Talk:Brooks Brothers riot

message: I don't see Alex Jones's name mentioned in the current version of the article, but wasn't he one of the instigators of this riot? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 02:22, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I see some stuff about Roger Stone. I'm having trouble finding anything about Alex Jones.  Do you have a source? –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:15, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Role of [[Alex Jones]]

message: I was reading various links on this article, when I noticed in this Washington Post piece from November 2018 that there are differing accounts of who was in charge. 
* "Brad Blakeman, a Bush campaign operative who proudly admits to coordinating what he prefers to call the “Brooks Brothers Rebellion,” denies that things got violent."  and "Working with about 20 paid GOP staffers or congressional aides and a small fleet of Republican lawyers — including Ted Cruz — Blakeman said the mission was simple. “We were ahead,” he said. “And the goal was never to be behind.” Once on the ground, Blakeman said he and his fellow GOP operatives set about connecting with local conservative leaders and Cuban radio stations, which encouraged people to protest." (The Washington Post talks about him enough in the article that one infers that they think Blakeman really was the guy in charge.)
* Later in the article, we read:
: "Stone claimed he ran the Brooks Brothers riot from a Winnebago parked near the election office.
: “I set up my command center there," he told Toobin. "I had walkie-talkies and cell phones, and I was in touch with our people in the building. Our whole idea was to shut the recount down. That was why we were there. We had the frequency to the Democrats’ walkie-talkies and were listening to their communications, but they were so disorganized that we didn’t learn much that was useful.”
: Blakeman says he was the one in the Winnebago, and he never saw Stone.
: “Roger says a lot of things that aren’t true,” he said. “If he was there, everybody would know it, because nobody can miss Roger Stone.”(That idea is backed up by none other than Donald Trump, who Stone consulted on a possible 2000 presidential run. “Roger is a stone-cold loser,” Trump told Toobin. “He always tries taking credit for things he never did.” Tapper’s book, meanwhile, does include a Stone sighting in the Winnebago but identifies Blakeman as the man behind the effort.)" Novellasyes (talk) 22:07, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: . , thanks for pointing this out. I went ahead and replaced  with  In my research, I discovered that the BuzzFlash source was a primary source, and barely even talked about the riot, so I'm not sure why it was used as a citation for the claim that Matt Schlapp was a leader in the riot. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:17, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thank you! I didn't mean to dump work on anyone. That sentence you wrote really captures the gist of the situation. Novellasyes (talk) 14:50, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Differing accounts of who ran the operation 

message: When User:Cameron Dewe did some talk page template sorting and grading here recently, it was the first time I noticed that someone had placed the crime template on this page. Here's that diff. I'd say this doesn't belong. I don't believe any of the participants were charged with a crime. I don't think that many RSes who have written long form and extremely interesting articles about this event over the years have ever used that word either. (Of course, I could be wrong about that.) If we imply that the event was a crime, by having that template on the talk page, it casts a slur on the list of people in the article who were part of the event, and that probably in some slightly indirect way is a BLP violation. Novellasyes (talk) 15:24, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. I have removed the crime template. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:54, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: , , what I have been doing recently is giving unassessed "Crime" articles a basic assessment to see how important they are to the Crime WikiProject, without closely considering if an actual criminal offence had occurred, so most of my assessments have been fairly cursory. Including the word riot in the article name mostly suggested this was a relevant Crime article. In various British Commonwealth jurisdictions a riot is a criminal offence, and reading the Riot Act is constabulary advice to disperse or face arrest. It may be better to change the article's name to Brooks Brothers protest, for example, because calling this assembly of people, a protest or demonstration, rather than a riot, is probably more factually accurate. In my country, under such circumstances, the Police have the discretion not to arrest or charge someone with criminal behaviour if their reason for protesting is a genuine expression of political protest, is justified by having a fair degree of legitimacy, especially if it is mostly political directed in nature at wrongful behaviour and nobody is being directly harmed by the protesters. It is called policing by consent. On the face of it a crime might have occurred but police officers might have turned a blind eye to it for some reason. This might not have been mentioned in the article. Assigning the article to the Law Enforcement WikiProject might be a better option than simply removing the Crime WikiProject template. I would note that I did rate the article's importance as "low" so I hold no strong opinions about whether it stays or goes, but your objections suggest a name change might be in order, too. Happy to discuss further. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 22:51, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: , It may not have been a riot in the legal sense, but 'Brooks Brothers riot' is the name used by most sources so per WP:COMMONNAME the title should stay as it is. This is a political thing, I don't think either the Crime or the Law Enforcement WikiProjects are particularly relevant. MrOllie (talk) 23:09, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: , as I said above, I just rated it, someone else added it to the Crime WikiProject, so I have no objection if the consensus is that the article is removed as not being relevant. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 23:41, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal to remove "crime" template 

message: Is there anyone interested in removing resolving the in-line CN tags under the "Participants" section? I think this event is OTD worthy but certainly needs to be worked on before being inserted to the list. --Mhhossein talk 13:27, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: All except for Bloemker were referenced by the Washington Post article at the top of the section. I cannot find any information about Bloemker and have therefore removed the entry. Einsof (talk) 15:51, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the edits Einsof. I just noticed the outcome or aftermath of he event is not being presented clearly. One may dedicate a some lines to the outcome under a separate section. --Mhhossein talk 06:17, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article quality 

message: The statement that this guaranteed Bush victory, nearly 3 weeks before Bush V. Gore was decided, is opinionated at best, and far from a neutral point of view. There were ways for Gore to have won despite the riot. There were ways Bush could have won without the riot. The riot took place in Miami-Dade, but Palm Beach County also had yet to finish it’s manual recount at the time of the riot, so they may have still yet counted enough votes for Gore to win in Palm Beach. It is also possible that, had the riot not occurred and the manual recounts resulted in Gore gaining enough votes to win, the Supreme Court could have ruled them unconstitutional anyways as the Manual Recounts were, in the majority opinion of the court, unconstitutional in their entirety because they violated the Equal Protections Clause. It was also possible after the riot that the supreme court could have simply not ordered a stay of the recount on December 9th and not found the recount unconstitutional. This is not to say that this things would have happened or are the most realistic alternatives, but that saying that the results were guaranteed at this point is not a statement of fact as there were pending court decisions. W0lfgangster (talk) 00:23, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point. The riot actually had the effect of ensuring that Miami-Dade County could not meet Katherine Harris’ November 26 deadline for submitting complete recount totals prior to statewide vote certification.Jeff in CA (talk) 05:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  “Guarantee” of winning election.