The war on women
This is being shared all over Facebook:
This is my Charlotte clinic. Right now. There are 4,000 people blocking access to our clinic. Tell me again how this isn’t terrorism?
Tip Jar
This is being shared all over Facebook:
This is my Charlotte clinic. Right now. There are 4,000 people blocking access to our clinic. Tell me again how this isn’t terrorism?
How isn’t this terrorism? That’s easy!
They’re white, they’re Christian, they like babies…
Try to play ‘spot the woman’ wearing one of those sky blue ‘We love life’ T-shirts. It’s really hard. It’s all men. Mostly burly men with beards. Fuckers.
Peaceful assembly and protest is not terrorism.
Compare the actual conduct of a protest you disagree with (like this one), with the conduct of a protest you agree with (I can think of two currently in the news right off the top of my head), and consider very carefully what sort of conduct it should take for the label of ‘terrorism’ to apply to a protest.
Consider very carefully, Karellen, if you can see a power differential here:
1. Protesters demonstrating against brutal police who have guns and have shown they are willing to use them.
2. Protesters massing against unarmed women who need medical care, and who have done nothing at all to deserve being “protested.”
Do you think that may change how we characterize this? I think it might.
Karellan,
The criterion is not whether or not we agree with the protesters, but their conduct. The key phrase is “blocking access to our clinic”, if that’s true it’s not a peaceful protest.
How would the protesters react if a mob prevented access to their Churches?
I think it’s a fair point to say it’s not literally “terrorism,” because we generally associate that with overt (as opposed to implied) violence.
But I definitely think this is terrorization. I think the huge crowd is absolutely meant to strike fear in the women who need or might some day need that clinic.
@Josh, @RJW, so, BLM is fine, but Standing Rock protesters – massing against unarmed Dakota pipeline workers who need to do their jobs (“blocking access to a place they need to go”) and have done nothing at all (in the eyes of some) to deserve being protested – are terrorists?
Yes, these while male christian family-planning protestors are a bunch of misogynist fuckwad assholes. But they’re not fucking terrorists.
Anyone considering joining, or even supporting, any kind of protest in the future ought to be wary of engaging in that kind of hyperbole treadmill. Besides that, words mean something, damnit.
It’s not peaceful protest, any more than catcalling and street harassment are having conversations. The protesters harass patients, yell at them, insult them, threaten them. They dox the clinic escorts and workers, threaten them and their families. They do everything they can to interfere with the operation of the clinic and traumatize clients and workers. Violence is not required in order to deem something terrorism; intimidation and threats of violence are sufficient. I think these clinic blockades, and what goes on at them, fit the bill.
I’m inclined to agree with Karellen to the extent that consistency is important (I won’t claim that there is a meaningful equivalence between this situation and Standing Rock), especially as “terrorism” carries a specific legal meaning that can send you to jail for a long time, and people in authority (e.g: Harper government flunkies) have used that term in connection with pipeline protests.
How about “intimidation”? I agree that it’s not literal terrorism and thus shouldn’t be called that, but it certainly looks like intimidation, if they’re blocking access to the clinic. If it were a march in front of city hall or the like, I wouldn’t say that.
Here is an article about the protest. It doesn’t sound like the worst I’ve heard about, but it’s bad enough.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/charlotte-abortion-rights-protest_us_5841b859e4b0c68e04808b82
I have absolutely no objection to calling the actions of many anti-abortion protesters “terrorism”, and I think “intimidation” is too weak. One of my activist friends received an anonymous thinly veiled death threat in the mail recently, showing that the miscreants had discovered her closely guarded address. The ones who show up make threats all the time. These are awful people doing awful things, not always but sometimes including physical violence, to scare people away from working at or using clinics where abortions are performed.
It is an act of terrorism to make a bomb threat, even if there is no bomb. The point of terrorism is terror. I understand that some may prefer other terminology, but please at least do not minimize how horrible these protests can be.
From Sackbut’s link: