To Kavanagh, the crime wasn’t just about blocking traffic. It was “steal[ing] hours of [people’s] lives away.”
Hot Take: If Kavanagh feels so strongly about this. Then make wage theft a felony because it is literally stealing people's time and it's a far larger problem than a few blocking a road.
Nevermind the hundreds of thousands of people socially murdered by US/EPA negligence. Those people were interrupted from going to their jobs and making money for rich twats. Don't people know that's so much more important than *checks notes... you getting cancer in your thirties?
Those sit in demonstrations targeted segregated businesses and the sit in protests happened inside those segregated businesses. As a consequence, the owners of the segregated businesses lost out on revenue and their customers lost the opportunity to make use of their services during the protests, but the customers suffered no further harm, nor were passersby harmed in any way.
Now blocking traffic on the other targets everyone that is moving from one place to another, which can have such consequences as: loss of wages because the person stuck in traffic could not work their hours, people who did not make it to work in time are forced to take up their scarce vacation days, fines from the daycare because the parent was too late with pickin up the children, ... But it can also have life altering consequences, such as: a father missing the birth of his child, an ex prisoner failing his parole conditions, a surgeon not making it in time to the hospital, ...
It's really no surprise that blocking traffic is one of the most derided forms of protest, only being beat by rioting and vandalism, while sit in protests on the other hand received widescale support.
The consequences are so vastly different in the harm they cause, that I can't even begin to fathom how you can possibly believe that these 2 forms of protest are equivalent.
I'm all for people protesting wherever they need to. But roads are not safe. Period. "Drivers should just stop and turn around!" Well, yeah, they should. But if someone doesn't, a lot of people get hurt. Don't use your body in a metal cage fight. You'll lose every time. So if you chose to protest in the street, just be aware of the risks.
I've seen photos of kids at roadblock protests. That's super fucked up. Kids and dogs don't belong at any protests, let alone ones focused on civil disobedience or whatever you may choose to call it.
This comment isn't about "muh commute!" It's about irresponsible organizers putting people in harms way.
Reminder that just about every argument that amounts to "protect the children" is a bullshit argument trying to override free speech and expression with some sort of misguided paternal instinct.
Not every protest is family friendly, but the vast majority of protests are perfectly safe for kids. And there is a long history of child involvement in protests. I take my baby with me to protests all the time, and she has never been in any danger.
And children should learn about civil disobedience, too. It's not just for adults.
As for roads not being safe, I imagine you're against bicycling on the road, too, and using crosswalks.
The little rock 9 was not a protest, in the context of the kids being there. They were there to go to school.
Protests are just waiting for violence unfortunately, be it from state actors, contesting groups, or even unintended risk from within the protest group.
Bicycles and crosswalks have patterned usage , and yes come with risk. There the most dangerous places for pedestrians.
Staging a protest in a roadway is not patterned usage and is just waiting for an accident, or the evil actions of an opposing murderer.
I was absolutely baffled by the downvote brigade in this thread, who see no qualms with blocking traffic as a form of protest, so I tried to find some numbers as to what non Lemmy users think of this kind of protest, and not surprisingly, it turns out that people are overwhelmingly against it.
I’d bet if you reframed the question as being about people’s personal interests, more would support it. Whether that’s abortion for fundamentalists or climate for liberals and lefties
I'm in favor of much more and much more drastic climate action, I'm still against blocking traffic. It not only harms other people, it also causes antipathy to whatever cause is being championed. It's really lose lose.
I 100% support the right to peaceful protest. I wish we had more protests. There are so many things that really need protesting, and I mean big large scale protest like back in the days of MLK with a million people marching down the National Mall.
A big part of the point of protest is to get people to join your side. Stopping traffic is like throwing spray paint in an art museum. It turns people against you. Whether it should be legal or not, it's a really dumb protest tactic.
You want to protest against cars? Fine. But if you do that by blocking the road, you just create more pollution from everybody sitting in traffic. And I promise not one of those people sitting in traffic is going to ever think that your cause is legitimate after that. They are going to hate you and everything you stand for.
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
There's I believe one example of that in the us and they were charged under the relevant currently existing law that makes willfully blocking emergency vehicles a crime.
Do you understand the difference between accidentally doing something wrong and being negligent and causing harm? Like you get that if I swing a bat around in my backyard and someone sneaks up behind me that is a lot different than if I swung a bat around in a crowded room?
The right to protest is important, but there have to be limitations. If you stage a protest where you commit crimes to disproportionately harm other people, then there have to be consequences.
Proportionality is important: if there's a protest march with tens of thousands of people just walking from one place to another place, then obviously traffic will be a massive clusterfuck, with thousands of other ordinary people stuck in traffic. But if your protest can only get a few dozen people together and you set about creating the same amount of traffic gridlock, that's something that can only be achieved by doing stupid shit and then there have to be consequences.
If you can't even get enough people together for your protest to not have enough space when walking on the sidewalk, then you should not be protesting in the road and hindering thousands of other people. Apart from how disproportionate it is that a few dozen people want to hold thousands hostage for hours, a protest like that also has the reverse effect and it creates loads of antipathy.
Climate action is very important to me and I do believe that we are not doing nearly enough to address it, but I hate those ludicrous climate protests, where there's a handful of protesters blocking roads. Those pricks generate so much antipathy and they do nothing to explain to the general public of how important climate action is. Those people are classic self righteous pricks with a holier than thou attitude and they are just making things worse for everyone.
That US soldier who self immolated a few weeks ago to protest the genocide in Gaza was pretty effective. Oh wait, no it's still happening. And I guess self harm is still violence. Either way I agree with you.
While I think this style of protest is completely counterproductive and just pisses everyone off rather than bring them to your side, a felony for doing it is fucking insane. You can't lump murder and standing in the road into the same category of offense.
If everyone with a grievance brought a city to a standstill
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.
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.
If you can bring the city to a standstill with your grievance then someone should probably do something about the grievance before that mob removes the mayor by force.
Closing one road is not bringing a city to a standstill. We haven't had true mass protests in the US in a long time.
You don't have a right to commit crime. If they think their opinion is more important because they're being the bigger asshole, fuck them in particular.
I think that guy, recently in the news, pleading with protesters so he wasn't late to court would take issue if someone summed up the critically his life at the moment so dismissively as "a commute".
People don't stop their lives because someone throws a tantrum. You made it others problems; now the courts whom represent those affected will have a legal option.