When Students Against State Violence met Tuesday night in Ballantine Hall, the 24 attendees reached their arms out and tried to focus their peripheral vision on their outstretched, wiggling fingers.
The exercise was part of the meeting’s purpose: to educate protesters on their rights during demonstrations.
“No matter what, you’re not alone,” graduate student Billy Hudson said.
Hudson used this lesson on peripheral vision to emphasize the idea of protesters being aware of what is going on in their surroundings.
This included police officers, journalists, the crowd’s overall preparedness and the mood of the bystanders.
He discussed both how to keep a protest running smoothly and what to do when the police become involved.
“Curate an attitude that is as un-paranoid as possible,” Hudson said.
He brought up a recent situation in which he said the actions of Black Lives Matter protesters were taken out of context. In a video that surfaced online, the demonstrators appeared to be attacking a car, but the footage failed to show the vehicle trying to accelerate through the crowd.
He suggested reaching out to the protesters who seem afraid, even if they are strangers.
“Offer a drink of water, something like that,” Hudson said.
Hudson also stressed the importance of the protesters sticking together. He said everyone should attend a rally with a small group and use the buddy system. This way, everyone has support whether they are just moving to a different part of the crowd or facing arrest.
One speaker, who was not a student and refused to give her name to the group, talked about the basic outline for stages of arrest.
As a precaution, she said that what she planned to talk about next might not apply to every individual the same way because police have been known to apply laws differently to different people.
“I really disapprove of the one-size-fits-all, know-your-rights trains,” she said.
In any case, she emphasized the lines between each phase can be murky but that each one still needed to be addressed.
The speaker said the first phase, consent, means a protester has free rights to do and say almost anything they want.
The detention phase occurs once the police have reasonable suspicion, she said. She suggested protesters be polite and said they must provide the police with some form of identification.
“Be nice, because you want to leave and you want to be unhurt,” she said.
The third and final stage is arrest. Here, police can search for any possessions on a protester or in a bag, excluding only cell phones.
During this phase, protesters should take full advantage of their Fifth Amendment rights.
“Take this time for meditation, personal reflection, because it’s the right to remain silent,” the speaker said.
She said after invoking the right to remain silent, a protester has to keep that precedent until they are finally able to talk to his or her lawyer, which is also part of his or her rights. However, a protester simply saying he will not talk does not protect any statements said after that.
“Your actions have to correspond to your words,” she said. “Weird world, but it’s true.”
