> the rights of rational citizens to get essential health care during a public emergency begin.

The US’ legal framework isn’t really big on Positive rights like that, though. Unless one is a ward of the state or in their custody, no-one has a “right” to healthcare in the US.

I’d love to be wrong about this though.

It's nuanced. Americans generally have a right to emergency healthcare whether you can pay for it or not. Beyond that... not so much.

> I’d love to be wrong about this though.

You're right, and there's good reason for it. Negative rights are generally non-interventionist, which tends to be more in line with classical liberalism. However, the fact that the stadium had to shut down, indicates that the protestors were actually infringing on the rights of those that wanted to get vaccinated.

So calling this "protesting" is a bit of a misnomer. They were not protesting, just how the folks that breached the Capitol on Jan 6th weren't protesting. This can be complicated, because the Boston Tea Party (for example) is often called a protest in history books, but it was pretty clearly an act of vandalism. Not that the two are mutually exclusive (after all, we can certainly have violent protests), but we mostly think of protests in terms of what the Constitution defines as the "freedom of assembly."

  They were not protesting

Clearly, you didn't look at the actual video (link embedded in the article). Protesters were clear over on the sidewalk and never impede traffic. Most verbal interactions are strictly among competing protesters.

Nobody missed getting their vaccine. The Times' summary fundamentally misrepresented the actual event.

So in other words, you change the definition of "protesting" based on if it aligns with your personal political viewpoint.

They should add this comment in the dictionary under the definition of "cognitive dissonance".

> So in other words, you change the definition of "protesting" based on if it aligns with your personal political viewpoint.

Not really. All I'm saying is that in everyday parlance, "protesting" implies that you're not infringing on someone else's rights. The gold standard of protesting is something like MLK's Selma to Montgomery March or Gandhi's hunger strike. Nevertheless, figures like Malcolm X or Che Guevara would vehemently disagree.

This definition applies to all spectrums of political discourse. Last summer, a bunch of BLM "protests" weren't protests in this (in my opinion, more correct) sense of the word, either -- people were looting and setting fires.

> people were looting and setting fires.

It's been said[1] that looting and property destruction should be seen through the eyes of an individual who decries society as illegitimate. If an individual feels that they have been violated or destroyed by the social system, what obligation does that individual have to maintain and uphold the social structure that they feel wronged them?

A more direct interpretation of _sticking it to the man_, for sure: the argument being that outside of a riot, one's personal outrage at _the man_ would be swiftly, albeit unjustifiably, punished - but in the middle of a riot, one can wreck... hundreds of dollars of damage to major corporate conglomerates: theirs is a modest penalty for perceived violations of the social contract, but a thousand times more satisfying to the perpetrator.

...or something.

[1] Yes, I'm aware this is a weasel word.

Yes, protesters blocking things is generally where their rights stop, but disorderly conduct is a better charge.

We've got a whole summer of court precedence which says that protesters can block roads with zero consequences. I think that ship has sailed.

Except a ot of people were arrested , pepper sprayed, beat up, etc.

So if the summer BLM a protests are the standard, let’s have the cops pepper spray these people with riot gear, best them up, and arrest them as well.

It doesn't say they were "blocking" the entrance, it says they gathered at the entrance holding signs.

Let's be fair, as long as they were peaceful, they were perfectly within their first amendment rights whether you agree with their message or not (i.e. the entire point of the first amendment).

That's a really good point. The strongest statement the article had was "stalling hundreds of motorists," and the shutdown was "as a precaution." It's not clear if the gathering or the shutdown "stalled" the motorists.

Sloppy reporting; it's really easy to read that and picture protesters blocking the driveway.

Their rights here should be pretty easy to sort out; they just have to follow the same rules as abortion clinic protesters.

In Los Angeles, standing on a sidewalk with a sign and not impeding foot traffic is perfectly legal. And what I saw of the signs was either factual (the 99.67% of everyone, infected or not surviving) or exercise of religious freedom. I admit I only saw two signs.

No, their first amendment rights don't end because you want them to. But I suspect we what they were doing could be construed as non peaceful, and thus no longer supported by the first.

If nothing else why can't they be trespassed and forcibly removed from the private property

Ironically, the property was likely sized via eminent domain, but that aside, and IANAL, Pruneyard might make the speech part of this protected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...

The protestors were on a public right-of-way, the sidewalk and street.

Pruneyard and subsequent cases established that as long as private shopping centers encourage the public to freely congregate in a common area at their leisure, that area is treated as a public square and people can engage in speech protected by the state constitution. This activity is limited to the common area of the property, it doesn't apply to areas which may be open for the movement of people. Strip malls and free standing stores are exempt because they don't meet the standard.

Really though - like, I really don't mind people protesting lockdowns or whatever out in a big group by themselves.

But actually doing it a vaccination site is just indefensible. The people who, like you said, are trying to get essential healthcare have just as much a right to safely do their thing.

The great thing about the First Amendment is that people's rights don't end based on the opinion of one ignorant person. And the great thing about the Second Amendment is that it exists to protect the First Amendment, because the founding fathers knew there would eventually be ignorant people who didn't understand the underlying purpose of the First Amendment.

I'm not even trying to be passive aggressive here (I'm aware it sounded that way initially), it's the literal truth. Give it a re-read. (I should make that into a bumper sticker)