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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024

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Did anyone see the SF DA's press release about the Golden gate blocking arrests? The perps were booked on a felony conspiracy charge, and it concludes

anyone who was detained against their will (falsely imprisoned) on the golden gate bridge... Is urged to contact the CHP at ### and provide a statement detailing what happened to you... So you can be alleged as a victim. You may be entitled to restitution and have other victim rights guaranteed under Marsy's law

(Edit: to clarify, this statement was addressed to anyone who the protesters blocked from crossing the bridge, declaring them victims who can seek restitution from the protesters! TTBOMK I'm not aware of a statement like this being issued after a left wing protest/riot before.)

They're not throwing the book at them, but does this seem like a setup to finally go after the leftist orgs funding these protests and inflicting financial harm on them?

It's strange for an SF official to be pursuing a strategy from Rufo's Twitter feed! "False imprisonment by rioters" has been a talking point on the right for years now, but it took urban liberal Jewish/* lawyers to deploy it in practice?

/* Don't @me, you know it's a safe assumption on this issue!

After reading this a couple times last night, sleeping, and then reading it again today, I finally realized what the quotation means and why people are reacting the way they are: the message is addressed to people who were trying to use the bridge and were impeded by the protesters, not the protesters themselves.

I thought the message was addressed to the protesters, who the DA was claiming were falsely imprisoned by the police. There are probably lots of reasons for my misinterpretation -- "imprisonment" being more closely connected to jail (and booking) than to being impeded by a protest, "detained" being a word associated with the police, and of course my schema of the world in which San Francisco prosecutors are more concerned about police misconduct than public disorder. I am fascinated by my misinterpretation.

For what it's worth, I had exactly the same misinterpretation and for a moment assumed it was a quoting a civil rights plaintiff attorney