.

Fair enough. I can sympathize if you had to endure 3 weeks of loud noise. Frankly if I wasn't supportive of the Convoy, I would be pretty upset too.

One more thing I would say is that the fault for how long the "Occupation" went on for isn't entirely with the Convoy. With a large protest like this, it's up to the government to deal with, one way or another.

The authorities didn't take the right actions. They should either come out to negotiate with the protesters, or quickly utilise force to disperse them. Instead, they basically sat still for 3 weeks while Trudeau "fled" Ottawa to some undisclosed location.

So I would lay some blame on the government in its tardiness in addressing the Convoy, as part of the reason it went on for so long. You can't expect angry people who are determined to change government policy to just pack up and go home when the government told them to

Yeah the municipal government and police force were first to completely drop the ball. They didn't do their job and let our downtown become a parliament hill autonomous zone. Heck, they gave the convoy participants access to a city parking lot which was then set up as a forward operating base for their supply lines for the next 3 weeks.

If the police had managed this situation properly after the first weekend this would never have become an international issue. As a police force they basically completely failed to maintain order in the city, and that's a big part of why we required an eventual federal response to clean up the occupation that had free reign to establish itself for weeks.

I'm not a Trudeau supporter but I'm not sure what he should have done differently in this situation - he apparently had covid on the first weekend, is that what you're referring to about him fleeing? Anyways, this should have been handled by the municipal police force with adequate support from the provincial police force within the first week. I hope that the eventual federal review that comes with enacting the EA will find the root cause why our police force failed so hard.

When you organize a large, funded protest, internal organization, tactics, and policing are definitely your responsibility. Unleashing an incoherent mob is just vandalism.

it is, indeed, unfortunate that it happened near your residence.

ok, just want to say i’ve heard this before and this is what i really hate about protests.

You want politicians or big business to react but you’re pissing off small businesses and civilians. Even if I 100% agree with your protest, I don’t want you to blare loud music and block off roadways and generally be aggressive and obnoxious. In fact this kind of thing makes ordinary people go against you.

If you can’t target the politicians and big businesses directly, if you want to get the people’s support, bring attention to your issue. If it’s a serious issue people will take interest themselves. Once you some support, then you can go out and protest and lead a huge rally, but don’t blatantly piss off bystanders.

I wonder if the government would have taken the same steps if these people simply protested on the lawn of Parliament or some other area that didn't block people from living their lives. I suspect not but I'm just a random Canadian.

Occupy Wall Street was a protest and an "occupation". CHAZ was literally people "occupying" a part of Seattle. Both of those protests were a good thing, but they were still protests. You don't get to decide what is and what isn't a protest just because you disagree with the message or the methods and the government's rhetoric in the past few weeks (calling it terrorism, occupation, foreign backed agitation) is very dangerous and should not be encouraged.

It's literally straight out of a third world country's dictator textbook on how to discredit any opposition, especially the cold War Era style insanity around "foreign backing!!" by... Americans. I guess at least they didn't blame the Russians this time

I think it's necessary to draw the distinction between this occupation, and other protests, because other protests do not greatly impact the ongoing lives of random unrelated citizens in the city who just happen to live in the area for weeks on end.

So sure, we can call both protests, but the important thing is that this was also a foreign-funded occupation. So there is no value in comparing this with the protests for both left- and right- wing causes that Ottawa sees on a weekly basis. Protests that get a permit, last an afternoon, and then go home and lets people live their lives without being harassed.

>because other protests do not greatly impact the ongoing lives of random unrelated citizens in the city who just happen to live in the area for weeks on end.

From my experience this is not true. Protests mostly involve discomfort to normal people.Be it BLM, occupy wall street, students manifestations, railroads blocking, etc

Maybe the scales of some are different, but calling this a "foreign-founded occupation" is disingenuous.

> Maybe the scales of some are different, but calling this a "foreign-founded occupation" is disingenuous.

Weird since it was definitely foreign-funded and definitely an occupation, but okay

I think the trucker protest was unique (and different from OWS, BLM) due to it deliberately targeting ordinary, unrelated citizens instead of the government. It would have been more like other protests if they blockaded and blew their horns at Trudeau's front lawn or Parliament or Big Business or something, but instead the protesters specifically went after the wellbeing of ordinary Canadians. All protests "involve discomfort" to normal people, but this one uniquely targeted them.

EDIT: This is not letting individual BLM protestors (who did deliberately target private businesses) off the hook, but the movement itself did not specifically call for belligerence against unrelated citizens.

I just want to address the comment about most protests involving discomfort to normal people. I live and work in the downtown core of Ottawa. I'm sure you will not be surprised to hear that the city is a focal point for protests and has had many of them, large and small, over the years. I completely agree that protests often include some measure of discomfort for random, unrelated citizens.

However, I can tell you that there has never been a protest even remotely close to the number of torments this protest inflicted upon the residents of the city. I personally know numerous people who were harassed verbally and physically while walking in the streets simply for wearing a mask. A downtown mall was forced to close for multiple weeks due to protesters refusing to follow masking rules. Think of the retail staff who lost out on multiple weeks of pay. There was an attempt to set fire to a residential building with the main lobby door being taped shut. Fireworks were being set off on city streets downtown. Extremely loud horns were being sounded throughout all hours of the day and night, including train and boat horns that could be heard throughout the downtown core. People were prevented from buying groceries within a reasonable distance due to the grocery store having to close; the workers having been harassed while working by protesters. Numerous small retail shops in the downtown were forced to close their doors due to protester harassment and reduced traffic as people largely felt unsafe in the downtown core. There was an instance of protesters harassing a homeless shelter into providing them food.

This was not discomfort. This was a complete prevention of the ability to feel safe in their homes and neighbourhood for a large swath of Ottawa residents who had nothing to do with the mandates. Many people were materially affected by this and had no way of escaping beyond leaving the city.

> "complete prevention of the ability to feel safe"

Kind of a hard thing to prove. I don't feel safe due to climate destruction. Can we invoke the Emergencies Act against the Canadian fossil fuel industry and the automotive parts manufacturers to make me feel better?

I really don't think it was that hard to prove. If you look up the injunction against the horns, it specifically cited the volume being well into what the law considered harassment. The fact that it was granted and extended shows that the judge felt the people of downtown as a whole were being harassed.

If you can get the majority of people to agree that they feel unsafe due to climate destruction and neither the municipal nor provincial governments respond accordingly, then, by all means, invoke the emergency act. I'd certainly be on board.

They protested against vaccination mandates and the store closure was due to government policy. To be honest, this sound very peaceful for a protest all in all.

Feeling unsafe is often invoked lately to restrict the rights of others. I don't believe this is sufficient in a larger context.

Please show me your source for saying that the mall was closed due to government policy.

I have none and I could be wrong.

You have no source and could be wrong but still declared that it was closed due to government policy?

I don't know what agenda you have but I will no longer be responding to you since you don't seem to be able to interact in good faith.

Occupy Wall Street was a protest and an "occupation". CHAZ was literally people "occupying" a part of Seattle. Both of those protests were a good thing, but they were still protests.

Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement basically just took over city parks and fed people. Occupy was basically a good. CHAZ is a kind of rolling disaster that involved over-anxious security killing a guy who'd stolen someone's car. As a leftist who knows people who were involved with it, I would say CHAZ was a very bad thing.

Of course, a democratic society has to decide what sorts of disruptions are acceptable and which have to be stopped. Of course such a society is going to do that. Otherwise, the first extremist cult to field enough armed people to seize the state will win.

...just because you disagree with the message or the METHODS(emphasis added)...

If the trucker convoy was basically thugs who were breaking the law because they thought they could and because they thought doing this would force the rest of the nation to bow to their demands, I don't think anyone has an obligation to have the least respect for their efforts.

CHAZ was literally an armed insurrection. They didn't "occupy", they tried to secede before changing their minds and relabeling to CHOP.

The truckers seems vastly more peaceful than the people involved in CHAZ, but government should still not be able to freeze their accounts. That is just insane.

You're aware that Canada and the USA are different countries, right?

Yes, what's your point? That gotcha is really annoying, there's no reason to pretend canada and the USA aren't extremely interlinked. Canadians have never been shy of comparing canada to the USA whenever it suits us, so it's funny to see how we are now pretending canada is completely unique and not comparable.

Also, I'm sure the CBC never talked about whats happening in the US but if they did they surely described CHAZ as terroristic occupation, not protests? Like do you think some canadians condemned those like they are condemning the current protests?

My point was about public opinion and hyperbolic media narratives, because it's abundantly clear that the reaction to this protest is hypocritical at best and unhinged at worse. Hence why I brought up CHAZ and OCCUPY (two movements that I fully supported )

As I understand things, a factor in how this has played out is that local (Ottawa) police essentially threw up their hands and said they couldn't do anything - when it was a matter of those police basically being sympathetic.

Emergency powers were needed to force what would be the normal job of police.

For example, they got rid of the police chief. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/canadian-official-po...

I agree - this would not be international news if the police had managed the situation appropriately in the early days. What happened within OPS, nobody fully knows yet. But apparently by enacting the federal Emergencies Act, an in-depth review of the events leading up to requiring the act will be a part of the aftermath.

I also live in Ottawa, in fact in the downtown core. This was absolutely a protest. I didn't support the message they were pushing, but it was a protest. The horns were a nuisance (people ending up in the hospital unable to sleep) but they were a problem solved a little before the halfway mark. It's unfair to give the impression this was still a problem.

Governments have occupied people's lives for 2 years now. I think you can bear a few days of honking for freedom.

Businesses weren't closed by protesters. That's what they were protesting FOR: to have things open up.

The protesters weren't harassing people: the government has been doing it for 2 years.

These statements are easily falsifiable, why do you make them? The largest mall in Ottawa was shut down for nearly a month because of the demonstrator's antics! https://ottawa.citynews.ca/local-news/rideau-centre-reopens-...

This comment is weird, it appears to be a rehashing of the populist argument "If you go against the majority then you deserve whatever happens to you", as an atheist living in a majority-muslim intolerant country, that's familiar.

And the kinds of people who say this are familiar too. They perceive themselves to be part of the majority (Or the "Right Side Of History", in other imaginations), they think it will never turn against them or - for that matter - that the people they're oppressing will never return the unpleasant favor and gang on them back.

All those countless centuries of history and people still haven't fully grasped that Power and Oppression are completely symmetric tools, totally blind to the identities of those wielding them or those they're used against. The tyranny you so gleefully cheer now is going to turn against you (or an equivalent one will be constructed by the ones you oppressed one day and used against you) and you won't be laughing then.

I tend to disagree. In democracy, the people is the state and, in extent, has the power. The government (elected people in place) is only temporary.

I agree with you on paper but have a really hard time viewing my current relationship with any State as that of which I have power. Nor do I see myself with any _limited State_ having any power. Nor do I see myself as having _any_ ability to legally inflict harm to others as the State has power to do.

I totally agree that democracy on paper says the People have control but I am not seeing that play out at any real scale.

In a lot of countries, "the people are the state" is only nominally true. Special interests often carry the day, and anyway in a partisan environment devoid of principles we need to protect against moments of passion where a 51% majority can infringe on the rights of 49% (or in my country, a largely elite 10%--which helms universities and media institutions and so on--can use the state to push their ideology on the other 90%).

This is a common recipe.

Suppress people's rights & freedoms for long enough until they revolt, then call them violent terrorists and suppress them a bit more.

True but people should be able to protest and make politicians uncomfortable, which is what happened here. If we can't hear the other side, we go down quickly.

Absolutely people have right to protest all they want, infact people are still protesting on side walks. But they don't have right to block whole city blocks for weeks, blocking paths of ambulances, jam 911 and block critical infrastructure.

Why not? I agree we currently don't but why shouldn't we?

I think this is reasonable, but it's also problematic when the subject of the protests invokes emergency powers to deal with his critics. That's not a precedent you want to set over people blocking streets, never mind the functionally weak position the government was attempting to defend (vaccine mandates).

I really wish that people would have protested without going overboard, the support would have grown a lot more. (Not making blanket statement that everyone who was part of protest went overboard)

I am not supportive of vaccine mandates and fully support people's right to control what is injected in their bodies. I don't support people getting fired because they are unvaccinated and all the other negative consequences of mandates.

We are in terrible and disappointing situation and can only hope that saner heads will prevail.

You sort of have to, if you want to actually make an impact.

Look at what they did in Euromaiden, or the recent protests in Kazakhstan (200+ dead). If Ukrainian people resorted to peaceful protests, the pro-Russian government would have easily cracked down and suppressed the protests.

If you want another even more brutal example - look at the Tiananmen Protests. Do you think peaceful protest will convince an authoritarian communist government to magically give up its powers?

The government rarely listens to its people (yes that includes democratic countries). If you want the government to listen, you gotta make a lot of noise.

Thank you for that perspective, fully support your right to peaceful protest.

We live in a democracy with representatives. We may be approaching Kazakhstan but not there yet. Protests in Canada were allowed for weeks to go on without much interruption from government and there are still protests going on.

I am against mandates, against vaccine passports, also against debanking people. I would argue better approach in democracy is to call your representatives phone rather than jam 911. You can also vote them out in the next election (there is an election coming up in Ontario, Canada, if you feel that mandates are wrong make sure people running for election understand that you don't want mandates).

I hope we can see there is a way to peacefully coexist, by using tools available in democratic process.

How did protestors jam 911 ? and what is the critical infrastructure that they blocked other than roads ?

>This is the risk in protesting. Authorities have never been nice to protestors. Protesting has always carried the risk of assault and the loss of livelihood, wealth, freedom, or life. So before protesting, you need to ask yourself if what your protesting for is worth it.

This act has never been used before, it's predecessor was used only during serious war. This act being used against legitimate protest and then going forward banning all protest?

Like say you want to protest the government based on one side of the Ukraine war? You can't, that's illegal.

Say you want to go cover those illegal protests and report on it as a journalist? That's illegal.

>Especially after the perceived police incompetence in the matter (by failing to dole out the standard ass-kicking-jail-fine punishment).

The police couldn't touch the protest for weeks not because of inaction but because your right to protest is a human right. They required the national emergency to remove our right to protest in order to label the protest illegal.

>The police couldn't touch the protest for weeks not because of inaction but because your right to protest is a human right. They required the national emergency to remove our right to protest in order to label the protest illegal.

So you are saying under Canadian law, if you protest and do something illegal like blocking roads, destroying property, etc then Canadian police can't do anything? So if I go back in history and look at other protests in Canada like the ones against the pipelines for example, then I will see that the police didn't act against them?

>you protest and do something illegal like blocking roads

Any protest of any respectable size will block the roads it chooses to march in, every climate change protest and every gay pride blocks the roads, never see people complaining about those.

>destroying property

What is the property that was destroyed by the protest in question?

> Any protest of any respectable size will block the roads it chooses to march in, every climate change protest and every gay pride blocks the roads, never see people complaining about those.

Ottawa gets protests for left- and right- wing causes on a weekly basis. One of the biggest protests we see is a yearly "bus all the catholic school children to parliament hill to protest abortion", and it goes by without a hitch every year.

Anyways, protests last for maybe an afternoon or day or two at most and involve people standing on parliament hill or marching around the downtown core, not blockading the city core and constantly harassing the people who live there for multiple weeks.

>constantly harassing

I see this word used multiple times in people arguing against the protest, never with any details about the concrete instances of the supposed harassment. Noise is not harassment, any activity with a large group of people is going to annoy and disturb the place they happen to choose to congregate, this is not even specific to protests.

Actually, just to be clear, what exactly did the protestors do besides blocking the road and making a lot of noise?

>protests last for maybe an afternoon or day or two at most

(1) The duration of a protest and

(2) How much inconvenience it causes to the locals

are the two factors that determine whether it's a legitimate protest or not ?

Noise is 100% absolutely definitely harassment, especially when it is over 100dB within people's homes, and every hour of the day for weeks on end. Why do you say it's not? It was loud enough to cause permanent damage and was unending for a significant portion of the occupation, until a citizen managed to get a court injunction.

The level of noise, the duration of the noise, and the tools they were using to create that noise (including multiple actual train horns) were all illegal under existing laws, as well.

You mean they did this at night? Wow. And police let this go on for multiple nights? When sleep deprivation is done to alleged terrorists, Amnesty International calls it torture.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/sleep-deprivation-is-torture...

Yes. Exactly. They'd also put off fireworks at random hours of the night to add to it.

>Why do you say it's not?

Because it's not, harassment is usually implied to be personal, involving hostile contact between the harasser(s) and the harassed. Did the protestors shout insults or threats at you or other neighborhood residents ?

>all illegal under existing laws

Do we really need to constantly circle back to the point that protests have to be lawful ? they do not, protesting is about breaking the ordinary and disrupting the status quo, that's the point, especially when the people protesting feel cornered and without a lawful retort to perceived injustices.

Every action against the government will hurt the population to some degree or another, 100db noise seems pretty mild compared to the private property damage valued in the millions that large-scale protests usually cause. Prioritising comfort over protest is implicitely siding with the government, which is your right off course, as long as you're explicit about it.

Edit : 100db noise turns out to be a deadly serious matter, I apologize to the person I'm replying to for making light of it.

I still believe it's wrong to use this as justification for quashing a protest, there is a whole spectrum of solutions from reasoning with the protestors to wearing ear covers, but I can better understand and empathize with the antagonism most of the affected city's residents hold toward the protests.

> 100db noise seems pretty mild

I'm done arguing with you. Bye.

Here's a helpful chart:

https://whitecathearing.com/when-is-sound-dangerous

At 100dB, a safe dose is about 15 minutes. Blowing horns all day for weeks on end poses a significant risk of severe hearing loss. Per affected person, a hearing loss payout can be up to around $100k. Given the ~1M people in Ottawa, I would expect the physical damage to persons in the area to exceed the millions of dollars in your "[usual] large-scale protest."

I see, it was ignorant of me to dismiss that harm, edited my reply to reflect my understanding.

Thanks for the perspective.

So basically protests are OK as long as they are easy to ignore?

Let's flip it - can your neighbour block the end your driveway and lay on their car horn 24/7 for weeks straight if they say they're protesting the government? Bonus points for harassing you if you walk by

I wouldn't like it, but I also wouldn't call it an illegal protest because I don't like it.

Truth be told I've rarely encountered a protest I liked - they are always annoying (even the ones I agree with are annoying - they block traffic to friends and foes equally).

It comes with the territory, and it's something you must tolerate to have a democracy.

> and it's something you must tolerate to have a democracy.

It's not for 21 days straight at noise levels capable of permanent hearing damage. It's really not.

If the government had stopped at halting the horns, very few people would object, and even then not seriously. A lack of a horn does not prevent a protest.

But that's not what Canada did, is it? They not just remove the protest they froze bank accounts of supporters. That's not democracy. That's a government very very threatened by the protest.

If Canada does not wipe the slate clean and vote away every single politician who was culpable in this, then Canada is not the place it's been advertised to be.

I mean, aside from the noise torture they shut down a city's downtown core for 3 weeks, continually threatened, harassed, and assaulted it's residents, released multiple statements and videos calling for overthrowing and arresting elected leaders (especially women / people of colour), and the municipal police force proved itself incapable of enforcing the law and keeping Canadians safe. Not to mention the other blockades that halted more than $300mil/day in trade.

> So you are saying under Canadian law, if you protest and do something illegal like blocking roads

Every protest in history has “done something illegal” like blocking roads or disrupting access to public spaces, at an absolute minimum. So if you have the right to protest, then you have the right to do those things that would otherwise be illegal within the context of a protest, or you don’t have the right to protest at all.

Right so then let's continue the thought process. You are saying under Canadian laws, if a group of people are protesting, they can break whatever laws they want within the context of the protest and the police can't do anything? And if we look historically within Canada, we will see that this holds true? That the police never shut down any protest without emergency laws being enabled?

I’m not saying that at all.

I am saying that protest by its nature is supposed to be disruptive on some level, and laws prohibit the type of disruptive behaviour typical of a protest clearly don’t apply _if_ you have a right to protest.

Blocking roads and occupying public spaces are some of the most fundamental features of a protest, so if you have a right to protest, then you certainly have a right to do that within the context of a protest.

If a protestor decides to commit a crime during their protesting, like destroying property, arson, assault… then they should still have full criminal liability for that. Nobody is disagreeing with you on that point. To me it seems you are simply trying to invent some contention out of nothing, in order to fit your view that the entire protest itself is illegal.

I never claimed the entire protest is illegal. I'm just trying to question the notion that in Canada when you protest and despite how disruptive you are, the Canadian police can't touch you or stop you without invoking emergency laws. I haven't seen it in recent history so I wonder why it's the case now.

To be fair, no one is complaining that they protested illegally. The complaint is that the protesters actively targeted unrelated civilians and made life a living hell for them for weeks on end.

I don't think you would say that it would be ok for protesters to physically attack random civilians because "it's a protest and that's their protest strategy". There are obviously limits to the illegal behaviour generally allowed to protests.

Many people are complaining that they protested illegally. It’s the basis of using emergency powers.

> It is no longer a lawful protest against federal government policy. It is now an illegal occupation. It’s time for people to go home.

- Trudeau in his speech justifying the use of the Emergencies Act.

Again, people aren't complaining that they protested illegally, they are complaining that the protesters are physically and verbally harassing them beyond every reasonable degree.

The quote you brought out does not say that an illegal protest is the basis for using emergency powers. It says that an illegal occupation is the basis.

We have had many many "illegal" protests where streets have been blocked temporarily and there were no calls to break out the emergency act.

> The police couldn't touch the protest for weeks not because of inaction but because your right to protest is a human right. They required the national emergency to remove our right to protest in order to label the protest illegal.

This is wholly incorrect. The Ottawa Police made a huge error at the beginning of the occupation, allowing the occupiers to entrench themselves in the city. Further disagreements in the police force and municipality extended the situation that all levels of government agreed was illegal from day 1.

This wasn't a protest, it was an illegal occupation.

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