It’s Time to Rein in Political Protests
If you’re looking for some anti-ICE protest signs, you can order them on AMAZON. (Screenshot by Lynn Woolley for WBDaily)
Why? Because people are dying. Look at three recent protests.
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s so-called murder, a ride-share driver named Daniel Perry got caught up in a Black Lives Matter protest in Austin, and ending up shooting and killing one of the protesters.
On January 6th of 2021, Capitol Police officer Michael Byrd shot and killed a protester, Ashli Babbitt.
And in the latest protests in Minneapolis, an ICE agent shot a female protester, Renee Nicole Good. The point here is that massive political protests often seem to get someone killed. Congress or the states ought to rein them in.
But Lynn, what about the constitutional right of peaceful assembly?
That still stands, but tell me, which of these three riots was peaceful?
AUDIO: Random Samplings of a Logical Mind (to come)
It doesn’t matter which side mounts protests.
Usually, in fact almost always, political protests that turn into riots are mounted by the political Left. Liberals. Progressives. Democratic Socialists. Check your history books, or even Wikipedia and you’ll find that’s true. The only major protest by Republicans I can think of that turned violent was January 6th when Trump supporters, believing the election had been stolen, breached the U.S. Capitol.
RELATED: Derek Chauvin and O.J. Simpson at Opposite Ends of Injustice
I’m not shy about saying that the party I support at the polls did that. It’s an embarrassment and a very dark spot on the history of the GOP.
I’m not saying that the protesters had no point. The Left had used the pandemic to change election rules in Pennsylvania and there were irregularities in Georgia, Arizona, and Harris County, Texas. The Democrats used the pandemic to leverage mail-in voting allowing for ballot harvesting.
Fifty-one members of the intelligence community signed a letter saying that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. That was a lie, but left-wing news outfits like the New York Times and CNN suppressed the laptop story. But still, what Trump supporters did on J6 was not the American Way.
Video: From Judicial Watch, the Ashli Babbitt shooting.
Here’s what happened to Babbitt according to Wikipedia:
On January 6, 2021, Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot during the attack on the United States Capitol. She was part of a crowd of supporters of then-outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump who stormed the United States Capitol building seeking to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. Despite multiple warnings not to proceed, Babbitt attempted to climb through a shattered window beside a barricaded door into the Speaker’s Lobby, at which point she was shot in the shoulder by a United States Capitol Police (USCP) officer.
Babbitt was acting illegally, however no Democrat to my knowledge has accused Officer Byrd of murdering her.
RELATED: Forget January 6th – Democrats are the Party of Violence
Another case in point was the Black Lives Matter riot in Austin in the summer of 2020, in which protester Garrett Foster was shot and killed.
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about that:
On July 25, 2020, Garrett Foster, a 28-year-old man, was murdered in Austin, Texas, by 30-year- old Daniel Perry. Perry had driven into a crowd of protesters during a Black Lives Matter protest following the May 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Foster, who had been legally open-carrying an AK-47, approached Perry’s vehicle, and Perry shot and killed him. Perry claimed that he had acted in self-defense, but in April 2023, a jury found him guilty of murder. He was acquitted of an aggravated assault charge. On May 10, 2023, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for murder.
In Perry’s case, Austin’s George Soros DA, Jose Garza obtained the indictment and the guilty verdict. Texas Governor Greg Abbott pardoned Perry on May 16, 2024, citing Texas’ “Stand Your Ground” law. Garza tried and failed to get the pardon overturned.
And now we have the case of Renee Nicole Good, shot by an ICE agent as she was attempting to leave the scene of a protest.
At this writing, the protests are still going on in Minneapolis, not far from where George Floyd died. I’m not going into all the details of who’s right and who’s wrong because it’s too soon. As you might expect, left-wing media is characterizing the death as a murder, while right-wing media is saying the ICE agent fired to save his life and possibly the lives of other agents.
Video: The shooting of Rene Nicole Good in Minneapolis.
Here’s how the left-wing Associated Press put it in a story headlined: “Renee Nicole Good: Woman shot by ICE agent was a mom of 3.”
The woman shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday was Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who had recently moved to Minnesota. She was a U.S. citizen born in Colorado and appears to never have been charged with anything involving law enforcement beyond a traffic ticket … Video taken by bystanders posted to social media shows an officer approaching her car, demanding she open the door and grabbing the handle. When she begins to pull forward, a different ICE officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots into the vehicle at close range. In another video taken after the shooting, a distraught woman is seen sitting near the vehicle, wailing, “That’s my wife, I don’t know what to do!”
Democratic talking heads on cable TV are calling it murder, as they did in the case of Garrett Foster. There was no such charge from the Left in the case of Ashli Babbitt. The end result, however, was someone died in each of these protests.
RELATED: The Hunter Biden Laptop becomes a Universal Symbol of Media Corruption
It’s past time to rein in large-scale political protests that have the potential to become riots or to cause deaths.
Congress or state legislatures ought to do it. They ought to set up a place where these protests can be staged, but not allow them near the scene of an investigation. In Austin, protests typically take place on the south side of the State Capitol. Each big city in America should have a place to stage protests.
The scene of a crime should not be violated by protesters. Let them rant and have their say at whatever designated spot is appropriate. In addition, protesters should never, ever be allowed to block streets or freeways as BLM did in Austin in 2020. Political protests should never impose on other people’s lives or block the use of city streets for emergency vehicles.
State governors should be empowered to decide when it appears that a protest might big too big to be peaceful, and call out the National Guard to make sure the protest is confined to a designated area and remains non-violent.
A word about rent-a-mobs.
Some of these protesters are paid agitators. That should not be happening in America, whether the source of the payments, or agitation from social media comes from George Soros, China, Russia, or anywhere else. Since this type of protesting is not authentic, Congress ought to look at a possible law to ban it. Our geopolitical adversaries like China would never stand by and allow the U.S. government to hire protesters at Tiananmen Square.
If you’re worried about the Constitution and First Amendment Rights, here’s the controlling provision:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The key word here is “peaceably.” Austin in 2020 and indeed the entire summer of 2020 nationwide was not peaceful. January 6 was not peaceful. Minneapolis this week has not been peaceful. The Constitution does not guarantee a right to violent protests, but that’s what we’re seeing all too often. It’s time to make a change because people are dying.
Lynn Woolley is a Texas-based author, broadcaster, and songwriter. Follow his podcast at https://www.PlanetLogic.us. Check out his author’s page at https://www.Amazon.com/author/lynnwoolley.
Order books direct from Lynn at https://PlanetLogicPress.Square.Site. Email Lynn at lwoolley9189@gmail.com.
There are several scenes of mass protests in the second story of the trilogy. Read the book to see why!
