← Back to context

Comment by brightball

9 hours ago

It is deliberately obtuse to pretend that a group 60 year old women were "forcibly" preventing anyone from doing anything. They stood in a hallway and sang hymns.

Is it a violation of the FACE act? Absolutely.

Conspiracy? If that's a conspiracy then virtually any protest that involves any planning whatsoever could also be twisted into a conspiracy.

> Conspiracy? If that's a conspiracy then virtually any protest that involves any planning whatsoever could also be twisted into a conspiracy.

Yes, that's what a conspiracy is. In other news, the sky is blue.

Conspiracy, to conspire.

Conspire, to make plans, usually in secret.

The reason conspiracy is a more serious crime is because it's worse; it's one thing to go to a protest with a bunch of friends, and then decide in the heat of the moment, when everyone's emotions are raging, I don't wanna leave yet. It's completely different crime to decide before the protest starts, in a secret group with a bunch a friends. There's nothing they can do to make you leave. And when the cops show up, and when they say you have to leave you're gonna throw a frozen water bottle at them.

In this case, they planned to actively stop someone from receiving the medical care. Do you feel that's reasonable? Should I get to decide what medical care I think you should have? Only on days I'm free to go out and protest, obviously.

Somewhat related, after reading florkbork's post, I'm excited to hear your reply about if you think crushing someone's hand in the door counts as protesting?

  • I think that counts as assault and the individual should have been charged and that's exactly the point about the precedent.

    Compare it to the situation in Minnesota. Protester bites of the finger of an agent. Is that protesting? Groups of people follow agents around blowing whistles while they're trying to do their job. Can protesters show up at an someone else's workplace and start blowing whistles at everyone? Diners? Medical offices?

    https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/officer-will-lose-fin...

    Now a situation has been created where everyone involved in those Signal chats could be...charged with conspiracy. The door is opened for that argument to be made and until the charge was thrown onto those women after the abortion protest, nothing like that had been done before.

    FACE Act and Assault charges, plus damages were absolutely warranted. Conspiracy charges were political punishment.

    • Given that GP refers to the act of throwing a frozen water bottle, I think you two are on the same side.

Ahhh, gender equality! Since we're going there, neither the age nor the gender of protestors is really relevant to anything. Stop cherrypicking just because whining could support your argument.