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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.)
What I’m not seeing mentioned here is Lemon’s defense; he says he was watching the protest as a journalist, which to be fair was his career and he claims to be doing independent journalism after his retirement from CNN. We do have video of him doing things like interviewing protestors and the pastor (who asked him to leave), and commenting on the contrast between people yelling and protesting and people trying to pray as demonstrative of a divided America. I don’t know that it’s great journalism, but it’s a more complex situation than “Don Lemon was rioting in a church.”
I think Don Lemon should be charged with trespassing, maybe criminal mischief, etc, particularly since he remained in the church after the pastor asked him politely to leave and told him that he was contributing to the disruption of their worship service. But I don’t know if it’s appropriate for him, personally, to be charged with civil rights offenses. The organizers of the protest and the people chanting and screaming during the worship services should be slapped with those, though. I think it’s important to draw a firm line on protesting and disrupting religious services, lest we become a nation where Christians start screaming about devil-worship in mosques or Palestinians start screaming about Gaza in synagogues.
Having had a chance to think about this, it looks to me like he was a part of the conspiracy or is otherwise criminally responsible. Arguably, part of the plan was to disrupt the church service simply by having a large number of people in the room. So I think that anyone joining the group; knowing about the plan; entering the church with the group; and refusing to leave when asked, should be prosecuted. I'm not familiar with the particulars of the law in question, this is just what seems reasonable to me. (I'm also assuming that Don Lemon was asked to leave and refused.)
Besides, I don't think being a "journalist" should give a person any more rights than they otherwise would have. I think anyone who was a part of the group; who entered the church; and who refused to leave when asked should be charged.
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Lemon is alleged to have helped plan it.
Imagine Lemon and others talked about robbing a bank. He goes along and interviews the bank employees whilst the bank robbery is committed.
Seems clearly his “journalist” defense is invalid.
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The specific indictment language includes accusasions of things that could be plausibly construed as conspiracy and pre-planning with the event organizers who, ultimately planned a church invasion.
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