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Traffic Blockade Protests Were a Nuisance. Lawmakers Want to Make Them a Felony.
(www.motherjones.com)
this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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No, one person with a weird grudge goes ranting in the middle of the road, you slow down and drive around them. When those grievances are popular enough to get so many people to bring a city to a stand still, maybe we deserve to be stopped and forced to listen to them.
Oakland and san fran combined have a total over 1.2 million people. And that's just the cities themselves. The article notes 70 people shut down the bridge between them. That's 0.006% of the population, and I'm generously assuming they all came from those two cities.
I'm not saying it should be criminalized, but in light of those numbers, your claim that if it's an insignificant amount of people you can just drive around rings ridiculously hollow.
Nope, one person is all it takes. It has happened in my city.
Disrupting the public just trying to go about their lives is a particularly ineffective way of rallying people to your cause, though, even assuming it's not outright detrimental. You end pissing off significantly more people than you persuade.
I don't think it should be illegal, mind you, but it's a pretty counter productive way to go about it imo.
That's the point. Get mad.
Miss. They aren't mad at the system, they are mad at the group that blocked them (and often vandalizes their car and threatens them while they are boxed in, safety stopped.)
Stopping ambulances, firetrucks, someone in labor, someone having a medical emergency is not cool. Getting someone fired for being late or not showing up is a dick move.
Go protest outside of a politician's or CEO's home, hurting the average person will only harm the cause.
Protests allow emergency vehicles through.
The article we are responding to notes how some of the protesters who blocked the bridge threw their keys into the water. Even if we ignore the absurdity of jamming up traffic for miles, but magically allowing emergency vehicles to get through ins timely manner, you can't let people through if you can't move your car.
Did you read the article? The amount of people in this thread who straight up want anarchy is insane. I agree it should be a felony these people do not have a legal right to block public roads. No matter what people on Lemmy think.
If the protest causes a mile long backup it can still be much harder for emergency vehicles to navigate the stopped traffic far away, out of the direct control or observation of the protesters.
Bullshit. If you had bothered to read the article you would have seen that people used their abandoned car as a blockade some of them throwing their keys away. You can't move your car for an ambulance when that happens. How can you move a car when you aren't there to move it?
And this helps the cause how, exactly?
Attention to the problem.
You can act like it doesn't work, but the Civil Rights movement had no traction until white people were inconvenienced.
There was a lot more to the success of the civil rights movement than simply blocking traffic.
Sit ins, marching in the streets, and other disruptive actions that are comparable were a significant part of it.
Not being the whole thing doesn't mean it wasn't important.
There's this weird idea that the civil rights protestors were met with people clapping and cheering and waving American flags. They were not. Those protests were wildly unpopular in their time. It was only later on, after they succeeded in getting some change, that the attitudes and rhetoric around those protests changed.
Civil rights protests were effective.
People who like the status quo do not want effective protests.
I'm well aware. I was specifically talking about the modern tactic of sit-ins in the middle of busy intersections and protestors glueing themselves to the tarmac, and so forth.
I never called into question political protest in general, even though that's apparently what people are assuming I said.
Tell me, how do you feel about the protests where property was destroyed?
Violence is never appropriate unless in self defense. Bystanders don't deserve to have their lives flipped over in the name of visibility.
And tell me, how do you feel about the Boston Tea Party protest?
The one from 1773?
I think it's ancient history and we live in a more modern society.
I firmly believe in nonviolent protest, in the modern era, if you need the goalposts moved thusly
The cause is second to the desire for attention.
But the people suffering in the wake are everyday americans. Not perple in charge of implementing changes.
There are more appropriate ways to be heard. Write a letter like the rest of us.
Do the absolute least effective thing that can be ignored in private away from the eyes of the general public.
Great idea!
Yup, it sucks sometimes. And it's slow. But it's the system we have in place for exactly this.
And since it's working as designed, you want to make felons of anyone who wants to use effective means to fix it.
If they're gonna be felons anyway, may as well do real felonies while they're at it.
Yeah if you don't get your way you throw a tantrum and burn everything down. Exactly the kinda logic I expect from someone defending this criminal behavior.
Yeah you get your own way every time a cop murders a protester.
The way you murdered that strawman argument?
I thought that's what we were doing here.