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Show me where in the first ammendment you have a right to go into peoples homes and other private property without their permission, constantly.
So she got a restraining order barring her from all buisnsses owned by the people she kept invading. Not sure what about that seems very controversial. Just that they own a lot of stuff i guess.
I mean, if you owned a warehouse where you stored valueable things... would you be perfectly cool with people just randomly breaking into your warehouse at all hours of the day... is that protected by the first ammendment? Will you also be perfectly cool when one of them fucks around too much and a crate crushses them, making YOU legally responsible since you knew thes people were tresspassing and never made any steps to stop them from doing so?
You can't go into other peoples property, and if you do... courts should be able to give you a restraining order... to make you stay away from places you aren't even supposed to be in the first place.
Hell she's god damn lucky the police haven't been called on her. |
Alright, you shouldn't be able to go on private property, I'll give you that. Yes, it should apply to more than just homes, and include businesses. The reason I think it's so controversial, and why I jumped to first amendment right to assembly, was that some of the places had nothing to do with the protests, and it just seemed like a war on peaceful protesting. I recognize she's rather vocal and obnoxious, but as far as I can tell she's been doing what would be considered peaceful protests. Tresspassing, yes, but the protesting part is legal. Some of the places she's barred from may be privately owned, but they're still public spaces. The lake shore for example. It just feels like an abuse of power to bar someone from a lake shore because they entered a business unwelcome. Or the hospital. How the hell does the company that handles the fracking own a hospital? Fine, whatever, apparently they do. But this means in an emergency, she could die because she was barred from the closest hospital. Some of these places don't seem like much of a stretch to bar her from, but others it just seems like an abuse of power to make her life miserable. Protecting private property? Sure. Refusing her money at a restaurant where she probably wouldn't be doing any protests anyway since it's in no way associated with the fracking business? Seem like they're just being dicks there. Perhaps 1st amendment rights isn't what's being harmed here, since again, the places causing the controversy aren't even the places she's protesting, but it still seems like they're doing everything they can to shut her up, which bothers me. No one likes what the Westboro Baptist Church has to say, but they have a right to say it. Denying them from accessing funeral homes seems reasonable, commen sense even, as you say, but if you were to deny them from hospitals just to make their lives miserable in hopes of getting them to stop, I'd say you were going too far. As much as I'd love them to spontaneously fall over dead, I don't think we should manipulate the law to make their lives miserable to fight back against them.I bring them up just as an example that it has nothing to do with fracking, but purely the principle of the thing. In the case of the fracking, I actually do agree that it's common sense that they should be able to kick her out of a place where they do business, if that business is one of the businesses she's disrupting. Barring her from an oil refinery, that makes sense. Barring her from a drilling sit, that makes sense. Barring her from a recycling center won't change how much she protests, it'll just make less recycling happen, it makes no sense and is just a dick move. Barring her from a restaurant won't change how much she protests, it'll mean less money for the restaurant, no sense, a dick move. Barring her from a supermarket will make life very inconvenient for her, but it won't change how much she protests. Makes no sense. Just a dick move. She's not disrupting those businesses, she shouldn't be discriminated against there. I wouldn't support that kind of discrimination no matter how disgusting the people are, again, even if they were the Westboro Baptist Church. There's a reason this is news, and it isn't that people think we should have no right to privacy. It's that these people are using their money to bully someone. Sure, that someone is pretty obnoxious, and probably just makes the anti-fracking movement look really, really bad, but that doesn't mean you should be able to make her life miserable. She didn't have proper representation in court, either, so that wasn't fair.
The whole thing just smells of corruption. It might be defendable by the law, but that doesn't make it right. A lot of people, that might otherwise support her cause, think she deserves this because she's not a very nice person, but to me it just seems corrupt, doesn't matter who it inconveniences. What if this were a protester of a cause you support, or at the very least were indifferent to? Let's say you were prolife (or prochoice), and a company that profited from abortions (or, I dunno, more births) barred a person from not just abortion clinics (hospitals? whatever you get the point), but also random services the protester used all throughout their hometown? Whether you support their cause or not, letting corporations get away with bullying a protester like that just feels wrong.
As far as I'm concerned, fracking might be viable, but there's too much conflicting information right now and it seems like it could potentially be dangerous. I know there's sources that say it isn't, but there are also sources that say it is, and the sources that say it isn't tend to be associated with the companies that are fracking, and the sources that say it is tend to be associated with their opponents, so it just seems like a mess, and I think it would be irresponsible to just jump into fracking without further research. The gas isn't going anywhere, but if there's merit to the health concerns or environmental concerns, the damage could be irreversible. I'm not satisfied with the current amount of research done. I normally like less red tape on things, but I consider public health and the environment to both be matters of public interest and therefore something the government has a place in regulating.
Edit: TL;DR: I see your point about private property, and try to explain the connection I drew to the 1st amendment and why I still think the actions taken against her feel corrupt to me. I also clarify that this is less about the specific issue of fracking and more about the potential of corporations or other wealthy entities to silence protesters via what seems to me like bullying, and that this seems dangerous to the right to protest in general regardless of the issue in question. To prevent further assumptions about my stance on fracking, I clarify that as well.
