I have a real problem with this, and I’ve been on both sides of it. It really doesn’t do anything to help your cause by having people stuck in traffic. There are many reasons that someone could be in their car at that moment, not just commuting to or from a job. They could be on their way to a court appointment, they could have dinner in the car, they could be going to pick their child up from school, they could be on their way to a doctor’s appointment, or any of a million other reasons that make this not just an inconvenience, but a complete shithead thing for someone to put someone else through. Protestors aren’t making their case against the war by pissing off every person stuck in traffic, they are just being dickheads. If you want to protest a war, go hang out outside of a government building, or in front of an elected official’s house. Make them feel uncomfortable, not some poor schmuck who has somewhere else to be at the moment.
Edit: Ok, I guess I need to give a peaceful example. You want to block traffic? Block the exits to the parking garage where the elected officials park downtown. Do that for a week and see how much of an impact you make. Blocking commuters is a waste of energy.
I don’t think the goal is to convince the people stuck in the artificially created traffic about Gaza. I think it’s to get news coverage from sites like nbcnews.com so as to raise the profile of the Gaza war so that politicians must address it. You are welcome to argue whether that’s an effective strategy, but I think that’s the intent.
Also, side note… Social progress rarely comes from rule following.
Is the profile not high enough? I’m pretty sure everyone knows about it who needs to know about it. Blocking traffic isn’t going to make a ceasefire happen across the world. Annoying your fellow citizens and ruining their day isn’t getting any politicians to act. It’s pointless. Actions must be taken against those in charge if we want to see any forward progress. Blocking traffic to protest a war is like yelling at a frycook because you want the McRib back. The actions are being aimed at the wrong people.
counterpoint: the people who would enact this change are far beyond our reach as citizens so there is no way to target them with effective protests.
Besides, some of the best way to affect policy is to A. Cost large businesses money or B. To cause general unrest over an issue. Both of these things will piss your fellow American off but this is how protests work nowadays.
I think most protestors don’t want to block cars of normal people or throw paint onto paintings or whatever. But they have to because if you look at the laws, organized protest has no bite anymore. Go ahead, annoy the politicians, they’ll just arrest your outside of their house and no one will hear about your issue.
I think it’s to get news coverage from sites like nbcnews.com so as to raise the profile of the Gaza war so that politicians must address it.
Right… because the global leaders of the world aren’t already aware of what’s going on. Thanks for raising awareness, guys.
It’s about the public discourse. If an issue (e.g. the U.S. giving Israel weapons and enabling their war) disappears from the headlines, it’s much easier for politicians to ignore it. But if the issue keeps coming up, politicians feel pressure to act–or they risk getting voted out of office. Especially during an election year.
They’re not in front of the White House, they’re not even in front of city hall, they’re hurting their own.
The King loves it when the peasants fight amongst themselves.
They’re hurting commuters from Marin county lmao. They’re not fucking peasants.
Yeah. I saw some of the posts across Lemmy trying to organize this.
There it was presented as blocking shipping ports. I thought that was odd. Wasn’t sure how that was going to affect Israel, but whatever.
Then the day comes and they’re doing this low effort reposting-of-a-meme-everyone-has-seen-already version of protest and I just rolled my eyes.
“Innocent people are being murdered in Palestine, so I’m going to go prevent someone that also hates what is happening from visiting their dying grandmother! That’ll show 'em!”
🙄
This comment is so meta. You’re literally engaging in the conversation about it right now. This means it worked… How does no one understand this? The fact of the matter is it makes the issue relevant so that it shows up on people’s screens and they’re forced to confront the issue and debate the protest and it becomes topical. No one wants to be stuck in traffic. I sympathize with those who were affected. But I’ll give you one guess who I sympathize with more right now.
Protesters were blocking ships that were sending weapons to Israel. You wouldn’t like any form of protest because YOU DON’T CARE
Protesters were blocking ships that were sending weapons to Israel.
Link? Because that would be a high quality protest I could get behind.
That’s not what the posted article is about, though. The posted article Is about protesters just blocking traffic. That’s what I was commenting on.
Any small group of dingbats can block traffic for a while. What they never seem to understand is that this kind of low effort protest doesn’t help their cause.
When you’re disproportionately affecting innocent people, many of whom may actually agree with your broader message, all you do is piss people off.
Blocking innocent people from getting where they’re going to protest something they had nothing to do with is just a kinder gentler version of bombing an apartment building and killing innocent people just because some militants are allegedly also in the building. They’re both great ways to convince people that you’re a shitty human being, but that’s about it.
I feel bad for the people in traffic but the protestors only get to this state because of repeatedly being ignored by the government. If normal protests aren’t cutting it anymore and you don’t want to be violent then what options do you really have? They (gov) just don’t listen.
Protest where it is effective, not where it gets you the most social media clout. Blocking traffic is the protesting equivalent of a selfie. Make some noise near an elected official, and often. See how quickly they change their attitude when they are the ones being fucked with.
I would love to know what Universe you live in where quiet polite demos in out of the way places get reported on the news and come to the attention of all the other 334,912,895 people in the US that didn’t see it personally.
These clowns didn’t even try a normal protest at city hall or to bother the government, the first thing they did was screw up the days of working class citizens, as usual, because they only ever take the easy way and not the way that involves any personal risk.
/agree
I fully support the cause, but this just ain’t the way to effectively protest the system. I feel the same way about the climate activists throwing soup on art instalation (yes I know they are all protected, but to the average person you still look like an ignorant fucking asshole).
If you want to spur change, then you need to make it uncomfortable for your representatives to take a public position than conflicts with your ethics. Do so peacefully, but forcefully and as often as is feasible. You are much more likely to garner public support that way, and normies generally love anything that make politicians look bad.
Why peacefully? Just today the IDF attacked a playground with an airstrike killing a group of children playing in broad daylight. It would be unbelievable if there wasn’t clear footage of it and numerous similar attacks. US supplied weapons, funded by our taxes, cheered on by our political establishment. Stopping traffic isn’t going nearly far enough.
The paintings were an amazing protest. Also love the protests interrupting plays. Meet complacent liberals at their stomping grounds.
The paintings were an amazing protest.
As a way to garner media exposure, sure. But not as a way to galvanize public support, which is what actually matters unless you are just interested in performative virtue signaling.
Also love the protests interrupting plays. Meet complacent liberals at their stomping grounds.
You seem like you care more about generalizing people, and antagonizing them than actually changing their minds. So, thank you for further reinforcing OP’s initial point I guess…
Yeah, I kinda thought that the backlash to those ones was mostly from people who weren’t going to give a fuck anyways. If throwing soup on the glass that protects the mona lisa, or interrupting a play, is higher on tje chopping block than the actual issue at hand, then that’s not the kind of person that was generally going to help anyways. Didn’t understand the scale of the problem, might have agreed with you in principle or in spirit but realistically was going to do jack shit all to advance your cause, etc. Oh no! Whatever will they do next? Walk around naked? Put hot sauce packets underneath the toilet seats of city hall? Anybody seriously outraged at what is basically just some light politically-motivated ribbing needs their priorities rearranged, because shit is going to/needs to change much more for, you know, change to occur.
Another way of saying bullying. There is a reason why the protestors aren’t blocking Sturgis.
Every bully is smart enough to punch down. So they go to places full of people who basically agree with them and wreck their day instead of doing the hard thing and dealing with people who don’t agree with them. You think you are being clever but it is just being cowardly.
The objective is to appear in the News, which will result in way more people becoming aware of just how many people are against what Israel is doing in Gaza and the US Administration’s support of it, which in turn will lead others to become more open about they themselves being against it since they will feel that “we are many” rather than “it’s just me” - grassroots movements independent of established politicial and media networks, no matter how many potential supporters they have, must be seen in order to grow otherwise they’ll just fizzle away and nothing will change.
That usually means some kind of stunt in an important and highly public place which is almost certain to affect lots of members of the public.
Barelly disturbing a handful of politicians as you suggest would not make the News unless the Press was already there for some other reason and it would still have to be some kind of stunt (think the Iraqi guy that threw his shoe at George Bush) for the Press to even mention it in the news.
Unfortunatelly in the World we live in people have to use marketing strategies to merelly be seen, more so to have soap box to be heard by the rest of the nation, especially in Theatre Of Democracy countries were the “choice” is either pre-selected A or pre-selected B, and were the Press is not at all a Pillar Of Democracy independent of the Political Pillar but is pretty much joined at the hip with Political and/or Wealth Powers.
If it had the kind of Political and Press environment were those things could just be done the way you naivelly (or maybe misleadingly) suggest, the US would be quite a different place in terms of Power, Voice and Representativeness and not one where the only electoral “choice” is between two genocide-loving presidential candidates.
Media attention is a failed outdated tactic.
The proposal states that in each city, we will identify and blockade major choke points in the economy, focusing on points of production and circulation with the aim of causing the most economic impact, as did the port shutdowns in recent months in Oakland, California and Melbourne, Australia, as just a few examples.
Hurting the rich’s pocket books is the only language they respect. Now I’m not sure blocking roads is the most effective form of this tactic. Usually you use labor unions. But they’re probably just working with what they have.
Those poor schmucks also have a voice and have political power. And you can’t deny the optics of the Golden Gate Bridge being closed, it’s an iconic throughway. I’m not sure if there are any instantly recognizable parking garages.
So, some single mother in the Midwest is now going to do something about Gaza now? That’s what we needed? Optics? Fuck. We should put up some billboards along the interstate next, that’ll bring all this kids back from the dead
You all are missing then ENTIRE FUCKING POINT of a protest. It isn’t to block traffic, it’s to force action to be taken where none is, and no one capable of taking that action gives two squirts of chipotle if some people stood on a bridge yesterday. Fuck with the establishment, make some cunt in his comfortable office sweat.
If you knew anything about the SF Bay area, you would understand who this protest is targeting. Those people absolutely have power to influence change.
I dunno I mean I would normally oppose this on principle, but I do kind of agree. This does stop all local traffic at the golden gate bridge, but it doesn’t really do anything to incentivize that politicians controlling the funding of israel at (mostly) the federal level to change course. Unless we maybe saw floyd-level protests happening across the nation, or something. This specific kind of protest is most effective when addressing local or state level problems, because local or state level leaders are more easily strongarmed, especially as they’re about to pass bad legislation. The threat of further property damage can be used as leverage which can influence local decisions. Local protests are better used against local targets, and target selection is crucial, basically, though that applies more to mass protests, this seems more like a smaller group.
It probably would’ve been better to go after a lockheed martin facility, or something to that effect, but obviously that comes with a much, much greater deal of risk. Probably the softest points to push on would be something like a higher-up, or the infrastructure going into and immediately around a facility, especially with such a small group. It’s not as though the locations of weapons manufacturers aren’t publically known, or accessible, or that there aren’t many different, small, critical pieces, including people, that go into the manufacture of advanced weaponry.
It’s so easy to complain about people protesting genocide when they stop you from going to work to fund the genocide.
You got it man random people driving in San Francisco are personally propping up the genocide well done
This a pretty bad take, and I fucking applaud what the protesters are doing.
ITT- You’re allowed your first amendment right to protest war crimes, just not where I can see or be inconvenienced. Because all of the civil rights and anti war protests in the past 70 years that were truly successful were very polite and inconvenienced no one.
MLK Jr. literally wrote about this exact same thing in his Letter from Birmingham jail.
that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor 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.’ ”
Yeah I remember reading that in college. He wasn’t the bland platitudes guy high schools teach.
He was also assassinated right after he started pivoting from civil rights to economic inequality (starting the Poor People’s Campaign). Funny coincidence, that.
Stopping traffic on the Golden Gate bridge to protest a genocide on the other side of the planet is so far from direct action.
When the state responsible for the genocide is reliant on our military aid its disingenuous to refer to it as a “genocide on the other side of the planet”
Yet here I am, in Germany, seeing that many US citizens apparently care about the situation. This I might not have known without this article.
It’s about exposure. That’s why climate activists glue themselves to the streets here in Germany. Does it make sense? Not really. Do people know the cause they’re fighting for? Absolutely. That’s a good thing.
I wish they cared this much about the people suffering in Sudan right now… Where’s the mass protests for those people…
Maybe I’m just fedposting, but I think probably my only objection to this protest is that it wasn’t extreme enough, and I don’t think it accomplished as much as it probably could’ve considering all the people protesting got arrested anyways. Probably a good amount of caltrops on the bridge and a bunch of cards or spray paint could’ve accomplished about the same goal, and I dunno if anyone would’ve even been arrested that way. Probably would take less in resources, too.
That’s if you even looking at the same target, I dunno if shutting down the golden gate bridge is a great thing to hit up if you’re looking to protest gaza. I would probably think one of many even local politician’s domiciles, city halls, or lockheed martin manufacturing plants, offices, infrastructure, etc. would be better things to hit. I dunno of the economic or social impact or protesting at the golden gate bridge for what is basically an afternoon is going to put anyone under duress. Maybe the most you could say of it is that it’s a mild social escalation, which, granted, isn’t nothing, but is less direct and is harder to quantify the impact of.
I mean, the people they’re irritating aren’t the ones that can do anything about it. All you’re doing is pissing everyone off. Go to your state’s capitol and fuck that place up instead.
Pissing people off is irrelevant. You’re irrelevant. You will not be swayed. You have demonstrated that after 6 months of innocent deaths. Even if 100,000 children die. 1 million children die. You’re selfish and lazy.
This is direct action, it’s about adding a financial cost to the government’s direction. They’ve decided supporting a genocide is more financially beneficial than pursuing justice. If we shut it all down, they’ll change their tune.
I mean, it sucks to get inconvenienced by stuff like this. But the goal is to make nations hurt economically for supporting the Palestinian genocide.
Most of the other options available would probably injure or kill innocent people. Like, you’re not gonna make a difference without some casualties. Better that casualty be an afternoon instead of your life.
Do you support the Islamic Palestinian Jihad terrorists calling for genocide of the jews?
Interrupting labor is the most peaceful way to threaten the capitalist class. If you object to this, you advocate for more extreme measures. Be careful what you wish for.
This argument completely ignores the impact this has on regular people. People who end up late to pick up their kids from daycare and end up owing extra money when they can barely make ends meet as it is. Yeah, this may have some marginal impact on the capitalist class, but it will be far more painful for the employees who WILL be held accountable for being late to work and may easily end up fired, and certainly will not be paid for the time they miss. Let alone the life safety issues this type of demonstration creates. This is holding your peers ransom because of something you want and you take away their autonomy to decide whether or not to take part. If you can’t convince people to join your cause willingly, maybe your cause isn’t as good as you think it is.
If you want the inconvenient protests to stop, fucking join them so that the change happens quicker.
Right… because antagonizing and harming people is such a great way to convince them to help you.
Nah, it’s random people who are at fault. How dare they have jobs or other things to do
Those people aren’t at fault in any meaningful sense no. But collectively their labor keeps everything running. To interrupt labor is to interrupt the means with which the capitalist class commit their atrocities.
Did they have a permit to protest on a public road? Freedom of assembly comes with some perfectly rational stipulations.
I’m sorry I didn’t see the word permit in the first amendment. I’m getting old enough to need glasses. Maybe I should try with them?
…
Nope, still no such requirement.
That’s like arguing exceptions for hate speech shouldn’t exist since it’s not in the first amendment.
Didn’t see anything about age requirements in the second but it’s illegal to sell a gun to a kid. Crazy how things work.
Freedoms and rights do need to have rules and regulations. Otherwise you would have nonstop hate speech and death threats protected by freedom of speech or protesting at hospitals and blocking ambulances like during COVID.
Nice.
If Americans want the protests to stop, they should stop supporting genocide.
Mm and how has the average San Franciscan contributed to a war on the other side of the planet?
The same way the average American contributed to black oppression. By being silent observers to your government’s actions.
In the same way we all do. Those weapons can’t be built without a reliable economy. Interruptions in labor produce ripple effects which disrupt the atrocities of the capitalist class.
Except these morons protest everywhere except where the weapons are made and shipped from. Curious.
Okay, so why haven’t you, as I assume an American, stopped working to disrupt the atrocities of the capitalist class?
It is easy to condemn obvious wrongdoers, but what about the supporting cast of complicitors: business partners, employees, investors, news organizations, and others? Whether we’re aware of it or not, almost all of us have been complicit in the unethical behavior of others and have not always used ethical decision-making skills.
Those protestors should have already stopped paying taxes if that mattered.
Well, many of them voted for Biden and plan to do it again, for one thing.
The Hamas genocide of 1200 civilians in Israel? Or using their populace as human shields in Gaza?
You go where your enemy is hiding. The glorious freedom fighters of Hamas, who have been holding an infant captive for half a year now, use the civilian population that they’re supposed to protect as human shields, slave labor, and conscripts.
Ah yes collective justice. Punish the population for what their government did. Hmm this feels familiar, is something like that happening somewhere else in world right now?
Be wary of fighting monsters, lest you become a monster.
yes bro. Your morning or afternoon commute becoming an hour longer is equivilant to having your people wiped off the face of the earth. Truly they can’t see this hypocrisy for what it is!!
It shows how little some people value the lives of brown people on another continent. How many people would have to die before they’d consider foregoing their mocha latte?
Ah yes Schrodinger’s protest. It is at once not a big deal and at the same time a big deal that will cause change.
Hey just curious, when you were being taught in school to raise awareness did they maybe mention something about how the process of abstraction works? No? Ok, guess it is my job. A =/ B, just because A does not equal B does not mean have nothing in common.
Edit: never mind, just noticed you are using an alt-account. Makes sense now.
This is so ignorant and entitled. I watched so many videos of kids watching their parents die in front of their eyes in gaza. It’s horrible to even imagine. How can you be so heartless?
Unfortunately any protest in the US is at best constrained to stopping future weapons shipments to Israel. But as Netanyahu has already shown he doesn’t care what Biden has to say, the US is unlikely to be able to stop them from continuing to use the weapons they already have.
Direct action is super based.
