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The Velvet Hammer™ Podcast
Trial lawyers can be real people, too—and this podcast proves it. The Velvet Hammer™ is back, and this time, Karen Koehler isn’t going it alone. Known for her fearless advocacy, bold storytelling, and, yes, even the occasional backwards dress moment, Karen is teaming up with Mo Hamoudi, a lawyer, poet, and storyteller whose empathy and resilience add a whole new dynamic to the show.
Together, they’re pulling back the curtain on trial law, diving into bold topics, heartfelt stories, and the messy, hilarious moments that make trial lawyers human. This is an unscripted, raw, and fun take on life inside—and outside—the courtroom.
The Velvet Hammer™ Podcast
Protesting in America: Your Legal Rights Explained
Episode 31: Protesting in America: Your Legal Rights Explained
Seattle recently saw 70,000 people take to the streets during the No Kings March, and Karen, Mo, and Mike are here to talk about what it means to exercise your right to protest. From Westlake Mall to Capitol Hill, they break down where you can legally assemble, what happens when protests cross into civil disobedience, and how politics shape whether rules get enforced at all.
Mo steps into the “public defender” role, laying out the constitutional protections for peaceful assembly, while Karen pushes back on law and order interpretations and calls out the messy reality of protest policing. They dig into Black Lives Matter, counter protests, government double standards, and the fine line between peaceful and non-peaceful action.
They do not shy away from the uncomfortable questions. Do anger and disruption drive change more than civility? Why do some movements get embraced while others get shut down fast? And what risks are you willing to take for a cause you believe in?
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Hosted by Karen Koehler and Mo Hamoudi, trial lawyers at Stritmatter Law, a nationally recognized plaintiff personal injury and civil rights law firm based in Washington State.
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This is Mo the public defender.
Mo Hamoudi :I'm not being a public defender.
Karen Koehler :Today, you're going to be a public defender.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay, I'll be a public defender. I will defend the public's right to protest.
Karen Koehler :All right Protest, people pay attention.
Mo Hamoudi :Are we recording? Oh yeah, we are. Let's go.
Karen Koehler :All right. So over the weekend, about 70,000 people strong turned out in Seattle area to march against in the no Kings protest. Yes, seattle area to march against in the no Kings protest, which was phenomenal. And I asked Mo because I think that protests are going to continue and Seattle, of course, has a very long history of protest to talk about people's rights.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay, when you think about rights, how do you want to talk about them? You want me to talk to them from the constitutional sense.
Karen Koehler :Well, I'm going to ask you questions.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay, ask me questions.
Karen Koehler :All right, so something really bad happens and a bunch of people want to go out and protest. Can we go out and protest in Westlake Mall, which is in the shopping district, a no-car zone?
Mo Hamoudi :Okay, good question. First, the source of your right. Both the federal and state constitution protect your right to peacefully assemble. That's the key peacefully assemble. And then your rights are strongest in what we call traditional public forums. What is a traditional public forum? Outside the Capitol building, sidewalks, streets. When you start to go into private property, it becomes a little bit gray area.
Karen Koehler :Well, westlake Center is kind of like a big pavilion in the middle of downtown. Okay, pavilion in the middle of downtown.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay, so then the way you want to think about it is has the Westlake Center, at that particular location, traditionally been used in Seattle for protesting? So sometimes you can have private property, by use over a period of time, be treated as a public forum. Under those circumstances, sure you can go and peacefully assemble and you don't need a permit to go and do that.
Karen Koehler :In front of Seattle City Council building.
Mo Hamoudi :Yes, you don't generally need to get a permit to go and protest unless your protesting is going to interfere with some other activity so traffic or it's going to interfere with the government building's function. So if you're going to go outside the Capitol building or a city council and the council people and the employees cannot access, then at that time you need to get a permit so that they can say okay, we will honor your right to go out here and protest, but we're going to set up you here so that there's a pathway for people to go to work. So those are the things you want to think about. That's why weekend protests are good, because the government buildings are usually closed.
Karen Koehler :Okay, but we want to make an impact. Why would we want to do that when government buildings are closed? We want to stop traffic, so can we go into the road?
Mo Hamoudi :I mean, you're obstruct stop traffic, so can we go into the road. I mean that's, you're obstructing traffic, you're effectively trespassing onto property because that property's use is for cars to drive. But I think what you're saying is very important that sometimes, to get the message of the protest out, to have it really land, you want people to feel the discomfort of what you're trying to accomplish, because if you are getting in front of them and you're blocking their path, they're not able to go about their day, and then they're forced to have to face the message that you are giving them and the inconvenience you're creating in their personal lives is going to force them to think this issue is so important that people are willing to come in and interfere with my life in order for me to hear it, because otherwise I won't hear it. So that's a balance. But you're at that point, violating the law and you can be arrested. So as a person, inside of your mind, you're making the choice to say I'm willing to violate that rule in order to get my message out.
Karen Koehler :All right, but in Black Lives Matter protests, what was the difference?
Mo Hamoudi :Pandemic. I mean, the city was shut down, nobody was really on the roadways. I think that that's not a good exception to draw, because that's not. We're not going to have pandemics.
Karen Koehler :I mean right now, like the kind of I disagree with you, by the way, on everything.
Mike Todd:Well, I was going to say too, you're asking me such a lawyer.
Mike Todd:You moved at a point there where I believe it went from peaceful protest to civil disobedience, which, because there's different levels of protesting, there's violent protesting, where people are attacking property, attacking people, attacking police. They're engaging violence or violent acts, but civil disobedience isn't necessarily that. That is where you make a choice as a protester, that you're stepping over the line as to what's legal into what's illegal to get the reaction that you were just describing People being confronted a little bit more, drivers in the middle of the road being stopped and inconvenienced because of the ideas that you're trying to express, where standing on the sidewalk and yelling yeah some people, you know, especially in busy cities, they're used to that.
Mike Todd:That's why when there's a pastor standing on a soapbox yelling whatever they're yelling which there used to be a guy down at Westlake Center who did that all the time with a lot of signs, little megaphone and would try to get everybody to believe what he believed I would walk by that guy every single time I went to a movie at Pacific Place and just ignore it, ignore it, ignore it. But if he got in my face and stepped in front of me and tried to stop me from going in or blocked the entrance to the movie that I was trying to see, that's where you get into confrontation, where you actually have to start to think about what they're saying, maybe, as opposed to just being able to go. Oh, that's another sound that happens in a busy city. My thinking is that?
Mo Hamoudi :well, first you asked, you didn't tell me the content of the speech.
Mike Todd:You said people want to protest these anti-Kings movements, yeah, and I think it can go with all different types of stuff.
Mo Hamoudi :But you're asking me about the rules, and the rules have to apply.
Karen Koehler :I was asking you about BLM, and the difference about BLM was not just the pandemic, it's the fact that the decisions were made to allow the protests.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah, because I mean they let the protests—well, that's a good observation. I kind of missed that point, but it was politically—it was convenient.
Karen Koehler :They were actually cheering on the protesters until they realized that the protesters were still going.
Mike Todd:Until they got too far out of hand. Yeah.
Karen Koehler :The protests continued on. Initially Jenny Durkan and even the governor were like oh, we're so glad you came out and showed up. And then weeks went by and then they started changing their tune because it was too inconvenient, it was partially inconvenient. They allowed that and they wanted to jump on the George Floyd terrible was a terrible thing bandwagon. But then they grew irritated with the protesters.
Mo Hamoudi :But that was a political decision.
Karen Koehler :It was, but I wanted to make sure that that was known that that was a political decision. It was, but I wanted to make sure that that was known, that that was a political decision and that that is an exception because the government says so. Government creates the rules and the government can decide whether to enforce the rules or not.
Mo Hamoudi :I think you kind of pointed out a challenge with protesting is that the content of the message drives some of the decision making, and the rules aren't supposed to work like that. If you're supposed to have the right to peacefully assemble, it shouldn't matter what the message is. The right is the right, and I think that what the government ends up starting to do is that making judgments about the content of the speech, even though it doesn't appear like they are, but they respond to it differently. What happened in Minnesota with George Floyd and the chaos and the violence that was in response to that was because the government there withheld information about Floyd's death and then a member of the public disclosed the video evidence and people got angry that their government lied to them and they protested. These politicians realized we got to avoid violence. So we're going to embrace this political message of like what happened over there, and then they bit off more than they could chew Because, like with anything when you have protests, like you did with the Black Lives Matter movement, you're going to have all kinds of protesters the peaceful kinds and the violent kinds and so I think that content really drives the decision making.
Mo Hamoudi :So this weekend I did not see or hear much violence. Up where I was I'm in Snohomish County there was massive protests in Edmonds, of all places. I didn't see much violence. I was like, okay, this was well done. There was also an art festival, so the police were out there managing two different types of crowds and allowing people to come and kind of occupy the space. Streets, shut down roads. I thought it worked well.
Karen Koehler :But you know, but you know, in addition to what I disagree about what you're saying, because you are kind of sounding pretty law and order to me, sorry. There are many values of protests, including non-peaceful protests. I've got to say the civil rights movement was marked by attempts to have peaceful protests that became violent and a lot of it was people attacking the protesters. Just the act of sitting on a counterstool in a segregated restaurant or not moving to the back of a bus, that was viewed as unlawful. And sometimes, as you said, you have to engage in civil disobedience. Civil disobedience could mean doing graffiti and doing property damage.
Karen Koehler :If there's property damage to make a statement because it's going to inconvenience someone, my question is and I know maybe this isn't that popular so what? So what if it's such an important point that there needs to be some property damage? I draw the line at personal violence, person-to-person violence. But even the protesters in Seattle during BLM, they were like throwing water bottles. They threw a water bottle at a police officer dressed in head-to-toe combat gear and then were gassed and bombed and shot with rubber bullets. The response was very disproportional. I think that's a whole other. I think we can go down a whole rabbit's hole of what is the protest and what is justified about the protest or not. But let's go back to the legal parts, because I'm coming down on you for being law and order.
Mo Hamoudi :You're not coming down on me, and I asked you to be the law and order I did. You know I'm coming down on you for being law and order. You're not coming down on me and.
Karen Koehler :I asked you to be the law and order.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah, you asked me to do that.
Karen Koehler :Here's the second question, because that was like that answered about four of the questions. If you are in a protest and the police tell you to disperse, do you have to disperse?
Mo Hamoudi :If you're lawfully at that location. No, you don't. So if you're occupying a place that is not interfering with police activity or interfering with public activity and a police officer says I order you to disperse, you have a right to ask why, because that's essentially the police officer controlling your movement. You are at liberty to stand in a public place unless there is something that the officer can identify to you that you are obstructing or interfering with. Then no, you do not have, you don't need to disperse. You can say, no, I'm within my. And then the officer has to make a choice. He says, oh yeah, all right, he can hit you with his billy club or he can grab you and arrest you. At that point he is now exercised his authority to arrest and that could violate your rights and that could give rise to a civil rights action.
Karen Koehler :But we have seen officers say you are to disperse. Now you are to disperse. Is that because people are protesting in the street? Or I mean, under what circumstances can they direct you to disperse?
Mo Hamoudi :There's a curfew order issued by the mayor or the governor, and now that the curfew order has been implemented, you're supposed to clear the streets.
Karen Koehler :That's what caused chaos, like one of the very first days of the Black Lives Matter protests is that the mayor declared a curfew Like less than it seemed like about 15 minutes before they announced it. They couldn't and nobody could hear that the mayor had actually or knew that. The mayor had actually said there's a dispersal order, and the crowds were thousands and thousands and so there was nowhere for the police to really. I mean, a little boom box wasn't going to travel, but a couple hundred people. So people did not know that there was a curfew order in place and they ordered dispersal. And when the dispersal didn't happen, then they began advancing on the protesters and gassing.
Mo Hamoudi :But Mike's example of walking to work and hearing the gentleman preach in a box, that's a good example of dispersal orders in action that could create problems. Say, for example, there was a hundred guys out there on boxes doing their thing and Mike just goes to work, he's using this roadway and then he's in the process of trying to get to one location has nothing to do with the protest and then they're issuing dispersal orders. Mike goes well, I got to get to work, I can't disperse. And then you start to gas.
Mo Hamoudi :Mike, like the thing is is that, like, a dispersal order has to be very specific and circumstance driven. The fact that the is that a dispersal order has to be very specific and circumstance driven, the fact that the mayor issues a dispersal order 15 minutes before dispersal order is even announced suggests to me that they realized they bit off more than they could chew. They let people out and they were like, oh boy, we're going to get into trouble. What do we do? We've already told them they could be out there. The only lawful way we can do that is a dispersal order, and that dispersal order was not a good one, and that's part of the reason, maybe, why they settled the case the Black Lives Matter case.
Mike Todd:I also feel like I mean, I've been to a lot of protests throughout my lifetime and I've watched, I guess, those that process change from being a slow one to a fast one, like the WTO riots here in Seattle. That was the first time. That was when people were engaging in civil disobedience by getting in the roadways and blocking traffic. Before that, often in Seattle there wasn't a lot of that type of action. It would more be in a park or some other place. These ones, they were down in front of the federal building. They were, you know, in front of where the meetings were happening. They were putting themselves in devices to keep the police from being able to take them, by chaining themselves together and having, you know, tubes where the handcuffs or chains, locks were covered, so it was difficult for the police to separate them and get them out of the road.
Mike Todd:Well then you move to Black Lives Matter. You know, which is many years later. But when you got to that point, protests had moved from that where it would take time for them to give the dispersal order. That sometimes could take days before it happened, like there would be levels of protests that went over for a period of time before the city took major action. Now, like Black Lives Matter, they tried to make that decision super fast, which then presents a problem of how does anybody know what's going on?
Mike Todd:Both the protesters and the police were confused as to what was happening, and you know, you mentioned the pandemic, so it was also a weird situation because a lot of people weren't working, there were less people out, there were less cars. It was a whole different situation. But at this point now, what we didn't have when the WTO riots were happening was social media. When the WTO riots were happening was social media, so a lot of people think that that information is being disseminated quicker than I believe it actually is. These days, people aren't finding out that there's a dispersal order any quicker than they were when the WTO riots were happening, but the police think they are.
Mo Hamoudi :What you're describing is that I think that modern-day policing is different than policing you're describing in WTO. Yes, for sure, for a couple of reasons, wto was 1990.
Mike Todd:I can't remember the exact year, but it was in the 90s, 90s, right.
Mo Hamoudi :Since in the 90s we have had significant war overseas, oh yeah, so we've had a lot of people get deployed overseas and then come back and then they're getting police jobs. So you're talking about rules of engagement and police officers' approach to engagement has completely been changed, because when you're in, like Fallujah, or you're in Kabul and you're like in multiple deployments and you're getting trained in the military to engage in those deployments, you are taught to make rapid decisions about rules of engagement. What you're seeing is that that kind of thinking and decision-making has now been adopted by police departments. Yes, and we call that the militarization of the police. Yeah, all right.
Mo Hamoudi :The second thing is that you have types of protests. There are protests that are I wouldn't call protests, but they're First Amendment activities that are planned like Pride Parade. You have an organized day where the rights of those are being celebrated who are historically marginalized, and everybody gathers and celebrates it, but then you have something happen like, for example, what's been happening in recent times with the government, and people just organically organize and respond to it. Those types of protests generally start movements which ultimately end up being like a pride parade, and that is what we're observing. That is part of what we're seeing over the weekend, and what you're seeing is that the police are responding to it in that kind of rules of engagement manner and they're showing up in full force.
Mo Hamoudi :Well, the message it sends to protesters is a simple one. It says we are on adverse sides of the content of what you're protesting about. If a guy shows up to me and I'm talking about something that's so important to me and I'm trying to express it, and he's wearing like full SWAT gear, he's wearing like he's got a gun and he's got like all this stuff and gas, I go. You're not here to kind of listen to my message. You're here to tell me that I am a threat to you. That's the problem.
Mike Todd:Not just that, that I don't have the right to do this.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah, and so it creates tension, right, and I always say who are the grown-ups in the room? The grown-ups?
Mike Todd:in the room. There's not that many these days.
Mo Hamoudi :No, but in reality, why did you run for office? Why did you go become a police officer? Okay, I get it, your job is hard. Most of these guys are driving in from like two hours out because they don't make that much money. They can't afford to live in Seattle, driving in leaving their families. But they signed up. Okay, why'd you sign up? You want to protect and serve.
Karen Koehler :I don't know. A lot of them make a lot of money. Yeah, you got night jobs, okay, but that's a whole other story. Let's not go there.
Mo Hamoudi :I've seen their overtime, but they're not making the type of money where they can buy the houses that people buy in Seattle. Okay. And secondly, I just think that, like, yes, there has to be social workers. You know, use force, there has to do a lot of things, but then don't sign up, and the politicians are the ones that piss me off.
Karen Koehler :the most Okay, wait Back to protests.
Mo Hamoudi :We are talking about the protests.
Karen Koehler :Back to protests. Okay, I am in a protest. Okay, I am in a protest, Okay, and I am with my dog and my child and I'm in the protest and suddenly something changes and there's some kind of an order being yelled at, but I can't really make it out and before I know it, I am smelling tear gas. We are all now in tear gas. How is that even possible? I wasn't doing anything, I was just here in this group, and now we are getting tear gassed.
Mo Hamoudi :The hard truth is is that you chose to participate in an organic protest in an environment where you're going to get disproportionate response to that protest. That's the hard truth.
Karen Koehler :Bad bad answer.
Mike Todd:Or it could be. I mean the Black Lives Matter protests. I can still remember when the protests during the day were pretty calm and by the afternoon, evening was when the cars got lit on fire.
Karen Koehler :Yes, Only one day did they get lit.
Mike Todd:No, I know I'm just talking about that first day. I'm not talking about the rest of the protests that went on for a long time. I'm talking about that first day. I'm not talking about the rest of the protests that went on for a long time. I'm talking about that first day. You go down, you know, say you're a 20 year old kid who was at school. One of your friends said hey, it's popping off down there. We got to go. We got to go, we got to tell them, we got to tell everybody what we feel. And you go down there with your friends and you're all hanging out together and thing you know, you see a car on fire. That's when you have to make the choice of am I going to stick around? Because if you see a car on fire, there's going to be tear gas, there's going to be rubber bullets. I guarantee that now.
Mo Hamoudi :Yes, I also think that it's a poorly organized protest, because effective protests and hear me out, when you look and see the civil rights movement, the way in which—.
Karen Koehler :Wait, you can't talk anymore. You're asking me about the rules. No, I'm not asking.
Mike Todd:You can't tell me in this day and age that there is not always somebody that goes to a protest that is there with the intent of trying to cause trouble.
Mo Hamoudi :There is always somebody there with the intent to cause trouble, but what I'm talking about is no, so we can't let him talk anymore.
Karen Koehler :Mike, we've got to just overrule Mo. He's too like law and order.
Mike Todd:I know because I know I don't personally know people that do this anymore, but I did when I was younger they go with the fireworks, they go prepared to cause trouble. They some of them, probably don't even care about the issues that are being protested. They know that they can go down and get a chance to throw a rock at a cop or shoot a firework at the police.
Karen Koehler :So let me just say this when you have a lot of people, there are two dangers. One is the officers, yeah, but the second one are the people that are coming with the intent to cause chaos and violence, who are normally a very small number of people, yes, but they can ruin a protest oh yeah fast. So I mean how can, how can protesters not have their protest ruined?
Mo Hamoudi :well, I can answer that, but you won't let me speak how do you get rid of that element?
Karen Koehler :you can't, because it's like. It's like everything of life, like look at the internet, look at all the hackers in 1999, I went back to iran, of all places, okay I went back to iran.
Mo Hamoudi :A police state okay, a police state, a police state. And there was the green revolution. And the green revolution was a student-based revolution out of the University of Tehran in downtown Tehran, where the students wearing green okay, supposed to represent colors of liberty, freedom marched against an authoritarian government. Right, they knew that they were going to get beat, to get beat. They knew that they were going to get beat with sticks, and I went in and marched with them. And then these guys came out, these police state officers, and started to beat the ever-loving God out of these people and they just kept marching ahead, took the beach, fell down, people carried them, kept marching forward.
Karen Koehler :Did you? Were you wearing green?
Mo Hamoudi :No, I was just moving with the crowd. I wanted to be part of this movement.
Karen Koehler :Did you get beat?
Mo Hamoudi :No.
Karen Koehler :Why.
Mo Hamoudi :Because one of my family's friends like community member friends saw me, was like what are you doing out there? Grabbed me and pulled me into a store and closed the door because he didn't want me to get beat. He was like your grandmother is going to kill me if he sees that you went out here. I just come back from the United States and I just wanted to be part of something. I thought this was so amazing. But I then watched these guys just keep walking and getting beat.
Mo Hamoudi :So they took personal responsibility, understanding that in order for them to respond to this authoritarian regime, they had to get beat. That was a part and parcel of the beating and they knew they could not be violent Because in that country if you're violent, you disappear. You hit those cops, you're gone, your family's gone, everybody's gone. I just think that, like there is not personal responsibility in protesting. When people are protesting these days here in the United States, it's scattershot. There are wonderful agents within the protest movements and then there are agents that, like Mike is describing, who are just there to diminish the content of what you're trying to accomplish. And I think that protesting you can self-police. Protesting you can differentiate yourself, you can hold accountable people within the movement to say that you're not part of our movement. I don't know what you are, but you're not us and we're going to do it our way and police it. That's just my thought.
Mike Todd:I think you're right, but I think that there's a difference between what you described in Iran, which is that's what I call civil disobedience, where you're knowingly doing something that you're going to get possibly arrested, or in another country, because, like when I was in Peru, that was the same deal. I saw a protest and and you know, they would all come to the main square in the middle of the city and go to protest whatever they were protesting, and after a certain amount of time, they drove in these big trucks with huge water cannons and immediately started shooting people, and police walked up in a line and pushed everybody into a place where they could get them to disperse. Usually usually is what would happen there and, and you know, once the once the violence from the police started, people would start to split apart. But, like we said here in the United States, some of those places that we're talking about, they don't have the right to say what they want, so doing that is trying to say, even though we don't have the right to do this, we need our voice to be heard.
Mike Todd:Where, here, we can gather in a place and as long as we're sort of following the rules, the police and the politicians can't do anything about it or aren't supposed to do anything about it until it reaches a level that the people are breaking the law, until it reaches a level that the people are breaking the law. But now we've got groups whose sole interest is going into those situations and raising it up above the level of protest immediately, so that you're running by civil disobedience like it wasn't even there and you're into full-on political violence. And that's when we end up in the situations that we did in BLM and so on and so forth, where the police are having to result to extreme crowd control, which inevitably means that protesters are going to get hurt and possibly have their rights violated.
Karen Koehler :You guys, we don't live in Iran or Peru. I am just walking my little dog into the protest. Maybe with my little did I say little kid?
Mike Todd:You did. I think you said kid yes.
Karen Koehler :I'm not coming to get beat. I didn't. I'm not exposing. I'm exposing, trying to expose my child to the great american way. I.
Karen Koehler :I believe personally that we live in a very sophisticated world. We don't live in an un-tech world. I believe that the police don't. I mean, they know who the disruptors are. They know who they are. Especially when a protest has been going on for two months. You can identify. Like, okay, these groups are, you can look and see. You don't just throw stuff blindly, tossing it into the crowd and just saying everybody's bad and I'm just going to toss this into the crowd, which is what they did. They didn't try to target the person that was firebombing or whatever they were doing, or that was throwing you know candles at them or something like that. They just indiscriminately threw bad things into the crowd and what their justification was what their justification was a lot of times was well, um, they, um, yeah, we, we told them to disperse and they well, they, yeah, we told them to disperse and they didn't disperse fast enough but what you're describing is actually the police were held accountable.
Mo Hamoudi :The city settled the Black Lives Matter case. So I think that, like going back to what you asked me originally know your rights. You know you have a right to peacefully assemble. You're in the United States. Traditional public forums being in a public place, your rights are the highest there. Once you start interfering—.
Karen Koehler :It does help to get a permit.
Mo Hamoudi :It does help to get a permit, but that's harder to do in organic progress.
Karen Koehler :And it takes time.
Mo Hamoudi :It takes time, and then letting the police know. I mean some of the most effective people. I know a lot of people in movements. I know people who call me a lot and ask me for advice. We want to go protest, Mo. What are your ideas, what are your thoughts? I go proactively, reach out to the police, Let them know hey, we're going to be over here. We want you to be safe. Don't come out there and flex. Write them a letter. Write the chief a letter. When you put the police in that kind of position, it's hard for them to come back and then justify what they did to you, and so I think that that kind of approach sometimes will be effective. But sometimes a protest is organic. You just something happens. You've got to show up and you've just got to make sure that you try to differentiate yourself from someone who's there intending to hurt people. Be aware of your surroundings If police try to talk to you.
Karen Koehler :Move away from move away. If you see violence, move away from it. I think that is sometimes it's hard if there's a crush, but get away from that.
Mike Todd:Yeah, be aware of what's going on and what your intent is there. I mean, we gave a lot of different situations, but I think if you're at a protest and you want you go with the idea that you don't want to be violent, that you just want to be a peaceful protester, and you see violence going on, you need to turn and go the other direction. Record.
Mo Hamoudi :Record the protest if you can Use your recording. Yes, that is super helpful. Go with friends, have accountability partners.
Mike Todd:Have a plan for if something's going to happen.
Mo Hamoudi :Exit plan Like, hey, if I lose you Mike?
Mike Todd:if I lose you, ken, we're going to meet up here.
Mo Hamoudi :We're going to meet up here at this time. Just let's agree to meet up here at this time. Bring water.
Karen Koehler :ACLU tells you to turn off your location.
Mike Todd:Yeah, leave your phone at home.
Karen Koehler :Really is what they tell you they tell you not to take videos of the crowd because it can be used to identify people and they tell you to not use chat, to only use like signal where the chat disappears.
Mo Hamoudi :I mean, I think ACLU is talking about privacy.
Mo Hamoudi :Yes and I think that, like privacy rights are a little bit different than like protecting your right to peacefully assemble and making sure you're documenting that you didn't do anything wrong in case somebody a police officer hits you or attacks you. So that's a decision you need to make. My privacy rights are less or more important than the other rights, um and uh. And the other thing is is that you know, I would bring a mask in case gas is deployed. I would bring goggles, bring water, bring a backpack with some water, bring a first aid kit, because this is the era that we live in.
Karen Koehler :Just so you know if you come prepared like that, then it's weaponized against you. You are a target immediately.
Mike Todd:If you're wearing goggles, the cops are looking at you first.
Mo Hamoudi :Well, you're not going to be walking around in goggles, mike. What I'm saying is you see, gas go up, you put those goggles on, you get the hell out of there. That's what I'm saying. It doesn't feel good to have pepper spray. You ever had pepper spray? Yes, oh.
Karen Koehler :Oh, you know, one of the interesting, one of the interesting rulings in in the Black Lives Matter case was that the city tried to claim that the protesters were at fault for getting attacked by the police wrongfully and that was thrown out of court because they did not assume the risk they they were exercising they, they came to exercise their right to free speech and it was being allowed and had been allowed for like for some of these people had been going on for like for some of these people it had been going on for like two months. It was patterns. They had allowed, it was allowed protests. The city didn't want to say that they allowed it, they just said that they basically tolerated it same thing. They didn't want to say that they affirmatively allowed it, but, yeah, they tried to say that it was a protester's fault for attending that they got brutalized by the police and that was not allowed.
Mike Todd:Well, I would also— I was going to bring up because Mo was talking about getting permits and the appropriate places to be. So, like we mentioned, yeah, Westlake Park Isn't that what it's called? That's by Westlake Center there. Ok, and that has been a traditional place where people have gone to protest downtown, gathered together in that space. Inevitably, if the protest gets too big, then it starts to bleed onto the streets there and then that's where those places usually start to become an issue. But, like there was a recent protest in Cal Anderson Park where a group that some people, a lot of the people in that area were saying had come to protest because they were contrary to the views of the people in that neighborhood. Yeah, and counter-protesters and I'm bringing this up because counter-protesters are now something that you have to consider- Well, let's be specific.
Karen Koehler :The group was some they were a church.
Mike Todd:Was it was a church I cannot remember the specific name from spokane. I know that one person that's involved with them often is matt shea, who was a former politician in washington state in Washington state, who has extremely extreme Christian views.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah.
Mike Todd:And this church is an extreme, what I would call an extreme Christian church. Who who are anti-trans, anti-gay, anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion, anti everything that that neighborhood believes in? But the city had given them a permit to use that specific park and come. They weren't engaging in violence or didn't go there with the intent.
Karen Koehler :And the city had to give them that permit.
Mike Todd:The city had given them several choices of where to go, but they had chosen that location themselves, which the city has backtracked on a lot of that stuff now.
Karen Koehler :Couldn't the city have said go somewhere else?
Mike Todd:Oh yeah, the city. I don't remember the other locations, but I do know from what I read that there were other locations that were put up and that they had chosen to use Calhoun Park.
Karen Koehler :And that's a choice.
Mike Todd:The city could have controlled that.
Karen Koehler :Yeah, they have the right to control where the protest is on a case like that, but they allowed it to go into the heart of Capitol Hill.
Mike Todd:And you know, who knows what was behind that choice, but that choice was made and then there was violence because of the counter protesters, and I think that that's I mean that was part of the Black Lives Matter protest as well is it wasn't just the people protesting pro Black Lives Matter, it was people protesting anti Black Lives Matter.
Karen Koehler :Yeah.
Mike Todd:Or all lives.
Mo Hamoudi :matter was what they were calling it, that's that's such a tough one, mike, because you know they absolutely have a right. The city cannot make content based decisions and discriminate on content, so they've got to give them the permit. Time place manner restrictions have to be reasonable, but you can't place a time place manner restriction to the point in which your message becomes ineffective, like you lose what you're trying to accomplish. These are people who said we have a message, we have an idea. These are people who said we have a message, we have an idea.
Mo Hamoudi :It is at odds with the people in this area's vision of what the world should be. We want to try to persuade them and we want to go there and put on a protest. It would be just as if you know people who are pro-trans rights, pro-lgbt rights, going to Spokane, yes, and going to the street where their church is located and occupying that space. Now, then you have the counter-protest problem. You can have police present to kind of manage that, but maybe police cannot manage that. At that point I can't help but say, like people who want to go and fight somebody because of their ideas and beat them, to me that's no different than people who were beating Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement for sitting at a cafeteria.
Karen Koehler :Well, it's different because those guys are right and these guys are wrong.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay, so then this is the thing, right. So this is the thing. When you start to make exceptions about what's right and what's wrong, I think that that's the problem. I mean, that's really the problem.
Karen Koehler :So you've got to consider the source right. This is public defender. He was a federal public defender.
Mike Todd:You would defend anybody, even if you didn't believe them ideologically because you're defending the group that's contrary to the the neighborhood's views right now. Yeah, I guess because they have the right, because of the first amendment.
Mo Hamoudi :What I'm saying is why can't you let me like, let a guy take his position, even though I don't agree with it, and try to be like this is why I believe it and then respond to him and say I hear you, but I disagree, and here's why.
Karen Koehler :How do you reconcile People's tempers flare.
Mike Todd:Because I was trying to walk through this park and you're getting in my way, okay so that's a little different. Or I'll take it even further. I had no idea this was going on. I was walking through this park, but you know what I don't agree with you.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay, I think that both those things being true, like anger and violence, will not solve that. Like that's the thing. Like I just don't think anger and violence are the solution, the tool-based solution to effectively exercise your right under the First Amendment or the Washington State Constitution's right to peacefully assemble, unless I mean unless you can. Maybe I bet you I could be.
Karen Koehler :You're being such a lawyer right now.
Mo Hamoudi :I'm not being a lawyer.
Karen Koehler :Of course anger and violence can make change. Of course it can. It did during.
Mo Hamoudi :George Floyd, they absolutely do. Okay, who has the power, karen? Do you think that the people who are I'm not advocating anger and violence.
Karen Koehler :However, historically, anger and violence does make change.
Mike Todd:And often it makes the change that becomes the history. That's correct.
Karen Koehler :So I'm not advocating it, don't get me wrong. I'm not telling people to go out and be angry and to commit violence. I'm just saying, if you look at it, look at what the movements that have created change. There's been the peaceful part of it, where all the peaceful protesters get beat by the police or arrested or whatever or by that. And then there's there's the parts where people are fighting. I think what, what makes it just what? Some of the distinction is who's fighting and how and why. Like if it's just, if you said you know disruptive forces come in and it's just general mayhem, not well thought out. But I mean, malcolm X was a force for change.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay, then who got the Civil Rights Act passed? Dr King or Malcolm X?
Mike Todd:Well, I would not give all the—I think that history would not agree with you Do you think he would have gotten it passed if Malcolm X wasn't part of it? I'm just asking the question, guys.
Karen Koehler :LBJ is the one that signed it.
Mo Hamoudi :Why did LBJ sign it?
Karen Koehler :Because he didn't want to get in trouble, he didn't want to have more uprisings.
Mo Hamoudi :You've answered your own questions. I mean you've answered your questions. I posed the question.
Mike Todd:You would say because the protests worked in that situation.
Karen Koehler :I think it's fantastic. I love Martin Luther King, his legacy, I love his writings and all of that, but I think it is naive to think that he moved a nation by himself. He didn't.
Mo Hamoudi :I don't think he moved the nation by himself. I'm talking about the two types of movement. There was the nonviolent movement and then there was the movement that embodied the Black Panthers and what was occurring with Malcolm X and what he was speaking about. And I'm asking is that which one do you think won the day at the end of the day?
Karen Koehler :And I think what I'm hearing you say maybe I'm hearing you incorrectly- which won the day is a kind of question that historians resolve and they always go with sometimes the easy Whoever took over? Yeah, like I mean we have a lot of stamps celebrating Martin Luther King, we have Martin Luther King Day, like he's a non-threatening black person. Malcolm X was a threatening black person.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay.
Karen Koehler :It's you know, then you get to racial. I just think a lot of things have nuance. I think you've done really good here.
Mike Todd:You had your own interesting viewpoint but you asked me about the law, so I give you the law, but you haven't asked me about my personal, so we meandered quite a bit on this one.
Karen Koehler :Yeah, we did it is, but this is the. This is the truth of the matter, what he just said. There, there is the law which we put him in the. We should have, like, had you wear the law hat, yeah, and then what's your personal position? Because the law and how it's going to be told to us. Mo did that. That is true, but what we think is right and what we're willing to do and who we're going to champion is a totally different. So I'm going to let you redeem yourself and tell us how you personally feel.
Mo Hamoudi :I mean. What I personally feel is that the only way that you can effectively accomplish what I call cultural change through activism is through a combination of what Dr King and Malcolm X collectively did in the 60s.
Mo Hamoudi :You cannot do it only one or the other, because there are people who respond to the concept that one, what I am doing is immoral, that I am beating a human being, reducing them to the color of their skin is immoral, and they look at themselves and they just cannot live with themselves and they go. I will change. But there are people who are incapable of doing that, and those people will respond to change if they feel that they no longer live in a safe space because of their behavior, that they continue to behave a particular kind of way. Their own liberty is at risk of being called into question, and I think that that's why the civil rights movement was so effective. Is that both those movements?
Mike Todd:worked so effectively together. Well, that's what I was going to say. Here we are. We could argue about what Karen's going at right now, but I would take it even further right now and say what protest movement after that would you say, has been effective since then. Like do you think that pro abortion?
Mo Hamoudi :Well, when you say effective, I think about legislation that is that is passed, policy that is passed funding money.
Mike Todd:So you would say that in the abortion issue that the anti-abortion movement won.
Mo Hamoudi :Well, you're talking about the most recent one, or since the 70s.
Mike Todd:The civil rights movement was a long thing too. It didn't happen in just a short period. We're talking about the movement itself. So if you say that the civil rights movement was effective, do you think that the abortion movement anti-abortion or pro-abortion was effective?
Mo Hamoudi :The anti-abortion movement effective? Yeah, it was effective. I mean, what they did is that after Roe v Wade, they organized and had a long-term goal of getting Roe v Wade overturned and they went state by state, locale by locale, and they changed culture through this concept of life and selling it in that perspective.
Karen Koehler :Well, they also firebombed abortion clinics, threatened doctors and.
Mike Todd:Shot people even as recently as and Protested right outside of the clinics. Just this weekend killed a politician.
Mo Hamoudi :In Minnesota.
Mike Todd:Yes.
Mo Hamoudi :So I think that yes, so I think.
Mike Todd:For women going to the clinics, they'd have to go through people that were protesting, handing them To this day still have to do that yeah yeah and have laws that and have laws that are being changed to let them be even more intrusive yeah, I mean now we're getting the right or wrong of it.
Mo Hamoudi :I mean you know, I mean you're right, I mean these same processes are used for what I call to create immoral realities for people, but I mean what's effective when you say effective. The Civil Rights Act that was passed was a significant milestone and it has changed people's lives. Have we accomplished the ultimate goals? No, naive, but that's a fantastic piece of legislation that has led to a lot of positive things. The consent decree that is being enforced here in Seattle, that has forced significant change in the Seattle Police Department even though the department has a lot of problems still is because of that movement.
Mike Todd:That's why, like I guess, but didn't they just pull that?
Mo Hamoudi :Well, no, it hasn't been removed yet.
Karen Koehler :It still exists, the consent decree is still there, Only crowd control Okay so that's. Okay, which brought us back to full circle.
Mo Hamoudi :Exactly.
Karen Koehler :Wait, we're going to have to end this. Because the moral of the story is that there will always be protests Because there has to be protests.
Karen Koehler :Always, and people is that there will always be protests, because there has to be protests always and people shouldn't give up. Um, the law isn't very practical with respect to protests. In a lot of respects it's not very clear. It moves around a lot. It's open to wide interpretation by the police and the governing authorities. They're given a lot of discretion and latitude to say, to declare, even declare something's a riot and come in and use force. They can do it in an instant and I think, at the end of the day, the message is that, yeah, you can risk getting gassed and you can risk getting arrested, and the choice is yours as to whether you're going to be brave or not. How much does it cause mean to you?
Mike Todd:there you go.
