•

Felony charges for activist who ‘glitter bombed’ interim Harvard president

https://www.boston.com/news/crime/2024/08/02/felony-charges-for-activist-who-glitter-bombed-interim-harvard-president/

Brittany Drake shouted “for the baby monkeys!” before she showered interim President Alan Garber with glitter ahead of a speech.

After dumping the glitter, she yelled, “For the animals in the labs! Harvard, shut down the baby monkey labs now!” The crowd erupted in jeering and booing, while Garber could be heard off-camera saying, “It’s fine. I could use a little glitter.”

21 comments

Gradually_Adjusting

•

I feel like the only people who didn't act appropriately is whoever decided on the charges. People should protest things peacefully and people in power should be able to take it in stride. That's how a free and open society works. The prosecution is out of hand.

ElfWord

•

My first thought after reading was also that the charges seemed excessive.

AshMan85

•

Yeah except fascism is so hot right now.

ThatWeirdGuy1001

•

Making protest illegal is always the first step

VelvetStorm

•

He then opened his speech with a gamely quip: “I hope that Harvard will always continue to be a place where speech, free speech, continues to thrive.”

Then, have the charges dropped and give her a realistic fine for the clean-up because a shop vac and a janitor don't cost 1200 bucks for an hour of work.

scutiger

•

He certainly can ask that charges be dropped, but the whole "pressing charges" thing that you see on TV and in movies is bullshit. Civilians don't get to make that call, and it's pretty much entirely on the police/DA what happens to her.

mozz

•

Police will usually ask if you want to press charges, because a lot of things are a waste of time to try to charge if the victim doesn’t want to move forward with the case (which involves some investment of time and inconvenience). Domestic violence is an exception; the cops a lot of times are legally required to take some kind of action regardless of what anyone involved has to say about it.

But yes, the actual decision of whether to do anything or not in terms of criminal charges is up to the prosecutors, not the victim, which sometimes leads to some pretty fucked up situations.

Nuke_the_whales

•

I learned this when a creep was stalking me and tried breaking into my house at night. The police refused to charge him despite my insistence.

greenshirtdenimjeans

•

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5Nr02odX74&t=6197s

Drake is charged with three felonies: Assault and battery on a person over the age of 60, and two counts of malicious destruction of property over $1,200. She is also facing three misdemeanors, including disturbing a public assembly, trespassing, and disturbing the peace.

peopleproblems

•

Jesus Christ. Assault and battery? Malicious destruction?

CobblerScholar

•

You ever tried to clean up glitter? Let alone that much? Nothing was broken per se but the cleanup required might as well be destruction. Also if you're going to make an ecological message how about not spreading a fuck load of microplastic huh?

Pyr_Pressure

•

Over $1200 to clean it up? Doubt.

Maggoty

•

Oh my God you're right it was so cringe we should just up the charges to murder.

BeautifulMind

•

Assault? Felony assault? For glitter?

Oh, yeah, glitter is a pain to clean up and the inconvenience involved can for sure be considered when weighing the liabilities involved, but the idea that he was in danger of any real harm is going to be a high bar to meet in court- almost certainly the charge is trumped-up to produce a chilling effect.

cupcakezealot

•

felon charges. pfft. should have called jk simmons to solve this who has done that.

mysticpickle

•

Imagine getting that shit in your eye

xorollo

•

Maybe they should perform reversible eyelid closures on Harvard speakers prior to speech.

wuphysics87

•

Are there baby monkey labs? Shame if there aren't

scutiger

•

There are, yes.

wuphysics87

•

Not to justify, but what do they use them for? Cosmetics testing? Early developmental psychology? Unknown to the public?

scutiger

•

According to the article

The Livingstone Lab studies vision in the primate brain, according to its website.

She clarified that she started working with young macaques in 2014 and, while her lab performed two reversible eyelid-closure procedures on macaques in 2016, the experiments now use non-invasive techniques such as goggles.

I don't know much beyond that.