I’ve been in ongoing discussions for a long time, with several friends who don’t drink the left-wing liberal Kool-Aid like I do, on the topic of the value of protest and whether it does any good. The usual result is that blood pressures get raised all around and we change the topic.

Honestly, I’m of several minds as to the actual value of waving a sign on national television. When it’s an organized event, like a Supreme Court decision or a planned rally on the Mall, you’re sure to find the counter-demonstrators lined up with their own signs and placards and bullhorns. If the media show up, which they’re unlikely to do unless you’re there with 100,000 of your closest friends, the betting money is on how they’re going to warp your message to fit into their allotted segment length and their preconceived notions. The Promise Keepers can trash the Mall all they like with their disposed John 3:16 flyers with nary a mention, but God help the liberal demonstrators who leave any detritus. Apparently we are hypocrites because we’re all presumed to be crunchy granola enviro types, and no one gives much consideration as to whether there were enough trashcans.

It’s not like I genuinely expect to change any minds by waving a sign, or adorning my jacket with a humorous button, or wearing a blue helmet. It would be far more effective to take everyone who disagrees with me and strap them into chairs while I deliver a two-hour speech of flowing oratory and stunning brilliance. But I’m not going to get that chance, so the sign will have to do.

Ultimately, though, I come down on the side of the validity of protesting purely because people have been taking to the streets for as long as there have been streets. Like prostitution and beer, it’s an ancient human cultural artifact, long predating newfangled notions like democracy and free speech. And as such, a nation that values the latter two should give some credence to this traditional form of expression.

For those who think we do, I have three words: “free speech zone.” What exactly does that mean for all areas outside of that zone? It would perhaps be more accurate to say that these are “disruptive people zones,” but the euphemism is required because the Constitution forbids the presumptive declaration of speech as disruptive. Hence the Orwellian phrasing, which was probably test-marketed and is now a standing aspect of political speech due to, er, lack of protest.

Recently the topic has shifted a bit to the intent of demonstrators, i.e. the intent to disrupt, break the law, inconvenience innocent onlookers, etc. There is a pernicious perception that if large numbers of people are getting arrested, the protesters must be “asking for it”, as it were. As Mark Kleiman sums up, this is not always the case. In fact, if my experience (anecdotal but with a very large sample size) is generalizable, it’s almost never the case.

Yes, there are people on the left who think that there’s little difference between waving a sign in front of McDonald’s and putting a brick through the front window. We call them “radicals”. There are even a few who extend that to putting a brick through a Starbucks employee or customer. We call them “lunatics”.

But for the rest of us — and I’m comfortable saying that this would be 99.999% or so — if we think getting arrested is key to making a political point, we’re going to do it nonviolently. So far I haven’t been, but it’s been a close thing a few times, and here I’m thinking of the FBI agent who was reaching for his handcuffs when I had the temerity to speak to him.

This was at a Planned Parenthood clinic, when a bunch of us had to ring the clinic on some significant anniversary, because apparently it’s the job of volunteer activists to enforce court orders against the people who think God wants them to attack the patients. Only then did the FBI and local police show up, because now there were two large, angry groups of people facing each other. They formed a ring around us for our “protection”, the sort of ring that would have made our presence unnecessary if they had only gotten there first. And the kind of “protection” where they don’t let you leave. After seeing a few people nearly getting hurt trying to sneak out by climbing a railing outside the police ring, I negotiated with an agent to let some of us go. Of course, there was no particular reason why we should have been detained in the first place, but the men with the guns and badges and handcuffs did so and that’s all there was to it.

I have no issue with enforcing the law against those who plan civil disorder and chaos. Disorder and chaos can be useful political actions; however, a justification does not make vandalism any more legal. If those people were sent to jail, it would probably make our planning meetings a lot simpler. It sure would be nice if fewer progressives had to undergo legal and self-defense training to protect themselves in the event they’re standing too close to a presumed vandal, or worse still (as the phrase is frequently being bandied about) a political terrorist. Come to Washington, and exercise your right to free speech — but first, be sure to take the seminar on what to do if you’re tear-gassed.

I know cops at these events have a tough job; it’s not easy to tell the difference between the guy who’s peaceful and the guy who’s peaceful now. But making those kinds of distinctions are what the police have to do all day long, and arguably the onus is on them even more so in the sphere of political speech. The folks getting arrested that I read about don’t sound like the radical kind of protesters. They sound like my kind of protesters. So when I hear about mass arrests in Washington and New York, or killings in Genoa, my first thought is whether heavy-handed use of force isn’t rather convenient for those who would prefer less protest. My second thought is that the powers that would suppress free speech are going to get away with it so long as no one out there in the mainstream seems to mind too much.

My third thought is that we’ve been here before. You’d think we’d have learned by now.