In the alternate universe of John Banzhaf (“When the Rabble-Rousing Turns Criminal, There’s A Civil Solution,” The National Law Journal, March 28), protesters have taken over the streets and hijacked the political process. Police step back and do nothing. They “yield the streets,” sometimes because they are “afraid to make arrests,” sometimes because “there is sympathy with their cause.” If arrests take place, protesters end up in court and “face only a token fine.”
The real world of street protest bears no relation to what Banzhaf describes. In fact, the post-9/11 trend, of which his anti-protester screed is symptomatic, is of increasing hostility to street protest. In the crackdown on peaceful protesters, police show no “sympathy with their cause” and are entirely “[un]afraid to make arrests.” As a consequence of the amped-up focus on security since 9/11, the “war on terror” has also become a war on dissent.
