EDITORIAL: The danger of disruptive protests is allowing them to happen without consequences

Boundaries. We’re taught them at an early age.

Don’t scribble on the walls.

Clean up after yourself.

Keep your voice down.

Don’t block the doorway.

Don’t argue with authorities.

And don’t step out into the middle of the road.

We all know them by the time we enter kindergarten.

Sadly, here in Albuquerque and across too many other American cities, young adults and older-age activists have either forgotten those boundaries or have jettisoned them altogether for some higher cause of social justice.

And it’s got to stop before someone gets hurt right here in Albuquerque.

Pro-Palestinian protesters, or so they like to call themselves as if the murderous attack on Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7 never occurred, are stepping up their disruptiveness. Thursday morning and afternoon they literally took on a nuclear power, blocking the main entrance to Kirtland Air Force Base.

Any credit for boldness is far outweighed by how ridiculous they looked, about a half dozen protesters at the entrance of Kirtland at Louisiana and Gibson, sitting in pop-up chairs with umbrellas and towels, like it was a day at the beach, linked by PVC pipe and handcuffs.

Do any of them really believe their childish antics will have any effect whatsoever on the war in Gaza or America’s military that they loathe?

What if there had been an emergency? Were they going to part Gibson like Moses did the Red Sea and allow emergency vehicles in and out? If they were students, they were certainly untraditional ones — way old enough to know better than to set up a fold-out chair in the middle of the street.

“Stop the war machine,” one of them wrote in chalk on the pavement like a child. They even had the idle time and audacity to chalk a Palestinian flag in the middle of the intersection. Drawing a Palestinian flag right outside a military base is incredibly disrespectful to the men and women serving there.

How could anybody take these people seriously when their behavior mimics that of preschoolers?

Albuquerque Police locked down Gibson SE, near Kirtland’s main entrance. It wasn’t the end of the world. Traffic flowed through other base entrances. There was no nuclear Armageddon, just another silly and senseless disruption by people with too much time on their hands and too little work to do.

No one was hurt, thankfully, either protesting or restoring order.

The situation was much more intense, however, even violent, during a student sleep-in the UNM Student Union Building on Monday night. Apparently, some students think the SUB is only for certain students who hate America and who wave the Palestinian flag as a beacon of freedom.

Only in America does such stupidity spew from our higher education institutions.

Our universities are in the thick of it. Campuses such as UNM are ground zero in the anti-Israel movement. The faculty’s chickens have truly come home to roost.

Thankfully, UNM officials aren’t taking it. They seem to grasp the gravity of the situation — the perception that their campus is being overrun by anti-Israel, anti-American, antisemitic, anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, anti-military, anti-antis — and that allowing such lawlessness to take place not only threatens Jewish students, it also threatens UNM’s funding streams from state and federal government sources to private donations and endowments.

University officials played it smart Monday night and early Tuesday morning, letting the protesters tucker out and chant themselves to sleep in tents set up indoors, just like children do. They damaged chairs and tables with makeshift barricades, and defaced university property with insipid slogans we’ve all heard a thousand times by now.

UNM police gave the protesters a 30-minute warning, saying if they didn’t leave in that time, they would be removed and charged with criminal trespassing. But that seems to have been the point of the sleep-in, to force officials to remove them physically so that they could whine about it.

It wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning that university and State Police moved in. And they’re to be commended for their restraint.

Sixteen protesters were arrested. We hope they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and that their criminal behavior will be duly noted on every future job application. If any of them are students, they should be expelled.

University leaders correctly note vandalizing property and barricading doors is not a legally protected form of expression. It’s organized anarchy.

Free speech is one thing. We support that as much as anyone, because we know what it’s like to face those in power who want to silence us. Let the student protesters speak freely and often. We’ll listen.

Barricading a public building is another matter. If nothing else, it’s got to be a pretty egregious fire code violation.

“UNM has a long history of activism, and the university very much supports people’s rights to express themselves and to protest,” said UNM spokesperson Cinnamon Blair. “But not when it starts to veer into criminal activities and or violation of our policies, and those policies are all there to keep the entire campus and the community safe.”

Correct: To keep everybody safe, not just the agitators.

The SUB is scheduled to reopen Monday after repairs are made. The protesters should be sued for property damages. If they feel so strongly about writing “Free Palestine” on bathroom stalls and walls, let them pay the damages.

Blocking traffic and agitating people going about their lives doesn’t seem to be the smartest or most persuasive public relations tactic. But these days, we all have to keep an eye on Google maps for an anti-Israel protest near you.

Where will the next protest pop up? Will they block the entrance to an emergency room, flank a VA hospital, or grease the steps at a veterans’ retirement home? Who knows. It’s all performative art and intended to rile people up.

The danger is allowing it to happen without consequences. Someone is going to get hurt otherwise. A 2-year-old won’t stop scribbling on the wall until they’re given a time out. A maniac won’t stop shouting until he’s left alone. And Gaza war protesters will block traffic as long as they’re allowed to.

We would like to hear the strategies for maintaining law and order from our candidates for Bernalillo County district attorney, because the fallout from these protests seems headed their way.

We’d also like for police to be more proactive and firmly establish boundaries, before someone gets hurt.

And we want to hear from the Gaza war protesters as well, just not up in our face while we’re blocked in traffic on the ride home.