I think the point that has the previous poster concerned is that you seem to be asserting that anything that requires capital allocation to perpetuate it's effectiveness as a disruptive protest isn't a protest. This thereby de-facto caps the effectiveness of any protest to something that can be quaintly noted and largely dismissed by the establishment.

This ultimately degenerates around the extremes, and I believe that is what the poster is concerned about; that your definition basically bakes in the assumption that any protest must necessarily be so minor in nature as to not overly disrupt, when in reality, the point of a truly effective protest is to disrupt.

Assume that somehow a fit of madness took hold of the Highest authorities in the land and sufficient agency to implement and enforce dicta in a resistable, but still a threatening degree to the nation as a whole. Assume quite literally the entire country except the perpetrators disagreed.

Now apply your rule. We've got a situation where literally everyone but the people wrecking things is ready to organize resistance. Your rule places the Authorities on a privileged position of presumptive legitimacy where none exists. Only token protests capable of being safely ignored due to transient nature and poor coordination will be tolerated. Anything (even peaceful in the extreme, literally being somewhere, taking up space, breathing air, and just existing), but requiring extensive/non-trivial logistics becomes an act against which force of law is "justifiable" to disperse.

Personally? I don't accept your view. If there are enough people that feel like their capital is best allocated making themselves a pain-in-the-ass to <authority of the week>, that's their perogative.

...Now, given, the cross-border jurisdictional complications in this case, I will give you this seems different because people in another nation are funding disruptive activity in yours. If it were only coming from domestic funders, that'd be one thing. The external funding elevates this to something else. However, this is a complication that has been long in coming to the forefront, and poses diplomatic questions currently above my paygrade.

However, I'm still more sympathetic to the protestors here in the same manner that I disagree with the Taft-Hartley Acts ban on organized secondary striking. Ultimately, I believe the People (for any unit Nation's definition thereof which is a completely different thing to kavetch about) are the ultimate authorities on what is legitimate, and what isn't. If they decide to fund something that the government, or even the rest of the populace doesn't like, ultimately, the vote of no confidence inherent in the action elevates their behavior to civil disobedience.

Which I am totally okay with.

Note: the implicit okay evaporates once people start getting violent, actually committing crimes (where said crimes are not transparently "stop being inconvenient" crimes, a la assault/battery/arson/murder/larceny/grand theft/kidnapping/property destruction).

Very impressive dodge of the question.

Let’s say a sit in did need support. Do you think that’s a valid use of GoFundMe?

Is this what your rhetoric is reduced to? Demanding that people answer for invented, imaginary hypocrisy? I didn't "dodge" a completely stupid, manufactured question because I have literally no onus to answer it.

GFM shouldn't be used to sponsor *ANY* protest. I've said that REPEATEDLY, and consistently. A protest that needs sponsorship is not a legitimate protest.

You realize the Civil Rights movements in the US had substantial fundraising? The March to Selma? How do you think people were fed? Where did they sleep?

So by your logic the Civil Rights movement was not legitimate?

Do you think if the relatively tiny sponsorship didn't happen, the civil rights movement wouldn't have happened? I specifically talked to protests needing sponsorship, and in the case of the current occupation the bloated GFM -- funded by the far-right in the US who have achieved such a bucolic utopia of governance they now want to export it -- spurred on the participation. It legitimized it. This was nothing before everyone was chomping at the bit to get their slice of a big pie.

"How do you think people were fed? Where did they sleep?"

They literally slept in fields and went days with negligible food. In Ottawa protesters are sleeping in hotels and in $600,000 sleeper cabs running 24/7 and are eating like kings. They have built various facilities including a sauna. They are treating it like a fun vacation. What a shocking contrast.

All of this makes the other reply to you simply incredible.

I think his point is that only well-off people, who can fund themselves, should be allowed to protest. Poor people, who can't support themselves protesting, should have no right to do that.

And as the other response mentioned, demonstrations were in fact funded in the past. Getting all defensive and outraged is one way to avoid an answer.

"And as the other response mentioned, demonstrations were in fact funded in the past"

You think this is a retort. Amazing.

"Getting all defensive and outraged is one way to avoid an answer"

Demanding an answer out of someone, especially when they've spoken directly to the topic repeatedly, and then announcing an imagined, projected hypocrisy, is an unbelievably ignorant, boorish tactic. I might just say a troll tactic. Did you learn this from Tucker Carlson? It has absolutely no place on HN.