The brazen appearance of white supremacist groups in Nashville left the city grappling with how to confront hateful speech without violating First Amendment protections.

The neo-Nazis poured into the historic Metro courthouse to disrupt a City Council meeting,

Arrest. Them. Holy shit, that’s something that in any reasonably sized city would be worth at least a night in jail to cool off, even if you were some fucking normie instead of a neonazi fuck. It’s not that fucking hard.

Arrest them for what exactly? Is disrupting a city council meeting anything but a civil infraction?

I don’t want this sort of thing going on, but what law would justify jail time?

I mean maybe they did do something to justify it, but I don’t know that disrupting a city council meeting should land people in jail. People also disrupt city council meetings when they try to pass anti-queer ordinances. And they should.

Arrest them for what exactly? Is disrupting a city council meeting anything but a civil infraction?

Criminal trespass, easy. Fuck, that’s levied all the time as a club against left-wing protesters. Yet when actual neonazis show up, they get nothing? Fuck that.

I think the answer to that is not ‘also arrest the Nazis,’ it’s ‘don’t arrest the left-wing protesters either.’

Balancing the scales doesn’t solve the problem.

Arrest any and all groups that storm in and disrupt government functions, simple as that

Which means that people in the government can argue that virtually anything the government does is a “government function.” Mayor’s press conference? Government function. Better arrest those protesters. Governor’s mansion? It has public tours. That’s a government function. Better arrest those protestors.

Look what happened without that law when a president wanted a photo op with a Bible in front of a church. And you want to make that even easier?

You can protest outside the building perfectly fine, storming into the chambers and stopping the agenda is blatant disruption and I won’t argue it.

But how do you make it clear that is the government function that can’t be disrupted but the press conference afterward can because it does not count as a government function?

Don’t enter government grounds for your protests… do it outside the building.