•  araneae   ( @araneae@beehaw.org ) 
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    1 month ago

    Here in Sweden you won’t get arrested for protesting peacefully.

    If you want to stage a protest you need permission from the police, they are required to grant it to you unless it can’t be done safely, then they can suggest a different location for the protest.

    Wow I hope Sweden never has any sort of rightward turn that would suddenly leave your “right to protest” (“peacefully”) (with mum’s permission) very much in the air. I hope you never have to fear they ID’d you at an event where the police kettled things from a protest into a survival riot. I hope you never have to decide whether to pop your phone in a faraday bag. Take the battery out. Never need to hide your face from a government fond of making lists. Never fear gait recognition following you home thru a hundred CCTV cameras. The raid that comes in the night when you realize your freedoms were quite illusory. I hope your protest movement isn’t demonized by the media or arbitrarily designated a terrorist organization.

    Fuck your shaming. We don’t protest for glory and clout. We protest because we are human. And some of us land immediately in the crosshairs unless we try to protect ourselves. Am I being hyperbolic? Ask the environmental movement the UK branded as terroristic for highlighting how close to extinction we are. Ask Cop City protestors. Ask Palestinian supporters in Germany. Ask BLM protestors who did nothing illegal and ended up in black vans being intimidated.

    Grow up. Freedom isn’t free.

    • Meh, in my experience, demonstrators wearning masks just want to riot or cause violence without consequences.

      If Sweden falls into a dictatorship or similar, I’d gladly revise my stance on the status of Sweden as a free country.

      Untill then, if you are protesting, take off you mask and show your face! Else I can’t take the protest seriously