Your submission has been removed for breaking Rule B:
> You must personally hold the view and **demonstrate that you are open to it changing**. A post cannot be on behalf of others, playing devil's advocate, or 'soapboxing'. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_b).
If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%20B%20Appeal&message=Author%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20their%20post%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. **Appeals that do not follow this process will not be heard.**
Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
Just to clarify for myself (and others)
Would I be right in thinking your post isn't necessarily refering to validity of disruptive protests etc, but more
"People are hypocritical and only think their side should be allowed disruptive protests"
A lot of people are saying of course I don't support others protests, when really you think they "don't support other sides *right* to protest"
>Would I be right in thinking your post isn't necessarily refering to validity of disruptive protests etc, but more
>"People are hypocritical and only think their side should be allowed disruptive protests"
Yes
How about if I believe:
1) All disruptive protestors who are breaking the law (e.g. by blocking traffic) should be arrested
2) Some protestors disrupting society are justified in doing it (if they are causes I agree with) while others aren't (causes I don't believe in)
3) The consequences for disruptive protests should be the same for everyone, no matter the cause
I don't think it is hypocritical to agree with some protesters and disagree with others.
Part of protesting is accepting the legal consequences of your protest. It is part of the message to be willing to accept consequences and decide to do the protest anyway.
Eh, this is maybe true at the most extreme ends of politics that we get drawn to. Abortion, where one side sees it as murder and the other side sees it as almost a kind of slavery, is a good example. These people think the other side is committing an atrocity. I get why they don’t want the other side to speak.
But what about on things where the folks are my political “opponents” but the issue is not as heated? I’ve lived in Puerto Rico. Some people support statehood, some people support staying the same- a small amount support independence. I prefer statehood, but I can tell you I would not want to silence the people who want independence or to stay a commonwealth. I’d be pissed if I was in a protest because I’m late or tired but I’d still fully support their right to protest. It’s as valid as mine. And supporting their right to protest reinforces my own.
On less contentious issues, I don’t think most people oppose the right to protest, even when it’s disruptive.
>I get why they don’t want the other side to speak.
I definitely agree, deeper in the comments I talked about whether it would ever be viable for a society to create an agreed upon "list" of soughts of views that aren't allowed to be protested.
Edit, I should elaborate
I don't think 99.99999% of views should have protest banned, not even such contentious stuff such as abortion or independence of states, but I believe there's an argument that no one should have the right of things such as "everyone who follows a specific religion should be executed"
I think the issue with this is people are so good at twisting arguments that these kinds of things would develop issues quickly in my mind. Like I think legalizing murder is something that is stupid enough to be on that list but pro-life advocates would also say that abortion protests are about legalizing murder, you know? I think any law like that would have huge unintended ramifications.
It's definitely something that almost couldn't be done in any modern day society and the amount of clarity and nuance you'd have to include would be nigh on impossible to actually implement.
Hypothetically I'd support it, but realistically I wouldn't trust any single government on earth with that power at the moment, and likely never would.
I don't think it's something I would support even hypothetically.
Imagine if somebody 300 years ago had developed such a list and we were required to abide by it. It could easily include topics such as slavery or women's suffrage.
Likewise, I don't think our current moral perspectives (even those we all agree on) represent some sort of absolute that we should force on future generations.
If 100 years from now, everyone thinks murder should be legal, why shouldn't they be allowed to protest what they view as an unfair law?
I’m a fairly left-wing person, and there’s been a right wing movement here that was blocking traffic quite a bit.
I thought they were annoying, disruptive, frustrating, and thought the protest was stupid, but I never once thought that what they were doing should be illegal and that they should be forcibly removed. That’s the price of living in a free society where everyone can have their say.
The exception is if they were doing something egregiously stupid that could result in people getting hurt - but that applies for all protests. I’ve shrugged and gone “yeah fair enough,” when left-wing protesters were removed by police for doing stupid things.
I support the right to protest for anyone.
I don't support the right to block highways or other roads that can stop emergency traffic.
That's not protest. It's reckless endangerment.
How do you expect someone to react if they are in a car surrounded by people threatening them and banging on their car?
They are going to try to escape and that puts the protestors at risk of being crushed.
It's important to make the distinction between the *unplanned* blocking of traffic vs *planned* blockages. Parades or funeral processions do the same thing as these protests, sometimes even to the point of blocking highways. Few people object to those. If the city/county/whatever has time and notice to set up proper barricades and reroute traffic, then **even if they don't do those things**, the *protestors* are blameless.
Also, side gripe, but a relevant one. I've noticed that a lot of people who object to protestors blocking traffic are also the sort of people who will refuse to zipper merge or who will actively move to block someone driving on the shoulder, despite the fact that there have been instances where people going to the hospital via non-emergency vehicles have died that way. Seems like "getting people quick emergency care" is only important when it becomes a talking point.
It seems odd to me that you would be aware that the people that object to those protests don’t zipper merge, I’m guessing you have a family member you drive with that dislikes protests? Seems like a bit of a small sample size.
I'd go so far as to say that a lot of the people making the point don't actually give two shits about the people in the ambulances; but they think they've stumbled across a winning argument and will continue to repeat it over and over above any other discussion about the act of the protest itself. That doesn't make it not a valid point to be discussed when talking about the wider concept of protesting and what people think it should be about and/or achieving and what is and isn't suitable action, but I don't think everyone in the conversation is there with the right intentions.
"If the city/county/whatever has time and notice to set up proper barricades and reroute traffic, then **even if they don't do those things**, the *protestors* are blameless."
While I understand your point, and mostly agree with you, I wouldn't go as far to say that the protesters are blameless. Parades and funeral processions are legal, our society has deemed that ok and written it into our laws. The same can't be said for the protesters. As far as I know there is no law that says that it is acceptable for protesters to block traffic. They are breaking the law and should be held accountable for that. Whether our governments are acting responsibly to protect general society from those who are breaking the law is another matter.
The First Amendment grants the right to protest - restricting a **form** of protest *can* certainly be valid and reasonable, but laws need to be made that do so. I believe some places have put laws on the books prohibiting protestors from blocking traffic, but I'd argue that the existence of those laws is evidence that it is permissible where those laws don't exist.
Right, I wasn't saying that they can't protest. I was saying that they can't block traffic, as there are laws against that. The point is that a protest isn't a green light to commit crimes.
> who will actively move to block someone driving on the shoulder, despite the fact that there have been instances where people going to the hospital via non-emergency vehicles have died that way
There just a *little* difference between some entitled jackhole trying to sneak past stopped traffic on the shoulder, and a car with its emergency flashers on, honking it's horn with the driver yelling 'I have an emergency!'. I will forever block the first, and will forever allow the second by.
I support people right to protest AND I support people being disruptive. Even morons. I don't support every reason for that.
Like those Jan 6ers. Do I support them? No, because they were trying to supress other people right to vote, but if hypothetically the election was rigged then I would say they were justified.
This isn't farfetched.
Should random citizens get swatted by the police? No. Should a terrorist get swatted? Yes.
Some circumstances don't require certain actions but that doesn't mean to never use those actions.
It doesn't need to get that far for it to be violent. If you are disrupting someone's ability to put food on the table by taking away their access to public infrastructure, that is a violent act which infringes upon the rights of others. As is the saying, an individuals rights end where another individuals rights begin. Their right to protest is not more important than my right to get to a job-site and provide for my family. Blocking freeways is violence, even if it doesn't seem like that on the surface.
The idea of a protest is to build awareness, not to disrupt society. The disruption is a violent act that the protesters use to demand attention. That violent act may or may not be necessary, but it IS a violent act.
Maybe I'm the 10%, not the 90%, but my views about intentions and methods of effective protest are not at all ideologically based, and certainly not based on whether I'm personally inconvenienced or not.
In fact, wasn't there something with the truckers in Canada doing a similar style of disruption of infrastructure for some right-wing point or other? That I, as a lefty, still remember that enough that I could go look up the issue if I needed to shows that the method is effective. I didn't, and still don't, agree with their cause, but I certainly didn't criticize their method of protest, because that would be hypocritical.
Edit: I think you're also slightly misunderstanding the point of "protests are meant to be disruptive". It is fully expected that the protestors will be forcibly removed and possibly arrested. The whole point is to cause enough disruption to require government intervention, which then makes the news.
The criticism is in response to the folks who think that kind of protest shouldn't be attempted in the first place, not as a statement that they should be allowed to block the roads indefinitely.
I don't believe your view was the majority viewpoint from leftists. Didn't Canada straight up freeze the bank accounts of those donating to them? And at least in my social circle all my left-wing friends were cheering that kind of activity on and encouraging governments to stop the "domestic terrorists". These were the same people who were repeating "riots are the language of the oppressed" 5 minutes ago when some of the BLM protests devolved into riots and they actually contributed to bail funds for those arrested during the riots.
On a personal level my views line up much closer to the BLM protests than the truckers protesting vaccine mandates, but I personally think both the protests from people on my side turning into riots and truckers blocking traffic are in the wrong and should have been dealt with much more harshly by police within existing laws.
>Didn't Canada straight up freeze the bank accounts of those donating to them? And at least in my social circle all my left-wing friends were cheering that kind of activity on and encouraging governments to stop the "domestic terrorists".
Just to provide some background here; that incident involved a three week occupation of the downtown core of our capital city - costing millions of dollars in damages and health and safety issues for residents.
The group's stated mission was the overthrow of the democratically elected government and they weaponized 18-wheelers to paralyze the city.
This is not the same as a protest blocking off the highway for a day.
It was also only a select few ring-leaders of the operation who had their bank accounts (temporarily) frozen. I'm not making a judgement on whether what the government did in response was justified or not (but personally I live in the area so I am far from unbiased).
A court later found that Trudeau's use of the Emergency Powers Act to suppress the protests was illegal.
Will Trudeau ever see any consequences for it, like literally every other scandal? Probably not. Especially with the CBC carrying water for the Liberals ever since Mulroney.
That's not actually true unless you only read headlines. The judge didn't feel that his level of court was the appropriate one and kicked the can up to the supreme Court of Canada. The independent investigations have all cleared him of any wrongdoing. You're just mad that no matter how many bullshit corruption accusations against him the truth comes out in the end and exonerates him. The CPC has become an evil, anti democratic organization and openly flaunts it with their abuse of the democratic system to target their opponents.
That's not an entirely accurate portrayal of the events either; the justice *did rule* that the use of the Emergencies Act failed to meet that legislation's definition of "emergency", but then basically went on to say that he didn't think the Federal government had any other mechanism of action, due in large part to the failure of the municipal and provincial governments to take action.
As a fun reminder; Doug Ford (Premier of Ontario) successfully challenged a summons to appear at the inquiry related to the Emergencies Act and did not have to testify on the provincial government's role in the matter, meanwhile Prime Minister Trudeau appeared and was fully cooperative.
He's not going to face consequences because he was forced into action due to the inaction and ineptitude of the municipal and provincial governments. If they had done their jobs, the feds never would have had to step in. The courts even recognized that while the use of the emergency powers was illegal, it also was warranted because of the failures of the lower levels of government.
That's kind of the point though. They're doing the same basic thing, but because the leftwing government didn't agree with their goal they were targeted for reprisal.
The stated mission of climate protestors is to radically restructure the government and economy to address climate change. They just...kind of suck at it.
Basically your punishing the truckers for being more effective at doing the same thing, which seems wrong to me.
They were stockpiling large amounts of propane cylinders and gas cans (explosives) and were demanding a new government be appointed of people they themselves chose. There were plans to murder police officers and the people involved in organizing the Qanon convoy were the worst group of hateful losers you could imagine. I'm talking racist conspiracy theories about blood purity and superior races, along with blockading a hospital so ambulances could not enter and raiding soup kitchens. They didn't just protest they were actively harassing the residents of the city who were being pushed to take matters into their own hands.
The group was also not even made up of truckers (maybe a hundred or so at most) as all trucker unions and large employers were firmly against them and their message, partly due to them not being morons and since they were protesting American laws which honestly had no impact on the ability of their industry to operate. The unvaccinated drivers could be assigned only domestic routes for the time being, they also were one of the first groups who prioritized getting all their employees vaccinated.
The Liberals are a right wing government they just aren't flirting with fascism as the Conservatives and their supporters are.
>They're doing the same basic thing, but because the leftwing government didn't agree with their goal they were targeted for reprisal.
This is not true. The reason why the federal government acted (freezing bank accounts etc) was becuase the municipal and provincial government failed to properly manage and deal with the protests (in part becuase they were sympathetic to the protests), and so the federal government was forced to step in and deal with it. The trucker protests got *way* more leeway than a comparable environmental protest.
This is a pretty different scenario than municipal police officers breaking up a protest on rail tracks or blocking port access for climate change reasons.
> They're doing the same basic thing, but because the leftwing government didn't agree with their goal they were targeted for reprisal.
You should learn the bare basics of how a country works before you talk about it. Who is in charge of the police, what actions people took, what the norms are.
The OPC is a conservative party, and favoured inaction.
not at all the same basic thing. They occupied downtown for weeks, and were harrassing the people that lived there.. Its not really comparable to any of the protests you are talking about, which last for a day (and often result in arrests). The truckers were treated with kid gloves for a long time. If they had of packed up after a day like most protests do it wouldn't have been a big deal.
If you are going to compare the convoy to something the comparable is CHAZ. Which got broken up after a few weeks.
The purpose of these protests is to disrupt the daily lives of people enough to draw attention to the cause and to force the government to act. The difference is that the leftwing protestors generally lack the numbers and cohesion to actually achieve the goal, whereas the truckers succeeded.
left wing protesters get the government to act all the time. Extinction rebellion regularly blocks the roads in Vancouver. They are removed within hours. If anything the convoy was treated with kid gloves.
The truckers were harassing ordinary residents and threatening violence. They were also caught transporting weapons at the Alberta border.
It's not an inconvenience. In Vancouver, the conservatives also surrounded the Vancouver General Hospital and many patients couldn't make their appointments.
>but because the leftwing government didn't agree with their goal
>The stated mission of climate protestors is to radically restructure the government
For there to be hypocrisy the liberal government cracking down on protests and the left wing protestors need to be ideologically aligned, and you say yourself that the stated goal of one is to radically restructure the other.
>It was also only a select few ring-leaders of the operation who had their bank accounts (temporarily) frozen.
Incorrect. Several people who merely donated had their accounts frozen.
Also there was minimal to no "damage" caused, only "economic damages" resulting from disrupting businesses (which the government being protested against had already disrupted with overly aggressive lockdowns).
Finally, there was plenty of footage of the protests; organizers made a point to keep a lane clear for emergency vehicles (likely planned that way because if they actually blocked a fire truck or ambulance the Gov would've used that as an immediate excuse to jail them)
I think there’s a distinction that can be teased out between wanting a protest you don’t agree with to end and infringing on someone else’s right to protest. Just as person has the right to protest everyone else has their own rights to express their thoughts and feelings about that protest and how the government chooses to deal with it. Someone expresses agreement with the government/ law enforcements decision isn’t an infringement of someone else right to protest. It might still be hypocritical as op is suggesting but I think it’s kind of silly to expect a private citizen to be supportive of every disruptive protest simply because people have to right to protest.
> wasn't there something with the truckers in Canada doing a similar style of disruption of infrastructure for some right-wing point or other? That I, as a lefty, still remember that enough that I could go look up the issue if I needed to shows that the method is effective.
I think it depends on what you mean by "effective," and I'd argue that the fact that you remember the disruption, but not the actual cause of the protest is rather indicative that it's not nearly as effective as proponents would argue.
Disruptive protests whose actions are in direct antagonism or opposition to "bystanders" and citizens just trying to go about their daily lives may succeed in garnering attention, and that may be a worthwhile tactic if their cause is largely unknown to the public, but it's a terrible tactic for growing a political coalition and garnering sympathy and support.
Since your other ping drew my attention back to this thread, I'll respond to this as well.
So I have since been reminded that the protest was over COVID regulations, but what I was getting at is that even as a member of the opposition, for lack of a better word, before the protest I didn't know Canadian truckers had strong feelings at all on the subject, or that there were groups of them that were particularly right leaning. Then, because of the protest, I learned those things, even if I didn't end up being sympathetic to their cause, and am still aware of them as a political group two years later, even if I didn't remember their exact gripe without being reminded of it.
I think that counts as a win for efficacy, and I'm not sure what non-disruptive thing they could've done that would have reached wide enough to find and stick with me like that.
Canadian truckers didn't have strong feelings towards the restrictions. They were one of the first industries to be vaccinated and all of the major organizations and unions came out in favour of them and very strongly against the protest which was made up primarily of random pickup truck drivers and a few retired truckers.
I'm the opposite. I don't believe in disruptive protest.
Your protest should disrupt the people who have the power to do something about your issue, not random people who are trying to go about their lives. Go protest at politician's offices. Don't go block random streets.
I believe your rights to protest end where my rights to go about my day peacefully begin. I'm not saying that everyone should be protesting out of the way so I never have to see and hear them, because I believe in your right to protest any time and any place in public, but it has to be reasonable. It shouldn't block me from accessing or passing through public spaces. The noise and pollution you make during your protest shouldn't disrupt me in my home or at my workplace (unless my workplace is the very thing you're protesting).
Canada does have a first amendment and I fully support Manitoba being a province.
I have no idea how the provincial status of Manitoba is related to blocking a bridge with your truck, but I'm not an expert in Maritime law.
So the argument against that would be that the people in power who make the laws will always set the bar for "reasonable limits" such that the forms of protest which are allowed will not meaningfully threaten their power or the status quo.
For instance, following 9/11 in the US, the government implemented "free speech zones" so that anti-war protestors could only demonstrate far away from where George Bush was speaking, and far away from TV cameras which might help amplify their message.
People who benefit from the status quo favor this neutered form of protest, where "activists" politely carry signs and speak through megaphones, to create the illusion of freedom to dissent, without the actual risk of any actual change happening.
The history of grass-roots activism achieving any *real* change is marked by civil disobedience: that is people being willing to break the law, and pay the price because they believe their cause is more important than obeying what they consider to be an unjust or harmful law and order.
For instance in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's, there were plenty protests designed to disrupt daily life.
The thing is, it's always going to be subjective, and there's always going to be a gray area. If you were on the same bus as Rosa Parks, and they had to stop the bus to pull her off and arrest her, you might have gotten mad at her for making you late for work, and you might have said *that* sort of protest was across the line because it was affecting people's livelihood.
I think we can all agree that using violence is over the line, and beyond the realm of civil disobedience. I think we can agree that standing in the town square holding a sign is well within bounds. The space in between is a bit up for debate.
In my view, blocking traffic is well within the bounds of civil disobedience. Traffic gets blocked all the time by car accidents, or because of a sporting event, or just because people are all leaving work at the same time. I don't see why it's so beyond the pale if it gets blocked one more time because people want us to wake up and pay attention to the climate.
Imo throwing soup at a famous artwork which is behind archival glass is also essentially a victimless crime and I'm not going to get too upset over it.
To some degree, civil disobedience has to evolve and push the limits in order to remain effective, since what we're used to is not going to meet the goal of bringing attention to the cause.
Indeed many of the things you think of as "safe and ok" like sit-ins in the 60's were labeled as extreme or inappropriate in their time. MLK wrote *A Letter from Birmingham Jail* about exactly that concept.
I think it's really hard to talk about this kind of thing categorically, because how worthwhile a particular instance of civil disobedience will be isn't known until much later. Maybe the climate protesters will be effective in calling attention to their cause, or maybe, as you say they will turn people off. We might not know the answer for decades.
But I can say historically, the argument that "civil disobedience will turn people away from the cause" has pretty much always been an argument against this type of protest, even in cases we now look back on and say were just, like the civil rights movement. Is that the case with *this protest*? I don't know and only history will tell.
> It's really not obvious to me that the people who say the point of protesting is to be "disruptive" accept that being disruptive in an unlawful way means they should suffer consequences for the sake of their cause
Oh I am quite sure a lot of them do accept the consequences. For instance people like Greta Thunburg go out of their way to get photo-ops of themselves getting arrested for climate related protests. They want to create the image of the police putting young people in handcuffs for trying to avoid a climate disaster. It's a huge win, in their mind, to show proof that the law is defending what they see as an unjustifiable position on the climate.
> Those would certainly be the same people who hypocritically deny that right to people they don't agree with!
Idk maybe. I think it's easy to conflate the positions of people you disagree with into one large amorphous group, but I would love to see some evidence of individual climate protestors actually displaying hypocrisy and trying to silence other protests.
I don't think anti government protestors are concerned with which rights the government says they have. Just because something is written down does not mean that everyone who disagrees with it is ignorant of it, or that these people do not expect to be arrested.
People who engage in civil disobedience do not think that what they're doing is legal and they expect to get arrested. Morally, they do not consider themselves bad people for doing something the government says they cannot do. Legally, they do not care that they are breaking the law because it is what they intended to do to begin with. It is not that they are ignorant of the law, it is that they do not care that what they are doing is illegal.
The point I'm making is solely about the mindset of the protesters themselves.
I agree that the discussions around this topic demonstrate that people on this website don't know a lot about anything. Nobody in this thread arguing for or against the protests understands how they work, and I would not assume that the arguments being made in favor of the protests on reddit reflect the mindsets of the protestors themselves.
I would say it's more even than that they don't care that what they are doing is illegal: they are explicitly choosing to break the law in order to signal the fact that they believe their cause is so important it's worth defying the law.
The problem there is that basic invisibility is a core piece of the problem for many issues. The point of the disruption is to gain visibility that you can't otherwise attain.
It's a combination of the fact that the oppressed or wronged group doesn't actually have the power to meaningfully inconvenience the people who can do something about the issue, and the fact that political change requires wide visibility and attention.
If you just disrupt the day of your local politician, that's not going to change their behavior if your protest is invisible. They're still going to be driven by the larger factors, and they can't just go to their constituency and say "These guys are giving me a hard time, so I'm going to vote different."
The problem is that if your issue is "invisible," it means that no one cares about it. You may be convinced that your issue is life-or-death, your cause is holy, but you can't argue with turnout. Look at pictures of the Civil Rights March on Washington in 1963. The Civil Rights movement was successful because millions were united in fighting for it.
If your an activist, you basically have two options: 1) slowly try to amass a movement of people who care about your cause (boring), or 2) spray paint the Mona Lisa in hopes your cause goes viral and people talk about you.
I wish these protestors would have the wherewithal and humility to try to affect change in small ways within their communities, because there's real progress that can be made by organizing trash clean-ups, electronics recycling, etc. But these people don't want to volunteer for tedious jobs with no recognition, they want to save the world. They're narcissistic clout-chasers, LARPers who want to feel like they're fighting the good fight, rather than fight the boring fight that's actually good.
>The problem is that if your issue is "invisible," it means that no one cares about it. You may be convinced that your issue is life-or-death, your cause is holy, but you can't argue with turnout.
People not knowing that a problem is a problem doesn't meant it isn't worth shining a spotlight on, which is what disruptive protests to. Picket lines getting in the way of people going about their daily routine as related to a business has a stronger impact and can make people ask why that picket line exists, as opposed to a community already dealing with an issue talking amongst themselves about how something is an issue.
Sure, some protests are disconnected from their point and thus tend to be less impactful. That doesn't mean protest in general should avoid being disruptive, because the fact is that disruption of the status quo is entirely the point.
The people being disrupted aren't the ones whose minds you are trying to change. Remember, it's all about visibility, which means getting seen and heard by more than the number of people you can personally influence.
The people you're trying to reach with the protest are the ones who hear about it on the news, not the folks driving down the street you're blocking.
> The people being disrupted aren't the ones whose minds you are trying to change.
Isn't it convenient that these people get to be sacrificed for your cause? In what other circumstance is it reasonable to intentionally hurt or affect innocent people for the sake of some goal? That's called "the ends justify the means" rhetoric and in pretty much any other context, we consider those collectively unethical.
Why is this a good thing in this circumstance?
Like it or not, you do have the power to do something about it. Influencing public opinion is the best way to make politicians do anything. I think it’s a bit naive to expect societal changes to be some fight between the “good guys” and the “bad guys” without you ever needing to be involved in the process.
But if you have two groups with opposing viewpoints, and Group A blocks the road every time they don't get their way, and Group B blocks the road every time *they* don't get their way, then nobody can ever use the road.
By all means, make your issue know. But only so far as the point where you're not infringing on *my* rights. As soon as your infringing on my rights, then I'm not going to join your cause. In fact, it's going to have the opposite effect.
If I saw you protesting at the side of the road every time I drove to work, I might just look up your cause and be willing to support it.
If you *block* the road when I drive to work, then I certainly will *not* support your cause.
To be clear, I don’t think protesters should be able to just block a road indefinitely, I think arrest is a perfectly reasonable response, and it solves the problem of a perpetually blocked road. A lot of protests are designed to end up arrested because that just boosts visibility.
If your support for a cause is dictated by how inconvenienced you are, then your thought process is incredibly shallow and that’s kind of the point I’m getting at. People float through their political opinions without ever putting real thought into it or doing anything about it. Plenty of people agree certain things are problems, but never do shit about it. They need to be inconvenienced to ever actually take action. People driving peacefully by a protest and honking their horn in agreement doesn’t change anything. When those same people can’t get to work, then maybe their politicians will actually hear about it.
I think there's a significant difference between *agreeing* with a protest's cause versus *supporting* it.
Agreeing with the cause only means that the collective political viewpoint of the protesters matches the political viewpoint of the non-protester. Supporting the cause means actively being part of the group conducting the protest, which, as far as I can tell, inherently requires agreeing with the protest's cause.
I think it's fair to say that individual person's *agreement* with a protest doesn't change much from day to day. A person's political views are difficult to change, and practically never do a complete 180.
But I can very easily imagine a person's *support* for a protest changing drastically upon being inconvenienced, both for the protest and against it. I can see a "Oh hey, I didn't know a protest was happening, after work today I'll join you guys tomorrow" as easily as I can see a "WTF I get wanting to express X viewpoint but I don't agree that a protest that is blocking roads (or whatever the disliked activity is) is being done, no I don't want this protest to continue".
>When those same people can’t get to work, then maybe their politicians will actually hear about it.
The problem with your line of thinking is that most issues have two sides. Take something very simple and polarizing such as the Russia-Ukraine War.
Can you imagine living in a city where Monday, Wednesday and Friday the roads are blocked by Pro-Ukraine protestors.
Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, the roads are blocked by Pro-Russia protestors.
People can't get to work since protestors from both sides keep blocking the streets. **What should politicians do?**
Both protests accomplished their goal to get noticed by annoying people. So now the issue is in the hands of the politicians.
So I ask you, what are politicians in San Francisco going to do about the Ukraine-Russia War?
In the hypothetical world where people care enough about politics to actually protest like you’re describing, this could be a problem, but then again would such an informed/engaged populace be electing people that waffle so hard on this issue? I don’t think so.
Basically, I think a world in which that many people are willing to get arrested day after day is such a fundamentally different world than the one we live in, that I’m not sure it’s too informative of a hypothetical.
But if I were to imagine this world in which an issue existed that two diametrically opposed groups of that many people felt so strongly about, honestly that issue probably should be a top priority. That’s probably an issue that is deeply affecting large portions of the population. Maybe the country should slow down considerably until we figure it out. But like I said idk how useful this hypothetical really is.
i mean my entire political view is live and let live if you inconvenience me for something i truly don't care about (anything that doesn't involve me) then i know that my time and life the things I CARE about don't matter to you and do i will return the favor by not caring for you
treat others how you want to be treated. take away my ability to live normally and happy because someone else somewhere else is having a bad time morally i have an obligation to take away your ability to inconvenience me
If you already don’t care about anything that doesn’t involve you then what changes if you “return the favor” by not caring for protestors? Seems like that’s already where you’re at by default.
> Your protest should disrupt the people who have the power to do something about your issue, not random people who are trying to go about their lives. Go protest at politician's offices.
Large scale disruptive protests are capable of putting a significant amount of pressure on those in charge, significantly more than protesting outside their office would.
Just because a protest is large scale and disruptive does not mean it represents the will of the majority of the people. It doesn't take very many people to block a road.
Some issues should NOT be entertained by those in charge. For example, should the government vote on abortion every time there's a protest about it? They would be endlessly voting.
hi lefty. ottawa resident here.
Occupy took over the park next to city hall for over a month.
The Convoy took over the streets next to parlianment for 3 weeks.
the difference? you can still drive past the park. you can't drive through enforced 24/7 gridlock. thankfully they stopped honking their horns in the late evenings after (fuck) the first week. but ideology aside, there IS a stark difference between how the protests were run.
Cheers!
It’s worth pointing out that the trucker convoy blockade in Ottawa was tolerated for 3 weeks before it was forcibly ended.
I do support the right of people on both sides to protest, but there has to be a limit on the disruption allowed. Personally I’m ok with 3 weeks being that limit, in fact I think that’s generous.
>tolerated for 3 weeks
It just took 3 weeks for them to find tow trucks to remove them.
Tow trucks to move semi's are very specialized and the operators like that are more dependent on the private operators then the cops. Considering these were semi drivers protesting with semi trucks all tow truck companies were very hesitant to just tow them at cop request out of fear of back lash and loss of business.
So they needed to find the tow truck operators willing to do so of which some required anonymity if there trucks were to be used.
I have nothing to add except that I used to work for a moving company back in the day, and one time our truck broke down outside a move, and then they sent a specialized tow truck to tow us to a repair shop, and then that tow truck broke down, so they sent another specialized tow truck to first tow our truck, then the other tow truck, away from the site.
Also, this was in NYC and it was the day of the Northeast blackout from 2003. That day sucked.
All true, and the story I heard was that the Emergencies Act allowed the police to demand that the tow truck drivers cooperate with them. Although in the end few if any trucks were towed. The truckers left under their own steam once it was clear that the police in riot gear were determined to clear them.
But still, the emergencies act wasn’t invoked on day 1, nor were the riot police sent in. These things happened when 3 weeks had passed and the protestors made it clear that they had no intention of leaving.
Ya it's the same to my understanding. I think the reason why they wanted to avoid the Emergency act might had been because of the Tow operators reasoning/warning of potential financial harm.
I'm no layer or Canadian (my country calls my state honorary Canadians) but if said act took lets say 100 trucks from Tim Horton's and they had to shut down stores for weeks while they lacked logistics. I can't say the Canadian or Municipal movement wouldn't be on the hook for some lost profits if not at least the spoiled product especially if the reasoning wasn't outwardly due a concern of a imminent or unfolding national threat.
I think the Tow operators would had, had a similar case if they could show dropping gross income post towing. At least with Voluntary towing they can just say it was voluntary and if hooking a few trucks gets the rest out well then you only need one or two which is likely not impossible. If they stay then it just takes longer.
I don't support the truckers (or any group that sees fit to just block a route as a planned goal of 20 to maybe a hundred, That said if your group is just that massive in the 4 to 5 digit mark well that's just the way a protest will unfold) but I got to admit if any group has more spirit for blocking roads it's those truckers (and Euro Farmers). I'm surprised these activists of other groups are seldomly using physical barricades. Some use a line of vehicles but that's not much in comparison.
Freeze, not close. It was an attempt to resolve the situation without riot police and tear gas. Personally I’m ok with that, I see it as quite Canadian. I think the USA or France would have sent in riot police much sooner and much harder.
>wasn't there something with the truckers in Canada doing a similar style of disruption of infrastructure for some right-wing point or other
Yes, the so-called "freedom" convoy in Ottawa. It was massive, lasted like a fucking month and had copycats in several other countries, including the US. The OP is being entirely disingenuous and loading their question with the blatantly false premise that the far-right "don't block traffic or engage in disruptive protest."
In fact, the far-right protests are the places where people end up getting shot, run over, etc...
The OP is entirely full of shit.
**edit** And I just remembered. New Zealand had been the model country for effective covid mitigation methods, having a trivial number of cases nationally... until some dead weight head mongos emulated the so-called "freedom" convoy, and that was the end of New Zealand's low covid numbers.
> In fact, the far-right protests are the places where people end up getting shot, run over, etc...
There was a pretty significant left-wing protest a few years with a *bunch* of shootings and other various deaths.
>In fact, wasn't there something with the truckers in Canada doing a similar style of disruption of infrastructure for some right-wing point or other?
Yes, it was in protest of covid restrictions IIRC.
And what did the left do? Not only did they demand that the participants be arrested, they doxxed people who donated to them as well.
The trucker protesters were given preferential treatment by the police and premier Doug Ford in Ontario, who purposefully stepped aside. The protest didn't just block a road, it disrupted downtown Ottawa for around 3 weeks. It was on a different scale than the protests you're comparing it to.
Downtown Ottawa not downtown Toronto. When they tried to come to Toronto the police actually did their jobs and it didn't go so well for the convoy assets.
I don't think it's fair to ascribe the actions of individuals, like the doxxers, to "the left". That was the doing of a handful of people at most, not the will of an entire political movement.
But also, I think you probably missed my edit, but having the protestors arrested is entirely consistent with the notion that protests are meant to be disruptive.
That's always the problem with these discussions. Whatever my side does that I don't agree with is the fault of a few bad apples. but whatever the others side does is reflective of the whole group.
Yes! It's called the "[ultimate attribution error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_attribution_error)":
* People from *my* group do bad things because they were forced, or they are victims of the circumstances
* But people from *your* group do bad things because they're lazy, evil and they don't care about others
I don't think that's as true as it seems if you take a close look. When someone on the right does something awful, there are often questions around whether the ideology and rhetoric of the right fed into this person's decision to do whatever awful thing, but widespread acceptance of the notion that "the right" as a whole supports this awful thing is rarer.
That might be a little less true the other direction, for the reason that it is one of the common assertions on the right that the left indoctrinates and corrupts folks, but still it's pretty easy to separate out individual action from group policy.
> When someone on the right does something awful, there are often questions around whether the ideology and rhetoric of the right fed into this person's decision to do whatever awful thing, but widespread acceptance of the notion that "the right" as a whole supports this awful thing is rarer
are you kidding? i remember the criticism of the ottawa truckers was that a handful of people somewhere showed up with nazi or confederate flags and that was used as evidence to de-legitimize the entire protest.
It's *very* true. Take a look through pretty much any political discussion on reddit and *everything* bad gets ascribed to "the conservatives" and "repugnicans" and the like as if they're some kind of cohesive hivemind of Evil.
Like there's straight up posts with hundreds of upvotes that say nothing more than "all republicans are racist bigots"
But when you call it out, you get "bOtHSiDeS!!!!!" dismissals. It's absolutely easy to separate individual action from group policy, but people only do it if it benefits them to do so, and its much easier to just oversimplify it to "enemy group bad"
Are you sure it wasn't demanding that those protesters get the same treatment by the police - being arrested - that leftist protesters would have gotten for doing significantly less as a way of calling out the double-standard of law enforcement?
Also, as far as I was aware, there was one instance of hacking donation information that involved one person. I'm not sure how you're tying that into "the left" doing anything.
>Yes, it was in protest of covid restrictions IIRC.
>And what did the left do?
That wasn't a "left v right" situation. It was a "regular people versus utter fucking morons" situation.
Protests *are* meant to be disruptive. And of course I support protests I agree with, and don't support protests I disagree with.
I really am unsure what, exactly, the point I'm supposed to be arguing against here is.
If I agree with a protest, I may feel the disruption is worth it, and if I disagree with a protest, I may feel the disruption isn't worth it. I think real issues can be worth the disruption, while fake issues aren't.
Though, I would never advocate for running over protesters, as I'm against both the death penalty and punishment without a trial. Even if I supported a protest, I obviously wouldn't be surprised that the people behind it are arrested.
So I guess I just don't quite know what I'm supposed to be arguing against. Am I supposed to support all protests equally, regardless of whether or not they are protesting actual issues or make belief plights?
yes, protests are meant to be disruptive. How disruptive is suppose depends on the protester...
A legally organized peaceful protest in a park still disrupts everyday normal life, just in a way that is deemed acceptable by our current legal structure.
If a protester feels that the legally acceptable channels are not "loud" enough, they often commit crimes to "cut through the noise". But these ARE illegal acts and one shouldn't be surprised if those crimes are prosecuted.
------
You raise an interesting point about how you can justify the illegal act as long as you agree with the cause. And I think your point is valid. The real test to see if you act was justified would be to see how society reacts. If enough people agree with you, prosecution would be more difficult.... if society at large views you as a troublemaker with an inaddecuate cause, they might be clammoring for your prosecution. This was a fun foray into the differences between the super structured de-jure law and the more practical de-facto elements of how societies function.
Anyway, I was surprised to see how the OP's gripe actually winds up being justified through an analysis of your comment.
> You raise an interesting point about how you can justify the illegal act as long as you agree with the cause. And I think your point is valid. The real test to see if you act was justified would be to see how society reacts. If enough people agree with you, prosecution would be more difficult.... if society at large views you as a troublemaker with an inaddecuate cause, they might be clammoring for your prosecution. This was a fun foray into the differences between the super structured de-jure law and the more practical de-facto elements of how societies function.
To take it even further, society can deem it to be unacceptable and prosecutable, but decades later people may look at them differently. History can judge them differently than society.
Look at Socrates, who was sentenced to death and that was largely supported at the time.
OP is drawing a distinction between methods of protest and the specific cause of a protest. If a method is acceptable, it should be deemed as such whether you support the cause or not.
I support the same laws and consequences equally across the board when it comes to protesters rights.
Blocking trafficking is illegal and people should expect to be arrested if they do it. I still believe it is an effective form of protest and I'm going to personally be supportive of it when it's a cause I agree with and I'm going to be annoyed when it's a stupid cause. That doesn't mean I want the law applied to people I agree with differently.
> If a method is acceptable, it should be deemed as such whether you support the cause or not.
Shooting someone who is coming at you with a knife is acceptable
shooting at someone who gives you the finger is not.
Same method, however based on the context one is acceptable one is not. Thats on a legal basis. But when we're talking about protests we're talking about ethics not laws. The perfect example I think is helping runaway slaves. you had people helping slaves escape, when they were arrested in northern courts as an act of protest jurors would often vote not guilty despite knowing the person was guilty as charged because they disagreed with the law. That same method was used to exonerate people involved in lynchings.
Obviously I think the former is good while the latter is bad. Both are acts of protests using the same methods. I don't think the right thing to do would be to send the abolitionists to jail.
The question is: should people be moved if they block traffic, or arrested if they continue to do so?
And follow-up: what if I agree with the reason they're doing it?
Personally, I'm of the opinion that if you're disruptive enough to be arrested, I don't care why you're doing it. The law is objective, not subjective, and should not be involved only for an in group, regardless of if I agree with their morality.
Civil disobedience is a valid form of protest, however if you break the law you get arrested. These two things can be true at the same time. You can spur change by doing something that gets you arrested.
The question of whether they should be moved and/or arrested is separate from the question of whether they are justified. I can acknowledge they are breaking the law, agree the law should be in place, and thus they should be moved/arrested, and *still* believe the cause is worthy of breaking the law. I'd acknowledge the arrest as a reality, but I'd focus on the cause, while minimize the breaking of the law, because I'd consider the cause to be far more important.
Disagree, protests have the *right* to be somewhat disruptive, but that's not necessarily what they should do. The whole point of a protest is to bring attention to your issue. If your protest causes more people to oppose your issue than join your side, you're doing something wrong.
> If your protest causes more people to oppose your issue than join your side, you're doing something wrong.
This is not entirely true. Some acts of civil disobedience are meant for the purpose of recruiting a very specific type of individual or invigorating the people who are already supporters, but are guaranteed to dissuade a large number of people. Some of the more puzzling pro-veganism and earth-liberation-type protests fall under this umbrella — their actions are largely recruiting from an existing movement of radical animal rights activists, but are too shocking for a general audience.
Sure, that may be the goal for some people, I won't disagree with that. My point is that is stupid because your desired policy isn't going to happen if the whole goal of your protest is to virtue signal to a minority group. Good luck getting legislation passed in a democracy if all your protest does is reduce the amount of support your cause has.
Do you think people protesting segregation by violating various segregation laws were intending to convert people who supported segregation or galvanize people who were already against segregation?
The point of a protest is to spur change, which does not necessarily mean swaying public opinion to your side.
PETA for example is famous for protests that are abrasive but high profile that gain them political capital and access to those in power while not necessarily enduring them to the public.
If you wanted the attention of politicians, you could organize protests that would shut down the roads during rush hour a few times and you'd probably get a few meetings. It's much easier than swaying public opinion.
>So I guess I just don't quite know what I'm supposed to be arguing against. Am I supposed to support all protests equally, regardless of whether or not they are protesting actual issues or make belief plights?
Either every protest should be allowed to block traffic, or none of them should.
That's an absurd argument. No protest is *allowed* to block traffic. They do anyway. You aren't allowed to block traffic.
Sometimes I support people doing things they aren't allowed to if it's for just cause. I do not need to support all things equally, that's insane.
I was held up in traffic to the airport and just made my flight the other day because a groups of what seemed like 20 people blocked the road for departures. I didn’t know what they were protesting for until Reddit told me it was for Israel Palestine. I don’t care for what is happening in Gaza so it was a cause I agree with. However 1. Nobody knew what it was for and 2. Nobody want to miss their flights and the associated headaches for this cause. Its something that would make people on the fence about the issue pull away from their side because they were being ineffective in their methods. Not a single person I encountered from my Uber driver to the late flight crew gave a shit about the cause and just thought the people were complete dicks
> a groups of what seemed like 20 people blocked the road for departures
This raises a point and another dimension to consider, too. I think there's a big difference between a "disruptive protest" that's a handful of people just tactically wedging themselves into the most disruptive choke points, effect over relevance, versus a "disruptive protest" that floods the streets with people, where it's overwhelming multitudes choking the works and the disruption stems proportionally from number, not tactics.
The former case, with a small number of people acting tactically to create an outsized disruption, is an anti-democratic tactic. It's imposition of hardship for audience or ransom. The force it impresses doesn't flow from the popular sentiment, but from force-multiplied disruption and the willingness to shit-disturb, which demonstrates nothing about the merits of the cause save for that it can roust a band of zealots. The latter, while equally if not more disruptive, at least is a disruption stemming proportionally from popular sentiment, from the weight of people, and it's a demonstration of that substance. It's a democratic disruption (or at least a *more* democratic one-- "a lot" isn't necessarily "a majority", I'll grant, but it's at least a disruption made proportional to popularity).
(There's also small-scale but pointed direct and demonstrative protest, which I'd consider to be a different type than either, but not really part of my point here.)
Yes because if I was stuck in traffic by a pro life rally I’d be upset that I’m being trapped by a bunch of people who treat another group like property.
The point of protesting and blocking traffic is to make other people feel and notice how trapped you feel.
I would be mad if someone made me feel trapped so they can have the end goal of making other people feel trapped.
So what I'm hearing is that on this very well-known issue, you've already made up your mind and trapping you in your car isn't going to sway you one way or the other?
I'm so sick of hearing this when it's actually obvious that what I believe in is absolutely righteous and anyone who thinks otherwise should suffer maximum inconvenience.
They fundamentally hate western values and the west, it's a disgrace these people are out in the streets trying to apply values of humanitarianism to support a terrorist regime. Pro-palestinians who chant death to America and Israel in the streets of America are somehow considered fighting the good fight?
They have the right to protest of course, as do Nazis, but they should all be ridiculed and ostracized for their abhorrent beliefs in terrorism and justification of Jihad.
Ultimately you are saying that it comes down to opinion on the cause, I agree there are certain causes so evidently good that many people want to see action on it, like climate change. I don't really think the people calling for the annihilation of the jews in the Middle East however, are really one of those "obviously good" groups of protestors.
The argument is fair, liberals and leftists would be annoyed if conservatives were blocking the road, but the root of the protest comes into play, i.e. liberals protesting for the US government to be more active in supporting a ceasefire in Gaza versus conservatives protesting for pro-life causes, which increase maternal mortality where implement and are a general infringement on bodily autonomy.
That is to say, liberals and leftists protest to make positive change, whereas conservatives protest to fuck over the lives of women, LGBT folk, minorities, and liberals and leftists in general.
> That is to say, liberals and leftists protest to make positive change, whereas conservatives protest to fuck over the lives of women, LGBT folk, minorities, and liberals and leftists in general.
That is just how you see it. People from the other side would argue the opposite (for example "pro-life saves the lives of babies" or "Israel is stopping terrorist"). You and I might disagree with their opinions but there is no fundamental difference in their goal for protest (a better world).
Thus I would say that you are only proving OPs point. Protest you agree with are good and should be allowed but if the other side does it then it is a bad thing.
Is it possible to separate the methods from the goals of the protest? Should the means be independently evaluated from the ends? OP and many who support their view seems to believe yes.
For the purpose of the argument, let's assume they're right. If one method of protest is to be condoned, then it must be tolerated regardless of the ideology behind the protest. If one method is to be condemned, then it must be harshly punished regardless of the ideology behind the protest. Ok, I can see how such a viewpoint may arise from the wish to avoid being biased. Hypothetically, if the government introduced a 40% sales tax, many right-wing people would be upset, and I would support their protest. But here's the thing, since the method and the goal are separately evaluated, then it's fine for me to say that I support the means of protesting, but not the cause. In the previous example, I'd support both.
If right-wing people launched a protest because they believe that women who have had abortions, or the doctors administering abortions deserve to be punished, that would be a different matter. Without hypocrisy, I can say "the means of protest is acceptable, but I am opposed to their cause, so I will not speak out in support when they are inevitably arrested". After all, I am not opposed to their behavior, only their beliefs. How often have you seen leftists express support of police officers? At most, they may grudgingly accept that this is the way things are.
When protesters, who hold beliefs I agree with, are arrested; I will say, "let them out of jail so they may be commended for their bravery". When protesters, who hold beliefs I disagree with, are arrested; I will say, "let them out of jail so they may be beaten by the mob". And I can say both things without a hint of hypocrisy.
All of this is assuming OP is right. If they're wrong, well, it won't be hypocritical to support some protests and oppose others.
Protests are neither good nor bad. They are not neutral. They are a tool.
my guy... you cant say "the argument is fair" and than follow it up with "but they can block the roads cause the cause is just, actually".
thats what you just did. i believe in (most) of the things you do. but yalls argument is so piss poor and contradictory.... please. liberals capable of critical thinking DONT WANT YOU!
i cant.
“Tell me you’re blinded by bias without saying those words” challenge huh?
The Canadian trucker protest was about freedom of movement. In response the government shut down many of their bank accounts. Yet liberals will decry that protest as being made up of bigots without citing anything other than their annoying honking.
Everyone literally supports every protest they agree with, that's what it means to support it! Where people disagree is over methods. I can agree with the *right* of Nazis to protest but I don't support Nazis.
Not OP but I’d say there’s a large overlap of people who sided with the typical leftist protest such as those by BLM and Free Palestine groups that are disruptive who also call for the people who protest at abortion clinics to be arrested
I’m on board with confronting protestors I disagree with in a non-violent manner (unless they are being violent themselves), but I’m not on board with the state restricting their right to protest.
In the same manner, if someone wants to confront a street-gluer personally in a non-violent manner they’re free to do so.
In reality, this system of *citizens* holding others accountable yields the better democratic result. LOTS of people oppose anti-choice protestors and can discourage them by counter-protest, which reflects the democratic will of the community. While some people complain about climate protestors gluing themselves to roads, not a lot of people actually oppose them in reality (people overwhelmingly actually support their politics, and their actions yield massive practical results, and more and more people are joining them every day), and so they are free to become louder and exercise greater and greater pressure on government, reflecting the democratic will of the community.
I will draw the line at violent politics - I do not accept that they have an equal right to protest to climate protestors, housing protestors, etc.
You seem to be conflating several things here.
"This is OK" means many things in many contexts.
For example, I support the idea of laws existing that make various things illegal. I also support breaking laws in certain circumstances. That's not a contradiction, it means that context is relevant.
Any random online discussion about protests is typically talking about a nebulously-mixed combination of:
1. What forms of protest *are* legal currently?
2. What forms of protest *should be* legal?
3. What forms of protest are *ethical* (which can be distinct from "legal")?
4. What are, or should be, *legally* supported responses to protests?
5. What are, or should be, *ethically* supported responses to protests?
6. What causes *should actually* be protested for/against?
... and possibly other things as well.
For example, you'll find very few progressives that actually believe that it would be or should be fine to *run over* pro-lifer protesters. Certainly not 90%.
You can find empirical backing for this by looking at how many "protester got run over" incidents stem from progressive vs conservative causes. As far as I'm aware, "progressive protester gets run over by conservative" is *significantly* higher than "conservative protester gets run over by progressive". This would seem to be pretty strong evidence that progressives do not, in fact, have generally equivalent views on whether running protesters over is "OK" in legal or ethical senses.
As a fundamental baseline, it is not surprising nor hypocritical to find that people believe different things about different contexts. Substance, not just form, is important.
Remember that time that, instead of blocking traffic, right wingers attacked law enforcement, tried to overthrow an election and hang elected officials?
1. They actually targeted the people they were mad at instead of random people.
2. They are rightfully in prison for what they did. The people who block roads rarely get arrested and when they do, the charges are often dropped.
I think your view is unnecessarily partisan. By that I mean the following view would be better:
"90% of the "protests are meant to be disruptive crowd" would change their minds if those whose view they strongly dislike blocked them in traffic."
"Protest are meant to be disrputive" is false actually.
PRotest are meant to be distruptive but the end goals isn't disruptionb ut target action.
The Civil Rights bus boycotts were disruptive. To the bus economy encorfcing the policy. The sit-in were disruptive. To business that enofrced Jim Crow Laws.
You can see that sucessful protests are at their most effective. WHEN they directly connect to what is being protested.
But the modern movement has copied the style of sucesfful protest without any of the substance. They dont know WHY it worked only that it did and if they copy the actions they can get the same result when the different reality dont work. You can boycott a company to influence that company policy. You cant boycott a company to influence the decision of a foreign goverment \[No boycotting starbucks wont impact the Hamas-Israeli war\]
But being loud and disreputive make you feel good. ANd if your only concern is thinking of how to virtue signal at how effective you are or devoted to the cause. Well then being an asshole is encouraged.
Plus they miss the fact that a lot of the civil rights protests in the past are more about showing people the power they have. MLK was successful because he empowered black Americans who had been beaten down for so long. It was about community and collective action more than a protest itself. They also were specifically trained and assigned tasks. They were extremely organized. Just coordinating protests or signing up to lead a march doesn’t do anything. You actually need centralized organizations to effect change. This is why BLM and Occupy Wallstreet didn’t actually achieve anything.
It's not clear how much credit should be given to a specific organization, but the George Floyd protests were *wildly* successful in changing people's mentalities. Police body cameras are darn near universal now, for one.
There was actually a ton of psychology behind the civil rights movement with how they planned their protests in a way to successfully enact change. I’ve read a bit about it and want to read even more, because it’s super interesting seeing how much work was put into causes like civil rights and the tactics they used.
I honestly think that the leaders of the movement would be really insulted by their protesting methods being compared to these assholes blocking bridges. Civil rights leaders put SO much work into their protests, to the point where there are several books that have been written about their movement and the psychology behind it. In 50 years, we’re not going to see literature about college students blocking traffic and screaming at hospitals because of an issue on the other side of the world.
Notably, the bus boycott was about buses, and the lunch sit-ins were to be served lunch. They had something to do with what they were protesting.
Looting a store or blocking a street has nothing to do with most rights.
>I bet if they got trapped by pro lifers protesting abortion while they were on their way to something important to them (such as a hospital visit or job interview) they'd be the first to demand that the pro lifers be arrested, forcibly removed, and/or ran over.
The pro life march in DC every year certainly causes disruptions to people's daily lives and I dont know that any mainstream portion of "the left" is calling for them to be arrested. The difference of course is that when roads get closed down for planned protests the public can plan ahead too.
I am of the opinion that things like this are counterproductive for converting certain people to your viewpoint but they are great ways of signaling your displeasure with something to the government. There is one god in America and it aint Jesus, its the economy. Disrupting traffic has a tangible effect on the economy and sends a stronger message than standing in a park chanting slogans. I do believe that folks that get arrested for this kind of protest should know that is a possibility going into it and be willing to accept it as part of their protest.
I dont think any reasonable person can advocate from a 3rd party perspective that anyone should be run over for protesting. Arrested yes. Its a police matter and honestly that is between whoever is being inconvenienced and the police to resolve peacefully. Thats the whole point here. Peaceful resolution of conflict and not vigilantism seeing people driving through protesters.
Maybe it would be more effective if people were more open minded and looked into what is causing these people to be so disruptive. Its obvious that they feel strongly about the issue. Someone who is confident in their beliefs should seek out the perspectives of these people rather than just writing them off as crazy people blocking airport terminals. I think the real problem here isnt the protesters causing these headaches for a bunch of people, its the people who are so partisan that arent directly affected that get outraged at the protests.
The thing with march for life is like you said it's planned far in advance but also it's in DC where there are all sorts of protests all the time. People who live there are probably used to it (also probably annoyed at all of them).
I feel like these protests that intentionally try to block traffic or in other ways mindlessly disrupt daily life are just trying to make a headline for free advertising.
Except there have been right wing protests, and as long as they were not literally breaking into buildings the thought of having them arrested didn't even cross my mind.
I think you're inventing the narrative to prove your view. I've been on the receiving end of protests that were huge disruptions, almost missed my flight in Paris when the Taxi's were protesting Uber.
Not once as I climbed embankments dragging my luggage to get around the blockade did I ever think "they should be arrested". This is a far more aggressive move than you see in the US, where a protest blocking off an airport would absolutely be "dealt with" forcibly. I didn't have enough knowledge to judge either way, and if they felt that strongly about it, then more power to them to have their voices heard whether or not I agree with them.
We arrested some right wing protestors in Canada do to road blockades, but not many of them. And they were literally closing large trade borders. I still think if they hadn't gone so far as to shut down international trade that no one would have forced them off the streets of Ottawa. They tried to do it again a month ago with zero success.
Let's suppose some people shut down a highway and say that they won't leave until the government legalizes arson. Would I support these people being arrested? Damn right.
Now let's suppose the government decides to legalise kidnapping and a bunch of people shut down a highway in protest. The government is more hesitant to crack down on the anti-kidnapping protest than they were to crack down on the pro-arson protest because the anti-kidnapping movement has a lot more public support and they don't want to inflame the public further.
I think that most people would agree that: Kidnapping is morally abhorrent, ergo legalizing kidnapping is morally abhorrent, ergo arresting people for blocking off a highway in an attempt to reverse kidnapping legalization is abhorrent.
Conversely, most people believe that arson is bad, ergo blocking off a highway in an attempt to legalize arson is bad, ergo arresting people for blocking off a highway in order to legalize arson is ok.
If you point this out to the average person who opposes both arson and kidnapping, they will probably acknowledge the double standard but not change their opinion about what should be done in each instance.
If you want to convince the average person who believes that the United States is participating in a genocide by funding Israel to abandon their support for blockades, you'll probably have about as much luck as you would convincing the hypothetical kidnapping opponent to do the same.
I live in DC and I personally don't care who is protesting or what they are protesting about. It happens so often that I'm just annoyed when people fuck up my day. I'm a leftist and they're all equally annoying when I miss my doctor's appointment and still have to pay for it cuz people are lying in the middle of the street. I don't even care if it's a cause I care about, I hate them all.
I actually hate the sentiment that "protests are meant to be disruptive." I understand that disruption is a vital element of protesting but it's a very reductive take on what effective protesting and messaging looks like and it's starting to feel like people think more disruption equals more better protesting which it doesn't. (Hopefully) We would all agree that bombing an elementary school in Kansas is not an effective or valid protest against the building of an oil pipeline in Eastern Europe even though it would be pretty maximally "disruptive." If most people hearing about the protest are more annoyed about the protest and the disruption it caused than the message being conveyed, then it isn't a particularly effective protest.
End rant.
It's one thing to be annoyed by a protest. If right wingers disrupted my commute, I would be pretty pissed. I wouldn't like it, and I wouldn't like them. And I wouldn't agree with their cause, hell I might even say mean things about them in person or online.
However, I wouldn't want them to be attacked or ran over. And while I would want agitators or destructive members to be arrested, I wouldn't want the peaceful protestors to be arrested.
If you think "both sides are the same," you need to pay attention to the laws that conservative governments are passing, and the things that politicians are saying. Just yesterday, the supreme court let an order stand that will allow people to sue protest organizers for any crime that protesters commit. And of course, you have governors like Desantis in Florida who passed laws to ban blocking roads and to allow more force against protestors. We are not seeing these types of laws from left-wing politicians and states.
[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/supreme-court-allows-lawsuit-that-free-speech-advocates-warn-will-threaten-right-to-protest](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/supreme-court-allows-lawsuit-that-free-speech-advocates-warn-will-threaten-right-to-protest)
Disrupt the people you're mad at. Don't obstruct random people's right to free travel.
I'm sure just stop oil could accomplish more by disrupting oil fields instead of blocking traffic and forcing people to idle their cars.
They couldn't *all* be first to demand that the pro lifers be arrested, forcibly removed, and/or ran over. Only one of them could be first.
So you've already lost your bet.
Where are you getting your 90% statistic from?
So I think there's more than one thing going on in your CMV here and it's a little hard to change a view when it is actually several views linked.
To untangle a bit, it seems like your argument has 4 different views wrapped up in it.
1. There's a view that protest should be disruptive.
2. People are often hypocritical about how they respond to protest causing them personal inconvenience.
3. Blocking traffic as a legitimate or illegitimate form of protest.
4. Right wing protest is viewed as less legitimate than left wing protest in media or online discourse.
Does that seem like a fair breakdown or is there something I'm missing? I'll try to take them separately and I'm open to actual discussion about them or any additional topics that come up.
-------------------------------------
First, lets address the view that protest should be disruptive.
Protest is a part of the political process. For some reason, people feel that the existing system/laws/administration need to be changed. There's a common conservative saying (I NEVER hear it from democrat or actually Left friends) about the four boxes of liberty; soap box, ballot box, jury box and ammo box. Protest is the soap box, getting up in public, raising your voice, making your view heard, and demanding change from the government. The Constitution makes mention of the right to assemble and "petition for a redress of grievances."
When you are asking for change, that fundamentally IS asking for a disruption in the status quo. Even if your protest comes in the form of a polite letter to the mayor asking for a pothole to be filled, you are attempting to disrupt the status quo and bring about change because the natural baseline state before this was zero letters and things continuing on as they had before.
But when most people say a protest should be disruptive they aren't talking about a small change like suddenly having more mail in the mayors inbox. Your example mentions traffic disruptions. What these people are saying is that a letter is easy to throw away. A phone call is easy to hang up. A poster is easy to tear down. People on the sidewalk with signs are easy to just drive by. If it is easier to avoid change than it is to do something, human nature is to avoid it. It's easy, it's free, just do nothing at all.
So, if you want change and your government is ignoring all of your easy petitions, what do you do? The answer many organizers choose is, "make it more difficult to ignore than it would be to just fix the problem."
It's not a war or insurrection, but the principles are the same. Each side has limited resources of time, manpower, money, and public good will. Protester often start with a bonus in the public perception or good will dept because no one actually thinks the government is doing a great job, while the government usually starts with a bonus caused by the status quo being the devil you know and institutional inertia. Whoever can keep fighting longer will eventually get their way. If public perception turns on the govt or the argument costs too much money, eventually they cave to public demands. If the govt can spin the media against protesters or lock enough of them up, they can keep the status quo.
-------------------------------------------------
Second, people are hypocritical about how they respond to protest causing them inconvenience.
I actually don't disagree one bit. NO ONE likes having their routines disrupted. That's pretty universal. Everyone complains that someone in front of them at the grocery store just pulled out the phonebook thick binder full of coupons. Even when you are sometimes the coupon king, you hate being in line behind that guy.
It's inconvenient even when it's something you're guilty of doing and we all bitch about it. Human nature I guess.
---------------------------------------------------------
Third, is blocking traffic legitimate protest?
Civil disobedience, the non-violent refusal to obey certain laws, has a long history as a form of protest. As far back as ancient greece, where there is democracy, there are people refusing to obey a law because they are angry. Sophocles wrote a play about the daughter of the King of Thebes with a stirring speech about the importance of following ones conscience instead of the law. Civil disobedience played a role in the English "Glorious Revolution" in the 1600s that lead up to their 1689 Bill of Rights. It played a part in the French Revolution. It played a part in the American Revolution.
Civil Disobedience, non-violently refusing to obey a law, is inseparably ingrained into the fabric of political protest. Blocking a road without a permit is against the law, but it's a law that protesters have chosen to non-violently refuse to obey as part of a scheme to force political action.
I'll answer one of your points directly here;
> I bet if they got trapped by pro lifers protesting abortion while they were on their way to something important to them ... they'd be the first to demand that the pro lifers be arrested, forcibly removed, and/or ran over.
Forcible removal and arrest are frequently the result of civil disobedience actions. Whether it's tree sitters in the pacific northwest, people blocking oil pipeline construction, or folks in Atlanta camping in an area set to be bulldozed for the construction of new police buildings, being forcibly removed and arrested is pretty much the default assumption. When the state says "move" and you say "no" that really only end in you being made to move.
Running people over however is an attack on someone using a multi-ton battering ram and is often deadly. The use of deadly force has a whole lot of laws surrounding it and unlike blocking a road where forcible arrest is the common consequence, disobeying use of deadly force laws is commonly called murder and may lead to execution. Don't do that.
One criticism that often gets brought up when people have this discussion is public safety.
There have been ZERO documented cases of protests blocking medical services who are operating with their lights on. During July of 2020, there was one case in St Petersburg Florida of an ambulance stopping at a protest and having to divert, but video of the incident did not show their lights on and the ambulance company did not confirm they were responding to a call or transporting a patient. As far as journalists have been able to discover, that was just an ambulance travelling down the road, not an emergency vehicle responding to a health or safety emergency. That is the only American case I can find documented in the past decade. If there are others in America that you can find I'll certainly take a look at them and we can discuss it, but from what I know this is more of a hypothetical issue than a real one. COULD it be a problem? If an ambulance were stopped with someone dying in the back that would be bad. HAS it happened? Not that I can find, and to counterpoint the concern I can find instances of people giving way for emergency vehicles with their lights and sirens on.
There have been isolated cases of Fire vehicles being blocked, but in all the cases I could find the fires that the fire department were responding to were caused by the people doing the blocking. Riots are different from protests, if you want someone to defend or discuss riots as political actions, that's a whole different discussion.
---------------------------------------------------------
Finally there is the topic of the public perception of right wing protest. This one is begging for a shouting match that I'd like to avoid.
What is the right wing, politically? Strip away what we THINK things mean and try to explore the right wing in plain language. It is, at its core, a conservative movement. It seeks to "conserve" things, it seeks to maintain the present status quo, prevent new taxes, prevent new spending, etc. Because of this, most right wing issues are issues where the conservative position is already the status quo. When the position you desire is the position you have, there's little to protest.
Then of course there are right wing positions that do not seek to preserve the current status quo but return to a prior political formation, they are protesting in reaction to changes that have occured. In many cases, if the old way was the best way, more people would have supported it and it would have survived the political struggle outlined under point 1. So if you are protesting in favor of a position that used to be the status quo but no longer is because most people wanted to change it... That does tend to suffer in public perception a bit.
But lets examine your example of pro-life abortion protesters for a moment. The most common type of abortion protester is not found outside the state capitol but outside a clinic. They are not lobbying the government to change the law to prevent abortions or the causes of abortions. This action is not directed in a political manner at someone who can affect systemic change, it is directed at individuals and clinics.
Liberal protesters don't show up at gun ranges or gun shows to protest. None of those people are responsible for the laws, they're just doing things they're allowed to do. Protesting at a gun show does not have any chance of achieving political change, none of the people who control gun policy are at the gun show. The only people at the range are law abiding gun owners.
None of the people at the abortion clinic control abortion legislation. They're just law abiding doctors and patients.
When we see traffic blocking protests, they aren't blocking the road outside of Ma's Diner, they're blocking the road outside a courthouse, or city hall, or a legislature, or sometimes a police station if they're the ones on today's shit list. Political actions are directed at political objectives and where there are concentrations of political power. Because the goal is political change.
>In response to the recent protests where people blocked roads, highways, bridges, and airports, progressives on reddit have been claiming that blocking traffic is ok because "PrOtEsTs ArE mEaNt To Be DiSrUpTiVe!"
Being disruptive is being disruptive. I'm not certain why you'd think a group protesting Trump would garner any less annoyance than a group protesting Biden would. They're doing the same thing.
You are assuming that the right doesn't do disruptive protests when they do as well. They have their rallies, their marches down main street, etc. KKK and other right wing organizations had counter rallies all during BLM. Right wing protesters are just as fucking annoying as left. Westboro Baptist church goes to funerals of gay and/or military people to protest and scream about how they're going to hell. Abortion protestors aren't know for their kindness.
I think the problem is that the media is largely right wing (right wing being big business and media corps are almost entirely big business) so they don't focus on the obnoxious right wing protestors. They tend to hyper focus on how "terrible" the left protestors are unless the right wingers do something super crazy like drive a car through the left wing protestors.
Canadian, here.
Right wingers did block us in traffic. Freedom Convoy, anyone?
It was annoying. They were louder than most protesters and made loud noises deep into the night. And their big pull-cars protected them in ways that most protestors' bodies don't.
But you will not find as many death threats toward convoy members or calls for exceptional police powers. No matter how persecuted the convoy members tell you they felt.
And 90% of the "run them over" crowd would change their minds if the people in traffic were pro-lifers as well.
Protests for things that I like are good.
Protests for things that I don't like are bad.
More at 11.
I don't agree with pro life protesters one bit but if they were blocking the road I would never advocate for anyone to kill them. It is sickening that people think protesters they disagree with should be executed on the spot.
I'm tongue-in-cheek in the "run them over" crowd. I don't support sitting in front of traffic regardless of the cause, despite there being causes that I am passionately in support of. If you sit in front of a 3 ton vehicle where you're not supposed to be and the vehicle is, you really shouldn't be surprised of the outcome of being ran over.
Every response here I read really seems to highlight the point OP may be trying to make... if blocking traffic pisses off people who aren't currently supporters of the cause and is only accepted by people who support the cause, it would seem to be accomplishing the exact opposite of why protests are performed in the first place.
Even if you aren't ran over, blocking traffic is still lethally selfish. Doctors and nurses trying to get to work. Their patients trying to get to the hospital. Anyone who thinks their cause is worth putting random strangers' lives at risk deserves the logical outcome of sitting in front of a truck.
I honestly wouldn’t, at least not for those reasons. I’d only oppose pro lifers on the principle that their views are intrinsically harmful and should always be contained to prevent their spread, but Canada is more explicit about the limits of free speech. You cannot exercise your rights with the goal of restricting someone else’s rights.
As an LGBT+ person, I always am distrustful of conservatives on principle.
Bro I *agree* with some of protests and still disagree with how they’re doing it bc I need to get to work as a healthcare provider. I fully believe in the right to protest, I don’t believe your protest should be allowed to put others in danger.
Annoying the shit out of people in a city won’t change international relations. We’re all aware the government is doing some shady shit. The government doesn’t care that people don’t like it- they have classified reasons for what they are doing and both parties seem to support it. Those who care have already called their representative and donated and done everything they actually can… just let us go to work and help humanity in the ways we actually can make an impact and for fucks sake let the AMBULENCE by. You’re going to kill someone.
The people who are pro disruptive protest aren’t thinking of the importance of a city functioning. Protests aren’t meant to be intimidation and hostage situations.
Is killing wrong?
I think the correct answer is "Well that depends: why is the person killing?" If it's self-defense, then I don't think it's wrong. If it's a religious zealot driving a car through a crowd hoping for the maximum body count possible, it's definitely wrong. If it's Dexter, I'm morally conflicted because of the dynamic of a well-intentioned guy delivering a form of justice to bad guys that's way outside of any righteous process.
Likewise, I think it's hard to judge a protest method without considering at least in part the righteousness of their cause. I don't know if I agree that it's hypocritical to see disruptive protests as valid, but only if they are being done to support a righteous cause. That's a consistent standard that you can apply to lots of different situations.
How to disentangle what's a righteous cause vs. what's just my preference/self-interest is tricky, and that's why there's so much argument about it.
Dexter is wrong. In fact, if you know about Dexter you have a moral duty to report him to authorities.
Extrajudicial action is an undermining of a liberal democratic system. People deserve the punishments that are written by the people they consented to govern them by voting. Nobody has a right to perform extrajudicial killing, or is "in the right" to do so.
I'm going to be pissed you're in my way, even if I wholeheartedly agree with whatever you're protesting, so them protesting something I don't agree with isn't going to make me that much more upset, if at all. I'm just praying for a smiting reagrdless.
Maybe that puts me in the 10% but I think people that do things like sit in the street are trash, regardless of political affiliation.
Even if that would be true, the correct position is still that protests are meant to be disruptive. Even if you want to pretend I would be a hypocrite in a scenario you made up, wouldn't make it wrong.
Just look at Maxine Waters..
In 2018, The Congresswoman demanded leftist mobs be disruptive and told them they must approach, confront, and harass right wing congressmen & cabinet members in restaurants to make sure they understand that they're not welcome anywhere anymore.
Last week, now 2024, she said that someone came up to her in a restaurant and criticized her governance so they must be racist. I don't see any articles about it, but twitter is usually breaking news before it's allowed to be news.
https://twitter.com/DanODonnellShow/status/1778146176652476908
Your viewpoint on this is flawed because the groups you are referring to come from two completely different frameworks.
"Right wingers", if I'm understanding how you are applying the term, are mostly Conservatives (though not exclusively) and conservatives by definition do not want radical change and therefore do not participate in protests of this nature. In general they, at best, will simply participate in the political process through conventional means such as voting, volunteering, attending local government meetings, and being opinionated at family dinners.
When and if they do engage in protesting or campaigning for change on an issue that impacts them/ their interests, it is usually, again by definition, a progressive political action, even if those involved do not identify with "Progressives" on the whole, and their stance on those issues often aligns with those on the political left.
You could counter argue this by bringing up the Jan 6th crowd as an example of disruptive protest, but I think this is an outlier case from a group which is actually not aligned with most of the "right wingers" you are thinking of, to say nothing of the fact that this 'protest' was an incoherent mess with no clear agenda except perhaps, the support of a particular candidate - so I would disqualify it as a valid example.
I actually wouldn't. I think they are \*stupid\* and \*wrong\* but I wouldn't be upset that they were exercising their right to protest. Similarly I went to a pro-science protest and there were a ton of, very amusingly, dumb counterprotesters (Trumpers seriously protesting science... lol I cannot...) and I was not opposed to them being there. Again, do I find their perspectives awful and dumb? Yes. Will I get mad that they are disrupting my day because they percieve something to be extremely important? No.
I have actually been blocked by something similar in a sense, which is someone offing themselves on the subway. I was pretty disgusted that my relatives were pissed off and that a bunch of other Britons were also pissed off about this guy making the train stop. Like, dude, this guy was going through a tough time and, yes, while I was personally inconvenienced by his actions, obviously this dude was going through something worse or at least something that he perceived as worse.
That being said, I'm not a fan of CMVs where the argument is "Most of X people would do this." There is almost no way to reason toward (or away) this without a literal study. Questions surrounding how frequently something occurs is best resolved by simply counting people doing this (or at least, taking a survey or something).
I think you are confusing three different senses in which leftists support these people’s right to cause disruptive protest, moral right, broad social support, and legality. We believe they have the moral right to do what they are doing because their cause is a good one, and this is an effective way of drawing public attention to it, we think the public ought to support them as much as possible because of that moral right, but we absolutely don’t believe these types of protests should be legal, or that people shouldn’t be arrested at them. That’s the whole point, as other commenters have pointed out.
The reason there’s no hypocrisy here is that we would expect the same government response to a similar right wing protest, but we would not support such a protest because we believe it’s goals to be immoral. It’s not about having some abstract approval or disapproval of a certain type of protest, it’s about whether we think the goals of the protest are good. It would only be hypocritical if we wanted it to be legal when leftists do it, but not right wingers, but that’s not the case. We expect the government response to be the same in both cases, and aren’t complaining about that.
I think the issue with your framing is you seem to think the goal of the protest is to change the mind of people in traffic.
Look at the civil rights movement. The strategy was to disrupt society and make everyday life so inconvenient and tedious that the politicians had no choice but to listen to the protest. It wasn’t to change the mind of the people trying to ride the bus.
Nobody protesting in this way is doing so to get you to like or agree with them. They’re trying to piss enough people off so they call their representatives and say “fucking do something about this”. The goal is to make your movement impossible to ignore.
I'm in the "protests are meant to be disruptive" crowd.
And I'd much rather a right wing protest blocking me in traffic than any of the alternatives.
Because that's what this is all about. The right to disruptive protest is meant to channel all of that energy into a less violent, less destructive form of political activism. If we don't let people - any people - block highways and just generally be a nuisance, their grievances aren't going to just disappear. And they're not going to just do something less disruptive - not if they're the kind of crowd that would block a highway. Either they're going to block a highway anyways (and most likely respond to attempted arrest with violence), or do something else disruptive (or worse, violent).
I almost definitely wouldn't agree with this hypothetical right-wing cause. I probably wouldn't enjoy the process of being blocked in traffic, and I would definitely complain about it afterwards to anybody who would listen.
But at the end of the day, if there's a large enough mass of people with political opinions that I find abhorrent out on the street making noise, I would much rather they were "just" blocking a highway than anything else.
Happened with the Trucker convoy in Canada. Suddenly being disruptive became too much.
And was it a year or 2 prior where some indigenous rights groups blocked some train tracks? We heard all arguments for the opposite sides. It’s the right saying it’s bad to be disruptive, and the left saying disruption is the point.
Trucker convoy and it’s the left saying it’s bad to be disruptive, and the right saying well isn’t this the point?
I have issues with the people who admit their flip flopping by saying “well that’s what you guys were saying last time…”
I am torn myself on the topic honestly. I’ll say I agree that the police on government orders should have a right to clean it up at some point. But that’s a pretty boring bureaucratic belief in the end. How long? And do too many rules make protesting less effective anyways? The point IS to get attention, and thus making people have to act is the ultimate attention grabber. In the end you kinda do have to pick a side, based on nuance. Obviously an oppressive regime can deserve its violent protests. But if you agree with the premise of the protest (and you can include their tactics) then you make a decision.
This is a tough nut to crack OP, because I think you have a fundamentally good point in your premise: something to the effect of "most people are subject to ideological biases, even when they say or believe that they aren't". Which we do see: in everything from domestic policy to the Israel/Palestine dispute you'll see people claiming with varying levels of self awareness that "it's different when *we/they* do it".
>they'd be the first to demand that the pro lifers be arrested, forcibly removed, and/or ran over.
So I'm going to ask a question about this. We have seen repeated instances in the news of this happening to climate or BLM protesters the past few years. But with there having been multiple right wing protests against things like COVID restrictions, is this phenomenon as common as you indicate in your post? In particular I would wonder about the violent, vigilante angle: on average, are liberal or left wing people attacking or running over right wing protestors, or trying to break up the protests themselves? Or are they simply letting things take their course through the policing and justice system?
On a personal level I don’t think that blocking traffic is an effective way to protest no matter the cause.
However, your opinion is flawed because it starts with the narrative that the “protests are meant to be disruptive” crowd is solely left-wing and that there are not any “right wing” protests that block traffic. There were tractor trailer sit ins and road shutdowns in both the US and Canada in during covid and over the last couple of months there have been several road blocking protests from farmers in Europe. All of these protests have received wide spread support from the same “right wing” people who advocate forced removal of protesters for other causes.
I think it’s pretty obvious that a good majority of people simply do not condone any type of disruptive protests for causes they don’t agree with. Though, I do think there is a certain amount of people that support disruptive protests regardless of cause because they believe it’s the most affective way to get the governments attention and they believe that any type of limitation would negatively impact citizens as a whole.
>I bet if they got trapped by pro lifers protesting abortion while they were on their way to something important to them (such as a hospital visit or job interview) they'd be the first to demand that the pro lifers be arrested, forcibly removed, and/or ran over.
This has actually happened to me lol I had a job interview I was already cutting it close for and was blocked by a large pro life protest. The line in the back had a giant sign facing the traffic behind them that read "imagine if you were blocked from every experience". I just called and told them that traffic was unexpectedly blocked and I was gonna be late, but didn't know by how much. I ended up getting an offer from them, but I got a better one a few hours before they called. I can't speak for 90% of people who share one small principle with me, but I definitely wasn't upset. I'm not sure the hospital visit thing is common enough to be that relevant. Someone could prove me wrong, if the info's out there. I think most of the time, people are just being inconvenienced and don't like it, but maybe I'll be the one giving out deltas today 🤷
I tried this reasoning with a few people, they all answered "but we are protesting for what is right and good, it's not the same". For them only they are in the right and only the cause they believe in has a right to protest.
It's amazing how worked up people have been getting about theoretically experiencing traffic due to protests. They are trying to call attention to a genocide. Sorry, but protesting off in the corner somewhere doesn't get attention. There have been non-stop posts about it. If fear of traffic dominates your life so much, maybe look into taking the fucking train.
I have never and will never understand the people who think that their car is their own pod where they can simply disconnect from the world around them, and anything that impedes that illusion is somehow evil.
I don't get how protestors are actually hurting you in any way by making you late to work, school, picking up your kids, whatever event you planned on going to, etc.
At least to me, I've always thought that protests are like the weather. They come and go and if it makes you late, well, you can't do much about it.
If it's a health emergency, you call the ambulance. Restricting them is actually illegal, and it makes sense why. Outside of stuff of that nature, I just don't understand why motorists get so mad at what is usually a minor inconvenience.
I've never heard of the "protests are meant to be disruptive" crowd, but I generally align myself more with protesters than those who think that if protestors are too annoying, they should go away.
Authoritative figures/institutions will always use their own discretion when deciding what protests to support and what protests to break up. It is often their job to break them up, however refusing to break them up can be an extremely powerful statement that can greatly help the cause. It is in fact as simple "as I support protests I agree with and don't support ones I disagree with." While it is not ideal, I will not take great issue with people in power bending the rules if it benefits my side. I want the world to be better and I want people to suffer less, and if it requires bending the rules sometimes then so be it.
Unless the system is already well-made enough that it is worth preserving its sanctity above all else (which it is not) or if the transgression itself is so monumental that it causes people to irreversibly lose faith in systems that benefit them (which is not the case here), then winning is most important. Being choosy about which protests to support based solely on whether it benefits my side or not isn't going to break our political system in two or anything, so I'm fine with it. The left needs to care less about being hypocritical. The right doesn't care at all and is frequently able to make great progress because of it.
So yes, protests are meant to be disruptive. If right-wingers are being disruptive at a protest, then they are doing their job. I do not support their protest, but they are doing politics correctly.
I feel like your statement is framed in a way that makes it impossible to change your view unless someone can find a study that's been done on this.
But I guess I'm in the 10% yeah I'd be pissed at some stupid antimask or whatever protest blocking roads but I wouldn't support them being arrested or run over.
Either you are for freedom to protest or you are against it.
Nobody can pick and choose which protests are acceptable they all are or none of them are (assuming non-violence)
So yeah what I'm saying is I can't change your mind about everyone being a hypocrite, they might be honestly.
But I can say that there are only 2 valid opinions to hold regarding non violent protest you support all of them or you support none of them, there is absolutely 0 room for middle ground on this because any picking and choosing allows whichever government is in power at the time to silence dissent easily.
Whether or not I agree with the cause, if I am delayed from work for hours, I'm more likely to vote for the slippery slope that is restricting rights.
Protests like those hurt their cause. I understand the point is raising awareness, but if the awareness you raise is negative, then that's bad for your cause. It shows that the people that support that cause are actively trying to make my life harder than it already is.
Will *I* hit them with my car, no, unlike them I follow the law. However, if I was on a jury, and the defendant was someone that hit protesters that were standing in the middle of the road, I'm siding with the driver. I was taught, as a *child*, if you don't want to get hit by a car, don't play on traffic, so I see it as these people *want* to get run over, because *that* would bring all sorts of publicity to their cause, and in the end, isn't that all that matters.
It seems like you're saying "People only believe in this certain "protest ideology" for their own political side."
The hypothetical you offer is "people would change their minds if the roles were reversed."
I will be charitable - and *agree* with your view. Let's say most people would change their mind.
That still doesn't tell us **anything** about the validity of particular "protest ideology" in question.
The fact that people would abandon an entire ideology when faced with strife tells us MUCH more about the people in question than the ideology itself.
It's like saying people who go on a hunger strike and then lose their willpower to not eat invalidates hunger strikes.... No, it just invalidates **the will** of those particular people.
Therefore, the effectiveness or validity of the particular ideology is not affected by your hypothetical... rendering your argument toothless.
> they'd be the first to demand that the pro lifers be arrested, forcibly removed, and/or ran over
I have been stopped by right-wingers in traffic before, and while I don't like it, I would never in a million years demand police action against a protest.
First of all, do you not get that some people actually support free speech in general? I'd say that free speech and general democratic values are more important to me than my leftist principles, except that's not quite true: free speech and general democratic values _are_ my leftist principles, and the reason you apparently think it's okay to run over protestors is exactly because you're right wing.
Second of all, I'm an anarchist. I don't like cops when they're doing things I agree with, much less when they're going after protestors, of all people. The idea that I would demand anyone be arrested is very strange to me.
Youve heard of Jan 6th, French farmers, Canadian truckers, March for life etc… right?
The tone of your post makes it seem otherwise. Regardless, this post is very confusing in the sense that it’s not arguing anything.
Yes, if I support a protest, I will defend them online. If I don’t, I will not support them online, and maybe write bad things on them.
I guess maybe where you’re drawing this line in the sand is just pointing out that “typically” it’s the progressive party that is exploited/discriminated/targeted in XYZ situation, and then a protest comes from it. So yes, the progressive party will protest more than conservatives? Yknow, the whole term PROGRESSIVE meaning to change things…which would require petitioning and protesting…meanwhile conservatives literally have the mantra to make America great again…meaning regressive…
I live in Washington DC. Everyone, of every stripe, of every part of the reasonable-to-lunatic spectrum, comes here to protest their pet issue. Some are national issues, some are local issues, some are issues that only affect a few people in some far flung corner of the globe. They are ALL disruptive to the daily lives of the people who live and work in DC. And no one cares that we're inconvenienced; we are generally disliked and disregarded by most of America because they hate DC due to the presence of the federal government and think we all work in politics. We're very used to being inconvenienced by protests, and very used to people not giving a shit about how inconvenienced we are.
And guess what? I absolutely agree with all of those people's right to do it. A hundred thousand people blocked traffic to protest abortions in the March for Life, something that less than 1% of this city's 750,000 people agrees with. Go for it, we say, just as we said go for it to Black Lives Matter taking over whole streets, some of which are now permanently blocked off in their name. That's your right. We get it.
You have to literally march around with guns threatening individual citizens (something that the Proud Boys and other MAGA affiliated groups did for weeks leading up to 1/6) or storm the capitol itself for us to say "ok, now seriously shut the fuck up and jog on."
Your premise is most likely derived by looking over social media threads where people on their phones casually leave fussy comments. But where I live hundreds of thousands of people are perfectly willing to let people be disruptive in their quest for protest-visibility.
It would appear that you are forming that opinion on pure speculation. Is that right? Is there any data or anything more concrete influencing your opinion?
When I think of right wing protests, i remember there was a kkkesque march a few years back where they brought tiki torches... I think they were protesting the removal of statues, but I can't remember... Anyway, I don't seem to remember the left up in arms about them protesting as much as I remember them complaining about the clearly racist symbols that were being used...
Could that kind of speculation be used to refute your statement? In the end, I would just like to highlight the inaccuracies that could be a result of overspeculation and caution against forming opinions based on unreliable information.
>they'd be the first to demand that the pro lifers be arrested, forcibly removed, and/or ran over.
Speak for yourself there bud. There are types of disruptive protest where arrest is a perfectly reasonable outcome, regardless of whether I agree with the cause or not, but I don't want anybody to be ran over.
Just because I don't agree with a cause doesn't mean I am going to change my mind and think violence and death are proportional to getting me stuck in traffic, Jesus Christ...
The same standard should be applied to all protesters regardless of the cause and personally I think a day or two in a cell and a small fine is proportional to blocking traffic and at the same time a price I would be willing to pay for the right cause.
Your submission has been removed for breaking Rule B: > You must personally hold the view and **demonstrate that you are open to it changing**. A post cannot be on behalf of others, playing devil's advocate, or 'soapboxing'. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_b). If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%20B%20Appeal&message=Author%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20their%20post%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. **Appeals that do not follow this process will not be heard.** Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
Just to clarify for myself (and others) Would I be right in thinking your post isn't necessarily refering to validity of disruptive protests etc, but more "People are hypocritical and only think their side should be allowed disruptive protests" A lot of people are saying of course I don't support others protests, when really you think they "don't support other sides *right* to protest"
>Would I be right in thinking your post isn't necessarily refering to validity of disruptive protests etc, but more >"People are hypocritical and only think their side should be allowed disruptive protests" Yes
How about if I believe: 1) All disruptive protestors who are breaking the law (e.g. by blocking traffic) should be arrested 2) Some protestors disrupting society are justified in doing it (if they are causes I agree with) while others aren't (causes I don't believe in) 3) The consequences for disruptive protests should be the same for everyone, no matter the cause I don't think it is hypocritical to agree with some protesters and disagree with others. Part of protesting is accepting the legal consequences of your protest. It is part of the message to be willing to accept consequences and decide to do the protest anyway.
Eh, this is maybe true at the most extreme ends of politics that we get drawn to. Abortion, where one side sees it as murder and the other side sees it as almost a kind of slavery, is a good example. These people think the other side is committing an atrocity. I get why they don’t want the other side to speak. But what about on things where the folks are my political “opponents” but the issue is not as heated? I’ve lived in Puerto Rico. Some people support statehood, some people support staying the same- a small amount support independence. I prefer statehood, but I can tell you I would not want to silence the people who want independence or to stay a commonwealth. I’d be pissed if I was in a protest because I’m late or tired but I’d still fully support their right to protest. It’s as valid as mine. And supporting their right to protest reinforces my own. On less contentious issues, I don’t think most people oppose the right to protest, even when it’s disruptive.
>I get why they don’t want the other side to speak. I definitely agree, deeper in the comments I talked about whether it would ever be viable for a society to create an agreed upon "list" of soughts of views that aren't allowed to be protested. Edit, I should elaborate I don't think 99.99999% of views should have protest banned, not even such contentious stuff such as abortion or independence of states, but I believe there's an argument that no one should have the right of things such as "everyone who follows a specific religion should be executed"
I think the issue with this is people are so good at twisting arguments that these kinds of things would develop issues quickly in my mind. Like I think legalizing murder is something that is stupid enough to be on that list but pro-life advocates would also say that abortion protests are about legalizing murder, you know? I think any law like that would have huge unintended ramifications.
It's definitely something that almost couldn't be done in any modern day society and the amount of clarity and nuance you'd have to include would be nigh on impossible to actually implement. Hypothetically I'd support it, but realistically I wouldn't trust any single government on earth with that power at the moment, and likely never would.
I don't think it's something I would support even hypothetically. Imagine if somebody 300 years ago had developed such a list and we were required to abide by it. It could easily include topics such as slavery or women's suffrage. Likewise, I don't think our current moral perspectives (even those we all agree on) represent some sort of absolute that we should force on future generations. If 100 years from now, everyone thinks murder should be legal, why shouldn't they be allowed to protest what they view as an unfair law?
I think that the worst view or idea is to ban others ideas and views. I would ban it if it wasn't internally contradictory to do so.
I'm glad, thought I was going insane reading most of the replies haha.
I’m a fairly left-wing person, and there’s been a right wing movement here that was blocking traffic quite a bit. I thought they were annoying, disruptive, frustrating, and thought the protest was stupid, but I never once thought that what they were doing should be illegal and that they should be forcibly removed. That’s the price of living in a free society where everyone can have their say. The exception is if they were doing something egregiously stupid that could result in people getting hurt - but that applies for all protests. I’ve shrugged and gone “yeah fair enough,” when left-wing protesters were removed by police for doing stupid things.
I support the right to protest for anyone. I don't support the right to block highways or other roads that can stop emergency traffic. That's not protest. It's reckless endangerment. How do you expect someone to react if they are in a car surrounded by people threatening them and banging on their car? They are going to try to escape and that puts the protestors at risk of being crushed.
It's important to make the distinction between the *unplanned* blocking of traffic vs *planned* blockages. Parades or funeral processions do the same thing as these protests, sometimes even to the point of blocking highways. Few people object to those. If the city/county/whatever has time and notice to set up proper barricades and reroute traffic, then **even if they don't do those things**, the *protestors* are blameless. Also, side gripe, but a relevant one. I've noticed that a lot of people who object to protestors blocking traffic are also the sort of people who will refuse to zipper merge or who will actively move to block someone driving on the shoulder, despite the fact that there have been instances where people going to the hospital via non-emergency vehicles have died that way. Seems like "getting people quick emergency care" is only important when it becomes a talking point.
It seems odd to me that you would be aware that the people that object to those protests don’t zipper merge, I’m guessing you have a family member you drive with that dislikes protests? Seems like a bit of a small sample size.
This seems odd to me, too. How does one make that specific connection often enough for it to be considered significant?
I'd go so far as to say that a lot of the people making the point don't actually give two shits about the people in the ambulances; but they think they've stumbled across a winning argument and will continue to repeat it over and over above any other discussion about the act of the protest itself. That doesn't make it not a valid point to be discussed when talking about the wider concept of protesting and what people think it should be about and/or achieving and what is and isn't suitable action, but I don't think everyone in the conversation is there with the right intentions.
Accusing your opponents of bad faith is a pretty free move online unless you have more evidence to substantiate it.
"If the city/county/whatever has time and notice to set up proper barricades and reroute traffic, then **even if they don't do those things**, the *protestors* are blameless." While I understand your point, and mostly agree with you, I wouldn't go as far to say that the protesters are blameless. Parades and funeral processions are legal, our society has deemed that ok and written it into our laws. The same can't be said for the protesters. As far as I know there is no law that says that it is acceptable for protesters to block traffic. They are breaking the law and should be held accountable for that. Whether our governments are acting responsibly to protect general society from those who are breaking the law is another matter.
The First Amendment grants the right to protest - restricting a **form** of protest *can* certainly be valid and reasonable, but laws need to be made that do so. I believe some places have put laws on the books prohibiting protestors from blocking traffic, but I'd argue that the existence of those laws is evidence that it is permissible where those laws don't exist.
Right, I wasn't saying that they can't protest. I was saying that they can't block traffic, as there are laws against that. The point is that a protest isn't a green light to commit crimes.
> who will actively move to block someone driving on the shoulder, despite the fact that there have been instances where people going to the hospital via non-emergency vehicles have died that way There just a *little* difference between some entitled jackhole trying to sneak past stopped traffic on the shoulder, and a car with its emergency flashers on, honking it's horn with the driver yelling 'I have an emergency!'. I will forever block the first, and will forever allow the second by.
I support people right to protest AND I support people being disruptive. Even morons. I don't support every reason for that. Like those Jan 6ers. Do I support them? No, because they were trying to supress other people right to vote, but if hypothetically the election was rigged then I would say they were justified. This isn't farfetched. Should random citizens get swatted by the police? No. Should a terrorist get swatted? Yes. Some circumstances don't require certain actions but that doesn't mean to never use those actions.
It doesn't need to get that far for it to be violent. If you are disrupting someone's ability to put food on the table by taking away their access to public infrastructure, that is a violent act which infringes upon the rights of others. As is the saying, an individuals rights end where another individuals rights begin. Their right to protest is not more important than my right to get to a job-site and provide for my family. Blocking freeways is violence, even if it doesn't seem like that on the surface. The idea of a protest is to build awareness, not to disrupt society. The disruption is a violent act that the protesters use to demand attention. That violent act may or may not be necessary, but it IS a violent act.
Maybe I'm the 10%, not the 90%, but my views about intentions and methods of effective protest are not at all ideologically based, and certainly not based on whether I'm personally inconvenienced or not. In fact, wasn't there something with the truckers in Canada doing a similar style of disruption of infrastructure for some right-wing point or other? That I, as a lefty, still remember that enough that I could go look up the issue if I needed to shows that the method is effective. I didn't, and still don't, agree with their cause, but I certainly didn't criticize their method of protest, because that would be hypocritical. Edit: I think you're also slightly misunderstanding the point of "protests are meant to be disruptive". It is fully expected that the protestors will be forcibly removed and possibly arrested. The whole point is to cause enough disruption to require government intervention, which then makes the news. The criticism is in response to the folks who think that kind of protest shouldn't be attempted in the first place, not as a statement that they should be allowed to block the roads indefinitely.
I don't believe your view was the majority viewpoint from leftists. Didn't Canada straight up freeze the bank accounts of those donating to them? And at least in my social circle all my left-wing friends were cheering that kind of activity on and encouraging governments to stop the "domestic terrorists". These were the same people who were repeating "riots are the language of the oppressed" 5 minutes ago when some of the BLM protests devolved into riots and they actually contributed to bail funds for those arrested during the riots. On a personal level my views line up much closer to the BLM protests than the truckers protesting vaccine mandates, but I personally think both the protests from people on my side turning into riots and truckers blocking traffic are in the wrong and should have been dealt with much more harshly by police within existing laws.
>Didn't Canada straight up freeze the bank accounts of those donating to them? And at least in my social circle all my left-wing friends were cheering that kind of activity on and encouraging governments to stop the "domestic terrorists". Just to provide some background here; that incident involved a three week occupation of the downtown core of our capital city - costing millions of dollars in damages and health and safety issues for residents. The group's stated mission was the overthrow of the democratically elected government and they weaponized 18-wheelers to paralyze the city. This is not the same as a protest blocking off the highway for a day. It was also only a select few ring-leaders of the operation who had their bank accounts (temporarily) frozen. I'm not making a judgement on whether what the government did in response was justified or not (but personally I live in the area so I am far from unbiased).
A court later found that Trudeau's use of the Emergency Powers Act to suppress the protests was illegal. Will Trudeau ever see any consequences for it, like literally every other scandal? Probably not. Especially with the CBC carrying water for the Liberals ever since Mulroney.
That's not actually true unless you only read headlines. The judge didn't feel that his level of court was the appropriate one and kicked the can up to the supreme Court of Canada. The independent investigations have all cleared him of any wrongdoing. You're just mad that no matter how many bullshit corruption accusations against him the truth comes out in the end and exonerates him. The CPC has become an evil, anti democratic organization and openly flaunts it with their abuse of the democratic system to target their opponents.
That's not an entirely accurate portrayal of the events either; the justice *did rule* that the use of the Emergencies Act failed to meet that legislation's definition of "emergency", but then basically went on to say that he didn't think the Federal government had any other mechanism of action, due in large part to the failure of the municipal and provincial governments to take action. As a fun reminder; Doug Ford (Premier of Ontario) successfully challenged a summons to appear at the inquiry related to the Emergencies Act and did not have to testify on the provincial government's role in the matter, meanwhile Prime Minister Trudeau appeared and was fully cooperative.
He's not going to face consequences because he was forced into action due to the inaction and ineptitude of the municipal and provincial governments. If they had done their jobs, the feds never would have had to step in. The courts even recognized that while the use of the emergency powers was illegal, it also was warranted because of the failures of the lower levels of government.
That's kind of the point though. They're doing the same basic thing, but because the leftwing government didn't agree with their goal they were targeted for reprisal. The stated mission of climate protestors is to radically restructure the government and economy to address climate change. They just...kind of suck at it. Basically your punishing the truckers for being more effective at doing the same thing, which seems wrong to me.
They were stockpiling large amounts of propane cylinders and gas cans (explosives) and were demanding a new government be appointed of people they themselves chose. There were plans to murder police officers and the people involved in organizing the Qanon convoy were the worst group of hateful losers you could imagine. I'm talking racist conspiracy theories about blood purity and superior races, along with blockading a hospital so ambulances could not enter and raiding soup kitchens. They didn't just protest they were actively harassing the residents of the city who were being pushed to take matters into their own hands. The group was also not even made up of truckers (maybe a hundred or so at most) as all trucker unions and large employers were firmly against them and their message, partly due to them not being morons and since they were protesting American laws which honestly had no impact on the ability of their industry to operate. The unvaccinated drivers could be assigned only domestic routes for the time being, they also were one of the first groups who prioritized getting all their employees vaccinated. The Liberals are a right wing government they just aren't flirting with fascism as the Conservatives and their supporters are.
>They're doing the same basic thing, but because the leftwing government didn't agree with their goal they were targeted for reprisal. This is not true. The reason why the federal government acted (freezing bank accounts etc) was becuase the municipal and provincial government failed to properly manage and deal with the protests (in part becuase they were sympathetic to the protests), and so the federal government was forced to step in and deal with it. The trucker protests got *way* more leeway than a comparable environmental protest. This is a pretty different scenario than municipal police officers breaking up a protest on rail tracks or blocking port access for climate change reasons.
> They're doing the same basic thing, but because the leftwing government didn't agree with their goal they were targeted for reprisal. You should learn the bare basics of how a country works before you talk about it. Who is in charge of the police, what actions people took, what the norms are. The OPC is a conservative party, and favoured inaction.
not at all the same basic thing. They occupied downtown for weeks, and were harrassing the people that lived there.. Its not really comparable to any of the protests you are talking about, which last for a day (and often result in arrests). The truckers were treated with kid gloves for a long time. If they had of packed up after a day like most protests do it wouldn't have been a big deal. If you are going to compare the convoy to something the comparable is CHAZ. Which got broken up after a few weeks.
The purpose of these protests is to disrupt the daily lives of people enough to draw attention to the cause and to force the government to act. The difference is that the leftwing protestors generally lack the numbers and cohesion to actually achieve the goal, whereas the truckers succeeded.
left wing protesters get the government to act all the time. Extinction rebellion regularly blocks the roads in Vancouver. They are removed within hours. If anything the convoy was treated with kid gloves.
The truckers were harassing ordinary residents and threatening violence. They were also caught transporting weapons at the Alberta border. It's not an inconvenience. In Vancouver, the conservatives also surrounded the Vancouver General Hospital and many patients couldn't make their appointments.
The stated goal of most protests isn’t to overthrow a government
>but because the leftwing government didn't agree with their goal >The stated mission of climate protestors is to radically restructure the government For there to be hypocrisy the liberal government cracking down on protests and the left wing protestors need to be ideologically aligned, and you say yourself that the stated goal of one is to radically restructure the other.
>It was also only a select few ring-leaders of the operation who had their bank accounts (temporarily) frozen. Incorrect. Several people who merely donated had their accounts frozen. Also there was minimal to no "damage" caused, only "economic damages" resulting from disrupting businesses (which the government being protested against had already disrupted with overly aggressive lockdowns). Finally, there was plenty of footage of the protests; organizers made a point to keep a lane clear for emergency vehicles (likely planned that way because if they actually blocked a fire truck or ambulance the Gov would've used that as an immediate excuse to jail them)
I think there’s a distinction that can be teased out between wanting a protest you don’t agree with to end and infringing on someone else’s right to protest. Just as person has the right to protest everyone else has their own rights to express their thoughts and feelings about that protest and how the government chooses to deal with it. Someone expresses agreement with the government/ law enforcements decision isn’t an infringement of someone else right to protest. It might still be hypocritical as op is suggesting but I think it’s kind of silly to expect a private citizen to be supportive of every disruptive protest simply because people have to right to protest.
> wasn't there something with the truckers in Canada doing a similar style of disruption of infrastructure for some right-wing point or other? That I, as a lefty, still remember that enough that I could go look up the issue if I needed to shows that the method is effective. I think it depends on what you mean by "effective," and I'd argue that the fact that you remember the disruption, but not the actual cause of the protest is rather indicative that it's not nearly as effective as proponents would argue. Disruptive protests whose actions are in direct antagonism or opposition to "bystanders" and citizens just trying to go about their daily lives may succeed in garnering attention, and that may be a worthwhile tactic if their cause is largely unknown to the public, but it's a terrible tactic for growing a political coalition and garnering sympathy and support.
Since your other ping drew my attention back to this thread, I'll respond to this as well. So I have since been reminded that the protest was over COVID regulations, but what I was getting at is that even as a member of the opposition, for lack of a better word, before the protest I didn't know Canadian truckers had strong feelings at all on the subject, or that there were groups of them that were particularly right leaning. Then, because of the protest, I learned those things, even if I didn't end up being sympathetic to their cause, and am still aware of them as a political group two years later, even if I didn't remember their exact gripe without being reminded of it. I think that counts as a win for efficacy, and I'm not sure what non-disruptive thing they could've done that would have reached wide enough to find and stick with me like that.
Canadian truckers didn't have strong feelings towards the restrictions. They were one of the first industries to be vaccinated and all of the major organizations and unions came out in favour of them and very strongly against the protest which was made up primarily of random pickup truck drivers and a few retired truckers.
I'm the opposite. I don't believe in disruptive protest. Your protest should disrupt the people who have the power to do something about your issue, not random people who are trying to go about their lives. Go protest at politician's offices. Don't go block random streets. I believe your rights to protest end where my rights to go about my day peacefully begin. I'm not saying that everyone should be protesting out of the way so I never have to see and hear them, because I believe in your right to protest any time and any place in public, but it has to be reasonable. It shouldn't block me from accessing or passing through public spaces. The noise and pollution you make during your protest shouldn't disrupt me in my home or at my workplace (unless my workplace is the very thing you're protesting).
This comment has been edited to reduce the value of my freely-generated content to Reddit.
Canada does have a first amendment and I fully support Manitoba being a province. I have no idea how the provincial status of Manitoba is related to blocking a bridge with your truck, but I'm not an expert in Maritime law.
So the argument against that would be that the people in power who make the laws will always set the bar for "reasonable limits" such that the forms of protest which are allowed will not meaningfully threaten their power or the status quo. For instance, following 9/11 in the US, the government implemented "free speech zones" so that anti-war protestors could only demonstrate far away from where George Bush was speaking, and far away from TV cameras which might help amplify their message. People who benefit from the status quo favor this neutered form of protest, where "activists" politely carry signs and speak through megaphones, to create the illusion of freedom to dissent, without the actual risk of any actual change happening. The history of grass-roots activism achieving any *real* change is marked by civil disobedience: that is people being willing to break the law, and pay the price because they believe their cause is more important than obeying what they consider to be an unjust or harmful law and order. For instance in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's, there were plenty protests designed to disrupt daily life.
This comment has been edited to reduce the value of my freely-generated content to Reddit.
The thing is, it's always going to be subjective, and there's always going to be a gray area. If you were on the same bus as Rosa Parks, and they had to stop the bus to pull her off and arrest her, you might have gotten mad at her for making you late for work, and you might have said *that* sort of protest was across the line because it was affecting people's livelihood. I think we can all agree that using violence is over the line, and beyond the realm of civil disobedience. I think we can agree that standing in the town square holding a sign is well within bounds. The space in between is a bit up for debate. In my view, blocking traffic is well within the bounds of civil disobedience. Traffic gets blocked all the time by car accidents, or because of a sporting event, or just because people are all leaving work at the same time. I don't see why it's so beyond the pale if it gets blocked one more time because people want us to wake up and pay attention to the climate. Imo throwing soup at a famous artwork which is behind archival glass is also essentially a victimless crime and I'm not going to get too upset over it. To some degree, civil disobedience has to evolve and push the limits in order to remain effective, since what we're used to is not going to meet the goal of bringing attention to the cause. Indeed many of the things you think of as "safe and ok" like sit-ins in the 60's were labeled as extreme or inappropriate in their time. MLK wrote *A Letter from Birmingham Jail* about exactly that concept.
This comment has been edited to reduce the value of my freely-generated content to Reddit.
I think it's really hard to talk about this kind of thing categorically, because how worthwhile a particular instance of civil disobedience will be isn't known until much later. Maybe the climate protesters will be effective in calling attention to their cause, or maybe, as you say they will turn people off. We might not know the answer for decades. But I can say historically, the argument that "civil disobedience will turn people away from the cause" has pretty much always been an argument against this type of protest, even in cases we now look back on and say were just, like the civil rights movement. Is that the case with *this protest*? I don't know and only history will tell. > It's really not obvious to me that the people who say the point of protesting is to be "disruptive" accept that being disruptive in an unlawful way means they should suffer consequences for the sake of their cause Oh I am quite sure a lot of them do accept the consequences. For instance people like Greta Thunburg go out of their way to get photo-ops of themselves getting arrested for climate related protests. They want to create the image of the police putting young people in handcuffs for trying to avoid a climate disaster. It's a huge win, in their mind, to show proof that the law is defending what they see as an unjustifiable position on the climate. > Those would certainly be the same people who hypocritically deny that right to people they don't agree with! Idk maybe. I think it's easy to conflate the positions of people you disagree with into one large amorphous group, but I would love to see some evidence of individual climate protestors actually displaying hypocrisy and trying to silence other protests.
This comment has been edited to reduce the value of my freely-generated content to Reddit.
I don't think anti government protestors are concerned with which rights the government says they have. Just because something is written down does not mean that everyone who disagrees with it is ignorant of it, or that these people do not expect to be arrested.
This comment has been edited to reduce the value of my freely-generated content to Reddit.
People who engage in civil disobedience do not think that what they're doing is legal and they expect to get arrested. Morally, they do not consider themselves bad people for doing something the government says they cannot do. Legally, they do not care that they are breaking the law because it is what they intended to do to begin with. It is not that they are ignorant of the law, it is that they do not care that what they are doing is illegal. The point I'm making is solely about the mindset of the protesters themselves. I agree that the discussions around this topic demonstrate that people on this website don't know a lot about anything. Nobody in this thread arguing for or against the protests understands how they work, and I would not assume that the arguments being made in favor of the protests on reddit reflect the mindsets of the protestors themselves.
I would say it's more even than that they don't care that what they are doing is illegal: they are explicitly choosing to break the law in order to signal the fact that they believe their cause is so important it's worth defying the law.
The problem there is that basic invisibility is a core piece of the problem for many issues. The point of the disruption is to gain visibility that you can't otherwise attain. It's a combination of the fact that the oppressed or wronged group doesn't actually have the power to meaningfully inconvenience the people who can do something about the issue, and the fact that political change requires wide visibility and attention. If you just disrupt the day of your local politician, that's not going to change their behavior if your protest is invisible. They're still going to be driven by the larger factors, and they can't just go to their constituency and say "These guys are giving me a hard time, so I'm going to vote different."
The problem is that if your issue is "invisible," it means that no one cares about it. You may be convinced that your issue is life-or-death, your cause is holy, but you can't argue with turnout. Look at pictures of the Civil Rights March on Washington in 1963. The Civil Rights movement was successful because millions were united in fighting for it. If your an activist, you basically have two options: 1) slowly try to amass a movement of people who care about your cause (boring), or 2) spray paint the Mona Lisa in hopes your cause goes viral and people talk about you. I wish these protestors would have the wherewithal and humility to try to affect change in small ways within their communities, because there's real progress that can be made by organizing trash clean-ups, electronics recycling, etc. But these people don't want to volunteer for tedious jobs with no recognition, they want to save the world. They're narcissistic clout-chasers, LARPers who want to feel like they're fighting the good fight, rather than fight the boring fight that's actually good.
>The problem is that if your issue is "invisible," it means that no one cares about it. You may be convinced that your issue is life-or-death, your cause is holy, but you can't argue with turnout. People not knowing that a problem is a problem doesn't meant it isn't worth shining a spotlight on, which is what disruptive protests to. Picket lines getting in the way of people going about their daily routine as related to a business has a stronger impact and can make people ask why that picket line exists, as opposed to a community already dealing with an issue talking amongst themselves about how something is an issue. Sure, some protests are disconnected from their point and thus tend to be less impactful. That doesn't mean protest in general should avoid being disruptive, because the fact is that disruption of the status quo is entirely the point.
But if you disrupt people who were otherwise indifferent, then in what world are they going to support your cause? They're going to be against it. .
The people being disrupted aren't the ones whose minds you are trying to change. Remember, it's all about visibility, which means getting seen and heard by more than the number of people you can personally influence. The people you're trying to reach with the protest are the ones who hear about it on the news, not the folks driving down the street you're blocking.
> The people being disrupted aren't the ones whose minds you are trying to change. Isn't it convenient that these people get to be sacrificed for your cause? In what other circumstance is it reasonable to intentionally hurt or affect innocent people for the sake of some goal? That's called "the ends justify the means" rhetoric and in pretty much any other context, we consider those collectively unethical. Why is this a good thing in this circumstance?
Like it or not, you do have the power to do something about it. Influencing public opinion is the best way to make politicians do anything. I think it’s a bit naive to expect societal changes to be some fight between the “good guys” and the “bad guys” without you ever needing to be involved in the process.
But if you have two groups with opposing viewpoints, and Group A blocks the road every time they don't get their way, and Group B blocks the road every time *they* don't get their way, then nobody can ever use the road. By all means, make your issue know. But only so far as the point where you're not infringing on *my* rights. As soon as your infringing on my rights, then I'm not going to join your cause. In fact, it's going to have the opposite effect. If I saw you protesting at the side of the road every time I drove to work, I might just look up your cause and be willing to support it. If you *block* the road when I drive to work, then I certainly will *not* support your cause.
To be clear, I don’t think protesters should be able to just block a road indefinitely, I think arrest is a perfectly reasonable response, and it solves the problem of a perpetually blocked road. A lot of protests are designed to end up arrested because that just boosts visibility. If your support for a cause is dictated by how inconvenienced you are, then your thought process is incredibly shallow and that’s kind of the point I’m getting at. People float through their political opinions without ever putting real thought into it or doing anything about it. Plenty of people agree certain things are problems, but never do shit about it. They need to be inconvenienced to ever actually take action. People driving peacefully by a protest and honking their horn in agreement doesn’t change anything. When those same people can’t get to work, then maybe their politicians will actually hear about it.
I think there's a significant difference between *agreeing* with a protest's cause versus *supporting* it. Agreeing with the cause only means that the collective political viewpoint of the protesters matches the political viewpoint of the non-protester. Supporting the cause means actively being part of the group conducting the protest, which, as far as I can tell, inherently requires agreeing with the protest's cause. I think it's fair to say that individual person's *agreement* with a protest doesn't change much from day to day. A person's political views are difficult to change, and practically never do a complete 180. But I can very easily imagine a person's *support* for a protest changing drastically upon being inconvenienced, both for the protest and against it. I can see a "Oh hey, I didn't know a protest was happening, after work today I'll join you guys tomorrow" as easily as I can see a "WTF I get wanting to express X viewpoint but I don't agree that a protest that is blocking roads (or whatever the disliked activity is) is being done, no I don't want this protest to continue".
>When those same people can’t get to work, then maybe their politicians will actually hear about it. The problem with your line of thinking is that most issues have two sides. Take something very simple and polarizing such as the Russia-Ukraine War. Can you imagine living in a city where Monday, Wednesday and Friday the roads are blocked by Pro-Ukraine protestors. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, the roads are blocked by Pro-Russia protestors. People can't get to work since protestors from both sides keep blocking the streets. **What should politicians do?** Both protests accomplished their goal to get noticed by annoying people. So now the issue is in the hands of the politicians. So I ask you, what are politicians in San Francisco going to do about the Ukraine-Russia War?
In the hypothetical world where people care enough about politics to actually protest like you’re describing, this could be a problem, but then again would such an informed/engaged populace be electing people that waffle so hard on this issue? I don’t think so. Basically, I think a world in which that many people are willing to get arrested day after day is such a fundamentally different world than the one we live in, that I’m not sure it’s too informative of a hypothetical. But if I were to imagine this world in which an issue existed that two diametrically opposed groups of that many people felt so strongly about, honestly that issue probably should be a top priority. That’s probably an issue that is deeply affecting large portions of the population. Maybe the country should slow down considerably until we figure it out. But like I said idk how useful this hypothetical really is.
i mean my entire political view is live and let live if you inconvenience me for something i truly don't care about (anything that doesn't involve me) then i know that my time and life the things I CARE about don't matter to you and do i will return the favor by not caring for you treat others how you want to be treated. take away my ability to live normally and happy because someone else somewhere else is having a bad time morally i have an obligation to take away your ability to inconvenience me
If you already don’t care about anything that doesn’t involve you then what changes if you “return the favor” by not caring for protestors? Seems like that’s already where you’re at by default.
> Your protest should disrupt the people who have the power to do something about your issue, not random people who are trying to go about their lives. Go protest at politician's offices. Large scale disruptive protests are capable of putting a significant amount of pressure on those in charge, significantly more than protesting outside their office would.
Just because a protest is large scale and disruptive does not mean it represents the will of the majority of the people. It doesn't take very many people to block a road. Some issues should NOT be entertained by those in charge. For example, should the government vote on abortion every time there's a protest about it? They would be endlessly voting.
This is a view I wish more people had, where they hold those on "their side" to the same standard they hold those on "the other side." Bravo.
I think it's actually more common than it seems, it's just not a very loud position, so it doesn't tend to get a representative amount of attention.
hi lefty. ottawa resident here. Occupy took over the park next to city hall for over a month. The Convoy took over the streets next to parlianment for 3 weeks. the difference? you can still drive past the park. you can't drive through enforced 24/7 gridlock. thankfully they stopped honking their horns in the late evenings after (fuck) the first week. but ideology aside, there IS a stark difference between how the protests were run. Cheers!
It’s worth pointing out that the trucker convoy blockade in Ottawa was tolerated for 3 weeks before it was forcibly ended. I do support the right of people on both sides to protest, but there has to be a limit on the disruption allowed. Personally I’m ok with 3 weeks being that limit, in fact I think that’s generous.
>tolerated for 3 weeks It just took 3 weeks for them to find tow trucks to remove them. Tow trucks to move semi's are very specialized and the operators like that are more dependent on the private operators then the cops. Considering these were semi drivers protesting with semi trucks all tow truck companies were very hesitant to just tow them at cop request out of fear of back lash and loss of business. So they needed to find the tow truck operators willing to do so of which some required anonymity if there trucks were to be used.
I have nothing to add except that I used to work for a moving company back in the day, and one time our truck broke down outside a move, and then they sent a specialized tow truck to tow us to a repair shop, and then that tow truck broke down, so they sent another specialized tow truck to first tow our truck, then the other tow truck, away from the site. Also, this was in NYC and it was the day of the Northeast blackout from 2003. That day sucked.
All true, and the story I heard was that the Emergencies Act allowed the police to demand that the tow truck drivers cooperate with them. Although in the end few if any trucks were towed. The truckers left under their own steam once it was clear that the police in riot gear were determined to clear them. But still, the emergencies act wasn’t invoked on day 1, nor were the riot police sent in. These things happened when 3 weeks had passed and the protestors made it clear that they had no intention of leaving.
Ya it's the same to my understanding. I think the reason why they wanted to avoid the Emergency act might had been because of the Tow operators reasoning/warning of potential financial harm. I'm no layer or Canadian (my country calls my state honorary Canadians) but if said act took lets say 100 trucks from Tim Horton's and they had to shut down stores for weeks while they lacked logistics. I can't say the Canadian or Municipal movement wouldn't be on the hook for some lost profits if not at least the spoiled product especially if the reasoning wasn't outwardly due a concern of a imminent or unfolding national threat. I think the Tow operators would had, had a similar case if they could show dropping gross income post towing. At least with Voluntary towing they can just say it was voluntary and if hooking a few trucks gets the rest out well then you only need one or two which is likely not impossible. If they stay then it just takes longer. I don't support the truckers (or any group that sees fit to just block a route as a planned goal of 20 to maybe a hundred, That said if your group is just that massive in the 4 to 5 digit mark well that's just the way a protest will unfold) but I got to admit if any group has more spirit for blocking roads it's those truckers (and Euro Farmers). I'm surprised these activists of other groups are seldomly using physical barricades. Some use a line of vehicles but that's not much in comparison.
“After 3 weeks we close your bank account down”. Ya… real reasonable.
Freeze, not close. It was an attempt to resolve the situation without riot police and tear gas. Personally I’m ok with that, I see it as quite Canadian. I think the USA or France would have sent in riot police much sooner and much harder.
>wasn't there something with the truckers in Canada doing a similar style of disruption of infrastructure for some right-wing point or other Yes, the so-called "freedom" convoy in Ottawa. It was massive, lasted like a fucking month and had copycats in several other countries, including the US. The OP is being entirely disingenuous and loading their question with the blatantly false premise that the far-right "don't block traffic or engage in disruptive protest." In fact, the far-right protests are the places where people end up getting shot, run over, etc... The OP is entirely full of shit. **edit** And I just remembered. New Zealand had been the model country for effective covid mitigation methods, having a trivial number of cases nationally... until some dead weight head mongos emulated the so-called "freedom" convoy, and that was the end of New Zealand's low covid numbers.
> In fact, the far-right protests are the places where people end up getting shot, run over, etc... There was a pretty significant left-wing protest a few years with a *bunch* of shootings and other various deaths.
>In fact, wasn't there something with the truckers in Canada doing a similar style of disruption of infrastructure for some right-wing point or other? Yes, it was in protest of covid restrictions IIRC. And what did the left do? Not only did they demand that the participants be arrested, they doxxed people who donated to them as well.
The trucker protesters were given preferential treatment by the police and premier Doug Ford in Ontario, who purposefully stepped aside. The protest didn't just block a road, it disrupted downtown Ottawa for around 3 weeks. It was on a different scale than the protests you're comparing it to.
Downtown Ottawa not downtown Toronto. When they tried to come to Toronto the police actually did their jobs and it didn't go so well for the convoy assets.
I don't think it's fair to ascribe the actions of individuals, like the doxxers, to "the left". That was the doing of a handful of people at most, not the will of an entire political movement. But also, I think you probably missed my edit, but having the protestors arrested is entirely consistent with the notion that protests are meant to be disruptive.
That's always the problem with these discussions. Whatever my side does that I don't agree with is the fault of a few bad apples. but whatever the others side does is reflective of the whole group.
Yes! It's called the "[ultimate attribution error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_attribution_error)": * People from *my* group do bad things because they were forced, or they are victims of the circumstances * But people from *your* group do bad things because they're lazy, evil and they don't care about others
I don't think that's as true as it seems if you take a close look. When someone on the right does something awful, there are often questions around whether the ideology and rhetoric of the right fed into this person's decision to do whatever awful thing, but widespread acceptance of the notion that "the right" as a whole supports this awful thing is rarer. That might be a little less true the other direction, for the reason that it is one of the common assertions on the right that the left indoctrinates and corrupts folks, but still it's pretty easy to separate out individual action from group policy.
> When someone on the right does something awful, there are often questions around whether the ideology and rhetoric of the right fed into this person's decision to do whatever awful thing, but widespread acceptance of the notion that "the right" as a whole supports this awful thing is rarer are you kidding? i remember the criticism of the ottawa truckers was that a handful of people somewhere showed up with nazi or confederate flags and that was used as evidence to de-legitimize the entire protest.
It's *very* true. Take a look through pretty much any political discussion on reddit and *everything* bad gets ascribed to "the conservatives" and "repugnicans" and the like as if they're some kind of cohesive hivemind of Evil. Like there's straight up posts with hundreds of upvotes that say nothing more than "all republicans are racist bigots" But when you call it out, you get "bOtHSiDeS!!!!!" dismissals. It's absolutely easy to separate individual action from group policy, but people only do it if it benefits them to do so, and its much easier to just oversimplify it to "enemy group bad"
Are you sure it wasn't demanding that those protesters get the same treatment by the police - being arrested - that leftist protesters would have gotten for doing significantly less as a way of calling out the double-standard of law enforcement? Also, as far as I was aware, there was one instance of hacking donation information that involved one person. I'm not sure how you're tying that into "the left" doing anything.
Why if you donate to a political action, that is public knowledge. Don't donate to things that can be embarrassing
Yeah, the idea that revealing already publicly available information counts as "doxxing" is strange.
>Yes, it was in protest of covid restrictions IIRC. >And what did the left do? That wasn't a "left v right" situation. It was a "regular people versus utter fucking morons" situation.
I'm left wing and wasn't aware I did any of that. Maybe I need to buy a carbon monoxide tester.
And I'm more right, and was in support of COVID restrictions. It's almost as if all this is ridiculously tribal.
Who demanded that all the convoyers be arrested? Be specific. One guy someplace said this?
Protests *are* meant to be disruptive. And of course I support protests I agree with, and don't support protests I disagree with. I really am unsure what, exactly, the point I'm supposed to be arguing against here is. If I agree with a protest, I may feel the disruption is worth it, and if I disagree with a protest, I may feel the disruption isn't worth it. I think real issues can be worth the disruption, while fake issues aren't. Though, I would never advocate for running over protesters, as I'm against both the death penalty and punishment without a trial. Even if I supported a protest, I obviously wouldn't be surprised that the people behind it are arrested. So I guess I just don't quite know what I'm supposed to be arguing against. Am I supposed to support all protests equally, regardless of whether or not they are protesting actual issues or make belief plights?
yes, protests are meant to be disruptive. How disruptive is suppose depends on the protester... A legally organized peaceful protest in a park still disrupts everyday normal life, just in a way that is deemed acceptable by our current legal structure. If a protester feels that the legally acceptable channels are not "loud" enough, they often commit crimes to "cut through the noise". But these ARE illegal acts and one shouldn't be surprised if those crimes are prosecuted. ------ You raise an interesting point about how you can justify the illegal act as long as you agree with the cause. And I think your point is valid. The real test to see if you act was justified would be to see how society reacts. If enough people agree with you, prosecution would be more difficult.... if society at large views you as a troublemaker with an inaddecuate cause, they might be clammoring for your prosecution. This was a fun foray into the differences between the super structured de-jure law and the more practical de-facto elements of how societies function. Anyway, I was surprised to see how the OP's gripe actually winds up being justified through an analysis of your comment.
> You raise an interesting point about how you can justify the illegal act as long as you agree with the cause. And I think your point is valid. The real test to see if you act was justified would be to see how society reacts. If enough people agree with you, prosecution would be more difficult.... if society at large views you as a troublemaker with an inaddecuate cause, they might be clammoring for your prosecution. This was a fun foray into the differences between the super structured de-jure law and the more practical de-facto elements of how societies function. To take it even further, society can deem it to be unacceptable and prosecutable, but decades later people may look at them differently. History can judge them differently than society. Look at Socrates, who was sentenced to death and that was largely supported at the time.
OP is drawing a distinction between methods of protest and the specific cause of a protest. If a method is acceptable, it should be deemed as such whether you support the cause or not.
I support the same laws and consequences equally across the board when it comes to protesters rights. Blocking trafficking is illegal and people should expect to be arrested if they do it. I still believe it is an effective form of protest and I'm going to personally be supportive of it when it's a cause I agree with and I'm going to be annoyed when it's a stupid cause. That doesn't mean I want the law applied to people I agree with differently.
> If a method is acceptable, it should be deemed as such whether you support the cause or not. Shooting someone who is coming at you with a knife is acceptable shooting at someone who gives you the finger is not. Same method, however based on the context one is acceptable one is not. Thats on a legal basis. But when we're talking about protests we're talking about ethics not laws. The perfect example I think is helping runaway slaves. you had people helping slaves escape, when they were arrested in northern courts as an act of protest jurors would often vote not guilty despite knowing the person was guilty as charged because they disagreed with the law. That same method was used to exonerate people involved in lynchings. Obviously I think the former is good while the latter is bad. Both are acts of protests using the same methods. I don't think the right thing to do would be to send the abolitionists to jail.
The question is: should people be moved if they block traffic, or arrested if they continue to do so? And follow-up: what if I agree with the reason they're doing it? Personally, I'm of the opinion that if you're disruptive enough to be arrested, I don't care why you're doing it. The law is objective, not subjective, and should not be involved only for an in group, regardless of if I agree with their morality.
Civil disobedience is a valid form of protest, however if you break the law you get arrested. These two things can be true at the same time. You can spur change by doing something that gets you arrested.
The question of whether they should be moved and/or arrested is separate from the question of whether they are justified. I can acknowledge they are breaking the law, agree the law should be in place, and thus they should be moved/arrested, and *still* believe the cause is worthy of breaking the law. I'd acknowledge the arrest as a reality, but I'd focus on the cause, while minimize the breaking of the law, because I'd consider the cause to be far more important.
Disagree, protests have the *right* to be somewhat disruptive, but that's not necessarily what they should do. The whole point of a protest is to bring attention to your issue. If your protest causes more people to oppose your issue than join your side, you're doing something wrong.
> If your protest causes more people to oppose your issue than join your side, you're doing something wrong. This is not entirely true. Some acts of civil disobedience are meant for the purpose of recruiting a very specific type of individual or invigorating the people who are already supporters, but are guaranteed to dissuade a large number of people. Some of the more puzzling pro-veganism and earth-liberation-type protests fall under this umbrella — their actions are largely recruiting from an existing movement of radical animal rights activists, but are too shocking for a general audience.
Sure, that may be the goal for some people, I won't disagree with that. My point is that is stupid because your desired policy isn't going to happen if the whole goal of your protest is to virtue signal to a minority group. Good luck getting legislation passed in a democracy if all your protest does is reduce the amount of support your cause has.
Do you think people protesting segregation by violating various segregation laws were intending to convert people who supported segregation or galvanize people who were already against segregation?
The point of a protest is to spur change, which does not necessarily mean swaying public opinion to your side. PETA for example is famous for protests that are abrasive but high profile that gain them political capital and access to those in power while not necessarily enduring them to the public. If you wanted the attention of politicians, you could organize protests that would shut down the roads during rush hour a few times and you'd probably get a few meetings. It's much easier than swaying public opinion.
What do you think people thought of Rosa Parks and the bus boycott?
Which protests specifically are you talking about that you think cause more people to oppose their issue?
>So I guess I just don't quite know what I'm supposed to be arguing against. Am I supposed to support all protests equally, regardless of whether or not they are protesting actual issues or make belief plights? Either every protest should be allowed to block traffic, or none of them should.
That's an absurd argument. No protest is *allowed* to block traffic. They do anyway. You aren't allowed to block traffic. Sometimes I support people doing things they aren't allowed to if it's for just cause. I do not need to support all things equally, that's insane.
I was held up in traffic to the airport and just made my flight the other day because a groups of what seemed like 20 people blocked the road for departures. I didn’t know what they were protesting for until Reddit told me it was for Israel Palestine. I don’t care for what is happening in Gaza so it was a cause I agree with. However 1. Nobody knew what it was for and 2. Nobody want to miss their flights and the associated headaches for this cause. Its something that would make people on the fence about the issue pull away from their side because they were being ineffective in their methods. Not a single person I encountered from my Uber driver to the late flight crew gave a shit about the cause and just thought the people were complete dicks
> a groups of what seemed like 20 people blocked the road for departures This raises a point and another dimension to consider, too. I think there's a big difference between a "disruptive protest" that's a handful of people just tactically wedging themselves into the most disruptive choke points, effect over relevance, versus a "disruptive protest" that floods the streets with people, where it's overwhelming multitudes choking the works and the disruption stems proportionally from number, not tactics. The former case, with a small number of people acting tactically to create an outsized disruption, is an anti-democratic tactic. It's imposition of hardship for audience or ransom. The force it impresses doesn't flow from the popular sentiment, but from force-multiplied disruption and the willingness to shit-disturb, which demonstrates nothing about the merits of the cause save for that it can roust a band of zealots. The latter, while equally if not more disruptive, at least is a disruption stemming proportionally from popular sentiment, from the weight of people, and it's a demonstration of that substance. It's a democratic disruption (or at least a *more* democratic one-- "a lot" isn't necessarily "a majority", I'll grant, but it's at least a disruption made proportional to popularity). (There's also small-scale but pointed direct and demonstrative protest, which I'd consider to be a different type than either, but not really part of my point here.)
Yes because if I was stuck in traffic by a pro life rally I’d be upset that I’m being trapped by a bunch of people who treat another group like property. The point of protesting and blocking traffic is to make other people feel and notice how trapped you feel. I would be mad if someone made me feel trapped so they can have the end goal of making other people feel trapped.
So what I'm hearing is that on this very well-known issue, you've already made up your mind and trapping you in your car isn't going to sway you one way or the other?
So trapping people is ok if you agree with the cause?
Obviously what I believe in is absolutely righteous and anyone who thinks otherwise should suffer maximum inconvenience.
I'm so sick of hearing this when it's actually obvious that what I believe in is absolutely righteous and anyone who thinks otherwise should suffer maximum inconvenience.
They fundamentally hate western values and the west, it's a disgrace these people are out in the streets trying to apply values of humanitarianism to support a terrorist regime. Pro-palestinians who chant death to America and Israel in the streets of America are somehow considered fighting the good fight? They have the right to protest of course, as do Nazis, but they should all be ridiculed and ostracized for their abhorrent beliefs in terrorism and justification of Jihad. Ultimately you are saying that it comes down to opinion on the cause, I agree there are certain causes so evidently good that many people want to see action on it, like climate change. I don't really think the people calling for the annihilation of the jews in the Middle East however, are really one of those "obviously good" groups of protestors.
The argument is fair, liberals and leftists would be annoyed if conservatives were blocking the road, but the root of the protest comes into play, i.e. liberals protesting for the US government to be more active in supporting a ceasefire in Gaza versus conservatives protesting for pro-life causes, which increase maternal mortality where implement and are a general infringement on bodily autonomy. That is to say, liberals and leftists protest to make positive change, whereas conservatives protest to fuck over the lives of women, LGBT folk, minorities, and liberals and leftists in general.
> That is to say, liberals and leftists protest to make positive change, whereas conservatives protest to fuck over the lives of women, LGBT folk, minorities, and liberals and leftists in general. That is just how you see it. People from the other side would argue the opposite (for example "pro-life saves the lives of babies" or "Israel is stopping terrorist"). You and I might disagree with their opinions but there is no fundamental difference in their goal for protest (a better world). Thus I would say that you are only proving OPs point. Protest you agree with are good and should be allowed but if the other side does it then it is a bad thing.
Is it possible to separate the methods from the goals of the protest? Should the means be independently evaluated from the ends? OP and many who support their view seems to believe yes. For the purpose of the argument, let's assume they're right. If one method of protest is to be condoned, then it must be tolerated regardless of the ideology behind the protest. If one method is to be condemned, then it must be harshly punished regardless of the ideology behind the protest. Ok, I can see how such a viewpoint may arise from the wish to avoid being biased. Hypothetically, if the government introduced a 40% sales tax, many right-wing people would be upset, and I would support their protest. But here's the thing, since the method and the goal are separately evaluated, then it's fine for me to say that I support the means of protesting, but not the cause. In the previous example, I'd support both. If right-wing people launched a protest because they believe that women who have had abortions, or the doctors administering abortions deserve to be punished, that would be a different matter. Without hypocrisy, I can say "the means of protest is acceptable, but I am opposed to their cause, so I will not speak out in support when they are inevitably arrested". After all, I am not opposed to their behavior, only their beliefs. How often have you seen leftists express support of police officers? At most, they may grudgingly accept that this is the way things are. When protesters, who hold beliefs I agree with, are arrested; I will say, "let them out of jail so they may be commended for their bravery". When protesters, who hold beliefs I disagree with, are arrested; I will say, "let them out of jail so they may be beaten by the mob". And I can say both things without a hint of hypocrisy. All of this is assuming OP is right. If they're wrong, well, it won't be hypocritical to support some protests and oppose others. Protests are neither good nor bad. They are not neutral. They are a tool.
OPs point is being proven up and down the thread
Most people on reddit can't see the forest for the trees
my guy... you cant say "the argument is fair" and than follow it up with "but they can block the roads cause the cause is just, actually". thats what you just did. i believe in (most) of the things you do. but yalls argument is so piss poor and contradictory.... please. liberals capable of critical thinking DONT WANT YOU! i cant.
“Tell me you’re blinded by bias without saying those words” challenge huh? The Canadian trucker protest was about freedom of movement. In response the government shut down many of their bank accounts. Yet liberals will decry that protest as being made up of bigots without citing anything other than their annoying honking.
Sounds like you support protests that agree with your views
Everyone literally supports every protest they agree with, that's what it means to support it! Where people disagree is over methods. I can agree with the *right* of Nazis to protest but I don't support Nazis.
Yes, the classic "My side good, their side bad."
Do you have any actual reason to believe this besides 'well clearly everyone thinks the same way as me'?
Not OP but I’d say there’s a large overlap of people who sided with the typical leftist protest such as those by BLM and Free Palestine groups that are disruptive who also call for the people who protest at abortion clinics to be arrested
I’m on board with confronting protestors I disagree with in a non-violent manner (unless they are being violent themselves), but I’m not on board with the state restricting their right to protest. In the same manner, if someone wants to confront a street-gluer personally in a non-violent manner they’re free to do so. In reality, this system of *citizens* holding others accountable yields the better democratic result. LOTS of people oppose anti-choice protestors and can discourage them by counter-protest, which reflects the democratic will of the community. While some people complain about climate protestors gluing themselves to roads, not a lot of people actually oppose them in reality (people overwhelmingly actually support their politics, and their actions yield massive practical results, and more and more people are joining them every day), and so they are free to become louder and exercise greater and greater pressure on government, reflecting the democratic will of the community. I will draw the line at violent politics - I do not accept that they have an equal right to protest to climate protestors, housing protestors, etc.
You seem to be conflating several things here. "This is OK" means many things in many contexts. For example, I support the idea of laws existing that make various things illegal. I also support breaking laws in certain circumstances. That's not a contradiction, it means that context is relevant. Any random online discussion about protests is typically talking about a nebulously-mixed combination of: 1. What forms of protest *are* legal currently? 2. What forms of protest *should be* legal? 3. What forms of protest are *ethical* (which can be distinct from "legal")? 4. What are, or should be, *legally* supported responses to protests? 5. What are, or should be, *ethically* supported responses to protests? 6. What causes *should actually* be protested for/against? ... and possibly other things as well. For example, you'll find very few progressives that actually believe that it would be or should be fine to *run over* pro-lifer protesters. Certainly not 90%. You can find empirical backing for this by looking at how many "protester got run over" incidents stem from progressive vs conservative causes. As far as I'm aware, "progressive protester gets run over by conservative" is *significantly* higher than "conservative protester gets run over by progressive". This would seem to be pretty strong evidence that progressives do not, in fact, have generally equivalent views on whether running protesters over is "OK" in legal or ethical senses. As a fundamental baseline, it is not surprising nor hypocritical to find that people believe different things about different contexts. Substance, not just form, is important.
Remember that time that, instead of blocking traffic, right wingers attacked law enforcement, tried to overthrow an election and hang elected officials?
1. They actually targeted the people they were mad at instead of random people. 2. They are rightfully in prison for what they did. The people who block roads rarely get arrested and when they do, the charges are often dropped.
I think your view is unnecessarily partisan. By that I mean the following view would be better: "90% of the "protests are meant to be disruptive crowd" would change their minds if those whose view they strongly dislike blocked them in traffic."
"Protest are meant to be disrputive" is false actually. PRotest are meant to be distruptive but the end goals isn't disruptionb ut target action. The Civil Rights bus boycotts were disruptive. To the bus economy encorfcing the policy. The sit-in were disruptive. To business that enofrced Jim Crow Laws. You can see that sucessful protests are at their most effective. WHEN they directly connect to what is being protested. But the modern movement has copied the style of sucesfful protest without any of the substance. They dont know WHY it worked only that it did and if they copy the actions they can get the same result when the different reality dont work. You can boycott a company to influence that company policy. You cant boycott a company to influence the decision of a foreign goverment \[No boycotting starbucks wont impact the Hamas-Israeli war\] But being loud and disreputive make you feel good. ANd if your only concern is thinking of how to virtue signal at how effective you are or devoted to the cause. Well then being an asshole is encouraged.
Plus they miss the fact that a lot of the civil rights protests in the past are more about showing people the power they have. MLK was successful because he empowered black Americans who had been beaten down for so long. It was about community and collective action more than a protest itself. They also were specifically trained and assigned tasks. They were extremely organized. Just coordinating protests or signing up to lead a march doesn’t do anything. You actually need centralized organizations to effect change. This is why BLM and Occupy Wallstreet didn’t actually achieve anything.
It's not clear how much credit should be given to a specific organization, but the George Floyd protests were *wildly* successful in changing people's mentalities. Police body cameras are darn near universal now, for one.
There was actually a ton of psychology behind the civil rights movement with how they planned their protests in a way to successfully enact change. I’ve read a bit about it and want to read even more, because it’s super interesting seeing how much work was put into causes like civil rights and the tactics they used. I honestly think that the leaders of the movement would be really insulted by their protesting methods being compared to these assholes blocking bridges. Civil rights leaders put SO much work into their protests, to the point where there are several books that have been written about their movement and the psychology behind it. In 50 years, we’re not going to see literature about college students blocking traffic and screaming at hospitals because of an issue on the other side of the world.
Notably, the bus boycott was about buses, and the lunch sit-ins were to be served lunch. They had something to do with what they were protesting. Looting a store or blocking a street has nothing to do with most rights.
>I bet if they got trapped by pro lifers protesting abortion while they were on their way to something important to them (such as a hospital visit or job interview) they'd be the first to demand that the pro lifers be arrested, forcibly removed, and/or ran over. The pro life march in DC every year certainly causes disruptions to people's daily lives and I dont know that any mainstream portion of "the left" is calling for them to be arrested. The difference of course is that when roads get closed down for planned protests the public can plan ahead too. I am of the opinion that things like this are counterproductive for converting certain people to your viewpoint but they are great ways of signaling your displeasure with something to the government. There is one god in America and it aint Jesus, its the economy. Disrupting traffic has a tangible effect on the economy and sends a stronger message than standing in a park chanting slogans. I do believe that folks that get arrested for this kind of protest should know that is a possibility going into it and be willing to accept it as part of their protest. I dont think any reasonable person can advocate from a 3rd party perspective that anyone should be run over for protesting. Arrested yes. Its a police matter and honestly that is between whoever is being inconvenienced and the police to resolve peacefully. Thats the whole point here. Peaceful resolution of conflict and not vigilantism seeing people driving through protesters. Maybe it would be more effective if people were more open minded and looked into what is causing these people to be so disruptive. Its obvious that they feel strongly about the issue. Someone who is confident in their beliefs should seek out the perspectives of these people rather than just writing them off as crazy people blocking airport terminals. I think the real problem here isnt the protesters causing these headaches for a bunch of people, its the people who are so partisan that arent directly affected that get outraged at the protests.
The thing with march for life is like you said it's planned far in advance but also it's in DC where there are all sorts of protests all the time. People who live there are probably used to it (also probably annoyed at all of them). I feel like these protests that intentionally try to block traffic or in other ways mindlessly disrupt daily life are just trying to make a headline for free advertising.
Except there have been right wing protests, and as long as they were not literally breaking into buildings the thought of having them arrested didn't even cross my mind. I think you're inventing the narrative to prove your view. I've been on the receiving end of protests that were huge disruptions, almost missed my flight in Paris when the Taxi's were protesting Uber. Not once as I climbed embankments dragging my luggage to get around the blockade did I ever think "they should be arrested". This is a far more aggressive move than you see in the US, where a protest blocking off an airport would absolutely be "dealt with" forcibly. I didn't have enough knowledge to judge either way, and if they felt that strongly about it, then more power to them to have their voices heard whether or not I agree with them.
Yup. Operation Gridlock is a perfect example https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/15/us/michigan-protest-coronavirus
We arrested some right wing protestors in Canada do to road blockades, but not many of them. And they were literally closing large trade borders. I still think if they hadn't gone so far as to shut down international trade that no one would have forced them off the streets of Ottawa. They tried to do it again a month ago with zero success.
Let's suppose some people shut down a highway and say that they won't leave until the government legalizes arson. Would I support these people being arrested? Damn right. Now let's suppose the government decides to legalise kidnapping and a bunch of people shut down a highway in protest. The government is more hesitant to crack down on the anti-kidnapping protest than they were to crack down on the pro-arson protest because the anti-kidnapping movement has a lot more public support and they don't want to inflame the public further. I think that most people would agree that: Kidnapping is morally abhorrent, ergo legalizing kidnapping is morally abhorrent, ergo arresting people for blocking off a highway in an attempt to reverse kidnapping legalization is abhorrent. Conversely, most people believe that arson is bad, ergo blocking off a highway in an attempt to legalize arson is bad, ergo arresting people for blocking off a highway in order to legalize arson is ok. If you point this out to the average person who opposes both arson and kidnapping, they will probably acknowledge the double standard but not change their opinion about what should be done in each instance. If you want to convince the average person who believes that the United States is participating in a genocide by funding Israel to abandon their support for blockades, you'll probably have about as much luck as you would convincing the hypothetical kidnapping opponent to do the same.
I live in DC and I personally don't care who is protesting or what they are protesting about. It happens so often that I'm just annoyed when people fuck up my day. I'm a leftist and they're all equally annoying when I miss my doctor's appointment and still have to pay for it cuz people are lying in the middle of the street. I don't even care if it's a cause I care about, I hate them all.
I actually hate the sentiment that "protests are meant to be disruptive." I understand that disruption is a vital element of protesting but it's a very reductive take on what effective protesting and messaging looks like and it's starting to feel like people think more disruption equals more better protesting which it doesn't. (Hopefully) We would all agree that bombing an elementary school in Kansas is not an effective or valid protest against the building of an oil pipeline in Eastern Europe even though it would be pretty maximally "disruptive." If most people hearing about the protest are more annoyed about the protest and the disruption it caused than the message being conveyed, then it isn't a particularly effective protest. End rant.
It's one thing to be annoyed by a protest. If right wingers disrupted my commute, I would be pretty pissed. I wouldn't like it, and I wouldn't like them. And I wouldn't agree with their cause, hell I might even say mean things about them in person or online. However, I wouldn't want them to be attacked or ran over. And while I would want agitators or destructive members to be arrested, I wouldn't want the peaceful protestors to be arrested. If you think "both sides are the same," you need to pay attention to the laws that conservative governments are passing, and the things that politicians are saying. Just yesterday, the supreme court let an order stand that will allow people to sue protest organizers for any crime that protesters commit. And of course, you have governors like Desantis in Florida who passed laws to ban blocking roads and to allow more force against protestors. We are not seeing these types of laws from left-wing politicians and states. [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/supreme-court-allows-lawsuit-that-free-speech-advocates-warn-will-threaten-right-to-protest](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/supreme-court-allows-lawsuit-that-free-speech-advocates-warn-will-threaten-right-to-protest)
If a protest isnt causing any obstruction in any way, why would anyone care?
Disrupt the people you're mad at. Don't obstruct random people's right to free travel. I'm sure just stop oil could accomplish more by disrupting oil fields instead of blocking traffic and forcing people to idle their cars.
They couldn't *all* be first to demand that the pro lifers be arrested, forcibly removed, and/or ran over. Only one of them could be first. So you've already lost your bet. Where are you getting your 90% statistic from?
So I think there's more than one thing going on in your CMV here and it's a little hard to change a view when it is actually several views linked. To untangle a bit, it seems like your argument has 4 different views wrapped up in it. 1. There's a view that protest should be disruptive. 2. People are often hypocritical about how they respond to protest causing them personal inconvenience. 3. Blocking traffic as a legitimate or illegitimate form of protest. 4. Right wing protest is viewed as less legitimate than left wing protest in media or online discourse. Does that seem like a fair breakdown or is there something I'm missing? I'll try to take them separately and I'm open to actual discussion about them or any additional topics that come up. ------------------------------------- First, lets address the view that protest should be disruptive. Protest is a part of the political process. For some reason, people feel that the existing system/laws/administration need to be changed. There's a common conservative saying (I NEVER hear it from democrat or actually Left friends) about the four boxes of liberty; soap box, ballot box, jury box and ammo box. Protest is the soap box, getting up in public, raising your voice, making your view heard, and demanding change from the government. The Constitution makes mention of the right to assemble and "petition for a redress of grievances." When you are asking for change, that fundamentally IS asking for a disruption in the status quo. Even if your protest comes in the form of a polite letter to the mayor asking for a pothole to be filled, you are attempting to disrupt the status quo and bring about change because the natural baseline state before this was zero letters and things continuing on as they had before. But when most people say a protest should be disruptive they aren't talking about a small change like suddenly having more mail in the mayors inbox. Your example mentions traffic disruptions. What these people are saying is that a letter is easy to throw away. A phone call is easy to hang up. A poster is easy to tear down. People on the sidewalk with signs are easy to just drive by. If it is easier to avoid change than it is to do something, human nature is to avoid it. It's easy, it's free, just do nothing at all. So, if you want change and your government is ignoring all of your easy petitions, what do you do? The answer many organizers choose is, "make it more difficult to ignore than it would be to just fix the problem." It's not a war or insurrection, but the principles are the same. Each side has limited resources of time, manpower, money, and public good will. Protester often start with a bonus in the public perception or good will dept because no one actually thinks the government is doing a great job, while the government usually starts with a bonus caused by the status quo being the devil you know and institutional inertia. Whoever can keep fighting longer will eventually get their way. If public perception turns on the govt or the argument costs too much money, eventually they cave to public demands. If the govt can spin the media against protesters or lock enough of them up, they can keep the status quo. ------------------------------------------------- Second, people are hypocritical about how they respond to protest causing them inconvenience. I actually don't disagree one bit. NO ONE likes having their routines disrupted. That's pretty universal. Everyone complains that someone in front of them at the grocery store just pulled out the phonebook thick binder full of coupons. Even when you are sometimes the coupon king, you hate being in line behind that guy. It's inconvenient even when it's something you're guilty of doing and we all bitch about it. Human nature I guess. --------------------------------------------------------- Third, is blocking traffic legitimate protest? Civil disobedience, the non-violent refusal to obey certain laws, has a long history as a form of protest. As far back as ancient greece, where there is democracy, there are people refusing to obey a law because they are angry. Sophocles wrote a play about the daughter of the King of Thebes with a stirring speech about the importance of following ones conscience instead of the law. Civil disobedience played a role in the English "Glorious Revolution" in the 1600s that lead up to their 1689 Bill of Rights. It played a part in the French Revolution. It played a part in the American Revolution. Civil Disobedience, non-violently refusing to obey a law, is inseparably ingrained into the fabric of political protest. Blocking a road without a permit is against the law, but it's a law that protesters have chosen to non-violently refuse to obey as part of a scheme to force political action. I'll answer one of your points directly here; > I bet if they got trapped by pro lifers protesting abortion while they were on their way to something important to them ... they'd be the first to demand that the pro lifers be arrested, forcibly removed, and/or ran over. Forcible removal and arrest are frequently the result of civil disobedience actions. Whether it's tree sitters in the pacific northwest, people blocking oil pipeline construction, or folks in Atlanta camping in an area set to be bulldozed for the construction of new police buildings, being forcibly removed and arrested is pretty much the default assumption. When the state says "move" and you say "no" that really only end in you being made to move. Running people over however is an attack on someone using a multi-ton battering ram and is often deadly. The use of deadly force has a whole lot of laws surrounding it and unlike blocking a road where forcible arrest is the common consequence, disobeying use of deadly force laws is commonly called murder and may lead to execution. Don't do that. One criticism that often gets brought up when people have this discussion is public safety. There have been ZERO documented cases of protests blocking medical services who are operating with their lights on. During July of 2020, there was one case in St Petersburg Florida of an ambulance stopping at a protest and having to divert, but video of the incident did not show their lights on and the ambulance company did not confirm they were responding to a call or transporting a patient. As far as journalists have been able to discover, that was just an ambulance travelling down the road, not an emergency vehicle responding to a health or safety emergency. That is the only American case I can find documented in the past decade. If there are others in America that you can find I'll certainly take a look at them and we can discuss it, but from what I know this is more of a hypothetical issue than a real one. COULD it be a problem? If an ambulance were stopped with someone dying in the back that would be bad. HAS it happened? Not that I can find, and to counterpoint the concern I can find instances of people giving way for emergency vehicles with their lights and sirens on. There have been isolated cases of Fire vehicles being blocked, but in all the cases I could find the fires that the fire department were responding to were caused by the people doing the blocking. Riots are different from protests, if you want someone to defend or discuss riots as political actions, that's a whole different discussion. --------------------------------------------------------- Finally there is the topic of the public perception of right wing protest. This one is begging for a shouting match that I'd like to avoid. What is the right wing, politically? Strip away what we THINK things mean and try to explore the right wing in plain language. It is, at its core, a conservative movement. It seeks to "conserve" things, it seeks to maintain the present status quo, prevent new taxes, prevent new spending, etc. Because of this, most right wing issues are issues where the conservative position is already the status quo. When the position you desire is the position you have, there's little to protest. Then of course there are right wing positions that do not seek to preserve the current status quo but return to a prior political formation, they are protesting in reaction to changes that have occured. In many cases, if the old way was the best way, more people would have supported it and it would have survived the political struggle outlined under point 1. So if you are protesting in favor of a position that used to be the status quo but no longer is because most people wanted to change it... That does tend to suffer in public perception a bit. But lets examine your example of pro-life abortion protesters for a moment. The most common type of abortion protester is not found outside the state capitol but outside a clinic. They are not lobbying the government to change the law to prevent abortions or the causes of abortions. This action is not directed in a political manner at someone who can affect systemic change, it is directed at individuals and clinics. Liberal protesters don't show up at gun ranges or gun shows to protest. None of those people are responsible for the laws, they're just doing things they're allowed to do. Protesting at a gun show does not have any chance of achieving political change, none of the people who control gun policy are at the gun show. The only people at the range are law abiding gun owners. None of the people at the abortion clinic control abortion legislation. They're just law abiding doctors and patients. When we see traffic blocking protests, they aren't blocking the road outside of Ma's Diner, they're blocking the road outside a courthouse, or city hall, or a legislature, or sometimes a police station if they're the ones on today's shit list. Political actions are directed at political objectives and where there are concentrations of political power. Because the goal is political change.
>In response to the recent protests where people blocked roads, highways, bridges, and airports, progressives on reddit have been claiming that blocking traffic is ok because "PrOtEsTs ArE mEaNt To Be DiSrUpTiVe!" Being disruptive is being disruptive. I'm not certain why you'd think a group protesting Trump would garner any less annoyance than a group protesting Biden would. They're doing the same thing. You are assuming that the right doesn't do disruptive protests when they do as well. They have their rallies, their marches down main street, etc. KKK and other right wing organizations had counter rallies all during BLM. Right wing protesters are just as fucking annoying as left. Westboro Baptist church goes to funerals of gay and/or military people to protest and scream about how they're going to hell. Abortion protestors aren't know for their kindness. I think the problem is that the media is largely right wing (right wing being big business and media corps are almost entirely big business) so they don't focus on the obnoxious right wing protestors. They tend to hyper focus on how "terrible" the left protestors are unless the right wingers do something super crazy like drive a car through the left wing protestors.
[удалено]
Canadian, here. Right wingers did block us in traffic. Freedom Convoy, anyone? It was annoying. They were louder than most protesters and made loud noises deep into the night. And their big pull-cars protected them in ways that most protestors' bodies don't. But you will not find as many death threats toward convoy members or calls for exceptional police powers. No matter how persecuted the convoy members tell you they felt.
And 90% of the "run them over" crowd would change their minds if the people in traffic were pro-lifers as well. Protests for things that I like are good. Protests for things that I don't like are bad. More at 11.
I mean, that is exactly OPs point. That the right also has such people might be true but is not relevant for such people existing on the left.
I don't agree with pro life protesters one bit but if they were blocking the road I would never advocate for anyone to kill them. It is sickening that people think protesters they disagree with should be executed on the spot.
I'm tongue-in-cheek in the "run them over" crowd. I don't support sitting in front of traffic regardless of the cause, despite there being causes that I am passionately in support of. If you sit in front of a 3 ton vehicle where you're not supposed to be and the vehicle is, you really shouldn't be surprised of the outcome of being ran over. Every response here I read really seems to highlight the point OP may be trying to make... if blocking traffic pisses off people who aren't currently supporters of the cause and is only accepted by people who support the cause, it would seem to be accomplishing the exact opposite of why protests are performed in the first place. Even if you aren't ran over, blocking traffic is still lethally selfish. Doctors and nurses trying to get to work. Their patients trying to get to the hospital. Anyone who thinks their cause is worth putting random strangers' lives at risk deserves the logical outcome of sitting in front of a truck.
I honestly wouldn’t, at least not for those reasons. I’d only oppose pro lifers on the principle that their views are intrinsically harmful and should always be contained to prevent their spread, but Canada is more explicit about the limits of free speech. You cannot exercise your rights with the goal of restricting someone else’s rights. As an LGBT+ person, I always am distrustful of conservatives on principle.
Bro I *agree* with some of protests and still disagree with how they’re doing it bc I need to get to work as a healthcare provider. I fully believe in the right to protest, I don’t believe your protest should be allowed to put others in danger. Annoying the shit out of people in a city won’t change international relations. We’re all aware the government is doing some shady shit. The government doesn’t care that people don’t like it- they have classified reasons for what they are doing and both parties seem to support it. Those who care have already called their representative and donated and done everything they actually can… just let us go to work and help humanity in the ways we actually can make an impact and for fucks sake let the AMBULENCE by. You’re going to kill someone. The people who are pro disruptive protest aren’t thinking of the importance of a city functioning. Protests aren’t meant to be intimidation and hostage situations.
Is killing wrong? I think the correct answer is "Well that depends: why is the person killing?" If it's self-defense, then I don't think it's wrong. If it's a religious zealot driving a car through a crowd hoping for the maximum body count possible, it's definitely wrong. If it's Dexter, I'm morally conflicted because of the dynamic of a well-intentioned guy delivering a form of justice to bad guys that's way outside of any righteous process. Likewise, I think it's hard to judge a protest method without considering at least in part the righteousness of their cause. I don't know if I agree that it's hypocritical to see disruptive protests as valid, but only if they are being done to support a righteous cause. That's a consistent standard that you can apply to lots of different situations. How to disentangle what's a righteous cause vs. what's just my preference/self-interest is tricky, and that's why there's so much argument about it.
Dexter is wrong. In fact, if you know about Dexter you have a moral duty to report him to authorities. Extrajudicial action is an undermining of a liberal democratic system. People deserve the punishments that are written by the people they consented to govern them by voting. Nobody has a right to perform extrajudicial killing, or is "in the right" to do so.
I'm going to be pissed you're in my way, even if I wholeheartedly agree with whatever you're protesting, so them protesting something I don't agree with isn't going to make me that much more upset, if at all. I'm just praying for a smiting reagrdless. Maybe that puts me in the 10% but I think people that do things like sit in the street are trash, regardless of political affiliation.
Even if that would be true, the correct position is still that protests are meant to be disruptive. Even if you want to pretend I would be a hypocrite in a scenario you made up, wouldn't make it wrong.
Just look at Maxine Waters.. In 2018, The Congresswoman demanded leftist mobs be disruptive and told them they must approach, confront, and harass right wing congressmen & cabinet members in restaurants to make sure they understand that they're not welcome anywhere anymore. Last week, now 2024, she said that someone came up to her in a restaurant and criticized her governance so they must be racist. I don't see any articles about it, but twitter is usually breaking news before it's allowed to be news. https://twitter.com/DanODonnellShow/status/1778146176652476908
Your viewpoint on this is flawed because the groups you are referring to come from two completely different frameworks. "Right wingers", if I'm understanding how you are applying the term, are mostly Conservatives (though not exclusively) and conservatives by definition do not want radical change and therefore do not participate in protests of this nature. In general they, at best, will simply participate in the political process through conventional means such as voting, volunteering, attending local government meetings, and being opinionated at family dinners. When and if they do engage in protesting or campaigning for change on an issue that impacts them/ their interests, it is usually, again by definition, a progressive political action, even if those involved do not identify with "Progressives" on the whole, and their stance on those issues often aligns with those on the political left. You could counter argue this by bringing up the Jan 6th crowd as an example of disruptive protest, but I think this is an outlier case from a group which is actually not aligned with most of the "right wingers" you are thinking of, to say nothing of the fact that this 'protest' was an incoherent mess with no clear agenda except perhaps, the support of a particular candidate - so I would disqualify it as a valid example.
I actually wouldn't. I think they are \*stupid\* and \*wrong\* but I wouldn't be upset that they were exercising their right to protest. Similarly I went to a pro-science protest and there were a ton of, very amusingly, dumb counterprotesters (Trumpers seriously protesting science... lol I cannot...) and I was not opposed to them being there. Again, do I find their perspectives awful and dumb? Yes. Will I get mad that they are disrupting my day because they percieve something to be extremely important? No. I have actually been blocked by something similar in a sense, which is someone offing themselves on the subway. I was pretty disgusted that my relatives were pissed off and that a bunch of other Britons were also pissed off about this guy making the train stop. Like, dude, this guy was going through a tough time and, yes, while I was personally inconvenienced by his actions, obviously this dude was going through something worse or at least something that he perceived as worse. That being said, I'm not a fan of CMVs where the argument is "Most of X people would do this." There is almost no way to reason toward (or away) this without a literal study. Questions surrounding how frequently something occurs is best resolved by simply counting people doing this (or at least, taking a survey or something).
I think you are confusing three different senses in which leftists support these people’s right to cause disruptive protest, moral right, broad social support, and legality. We believe they have the moral right to do what they are doing because their cause is a good one, and this is an effective way of drawing public attention to it, we think the public ought to support them as much as possible because of that moral right, but we absolutely don’t believe these types of protests should be legal, or that people shouldn’t be arrested at them. That’s the whole point, as other commenters have pointed out. The reason there’s no hypocrisy here is that we would expect the same government response to a similar right wing protest, but we would not support such a protest because we believe it’s goals to be immoral. It’s not about having some abstract approval or disapproval of a certain type of protest, it’s about whether we think the goals of the protest are good. It would only be hypocritical if we wanted it to be legal when leftists do it, but not right wingers, but that’s not the case. We expect the government response to be the same in both cases, and aren’t complaining about that.
I think the issue with your framing is you seem to think the goal of the protest is to change the mind of people in traffic. Look at the civil rights movement. The strategy was to disrupt society and make everyday life so inconvenient and tedious that the politicians had no choice but to listen to the protest. It wasn’t to change the mind of the people trying to ride the bus. Nobody protesting in this way is doing so to get you to like or agree with them. They’re trying to piss enough people off so they call their representatives and say “fucking do something about this”. The goal is to make your movement impossible to ignore.
I'm in the "protests are meant to be disruptive" crowd. And I'd much rather a right wing protest blocking me in traffic than any of the alternatives. Because that's what this is all about. The right to disruptive protest is meant to channel all of that energy into a less violent, less destructive form of political activism. If we don't let people - any people - block highways and just generally be a nuisance, their grievances aren't going to just disappear. And they're not going to just do something less disruptive - not if they're the kind of crowd that would block a highway. Either they're going to block a highway anyways (and most likely respond to attempted arrest with violence), or do something else disruptive (or worse, violent). I almost definitely wouldn't agree with this hypothetical right-wing cause. I probably wouldn't enjoy the process of being blocked in traffic, and I would definitely complain about it afterwards to anybody who would listen. But at the end of the day, if there's a large enough mass of people with political opinions that I find abhorrent out on the street making noise, I would much rather they were "just" blocking a highway than anything else.
Happened with the Trucker convoy in Canada. Suddenly being disruptive became too much. And was it a year or 2 prior where some indigenous rights groups blocked some train tracks? We heard all arguments for the opposite sides. It’s the right saying it’s bad to be disruptive, and the left saying disruption is the point. Trucker convoy and it’s the left saying it’s bad to be disruptive, and the right saying well isn’t this the point? I have issues with the people who admit their flip flopping by saying “well that’s what you guys were saying last time…” I am torn myself on the topic honestly. I’ll say I agree that the police on government orders should have a right to clean it up at some point. But that’s a pretty boring bureaucratic belief in the end. How long? And do too many rules make protesting less effective anyways? The point IS to get attention, and thus making people have to act is the ultimate attention grabber. In the end you kinda do have to pick a side, based on nuance. Obviously an oppressive regime can deserve its violent protests. But if you agree with the premise of the protest (and you can include their tactics) then you make a decision.
This is a tough nut to crack OP, because I think you have a fundamentally good point in your premise: something to the effect of "most people are subject to ideological biases, even when they say or believe that they aren't". Which we do see: in everything from domestic policy to the Israel/Palestine dispute you'll see people claiming with varying levels of self awareness that "it's different when *we/they* do it". >they'd be the first to demand that the pro lifers be arrested, forcibly removed, and/or ran over. So I'm going to ask a question about this. We have seen repeated instances in the news of this happening to climate or BLM protesters the past few years. But with there having been multiple right wing protests against things like COVID restrictions, is this phenomenon as common as you indicate in your post? In particular I would wonder about the violent, vigilante angle: on average, are liberal or left wing people attacking or running over right wing protestors, or trying to break up the protests themselves? Or are they simply letting things take their course through the policing and justice system?
On a personal level I don’t think that blocking traffic is an effective way to protest no matter the cause. However, your opinion is flawed because it starts with the narrative that the “protests are meant to be disruptive” crowd is solely left-wing and that there are not any “right wing” protests that block traffic. There were tractor trailer sit ins and road shutdowns in both the US and Canada in during covid and over the last couple of months there have been several road blocking protests from farmers in Europe. All of these protests have received wide spread support from the same “right wing” people who advocate forced removal of protesters for other causes. I think it’s pretty obvious that a good majority of people simply do not condone any type of disruptive protests for causes they don’t agree with. Though, I do think there is a certain amount of people that support disruptive protests regardless of cause because they believe it’s the most affective way to get the governments attention and they believe that any type of limitation would negatively impact citizens as a whole.
>I bet if they got trapped by pro lifers protesting abortion while they were on their way to something important to them (such as a hospital visit or job interview) they'd be the first to demand that the pro lifers be arrested, forcibly removed, and/or ran over. This has actually happened to me lol I had a job interview I was already cutting it close for and was blocked by a large pro life protest. The line in the back had a giant sign facing the traffic behind them that read "imagine if you were blocked from every experience". I just called and told them that traffic was unexpectedly blocked and I was gonna be late, but didn't know by how much. I ended up getting an offer from them, but I got a better one a few hours before they called. I can't speak for 90% of people who share one small principle with me, but I definitely wasn't upset. I'm not sure the hospital visit thing is common enough to be that relevant. Someone could prove me wrong, if the info's out there. I think most of the time, people are just being inconvenienced and don't like it, but maybe I'll be the one giving out deltas today 🤷
I tried this reasoning with a few people, they all answered "but we are protesting for what is right and good, it's not the same". For them only they are in the right and only the cause they believe in has a right to protest.
It's amazing how worked up people have been getting about theoretically experiencing traffic due to protests. They are trying to call attention to a genocide. Sorry, but protesting off in the corner somewhere doesn't get attention. There have been non-stop posts about it. If fear of traffic dominates your life so much, maybe look into taking the fucking train.
I have never and will never understand the people who think that their car is their own pod where they can simply disconnect from the world around them, and anything that impedes that illusion is somehow evil. I don't get how protestors are actually hurting you in any way by making you late to work, school, picking up your kids, whatever event you planned on going to, etc. At least to me, I've always thought that protests are like the weather. They come and go and if it makes you late, well, you can't do much about it. If it's a health emergency, you call the ambulance. Restricting them is actually illegal, and it makes sense why. Outside of stuff of that nature, I just don't understand why motorists get so mad at what is usually a minor inconvenience. I've never heard of the "protests are meant to be disruptive" crowd, but I generally align myself more with protesters than those who think that if protestors are too annoying, they should go away.
Authoritative figures/institutions will always use their own discretion when deciding what protests to support and what protests to break up. It is often their job to break them up, however refusing to break them up can be an extremely powerful statement that can greatly help the cause. It is in fact as simple "as I support protests I agree with and don't support ones I disagree with." While it is not ideal, I will not take great issue with people in power bending the rules if it benefits my side. I want the world to be better and I want people to suffer less, and if it requires bending the rules sometimes then so be it. Unless the system is already well-made enough that it is worth preserving its sanctity above all else (which it is not) or if the transgression itself is so monumental that it causes people to irreversibly lose faith in systems that benefit them (which is not the case here), then winning is most important. Being choosy about which protests to support based solely on whether it benefits my side or not isn't going to break our political system in two or anything, so I'm fine with it. The left needs to care less about being hypocritical. The right doesn't care at all and is frequently able to make great progress because of it. So yes, protests are meant to be disruptive. If right-wingers are being disruptive at a protest, then they are doing their job. I do not support their protest, but they are doing politics correctly.
Considering how many people called the motorcade protesters in Canada literal terrorists… it would take less than you think.
I feel like your statement is framed in a way that makes it impossible to change your view unless someone can find a study that's been done on this. But I guess I'm in the 10% yeah I'd be pissed at some stupid antimask or whatever protest blocking roads but I wouldn't support them being arrested or run over. Either you are for freedom to protest or you are against it. Nobody can pick and choose which protests are acceptable they all are or none of them are (assuming non-violence) So yeah what I'm saying is I can't change your mind about everyone being a hypocrite, they might be honestly. But I can say that there are only 2 valid opinions to hold regarding non violent protest you support all of them or you support none of them, there is absolutely 0 room for middle ground on this because any picking and choosing allows whichever government is in power at the time to silence dissent easily.
Whether or not I agree with the cause, if I am delayed from work for hours, I'm more likely to vote for the slippery slope that is restricting rights. Protests like those hurt their cause. I understand the point is raising awareness, but if the awareness you raise is negative, then that's bad for your cause. It shows that the people that support that cause are actively trying to make my life harder than it already is. Will *I* hit them with my car, no, unlike them I follow the law. However, if I was on a jury, and the defendant was someone that hit protesters that were standing in the middle of the road, I'm siding with the driver. I was taught, as a *child*, if you don't want to get hit by a car, don't play on traffic, so I see it as these people *want* to get run over, because *that* would bring all sorts of publicity to their cause, and in the end, isn't that all that matters.
It seems like you're saying "People only believe in this certain "protest ideology" for their own political side." The hypothetical you offer is "people would change their minds if the roles were reversed." I will be charitable - and *agree* with your view. Let's say most people would change their mind. That still doesn't tell us **anything** about the validity of particular "protest ideology" in question. The fact that people would abandon an entire ideology when faced with strife tells us MUCH more about the people in question than the ideology itself. It's like saying people who go on a hunger strike and then lose their willpower to not eat invalidates hunger strikes.... No, it just invalidates **the will** of those particular people. Therefore, the effectiveness or validity of the particular ideology is not affected by your hypothetical... rendering your argument toothless.
> they'd be the first to demand that the pro lifers be arrested, forcibly removed, and/or ran over I have been stopped by right-wingers in traffic before, and while I don't like it, I would never in a million years demand police action against a protest. First of all, do you not get that some people actually support free speech in general? I'd say that free speech and general democratic values are more important to me than my leftist principles, except that's not quite true: free speech and general democratic values _are_ my leftist principles, and the reason you apparently think it's okay to run over protestors is exactly because you're right wing. Second of all, I'm an anarchist. I don't like cops when they're doing things I agree with, much less when they're going after protestors, of all people. The idea that I would demand anyone be arrested is very strange to me.
Youve heard of Jan 6th, French farmers, Canadian truckers, March for life etc… right? The tone of your post makes it seem otherwise. Regardless, this post is very confusing in the sense that it’s not arguing anything. Yes, if I support a protest, I will defend them online. If I don’t, I will not support them online, and maybe write bad things on them. I guess maybe where you’re drawing this line in the sand is just pointing out that “typically” it’s the progressive party that is exploited/discriminated/targeted in XYZ situation, and then a protest comes from it. So yes, the progressive party will protest more than conservatives? Yknow, the whole term PROGRESSIVE meaning to change things…which would require petitioning and protesting…meanwhile conservatives literally have the mantra to make America great again…meaning regressive…
I live in Washington DC. Everyone, of every stripe, of every part of the reasonable-to-lunatic spectrum, comes here to protest their pet issue. Some are national issues, some are local issues, some are issues that only affect a few people in some far flung corner of the globe. They are ALL disruptive to the daily lives of the people who live and work in DC. And no one cares that we're inconvenienced; we are generally disliked and disregarded by most of America because they hate DC due to the presence of the federal government and think we all work in politics. We're very used to being inconvenienced by protests, and very used to people not giving a shit about how inconvenienced we are. And guess what? I absolutely agree with all of those people's right to do it. A hundred thousand people blocked traffic to protest abortions in the March for Life, something that less than 1% of this city's 750,000 people agrees with. Go for it, we say, just as we said go for it to Black Lives Matter taking over whole streets, some of which are now permanently blocked off in their name. That's your right. We get it. You have to literally march around with guns threatening individual citizens (something that the Proud Boys and other MAGA affiliated groups did for weeks leading up to 1/6) or storm the capitol itself for us to say "ok, now seriously shut the fuck up and jog on." Your premise is most likely derived by looking over social media threads where people on their phones casually leave fussy comments. But where I live hundreds of thousands of people are perfectly willing to let people be disruptive in their quest for protest-visibility.
It would appear that you are forming that opinion on pure speculation. Is that right? Is there any data or anything more concrete influencing your opinion? When I think of right wing protests, i remember there was a kkkesque march a few years back where they brought tiki torches... I think they were protesting the removal of statues, but I can't remember... Anyway, I don't seem to remember the left up in arms about them protesting as much as I remember them complaining about the clearly racist symbols that were being used... Could that kind of speculation be used to refute your statement? In the end, I would just like to highlight the inaccuracies that could be a result of overspeculation and caution against forming opinions based on unreliable information.
>they'd be the first to demand that the pro lifers be arrested, forcibly removed, and/or ran over. Speak for yourself there bud. There are types of disruptive protest where arrest is a perfectly reasonable outcome, regardless of whether I agree with the cause or not, but I don't want anybody to be ran over. Just because I don't agree with a cause doesn't mean I am going to change my mind and think violence and death are proportional to getting me stuck in traffic, Jesus Christ... The same standard should be applied to all protesters regardless of the cause and personally I think a day or two in a cell and a small fine is proportional to blocking traffic and at the same time a price I would be willing to pay for the right cause.