Carolyn Marvin, 78, said she is exercising her First Amendment right to protest — and will do it again.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53250107

Police confirmed they had responded to a report of “criminal mischief involving a robot” on the 1200 block of Filbert Street around 1:16 p.m. on Wednesday. A woman on the scene ignored “multiple commands” to move, they said, resulting in a criminal violation notice for disorderly conduct.

Uber declined to comment.

Marvin, who plans to contest the charge on the grounds of her First Amendment right to protest, has been undeterred by the arrest. She plans to continue blocking Uber Eats robots and chatting with curious passersby who ask what she’s doing.

“It allows me to talk to people about what’s going on,” she said. “It’s always very interesting conversations that we have, and I think it’s good to have those kinds of conversations in public space.”

      • Andy@slrpnk.netEnglish
        71·
        4 hours ago

        Respectfully, you’re missing a key piece.

        You’re making the point that you can’t stand up to oppressive powers like Uber while operating within the law.

        Crucially: so is she.

        This woman is an academic expert on law and our rights, and what she’s doing is exploiting a loophole in Uber’s control scheme in public and forcing everyone to watch what happens.

        She is creating a problem for Uber while denying them a legally justifiable reason to wield law against her. Which will either demonstrate to more people an action that allows protestors to impose harm on a powerful company while remaining out of reach of their ability to impose punishment, or force them to reveal that their ability to impose punishment isn’t actually based on law, it’s based on power.

        In doing so, she helps analyze the strength of various legal rights that can still be used and unmasks which ones no longer exist.

    • olejellylegs@lemmy.zipEnglish
      151·
      8 hours ago

      That’s irrelevant.

      There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels … upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
      — Mario Savio

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      10 hours ago

      Not sure this will be either. Just because we agree with it doesn’t mean that intentionally stopping a service provided by a company won’t make you liable in court if they sued them. “People have increased doubts about ordering products on our platform because they were intentionally stopping the products from arriving”

      I can’t see a reasonable judge not finding them liable and therby any damages the company can prove plus court fees would be on this person.