No comparison between raucous anti-vaxxers and civilly disobedient climate protesters
I was quite surprised at Joan Vennochi’s use of false equivalencies in her column “When do protests cross the line? It can depend on your politics” (Opinion, Jan. 20). She compares the raucous anti-vaxxers, led by public servants who put the public at risk by refusing to get vaccinated, creating public disturbances outside Mayor Michelle Wu’s home with climate change activists engaged in civil disobedience.
Climate activists, some of whom I have represented when they have been arrested, are committed to peaceful civil disobedience, in the tradition of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela. Their commitment to their cause recognizes civility and the civil law. They are willing to accept the consequences of being arrested for their beliefs as part of their protest. In contrast, the lack of civility of the anti-vaxxers in front of the mayor’s home and elsewhere shows a lack of understanding of civil disobedience and public discourse. They claim protection of the First Amendment as entitlement to their incivility and disrespect for the law.
The First Amendment does not protect all speech. It does not protect criminal threats of physical violence to the mayor. It does not protect racial bigotry, directed at the mayor’s Asian ethnicity. Nor does it entitle the anti-vaxxers to engage in criminal behavior such as disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, and trespass — criminal charges that commonly are the basis for the arrest of climate change protesters and other demonstrators on the left, such as the Occupy movement. Indeed, the more perceptive analysis I would have expected from Vennochi is the stark contrast between real civil disobedience and the riotous, unruly conduct of the anti-vaxxers.
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Andrew Fischer
Brookline
The writer is an attorney.
Consider how a formerly tranquil neighborhood is being affected
We live close to Mayor Michelle Wu’s home in Roslindale. While, admittedly, there is a free-speech issue regarding the noisy protests going on outside her house, there are other factors to consider.
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We moved to our home in 1984 and have seen our close-knit neighborhood grow better and better with each passing year. When a sister of ours (then 79 years old) who lives with us was hit by a car in May, our neighbors rallied around our family with tremendous support, which has aided immensely in her long and ongoing recovery.
One of our neighbors can hear the protests from her bedroom, where she lies ill, awaiting a kidney transplant that never seems to come. This woman is not the only one affected by the noise. It is the lack of empathy and kindness toward the people of an entire neighborhood that detracts from any sympathy and willingness we may have had to listen to the reasoning of the protesters.
No one’s mind is changed, so nothing fruitful is accomplished by these tactics, which belong at City Hall, not in our formerly tranquil neighborhood.
Janice and Stephen Babcock
Roslindale