Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
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User ID: 863
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5d ago
Technically the jury found her speech towards the camera man rose to the level of "fighting words" (a First Amendment exception). She was acquitted on the original count against the child and his father.
You can search here for the case (I can't find a way to get a link). Case number 55-CR-25-6656. From the Jury instructions (document #58) as regards the charge she was convicted of:
DEFINED
Under Minnesota law, whoever, knowing or having reasonable grounds to know that it will tend to alarm, anger, or disturb others, or provoke an assault or breach of the peace, engages in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct, or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others, is guilty of a crime.
ELEMENTS
The elements of this crime are:
First, the defendant engaged in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct, or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others.
If you find that the defendant's conduct consisted only of offensive, obscene, or abusive language, you must also find that the words used were “fighting words.” Speech is not “fighting words” merely because it is racist. “Fighting words” are words that constitute personally offensive epithets that, when spoken to the ordinary person, under the particular circumstances of the case, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke a violent reaction or incite an immediate breach of the peace by those to whom such words are addressed. The offense may be based upon the utterance of fighting words alone, without resulting in actual violence. The focus is upon the nature of the words and the circumstances in which they were spoken, rather than upon the actual response.
Second, the defendant knew or believed or had reasonable grounds to know that the conduct would, or could, tend to alarm, anger, disturb, provoke an assault by, or provoke a breach of the peace by others.
Third, the defendant's act took place in a public or private place.
Fourth, the defendant's act took place on or about April 28, 2025, in Olmsted County. If you find that each of these elements has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant is guilty. If you find that any element has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant is not guilty.
The instructions are identical for the count on which she was acquitted.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5d ago
I think it can be reasonable to hold X responsible for Y's actions in the case where X is in some kind of position of authority or responsibility over Y. I don't think sharing an ethnicity, or religion, or gender, and so on automatically puts you in that kind of position relative to others in the same demographic. Although even in your case it's not clear to me that petitioning the elder in the Amish community to use his authority to rectify the issue is coterminous with assigning some kind of blame to the elder for the issue. Something I've learned plenty of times in my own profession is that just because something is not your fault does not mean it is not your problem.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
6d ago
This is a post that's been floating around in my head for a while that I finally wanted to get out. Apologies if this is a little rambling.
There's a phenomenon I observe on both the left and right that is a little mysterious to me and I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts on it. There seems to be a tendency to take the actions of particular individuals and ascribe some kind of moral responsibility for those actions to demographic groups the perpetrator is a part of. Such and such man/woman/white/black/migrant/christian/etc did a bad thing and, actually, all men/women/whites/blacks/migrants/christians/etc are in some sense responsible for it. Such that it is reasonable to think less of or perhaps take retribution against all members of whatever the relevant demographic group is.
I don't think it's too hard to come up with examples. I'm confident a lot of innocent Jews or Palestinians have caught strays from people mad at the Israeli government or Hamas. There was that unrest in the UK after a Sikh Northern Ireland after an African man stabbed a guy to death. Go to probably any dating forum and you can find men and women generalizing about the evils of the other gender based on their dating experiences.
I think of myself as having an essentially liberal individualist view of moral responsibility. People are morally responsible for the things they actually do and not the things that other people who happen to share demographic characteristics with them do. This makes arguments or actions of the above kind feel alien to me. I don't see the logic, the reason, that connects "Person A of X demographic did a Bad Thing" to "Therefore it is justified for me to do a Bad Thing to Person B of demographic X." I also observe deployment of arguments of this type seem to have a whiff of hypocrisy. People who deploy these kinds of arguments about demographic X they are not a part of would ~never accept similar generalizations about demographic Y that they are a part of.
I should also mention that I sometimes see a reverse of this. People of a particular demographic want credit for the good things other members of their demographic have done, regardless of what they themselves have done. The examples that come to mind here are all right-coded to me ("men built society so I, as a man, should get credit for what those other men did regardless of what I personally have done". s/men/whites) but that is probably just my bubble.
I guess I'm trying to understand if there's some underlying logic, some theory of demographic-based moral responsibility I'm missing? Or is this all a kind of pre-rational responsibility assignment?
I'm still not sure I follow. I don't deny that individuals can come to have aligned interests due to their membership in a group. Legal or socially permissible discrimination against members of a demographic is one way this has happened historically. How does that get you to a demographic theory of responsibility though?
If a woman suffragette commits a bombing is a woman anti-suffragette also partly responsible because she is a woman? Is a man suffragette responsible because he's aligned with the woman, even if he otherwise had no part in or knowledge of it? How abstract can a group be such that we can judge members by the actions of other members?
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