The police closed down whole swaths of the city around the meeting, tear-gassing peaceful protesters as well as bystanders, indiscriminately shooting rubber bullets and making arbitrary arrests. People were ordered to stop passing out copies of the First Amendment and tear-gassed for merely walking toward their car. Welcome to the free speech fights of the new millennium. Rather than tolerate demonstrations, cities and police are devising ways to cut them off at the pass. In Washington, D.C., at the April meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, city police closed streets to protesters and engaged in preemptive arrests, taking in hundreds of protesters and shuttering their headquarters for alleged fire code violations.
Democracy is a messy thing.
It's full of factions, interest groups, angry protests, marches and even sometimes civil disobedience. Crowds of protesters are the antithesis of calm order, which means they are inherently unnerving to police and city officials. At the same time, the freedom of people to assemble in massive groups to express a viewpoint is a cornerstone of a democracy. It may be rare these days for people to turn out en masse for something other than a parade for victorious, spoiled, millionaire athletes, but when something does spark public consciousness, that should be considered a good thing for our democratic system. Free speech is being pushed aside, contained and boxed to keep people with actual ideas from participating in our national political conventions.