BART, Charles Blair Hill, and The Reese's Defense

[tongodeon]

In high school I considered myself quite clever for inventing "The Reeses' Defense". Since the famous TV commercial claimed that "There's no wrong way to eat a Reese's", I reasoned that if you robbed a bank while eating a Reese's that could serve as your legal defense.

Recently there were rumors that people would try to disrupt BART service, in

Comments

[catbear]

Careful with that brush of tar, it applies to BART as well: shutting off cell service "disrupts the lives of people who never" wanted to protest. I don't have a cow in this race; in my view both sides are dumb, approaching a complex problem with a simple solution that is wrong.

[tongodeon]

I'm not sure there's much of a parallel. The protestors had the choice between either initiating a disruption of the mass transit system or not, and picked the more disruptive choice. BART had the choice between either a preventative disruption of the phone service or letting their train service get disrupted, and picked the less disruptive choice. There are elements of the trolley problem here - was BART's action more unethical by intentionally creating a minor disruption, rather than passively allowing a major disruption? I don't think so, but I suppose a few decades of psychological experiments show that there's room for disagreement

[catbear]

History's written by the victors. BART shut off the wireless and there was no protest, so they get to say "we shut off the wireless because there was going to be a disruptive protest, and the protest didn't happen -- wasn't that cool, we did the right thing there. And now that we've done it and the world didn't end, we'll be sure to do it again should the threat of disruption arise again." I guess nothing newsworthy happened about people not being able to phone or text or whatever during the interruption

[occlupanid]

I believe that shutting off networks IS wrong. But what is awesome is the spotlight of unpleasant attention from news agencies, the public, and the federal government, who may decide that they acted illegally. It's slow, it's not flashy, but it's the way a gov't ought to work. And it's actually happening.

A big riotous protest is not just slightly, but entirely counterproductive to any of these actions. And may in fact free regulators from having to make the difficult decision of fining BART for their actions, because I can think of no worse place to hold a protest than a BART platform. People are trapped, the platforms are unsafe for shenanigans, and folks can fall.

[adam_0oo]

Ah yes, misguided protests/riots in London.

ANGRY AT THE RICH = BURN DOWN CORNER STORE.

[tongodeon]

Except that it turns out a lot of the people being tried in London courts aren't even poor disadvantaged people from council houses, some are opportunistic middle class teachers and graphic designers who went on a particularly enthusiastic shopping spree.

[gaping_asshole]

You compared the current version of political street protest to the Civil Rights Movement and thinking about it gives me much reason for sadness. The MLK wing of the 1960's black civil rights movement was a wonderful thing: ultimately very effective in the face of heavy and violent opposition; well regarded by history; lead by thoughtful intelligent people motivated by rational thought and principles; generally able to maintain its identity and focus even while more reactionary and violent movements were happening in parallel. We desperately need protest with that level of skill and strength today but the only thing that keeps me from laughing at the protest-oriented Left these days is that I'm too busy crying

[tongodeon]

It doesn't help that there are just so many things worth protesting these days that it's hard to have a single unifying cause like black civil rights had in the 1960's.Or, to put things another way, disenfranchisement and deliberate, overt, institutionalized discrimination against a large percentage of the American population was such a major problem with such an obvious solution in the 1960s that it galvanized progressives. These days we're actually better off, therefore the harm that the problems cause is smaller and the solutions are more complicated with less clear-cut cost/benefit tradeoffs

[occlupanid]

This is wonderfully succinct. Too bad it's too long to fit onto a twitter post in response to all the Anon protesters who are comparing themselves favorably to Rosa Parks.

[tensegritydan]

Daaaammmnnnn, shit just got reasonable!

[occlupanid]

thank goodness.

[tensegritydan]

I might have to make a "Damn, shit just got reasonable" icon.

[occlupanid]