6 October 2018 — 1610 mdt
Did Missoula’s cops help leftist lawbreakers exercise a heckler’s veto?
Frustrated by the impending confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, and apparently mad as hell at the whole damn world, members of Missoula Rises and the Western Montana Chapter of Democratic Socialists of America conducted a nonviolent sit-in at the office of the Republican Party in Missoula yesterday. Their strategic objective? None. They just wanted to make life unpleasant for the people who worked there.
Seven of the protesters were arrested for criminal trespass, a misdemeanor, which apparently was their soul satisfying objective (in some circles, having been arrested at a protest is flaunted as proof of moral superiority and proudly worn as a badge of honor).
Then, the Missoulian’s Seaborn Larson reports, something strange happened:
At the very least, protesters were able to close the GOP office for the remainder of the afternoon. Kelsey Cooley, regional field director for the Montana Republican Party, said the police told her she would have to close up shop once the protest was over, so police wouldn’t have to return if issues arose again.
“The fact of the matter is it’s totally fine for them to protest outside,” she said. “I have no problem with that, they’re peaceful, but the thing is they interrupted my business activities for the day. I can no longer interact with constituents, register people to vote, or anything without them being intimidated by protesters being in my office.”
What is this other than a heckler’s veto? Why did Missoula's police force help political leftists close a Republican office where the only lawbreaking was done by the trespassing leftists?
The job of the police is to keep order so that lawful citizens can go about their lawful tasks. It is not to order citizens to shut down their activities so that the police won’t be inconvenienced by an incident of lawbreaking by other citizens.
Although not violent, the sit-in was illegal and self-indulgent. It was not a constructive way of discharging displeasure over the inevitable consequence of the election of 8 November 2016. Instead of sitting on their butts in a political party’s headquarters, the protesters should have been busting their butts to help get Democrats elected on 6 November 2018.
But the deplorable conduct of the Risers and DSAers pales in comparison to the misconduct of the Missoula Police in ordering the Republicans to close their office to spare the constable the inconvenience of doing his job. The Republicans in Missoula ought to lodge a formal complaint against the cops.