Protesters think protesters who break laws shouldn’t be punished

A number of protesters from the Black Lives Matter movement are making the argument that protesters in the movement who break the law should not be punished because that’s not progressive, man!

In an editorial in The Stranger, Eliana Horn, Cat Cunningham, Beck Gross and Gillian Locascio (“four white Jews and queers,” as they say) complain that the City of Seattle is charging protesters who they believe broke the law during the many protests over the last several months. They argue that this action isn’t living up to Seattle values:

The City of Seattle brands itself as a progressive city emblematized by Chief Sealth on the city’s official corporate seal. Yet, like other American cities, Seattle’s police department and our local criminal justice system disproportionately target people of color. According to the Seattle Police Department (SPD) arrest figures, the total black drug arrest rate was over 13 times the white drug arrest rate in 2006. As of 2014, the King County Juvenile Detention Center was locking up more black youth than white youth, although there are six times as many white children in Seattle as black ones.

They don’t provide any context as to why people of color are being “target[ed]” because then they might have to point to a reason beyond racism. There’s also some humor in that these four white people are complaining about how the SPD targets people of color, when these four, in particular, were arrested and tried for pedestrian interference.

How about this novel concept: if you break the law as an adult who should know better, you should be arrested and tried.

Related: Try to decipher this Seattle nonsense

What I love about this particular movement is how they don’t quite understand the concept of civil disobedience, which many of the protesters tout as necessary. Well, it’s not entirely civil disobedience if you’re not breaking the law and getting arrested for it. The reason why civil disobedience is so powerful is that you actually sacrifice something meaningful for the sake of social change; acting cowardly, trying to avoid an arrest, is hardly noble and certainly doesn’t show any willingness to make scarifies on behalf of your beliefs.

They write: “We are fighting for a world where all people can live without fear of police brutality. Today, we ask [Seattle City Attorney] Pete Holmes: how are you using your position to challenge white supremacy?”

I guess I’ll answer: maybe he’s doing it by charging four white people who he viewed as breaking the law, who are now using their white privilege to stop future prosecutions against them.