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Notes -
With the recent arrest of Don Lemon, I think it's worth asking how society should respond to the sorts of activities he (allegedly) engaged in?
Disrupting a church service is not exactly terrorism, since there was no actual violence used. But it's not civil disobedience either -- nobody is seriously arguing that the laws against disrupting meetings are themselves unjust.
It's sort of Terrorism Lite. It's kind of like, as another poster analogized, to holding your fist a millimeter away from someone's face while chanting "I'm not touching you." The point is to (arguably) inflict as much harm as you can get away with, to grab attention, to intimidate, to provoke a response, etc. while plausibly claiming that you are non-violent.
Maybe it's my imagination, but I feel like I've seen more and more of this Terrorism Lite in recent years. Things like traffic-blocking; meeting disruption; etc.
While it's true that there are already laws on the books against these sorts of things, I think an argument can be made that there needs to be a more focused and vigorous response. By analogy, in theory blowing up a bomb in a train station is already against the law, whether or not it's in support of some political objective, but there is value in having special laws on the books against terrorism and especially against those who finance or otherwise support it.
In the same way, there could be laws which sanction people, organizations, and governments for providing material support to what I have called Terrorism Lite. (Perhaps someone can suggest a better term.)
By state law, it's 100% disorderly conduct, criminal trespass and I think riot in the third degree ("When three or more persons assembled disturb the public peace by an intentional act or threat of unlawful force or violence to person or property, each participant therein is guilty of riot third degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 364 days or to payment of a fine of not more than $1,000, or both."). Any threat of violence would be "gross misdemeanor" assault in Minnesota. The proper response is that the state government of Minnesota should arrest, try, and convict the mob members and send them to prison for a few months each. That would be a proportionate and just response. If the state government of Minnesota refuses to do that because they are on the side of the "protestors" ... well then you are in a state of exception ...One option then, is to hack federal law in order to go after the protestors, which is what the left usually does. It might make sense to make disorderly conduct in sufficient scale and coordination to be a federal felony. That would stop all these "terrorism lite" tactics. Another possibility would be to arrest the actual members of the state government in that case, for conspiracy to deprive rights under color of law. And if you can't get a federal judge to approve it, well, again, you would be in the state of exception. All of these tracks require a plan for the ensuing escalation.
I'm certain that at least some of the Internet packets used to coordinate the event (or live stream it) crossed state lines. IIRC that's been a federal jurisdiction hook before.
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