by blocking him in a police car for more than an hour.
http://www.10news.com/news/sdsu-students-protest-against-president-hirshmans-response-to-042716
Gee, I missed this somehow on my local news. That’s my alma mater… And so it goes.
Sheriff Bill Gore recently talked about the connection between 9/11 and San Diego, but I have no idea what the FBI knows, and if there are any students at SDSU under surveillance.
I’m curious to know more about the Horowitz’s group claims of hatred expressed against Jews.
Blocking a car is “terrorizing” the president? Gee, some people have a much lower threshold for what it means to terrorize someone than I do.
Note that it started with provocations (posters and ads in newspapers) from the “David Horowitz Freedom Center”, which is sometimes thought of as an anti-Muslim group (see controversies at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horowitz#Criticizing_Islamic_organizations ). One of the posters is shown in the photos with the linked article. Of course, it is related to Israeli - Palestinian politics, which usually tends to devolve into racism as the noisy racists on both sides drown out everyone else.
And the blocking/protest lasted less than 2 hours.
Back in the late '60s, the anti-Vietnam War student protesters at Oberlin ended up driving the ROTC military staff off campus by surrounding/blockading them in their car for over 10 hours. Worse, they wouldn’t even let them out for a bathroom break.
The last bit was a bit much IMO. Considering the increasing anger and concern among those who were not only concerned about the war, but the real possibility they could be drafted to fight a war they didn’t believe in and strongly suspected was based on dubious pretexts, it was understandable…even if excessive*.
- In a later Congressional investigation, the findings were such that many doubts were raised about whether the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which served as a public justification by LBJ to escalate the Vietnam War actually happened.
Blocking a car in an effort to make someone with different views uncomfortable is a tactic reminiscent of the Klan, which routinely did the same to “welcome” civil rights workers to a town. Not that these students are connected to the KKK, but I wonder if they realize their tactics put them in such dubious company.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call this terrorism. The student demonstration - like the occupation of an admin building at Princeton, Occupy Wall Street’s human chains to keep brokers from their workplaces, or some rowdy protests linked to Black Lives Matter - is a counterproductive way to express a viewpoint. That hardly rises to the same level as threats to others’ lives, and using terms like terrorism lightly (as comparisons to the Nazis are overused by many) makes them less powerful in situations where they’re justified.
Terrorizing Definition: create and maintain a state of extreme fear and distress in (someone); fill with terror.
I know if that was me stuck in the car, surrounded by 100+ screaming students, I would feel a bit “distressed”.
How is this an acceptable tactic, be it the Klan, Vietnam war protesters, or BDS supporting students?
It’s been a long time since I took a law school class on the First Amendment, but whatever happened to reasonable TPM restrictions (time, place, manner) on speech?
If I was trapped in a car surrounded by screaming people, I would feel terrorized too.
Big supporter of 1st A rights (and the rights of students to express themselves - if you’re not going to do it in college when are you?), but there are recognized limitations.
Blocking the car for an hour! That could be the crime of false imprisonment. Were any of the students charged?