TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Over the weekend, occupy supporters “protested” a tribute to Ronald Reagan event put on by conservative advocacy group American For Prosperity (of which David Koch is a large donor) in Washington, D.C. When I say protest, I mean intentionally block traffic (and tell drivers “you have no power right now and your son can’t save you” and that they need to find another route), bang on the building’s glass, harass participants, shove them, and, from what it looks like, attempt to enter the building. Here’s video, filmed by the Daily Caller.

At least one protestor was hit by a car while “demonstrating in the street” and taken to the hospital.

Here’s Will Wilkinson on this “protest”:

And here’s the way it looks to the rest of us: A bunch of committed, mostly well-to-do conservatives went to a totally anodyne event organised by a conservative advocacy group in celebration of a popular conservative president, and they got harassed in a pretty frightening way by OWS-affiliated ideologues who seem to think they have the right to intimidate people whose politics they happen to disagree with.

Say what you will about the tea-party movement, but I don’t recall tea-party types storming the doors at progressive events and knocking down old ladies. I think it’s safe to say that very few Americans approve of this sort of behaviour. Americans disagree sharply about a whole array of issues, but we expect to work out our disagreements in a civilised fashion, with a minimum of social disturbance. To assemble peaceably is a basic American right and a venerable tradition. To get together and aggressively antagonise other people peaceably assembled because you’ve decided they’re the enemy is not.

I don’t want to wade into the “is the OWS movement better or worse than the Tea Party movement,” because I find both movements rather obnoxious and there’s little value in trying to decide which one is better, but I do find OWS protests descent into more mob-like tactics worrying. What we saw above, and in the Oakland occupy protests decision to blockade the Oakland port, is not a protest. It’s an attempt to use force to disrupt people’s lives because they disagree with them and, let’s be honest, threaten them. Respectable movements do not attempt to force their way into private events and scare people away from attending them.

What happened there could have easily turned into something much worse than the protestor who was hit by a car and the elderly woman who was knocked down a set of stairs in the commotion.

None of this is acceptable, and it isn’t simply a “small minority” in the protest trying to create trouble. That isn’t what happened in Washington, D.C. this weekend and that isn’t what happened at Oakland’s port. This deserves a lot more criticism, and especially from progressives who agree with the general thrust of the movement and do not want to see it devolve into something that will not only harm their cause, but harm others, too.