Better ways to handle protesters

Being American means you have the right to protest and the right of free speech. It is in the Constitution. The Supreme Court has, again and again, affirmed that right, and they have also affirmed your right not to be impeded in public places while you exercise that right. Of course, there are safety and hygiene issues — and, most off all, there are issues with violence at crowded demonstrations.However, none of the pitfalls outweigh the one single Constitutional right to protest on public property. All across this country that right is being assaulted, confronted, battled and pushed aside for what are, seemingly, good reasons. The New York police quote a dollar-per-day burden on public taxpayers (as if the protesters are not the public as well). The Oakland police up the violence with riot gear, tear gas, pepper spray and baton charges, and then cite the “wanton destruction of the public peace.”Can everyone please stop and think for a second? Are these anarchists? No, these are the flower-power left-wing; these are elderly people wanting to know why their pensions are gone. These are not your hippie Black Panther regiments. Do these protesters have guns and weapons? No. Are they hurling anything except insults at the suited few who dare pass by? Sure, later, when the protest has been prodded into defense and that 5 percent of crowd-bred violent members takes control, they hurl bottles and bricks, but who started the battle? Who showed up in body armor, carrying shields, shotguns ready, pepper spray in handy fire-extinguisher bottles for ex-soldiers and retired pensioners?Now, if the police, the upholders of the law, would only allow a little accounting to change their focus. These aging do-gooder liberals are mostly a peaceful lot. If cities have a legitimate concern on police expenditure and budgets — especially when police methods are full force, full battle gear and full riot mode on overtime — then why not find a way to spend less of the public taxpayers’ money? Instead of $1 million a day policing the hygiene problem in a city park, how about spending $5,000 a day on public portable toilets. How about negotiating with the demonstrators and allow them proximity to those they want to insult? How about encouraging them to clean up (once they have somewhere to go) and place barriers to allow the demonstrators a circuit around the financial district to keep them moving and orderly? How about a soup kitchen instead of tear gas? Soup is way cheaper than tear gas.The alternative is to create a pressure cooker, allowing the most radical to seize command and, in response to the visible threat of battalions of heavily armed police, gravitate to violence.“Sticks and stones...” should not be the police’s defense against legitimate, Constitutional, “words can never hurt me.” A former Amenia Union resident, Peter Riva now resides in New Mexico.