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Bill: Respect for Protestors and Police
Details
Submitted by[?]: Free Reform Coalition (FRP)
Status[?]: defeated
Votes: This bill is a resolution. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: December 2073
Description[?]:
| This is a proposal that is designed to come someway between allowing absolutely free assembly of groups in public and having police officers being able to disperse groups they feel are a threat. The proposal is: Marchers, Demonstrators and vigilors must first send a letter/email/phone call to the police informing them of what they are doing, when and where. this must be done at least 48 hours before the march or demonstration. To allow for flash demonstrations a call to the police to inform them of what is happening is also acceptable. Picketers must also inform the police but cannot picket until 24 hours after the phone call. something is considered a march/demonstration etc. if there are more than 20 people in the same area. This is mainly just a design to ensure good relationships between police and protestors. we want the police to respect them and protestors to respect the needs of the police to ensure that everyone remains safe. |
Proposals
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 19:42:29, June 23, 2005 CET | From | Social Republican Party | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | Acceptable. |
| Date | 11:18:39, June 24, 2005 CET | From |  Free Reform Coalition (FRP) | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | shall we move to a vote? or would people like to add more comments or changes? |
| Date | 12:14:27, June 24, 2005 CET | From | LibCom Party | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | We're against this. It will either be totally ineffective, or give police too much power to break up demonstrations. Particularly in the case of pickets. |
| Date | 12:33:07, June 24, 2005 CET | From | Free Reform Coalition (FRP) | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | ooc: this is standard practice for most countries that allow protesting in the real world. ic: the phone call is not a phone call to ask for permission, but just to inform the police. the aim being that in the time between the call and the date of the protest, the police can create a safe alternate route for cars and also to ensure that it is safe for both protestors and passersby. also, our law is that police can only break up a protest if it is acting violently. this bill is simply to ensure that the police have time to make sure that the street is not blocked and that there is a safe exit in case of fires etc. furthermore, any legitimate protestor knows that violence on his or her part actually damages her cause and won't do it. a peacefull protest has nothing to fear from the police. also, as for it being inneffective, it is designed to be as little a hinderance as possible on the right of people to protest. OOC: many countries have good police-protestor relationships because of this exact law. conscientious protestors want to inform the police simply as a courtesy and also becuase they know that protection goes both way: the police are also there to help protestors stay safe from people who disagree with them. |
| Date | 15:24:16, June 24, 2005 CET | From | Protectorate Party | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | agree |
| Date | 16:21:52, June 24, 2005 CET | From | LibCom Party | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | In practice, this bill would allow the police to make sure that the street is blocked in order to contain the protest and make sure it doesn't get anywhere where it might be effective. This could quite easily lead to the police provoking legitimate protesters to violence. (OOC: I've seen this happen all too often in RL.) Of course it is entirely understandable that the FRP and PP would like to restrict protesters' rights, due to the massive protests that would occur were they ever in a position to implement their policies. |
| Date | 16:39:54, June 24, 2005 CET | From | Free Reform Coalition (FRP) | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | umm no! this is not a restriction on the rights of protestors. it is in fact a benefit. by law civil servants must remain independent of politics, thus protestors are protected from abuses by the government. but if the libcom party is worried about rights abuses why have they voted to remove all property rights from creators, all ownership rights from farmers and prevented people from having the choice of going to the school they want? the answer is becuase the libcom is biggest abuser of human rights aside from the LevP! |
| Date | 16:37:47, June 25, 2005 CET | From | Leviathan Party | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | Property is not a human right, food is. Figure out the difference. And how to use a shift key. |
| Date | 00:46:17, June 26, 2005 CET | From | Social Republican Party | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | when did we start talking about food/ we are only talking about protestings. and besides, if too many protests are detained, we will reverse this bill. |
| Date | 18:45:29, June 26, 2005 CET | From | Free Reform Coalition (FRP) | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | property is a human right, 00c: perhaps levp should read something other than "famous quotes from Hobbes' Leviathan" like Rousseau or hagel. |
| Date | 19:22:56, June 26, 2005 CET | From | Free Reform Coalition (FRP) | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | ooc: also we assume that the shift key is used to indicate shouting, true? then why would we yell at the levp? do teachers yell at children when they don't understand something or when they don't know enough? of course not; they try to explain calmly, thats why we won't yell at the levp, we will explain things calmly as if they were a little child. |
| Date | 11:36:06, June 27, 2005 CET | From | LibCom Party | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | If property is a human right, then private property is a violation of that right. But of course that's somewhat beyond the scope of the current debate. So the SRP is happy to pass repressive legislation in the hope that they'll be able to repeal it at their convenience? That highlights the danger of such legislation - it's all well and good when the government is benign, but if the far right should ever come to power we don't want to have done their work for them. |
| Date | 12:01:43, June 27, 2005 CET | From | Free Reform Coalition (FRP) | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | or what about the far left *ahem* preventing protests for farmers to get their land back, or publishing companies to get their industry back? We hear reports every day that those protests are crushed by communist controlled police officers. |
| Date | 12:05:34, June 27, 2005 CET | From | Free Reform Coalition (FRP) | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | seriously, the libcom does make a fair point about extremists distorting the system to limit freedoms in order to give the government more control. we live in a democracy however, and as much as some parties may wish it weren't it is, and that is a great thing. we beleive that democracy will preserve the rights of the people and that freedom of the press will be a check on the government's actions so we do not think this will result in oppressive government action, unless the communists suddenly obtained 70% of the seats in the assembly. |
| Date | 13:57:46, June 27, 2005 CET | From | LibCom Party | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | There may well have been some protests from absentee landlords and their lickspittles in the FRP when we took their land and gave it to the farmers, but these were never crushed, unless it was by the farmers and their fellow workers queuing up to hurl manure at their former exploiters. |
| Date | 15:41:17, June 27, 2005 CET | From | Free Reform Coalition (FRP) | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | ooc: lol, ah, poop humor never ceases. ic: typical thoughts from the communists in our country; if its not left wing; its not legitimate. |
| Date | 11:31:42, June 28, 2005 CET | From | LibCom Party | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | Who said anything about legitimacy? That's for the people to judge, not us in the Assembly. |
| Date | 13:22:13, June 28, 2005 CET | From | Free Reform Coalition (FRP) | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | we are legitimate as the FRC has 39 seats altogether and with ICweapons; 48. |
| Date | 13:22:39, June 28, 2005 CET | From | Free Reform Coalition (FRP) | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | anyway, moving to vote now. |
| Date | 05:24:02, June 29, 2005 CET | From | Protectorate Party | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | We do not see this as removing rights of the individuals rather as protecting all those involved. It would be very sad to hear of an incident involving the injury or even death at a rally when it could have easily been prevented by the presence of law enforcement personnel. The remarks of the LibCom party are puzzling, since there are no extreme right parties present in our Assembly. |
| Date | 11:58:08, June 29, 2005 CET | From | LibCom Party | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | There may not be any extreme right parties at present (though this is debatable), but we mustn't be complacent. If extremists were to take power one day, we wouldn't want to have done their dirty work for them. |
| Date | 13:55:05, June 29, 2005 CET | From | Radical Centrists | To | Debating the Respect for Protestors and Police |
| Message | Slippery slope. |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | ||||
| yes |
Total Seats: 48 | ||||
| no |
Total Seats: 52 | ||||
| abstain | Total Seats: 0 |
| Random fact: If your "Bills under debate" section is cluttered up with old bills created by inactive parties, report them for deletion on the Bill Clearouts Requests thread: http://forum.particracy.net/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4363 |
| Random quote: "If voting changed anything, they'd abolish it." - Ken Livingstone |