The brazen appearance of white supremacist groups in Nashville left the city grappling with how to confront hateful speech without violating First Amendment protections.
They first arrived at the beginning of July: dozens of masked white supremacists, shuffling out of U-Hauls, to march through Nashville carrying upside-down American flags.
A week later, members of a separate neo-Nazi group, waving giant black flags with red swastikas, paraded along the city’s famed strip of honky-tonks and celebrity-owned bars. The neo-Nazis poured into the historic Metro courthouse to disrupt a City Council meeting, harassed descendants of Holocaust survivors and yelled racist slurs at young Black children performing on a downtown street.
The appearance of white nationalists on the streets of a major American city laid bare the growing brazenness of the two groups, the Patriot Front and the Goyim Defense League. Their provocations enraged and alarmed civic leaders and residents in Nashville, causing the city to grapple with how to confront the groups without violating free speech protections.
I’m saying arresting Nazis won’t happen but changing the laws to make it so that protesters won’t get arrested at all is a possibility, especially on a regional or local level.
One relies on the cops cooperating. The other relies on just telling them they can’t even be there.
Yes, and you dismiss the idea of attempting it because “it will never happen” after mocking the approach of “It won’t happen so why try”.
I legitimately don’t know how to simplify this any further.
Do you… do you think the cops listen when they’re told not to be somewhere and they want to be there? Do you think that’s not cooperation?
Yes. I think cops will not go places if they’re told they will be facing things like fines if they do. They like getting paid.
And I think it’s much easier to do that on a local level than telling them to go arrest the Nazis.
So there’s the power to coerce cops to follow the law, but not the power to coerce cops to do their job and ensure others are following the law. Do we have the power to make cops enforce any laws?
You think it’s easier to make cops respect people’s rights than it is to get them to arrest people they don’t give a fuck about.
Okay.
Yes. It’s called money.
Yes, if it costs them money.