Paying the Tab for Peaceful Protest
Emily Gil, who is 18, was inspired to hold a rally in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, this summer after watching thousands of Americans show support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Nothing the government does is free, even allowing you to protest. So learned a 18 year old in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
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“It’s an issue we care about. And we notice these issues in our own town, so we can do something about it,” Gil said.
She also wanted to highlight a lack of affordable housing.
Gil said she notified local officials in June about the protest and even met with the police chief to iron out logistics. The protest went off without a hitch on July 25 and lasted about 90 minutes.
A few days later, Gil said she received a letter from Mayor Mario Kranjac, billing her for about $2,500 worth of police overtime used during the protest.
“I was shocked when I read that I had to pay to exercise my First Amendment right,” said Gil. She thinks she was targeted for her take on affordable housing in the community.
The mayor said he is the first in decades to combat the housing issue and had no problem with the protest.
“And we made sure that we fulfilled and satisfied our obligation to make sure that they can exercise their freedom of speech and to peaceably assemble,” said Mayor Kranjac.
Kranjac said the borough has an ordinance in place that allows it to bill for any expenses incurred for police services at private events. The bill sent to Gil was standard protocol, he said.
“We always bill… the bicycle race or running race or any other event, where our police are used, including utility work, people pay for the overtime,” said the mayor.
He later said, however, that he is rescinding the bill, which he said was issued pursuant to advice he received from the Borough Administrator who he understands consulted the Borough Attorney.
“I was told that all private events requiring police overtime should be paid for by the organizers. It was never intended as a fine, but rather as a fee,” he said in a statement to Gil that was sent to CBS News.
“I have researched the issue further with my own counsel and I am hereby rescinding the bill, subject to our Council’s ratification of my action,” said Kranjac. “I always want to make certain that everyone’s Constitutional Rights are fully respected. We will have to adjust the Borough’s ordinances accordingly.”
He said he was glad Gil was able to express her rights to freedom of speech and assembly and wished her success in her college career.
Hot take: none of the Cancel Culture is coming for us peeps will see this kind of thing as an attempt to silence public dissent.Report
Giving them the bill up front would be an attempt to silence public dissent.
After the fact is a way to buy beer.Report
Well that was fast. Only took one response.Report
Cancel culture types are very explicit about wanting to punish or suppress speech specifically because of its content. They’re proud of it, because they think they’re fighting the good fight. It’s a literal subculture where doing this is seen as praiseworthy, even heroic.
This is bad, but it isn’t that. It seems to be a content-neutral policy. She wasn’t told about it until after the event. If the goal had been to stop the event from happening, they could have told her up front that it was going to cost money. Furthermore, the mayor seems to be more or less on her side, politically.
I think what this actually is is a police union grift to get some easy overtime pay. The event lasted 90 minutes, 30 people showed up, and Gil claims not to have seen much in the way of police presence. They were featherbedding.Report
Lighting a car dealership on fire, by comparison, is free.Report
Hmmm. You’ve admitted that in your view BLM people aren’t engaging in looting and arson, yet here you are perpetuating the misperception. None of us want nice things anymore.Report
If we admit that the mostly peaceful protests happen in response to police shootings, then, like it or not, the mostly peaceful protests are BLM.Report
Except by your own lights, that’s not true….Report
“Suppose the looting and arson is perpetrated by right wingers to serve partisan interests. Still BLM?”
Jaybird: “Yes, still BLM.”Report
You’re not allowed into the protest until you show your BLM membership card.
Everyone knows that.Report
I concede that if the violence is done by, for example, Russian spies, then the violence is not BLM but Russian interference.
That said, there does seem to be a narrative out there that ties the Mostly Peaceful to the Protesting rather than to outside agitators.
Now, is there a Platonic Black Lives Matter Protestor? Yes, there is.
Does this Platonic Protestor damage property? No, she does not.
There has been a lot of smearing of concepts by not only those opposed to the protests but the “well, you have to understand” crowd and I think that the Mostly Peaceful is now married, like it or not, to the Protesting itself.Report
There has been a lot of smearing of concepts by not only those opposed to the protests but the “well, you have to understand” crowd …
Don’t be shy. Include yourself in those groups, too.
As for the riots being married to the protests, I disagree. I, for example, have no difficulty separating the two. Nor did you in the now long-distant past that was yesterday.Report
It feels like a No True Scotsman.
The Good Protestors don’t vandalize. The Bad Protestors do. The Bad Protestors are not affiliated with Black Lives Matter. The Good Protestors are.
Sadly, both groups show up to the same protests.
Along with agents provocateur, of course.Report
But notice where we started. Andrew writes a post about a BLM activist receiving a bill from the city for security detail costs, and your response is to *link* the girl receiving a bill from the city to express her constitutionally protected speech with burning up a car dealership. You equated the protestors with the rioters.
Now you’re doing a “well you gotta understand, I don’t actually think that but other people do” dance.Report
I was more making the wry observation that it costs money to be one of The Good Protestors.
Being one of The Bad Protestors is free.Report
Ahhh. Of course.Report
I was more making the wry observation that it costs money to be one of The Good Protestors. Being one of The Bad Protestors is free.
FWIW, this was pretty clear to me, and I can’t see how any other interpretation makes sense.Report
Concepts are smeared, narratives are married, all passively, by unknown and invisible actors.
Where would one go to witness the smearing of concepts and wedding ceremony of Narrative and Protest?
Strangely, it is never said. These activities just somehow happen, you know they happen, and if you can’t see the evidence of their happening it is because sensible people don’t bother to ask.Report
Correct. Intentionally collapsing the distinction between the protestors with the rioters would seemingly block the person doing so from claiming they had nothing to do with that distinction being collapsed.Report
Concepts are smeared, narratives are married, all passively, by unknown and invisible actors.
Chip, I gave an example of CNN doing it. Like, you can watch the video. See it happen.Report
You tell us a narrative exists that says the protests are connected to rioting. Your evidence for this is a CNN screengrab that juxtaposes “Mostly Peaceful” over video of flames.
Are you reporting that CNN is affirmatively declaring that the riots and protests are the same?
No, you didn’t actually say that.
Are you reporting that this has caused the public to discredit the protests?
No, you didn’t say that either.
Because you didn’t really make any sort of statement in your own voice.
Who is writing this narrative?
You.
You are creating a story, (that the public now views the riots negatively) while pretending you are merely reporting on its existence.Report
Are you reporting that CNN is affirmatively declaring that the riots and protests are the same?
No. I’m saying that CNN is on record as calling the protests “Mostly Peaceful”. In front of burning buildings. Want to see another time they did this?
Turn the sound on. It’s vaguely funny.
Are you reporting that this has caused the public to discredit the protests?
I’m not arguing that this has caused the public to discredit the protests.
But if you want video of someone on CNN saying that, here you go.
You want a narrative? I give you CNN.Report
Exactly, you aren’t saying anything in your own voice or even making any kind of an argument of your own.
Except to assure us that some sort of narrative exists, which you can’t define, but it is definitely married to something, but to be clear you aren’t the one saying that.
But people are saying that. And if we don’t believe you, we should watch tv.Report
My argument is that the rioters, looters, and people protesting the shooting of yet another suspect are being conflated.
Smooshed together.
Your response was to point out that I was saying that this was happening and using the passive voice and not naming names on who was saying it despite the fact that I posted clips.
Then I posted more clips.
I assure you, this smooshing is happening and, if you want evidence, I have provided it.
If you were just asking for evidence as a stalling tactic, well. There it is anyway.Report
My argument is that the rioters, looters, and people protesting the shooting of yet another suspect are being conflated.
Re-read your first two comments in this subthread. You weren’t making an argument that the distinction has collapsed in those comments. In the fist, you collapsed it. In the second you were arguing that it’s already collapsed. When people point out that it isn’t collapsed, that collapsing it is either lazy or cynical, you retreat to saying “well, you gotta understand, CNN collapsed it too, so…”Report
My first comment in this subthread was making a joke about the incentives for “good” protesting versus “bad” protesting and how the cops are incentivizing the bad.
Everything after that is some weird denial that the violence has anything to do with the protesting happening.
Maybe George Soros is funding it!Report
Jaybird, remember when you posted that the “riots” over George Floyds death had reached Berlin when in fact they were only peacefully protesting?
Good times.Report
Yeah, and when called on it, I pointed out that I was mistaken and the protests were, in fact, peaceful.
Rather than merely mostly.Report
Part of the reason I’m always so alert to the passive voice is that I see it often used in conjunction with the ventriloquist voice.
As in “Boy, this development [that I don’t like] is creating the narrative that Blah Blah, and the Average Voter really is turned off by this, so this will turn out like X”.
Its all passive construction and projection camouflaged as detached analysis.Report
Chip, I posted video.Report
You want people to look at videos? Why now, as opposed to in Kenosha?Report
I’m not posting snuff films, for one.
Is that sufficient reason or do you need more?Report
When the witness gives the right non-responsive answer, the best thing to do is let it sit there.Report
I am opening myself to a BSDI accusation but I think what we’re witnessing is a problem of competing distortions. The distortions of the administration and its backers are obvious. But there’s a second problem, one that the media has been falling into over and over again with Trump, that being cutting corners on (striving for) objectivity.
I mean, I agree with the basic goals of police reform but this ‘mostly peaceful protest’ thing is getting farcical. It feeds the post truth world in which Trump and his ilk thrive.Report
What would a correct reporting be?Report
Off the top of my head:
-Report on what you’re seeing. Where it’s peaceful say so. Where it isn’t, say so.
-Where there is overlap and lack of clarity on who is doing what say so forthrightly, no need to reiterate a particular narrative.
-For God’s sake have the perspective to avoid the embarrassing episodes like the one Jay posted above.Report
I personally have no problem with the term “mostly peaceful protests” since I know the distinction they’re trying to capture. Other people mock it because it implies that the very same people are only “mostly” peaceful. But in the context of looting and arson, that understanding of the term is pure cynicism, in my view, since anyone with common-sense and the desire to use it realizes that the rioters and looters and the peaceful protestors are different individuals, different groups of people.
But I also think the term “mostly peaceful protestors” as a general descriptor is lazy in a quintessentially media-ish way in that going way back to George Floyd’s death, the term “mostly peaceful” *did* make sense: the protestors were peaceful until the cops started pepper-spraying and wacking them with batons.
Right now, the better phrasing would probably be to say “Arsonists burn building in aftermath of Blake’s shooting.”
I read a report about the demographics of people arrested for violence in Seattle, and the cast majority were young white males. I think that demo is a very pissed off group, whether they’re far right wingers or far left wingers, and that the violence isn’t an expression of protest so much as an attempt to create enough havoc that all the institutions they dislike burn to the ground.Report
Protests are like those mumurations of birds you see, where they change shape and configuration constantly; Here they swoop down, then up, then spread out, then bunch together, then scatter to reform.
Except protests are even more diverse than that.
The people who march at 6PM are different people than the ones shattering windows at 9PM.
I’ve witnessed this with my own eyes, that the composition of the crowd changes drastically as time wears on.
Describing a “protest” as a single event with a single motive and single character is impossible.
Maybe we would understand it better if there was a chyron saying “White People are Mostly Peaceful” overlaid on video of neo-Nazis stomping some guy.Report
There was a great piece by an Italian economist when Trump was president elect here. Unfortunately it’s paywalled but I think it was prescient in both the type of president Trump is and the key to defeating him, based on the Italian experience with Silvio Berlusconi. Obviously our establishment media has completely disregarded the approach but it’s illustrative of this problem. Their discrediting of themselves with unforced errors feeds these reactionary movements with little kernels of truth.Report
Linky no work for me.Report
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/opinion/the-right-way-to-resist-trump.amp.htmlReport
Thanks. That’s a good article.Report
You do have a point. Part of the problem is the “if it bleeds it leads” issue. The media is drawn to the riots and have ignored completely peaceful protests for months. So everybody just sees the riots ( which are bad to be clear) and doesn’t see anything peaceful. There have been plenty of peaceful protests but they are invisible. It is akin to the claims of conservatives for years that blacks don’t protest or speak out against violence in their own communities. Then someone, well me, points out all the protests and movements that people don’t hear about. That never matters for some reason. If it wasn’t on CNN or Fox it didn’t exist.
The mostly peaceful etc is silly but there is truth there. Burt talked about Portland a few week ago. 99.9% peaceful. During the day quiet protests downtown. Late at night morons show up, violence starts. What does everybody see and report and believe “Gah Portland is on fire!!!”Report
Nothing is more important to the media than maintaining a critical mass of credibility. There are voices out there that will always challenge it which is fine. But where they’re demonstrably lazy or sycophantic they’re doing the work of bad actors and other defectors.Report
Agreed. Everybody knows much of the press sucks and blows. That is obviously a problem. Secondary to that people who hate the media gobble up distorted narratives like stoners with chips and will still tell you how bad the chips(media) are threw crumb filled mouths.Report
I think it depends…
Are they saying “Mostly peaceful protestors”? Because that is almost certainly true from a numbers perspective: most of the PEOPLE there are peaceful.
“Mostly peaceful protests”? I don’t even know how to begin to measure the peacefulness of a protest.
Related: Is setting fire to a building “violence”? Or does violence assume human targets/victims?Report
If someone burned down the school building where you taught kids, would you think, for a minute, that maybe it was something other than violence?Report
Oh heck yes. Often it’s just sending a message, like when we firebombed Tokyo. It’s was a non-violent way to urge them to reduce their war production.Report
I’d think it was arson.Report
@kazzy:
That’s a good question, and I hadn’t really thought of it before you asked. I just assumed arson=violence.
Now that you ask, I’m prepared to say that arson is presumptively violence. That is, it isn’t necessarily violence, but it’s up to the arsonist to demonstrate why it isn’t. I say that because one very predictable effect of arson is to cause people to fear for their physical safety. To me, effecting fear for one’s safety is effecting violence.
I also say that arsonists probably (mostly? usually? I’m not a scholar into the mindset of arsonists) don’t take all the necessary precautions to make sure no one is hurt in the act of arson. Maybe a janitor is staying late that night and is killed even though the arsonist “didn’t intend to hurt anyone.” Or maybe a firefighter is injured when called to put out the fire.
Or let’s say the arsonist warns people on the premises. In that case, it’s still violence because the arsonist is essentially saying, “if you stay here, your life is at risk.” That’s very similar to me pointing a gun at someone and saying, “if you don’t do what I say, I might shoot you.”
Maybe there are ways to rebut that presumption. I suppose if no one is hurt and the arsonist takes pains to see no one is hurt, then maybe that rebuts my presumption.
Finally, maybe it’s not necessarily only about whether arson is or is not violence. It’s where arson falls on the spectrum of violent vs. non-violent. On that spectrum, if we stipulate no one has been physically injured, then arson probably falls short of actual targeted violence against persons. But it’s still closer than, say, vandalism or even window smashing.Report
-Andrew Sullivan
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-trap-the-democrats-walked-right
Don’t worry, there is plenty of TDS in the post, but he does nail the current situation.Report
Jaybird, here is an example of the passive ventriloquist voice, similar to the Pundit Fallacy.
Sullivan uses a ventriloquist dummy to mouth his personal description of the liberals, then writes passively of how “Democrats are realizing” and how by golly this is going to lead to a Trump victory.
Sullivan isn’t actually saying in his own voice “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have refused to criticize violent rioting and therefore I am voting for Trump”;
Instead he “noticed the silence”;
And Sullivan himself isn’t realizing that Democrats hate America;
Instead “Democrats are realizing”;
And so therefore, Sullivan predicts that “most ordinary people who love America will balk”.
Sullivan is just a passive observer, a fly on the wall who perfectly records the thoughts and feelings of Democrats and “ordinary Americans” whose feelings strangely mirror his own.Report
Do you see the difference between that and saying “Don Lemon is saying that the rioting needs to stop because it’s hurting polling” and then posting Don Lemon saying just that?Report
Well, maybe the protester was still pissed off about the way Vietnamese treated downed black fighter pilot Major Fred Cherry, holding him for seven years because he wouldn’t say anything remotely like what BLM chants constantly about white racism and American imperialism.
Then again, maybe they protesters are a pretty close approximation to the folks in a Mad Max movie, except with a propensity to loot flat screen TV’s and the lack of an actual nuclear apocalypse.Report
;At least some of the BLM people are explicitly pro-looting.Report
Reportedly, one California DA decreed that looters can’t be charged if they can show they need what they’re stealing. ^_^
The Democrats are now the pro-drug, pro-rape (Jacob Blake), pro-arson, pro-theft party.
One interesting analysis of why this came to be is that back in the 80’s and 90’s, the Democratic leadership decided that the way to solve their problems was to sell out to the elites and thus become elites themselves. The could offer moral absolution and receive it in turn, forming perhaps the most racist and exploitative political relationship in modern history. The elites got to screw everyone in the middle, sell them out, and take their stuff, under the cover of helping minorities, who they’d keep in poverty.
The Democratic elite would tell victims their minority serfs that everything bad in their lives was the fault of Republicans, who have no voice in or power in what happens in all those blue states. Of course, the minorities in those states have no way of knowing any of this because their own leaders joined the elites. But as this devil’s bargain came under attack, the elites had to poke, prod, and brainwash their victims into rising up in rebellion against… the Democratic machines run by the elites in blue cities.
The poor minorities have been so brainwashed by Democrats that they’ve really never heard a counter-argument to the joys and wisdom of looting. The problem for Democrat elites is that having started this mess, and realizing how it’s blowing up in their faces and will strip them of all their power, money, and prestige, they’re realizing that the poor minorities are not open to argument against looting because the Democrats have spent the last four years demonizing anyone who argued anything remotely rational.
There’s no way out of this box except to try rampant election fraud and hope they get away with it.Report
I grew up a few towns over from Englewood Cliffs. It is an exceedingly wealthy town in an otherwise wealthy part of the country. I’m sure they could have afforded this without sending a bill.Report
Right. So why did they send the bill then?Report
It’s almost like maybe they wanted to dissuade people from speaking up and speaking out.
Almost.Report
Probably the cops were annoyed at the protest and submitted a bill for the overtime through the city bureaucratic process. Chances are none of the politically minded types (Mayors, etc.) ever saw the bill, it just was processed through the system established for such things.
Leveraging the system because they can.Report
She shouldn’t have been billed.
Free speech, yo. It’s baked into the cake.Report
It does appear the bill was rescinded. Thankfully.Report
Ughhh. More violence in Portland tonight. Everything prelim so far and needs to be treated that way. Some vids show Trump people gathering ahead of time, driving throw protesters on foot and macing them out the window. Someone has been shot, very early info says a MAGA rally goes shot someone from out their car. Only thing certain is…..uggghhh.Report
There is nothing wrong with forming armed parties, driving death machines into Seattle, and hunting the mutants. They did it in Rick and Morty season 3 episode 2, “Rickmancing the Stone”. Similar stories are pretty much a sci-fi staple. 🙂Report
The New York Times is reporting that the decedent was wearing a Patriot Prayer hat. I predict that a lot of people’s views on the propriety and legality of shooting in self-defense are about to get a bit more complex.Report
You would possibly be wrong on the self-defense views. The Portland leftists are asserting that shooting someone who doesn’t appear to agree with them is in fact self-defense, even if that person is shot in the back. They’ve also been arguing that it’s self defense to murder someone who tries to defend themselves with pepper spray. They’ve asserted that it’s moral, just, and legal to shoot someone who possesses pepper spray. I’ve even seem them asserting that it’s okay to kill Republicans because Republicans drive trucks and ISIS drives trucks
Almost all that I’ve seen have asserted that Kyle Rittenhouse defending himself from attackers intent on killing him is exactly the same as singling out an individual they disagree with,, coordinating to distract him, and shooting him in the back are both equally valid cases of self-defense.
.
They’ve also asserted more than a few other things that are so legally daft that I can’t quite do justice to them. Its obvious that the absolute failure of the Oregon school system to teach children anything remotely connected to US history or law, or indeed world history, could possibly result in an enormous number of deaths of Portland residents.
For example, by their own arguments, it’s now okay to shoot Antifa folks in the back of the head when they’re walking down the sidewalk and least expect it, because that is self defense The right is going to love that game! Someone needs to come up with a scoring system so we can build an audience and monetize it before anyone else does. Often, the first people on a new trend reap most of the viewers even if they don’t produce the best coverage.
But perhaps the useful idiots of the left are the real victims here. A better question to ask is “Who is trying to use them as cannon fodder?” The answer to that is in Marx, which they cite constantly in every discussion of the latest shooting. What their leadership is trying to do is straight out of the 1800’s Marxist playbook, striking their enemies so that the government counter-strike will so enrage the masses that the proletariat will rise up and throw off their chains. ^_^
That’s just hilarious. because they don’t realize that their own wacko side absolutely controls the government in all the cities where they live. Kenosha doesn’t even have any Republicans on the ballot for local offices this cycles, just like the cycle before that, and the cycle before that, etc. They are rebelling against the oppression that they put in place and maintain. They decry the police who indulge them and protect them from regular folks, and then when they try to murder regular folks and meet resistance, they cray out for the police to intervene and protect them.
They have been completely infantilized. It’s like they’ve lived their entire lives in a baby crib, an failed hybrid offspring of Democrat elites’ parasitic marriage to Democrat victims, just like the Antebellum South, the Jim Crow South, or all the Northern public housing developments, or the West’s strict racial zoning and especially Oregon itself, the only US state founded and maintained as an explicit white supremacist state.
It seems that the closer the left elites feel they are to getting called out on their scam, the more shameless their desperation becomes. They all gave a nod to mass protests, which have likely already killed an addition 10,000+ innocent blacks from Covid, and an even greater number of innocent whites. They just don’t care. Their status is elites is under threat, and in the final analysis, the only Americans they’ll defend are themselves.Report
They already are complex. To many people define murder/self defense based on who was killed and was the killer. It will be grimly interesting to see what the story is behind his killing.Report
Ugh indeed.
What stands out to me is the apparent — at least stated — intent between the different groups.
One group is saying Black Lives Matter and, ostensibly, protesting against police abuse and institutional racism.
One group is a Pro-Trump political rally and, ostensibly, standing up in support of President Trump and/or his re-election campaign.
That… feels different.
If the argument is that protestors should opt for other means to make their voices known, surely we should also argue that the political rally-goers opt for other means to make their voices known. I mean, political rallies have been having for decades — centuries even — without involving drive-by sprayings of gas or paintballs.
It is almost like the two sides are not analogous to one another and shouldn’t be treated as such. Just maybe.
All that said, I’m sincerely hoping leadership emerges among the protestors that can straighten up their side of the matter.Report
Did anyone read the headlines about the protests in Los Angeles the past week?
No, no one did because the daily protests have been peaceful without incident. No windows broken, no fights just noisy marches and chanting.
No headlines.
Peaceful protests are the planes that land safely.
On the other hand…how many people had Police Brutality as a significant campaign issue before the Floyd protests?
Were it not for Jacob Blake and Kenosha, would it be fair to say that white Americans were already in the process of going back to sleep ?
Does the admonition to “Protest peacefully” just mean “Protest in a way that I can safely ignore”?Report
Speaking of CNN, it looks like there might be Russian ties to some of the BLM social media agitation. It makes sense that the Russians would try to divide Americans like this.Report
The next time the DNI briefs Congress on election security, someone should ask him about this.
Oh, wait…Report
The dropped the briefings because Democrats leaked the information in the last one just a few minutes after the briefing.Report
This one from Cillizza speaks for itself:
Report
This incident does serve as a reminder that policing comes with a price tab. It’s almost definitely wrong to make a responsible protester pay for police protection for exercising their constitutional rights. But someone has to pay the bill. I don’t have a problem saying it’s the taxpayers who should pay. But things need to be paid for.Report
A new headline in this vein:
Report
I saw this linked as a related story. The framing is interesting: A member of Patriot Prayer gets shot by an Antifa™ activist, and the story is about a renewed focus on the threat posed by Patriot Prayer.Report
Direct link to report here. It looks like what they’re doing is padding out the numbers with a bunch of small protests. That 7% is out of 7700 protests, so that’s about 500 that were violent. If you look at the map,you’ll see that basically every major city had riots, and also find yourself wondering, once again, “Seriously, WTF is wrong with Portland leftists?”Report
Was the CHAZ/CHOP considered a single protest?Report
I believe that they consider each day and each discrete location as a single protest. There’s actually a section for “Seattle, Washington,” and their chart shows up to 27 events on a single day. Interestingly, they show no riots during the CHAZ/CHOP period, which means that they didn’t count the shootings at all.
I can see a reasonable argument for doing that, since the shootings were conducted by individuals rather than collective action, but it also feels kind of like they’ve optimized their methodology to report a low rate of violent protests.
By the way, comment submission has been extremely slow today (since the update alluded to by Dev Cat in the sidebar?). It took about a minute to submit the comment and reload. But the delay seems mostly to be on the post-submission reload, as I was able to load this page in another tab and see my comment before the tab I submitted it on finished loading.Report