there is a lesson to be learned in giving money to dubious causes led by sketchy people on unsecure platforms.
Yes; the lesson is that it brings out the vengeful ethically vacuous idiots among media, and the tyrannical totalitarians among readers/viewers. Pretty much everyone by now reasonably knows the consequences of doxxing (ignorance can no longer be claimed as an excuse). It's rarely punishment proportionate to "crime". All information is theoretically "news", but information ordinarily considered confidential should remain confidential unless it serves a public interest. Knowing who donated a couple of hundred bucks to an amorphous protest movement is not a public interest - maybe as far as the people charged with investigating crime, and that's it. If you don't reasonably need to know it, you shouldn't go looking. Otherwise, you are, charitably, a nosy busybody and an asshole. To publish it is obviously to be much more discreditable than that. In current political climates perhaps publication of donor lists should itself be a crime. It would be a sacrifice to political transparency, but the safety and security and liberty of persons evidently is at stake.
"Respect the dignity of all persons."
Maybe a new case study for ethics seminars: "I know something discreditable or potentially embarrassing, and ordinarily confidential or at least not ordinarily given widespread dissemination, about someone. May I promulgate it in order to diminish and punish her for her views?"
On the speculation between nefarious/incompetent government: always choose the simpler explanation (incompetence). The government led with trying to slime the protestors. I've read "The Prince" and "The Art of War", and don't recall "Use intemperate language to burn your options for negotiation" as advice. I suppose maybe it's in the art of negotiation - establish some sort of moral high ground so that your opponents will beg to meet your terms in order to regain your good opinion of them? Then we have a period of dithering and hand-wringing and further denunciations. Then finally we have invocation of the EA AFTER ordinary powers have been shown capable of dealing with demonstrations and blockades. "Experts".
An "emergency" is an event which exceeds your capability to deal with it. Part of capability is competence, but it's a poor excuse for resorting to calling your problem an "emergency".
Speaking of unlawful assemblies, the teenagers who sometimes gather late in the evening in the park behind my house occasionally behave "tumultuously". Good example of a law that needs a more stringent definition.