A pro-Palestinian protest action briefly blocked all traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Wednesday morning.
Starting at about 7:45 a.m. Protesters stopped cars and stretched banners across the roadway denouncing Israel’s bombing of Rafah in the Gaza Strip and demanding that the U.S. stop arming Israel.
Northbound and southbound traffic on the bridge was at a standstill as of 8 a.m.
I don’t get it. When does it become morally acceptable to block traffic?
Between Just Stop Oil and Stop Arming Israel, they both have equally valid points. So why is it that blocking the Golden Gate Bridge is “based” while blocking various feeder roads in Britain makes you a twat?
Edit: messed up the titles
It’s absolutely acceptable. Driving isn’t some untouchable human right that goes above everything else and can’t yield to something else for a little bit.
I just question the effectiveness of it. We want more people to join the cause, but making them sit and listen to honking for 15 minutes might have the inverse effect.
Great for spreading awareness, though.
Nah brah. There could be an ambulance carrying your child to a hospital in that queue.
Or a dude on its way to an interview after more than two years trying to land a job.
Or a person about to catch a flight.
So, not absolutely acceptable. No.
Or tens of thousands of children being slaughtered. Nah brah
How does this help though? It just makes people annoyed at protesters and, if anything, detracts from their cause. Protesting is great, blocking traffic is a criminal offence.
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They block ambulances and I have zero problems with people kneeling for the anthem.
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“common” “usually”
How about don’t do things like that and you won’t have to have faith in backup plans?
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Yes, yes, and yes. How about you stop playing in traffic and murdering people?
If it prevents people from taking planes, that’s a good thing climate and pollution wise.
Considering that the planes were still flying around empty when travel restrictions were in place, I don’t think a few passengers caught in a traffic jam are going to keep the planes from taking off.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/ghost-flights-pandemic-greenpeace-cmd/index.html
Actually the right to travel is a human right. You are the oppressor in this because you are inflicting your will on everyone else.
It absolutly is not, protest how ever you want with or without a permit from the municipality, you are responsibly for your own actions. If you delay an emergency vehicle, those lives are on your head.
When I lived in Boston this happened multiple times. The one that comes to mind was some eco-protest that linked the protesters to oil drums filled with concrete on mass pike (the main east-west highway into the city). There were emergency vehicles stuck in the jam and someone died that was on their way to the hospital. IIRC most of the protestors are still in jail for murder.
Apparently if you are a farmer in Europe people support your right to block traffic
I don’t support them either
I wish we could block more than traffic
They’re both twats. They aren’t making converts or reaching the people who can even effectuate a change. All the do is poison the well for the middle of the country that otherwise might have been receptive.
If I’m on my way to work, or the hospital, or to visit gram gram and some whack job makes my life noticeably more miserable then I’m always going to have negative feelings for them.
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Nope. Not always. Next time you have to drive a loved one to the hospital, and then there is a blockade because of “the children of North Korea,” let me know if you feel like sympathizing with the blockers.
Edit: I understand the whole Palestinian crisis is a very sensitive subject, and people get emotional with this kind of topic. But we can’t have that “either you’re us or against us” mentality. It’s not like I’m saying “don’t protest, and your cause sucks!” I’m saying “yes, protest, and yes, disrupt, but disrupt it to the people who can actually do something about it.”
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Sure. Because an ambulance can totally divert to an alternative way when it’s already on the bridge. And if it’s not on the bridge already, then the “alternative way” is the “already too late” way. That’s why there is a bridge there in the first place.
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Insightful comment. Thank you.
I still gotta add, though: just because ambulances are trained to deal with protest blockades, doesn’t justify said blockades. Like a cop is trained to deal with thieves that shoot at them, we don’t say “ok! Violent burglary attempts may continue to happen, then.” So yeah, good to know that ambulances have an alternative, but that doesn’t mean I’m okay with these blockades all of a sudden. Plus not everyone wanting to cross that bridge (or road, or whatever) has a good contingency plan.
Yeah I’d take that risk lmao
Beside, buddy there’s traffic jam in front of my house every morning, how do you think that does for ambulance circulation?
That’s a false equivalence. The traffic in front of your house is not caused by some people who can’t think of better ways to protest.
Of course not. It is caused by people who can’t think of a better way to pollute.
At least protesters stands for something. They are not poisoning the air for the sake of not moving their collective fat asses.
Beside, your way of thinking about it is suspiciously close to the one of those who want protesters run over.
Again… not the point. And that’s another false equivalency. “People with different reasons to be on the road are blocked by people are being a public threat in the name of some cause.” “Well, serves them right for being a public threat with their cars!” No, that’s not a good argument.
I’m just going to pretend you didn’t write this absurd sentence.
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When there is a truck with people carrying your mom to a lynching site.
Other than that, I agree with you. Blocking traffic is one of the dumbest way to protest. You won’t get any sympathizers from that car queue.
Unless you are DIRECTLY saving a human life, it isn’t.
I get that it gets your movement noticed. But not by the people that can do a damn thing about it.
And the people that maybe can do something, like Biden? They will never reward such tactics so as to not encourage more protests of the type.
And you want to point to civil rights protests doing the same thing? When the first Selma to Montgomery march happened, it was Sunday, a day when at the time few travelled anywhere but church on Sunday. They deliberately chose low traffic times and announced it well in advance.
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Run them over?!
Rotting car brain syndrome.
someone needs to spend some time on !fuck_cars@lemmy.ml
Truly a gathering of the most level headed people on Lemmy
Britain is the rotting husk of a colonial empire. The people are psudo-fascist bootlickers obsessed with institutional proceduralism who think good things fundamentally cannot happen.
*England is…
Time for bed, lass, school in the morning, off ye go