>>512256532You're speaking as though 300,000 people need government permission to protest.
The human crush risk related to people being unable to exit the bridge, people trying to push on before anyone was able to get off, and crowd crush on staircases, adjacent public transport etc etc, it was a legitimate concern but the obvious parallel is new years eve fireworks.
Police would have had a long time to prepare, if the permission for the protest was immediately granted. The issue is police also seem to think the premiers can ban public protest, or that anyone gives a fuck what the premiers say.
The way I probably would have done it is to Marshall the protesters into blocks, and marched them across the bridge in blocks, so there was twice as much space as there were people. That's why the army does it in military parades.
Cooperation from protesters is relative, it you get half the people spaced, well there still ten times more free space than there would have been.
In a crowd crush the people only have to travel two, three meters to get crushed and it turn into a mass fatality event. You get a surge, the surge pushes two meters of people into somewhere they don't want to go, then are themselves pushed in behind those people. Like into a river, down stairs, into a pile of fallen people. So even a few meters spacing stops the surge, the people who surge forwards just fill that space and overtake everyone else. It stops the Mexican wave threat of people at back pushing, everyone pushing, and suddenly the people at the front 60 meters away get pushed into a kill zone.
Protestors will generally cooperate with organisers and police, so long as they trust those people. In covid, secret police impersonated organisers, protesters and police to try to break up protests and get protestors arrested
