• mommykink
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    218 months ago

    If everyone with a grievance brought a city to a standstill

    No, one person with a weird grudge goes ranting in the middle of the road, you slow down and drive around them. When those grievances are popular enough to get so many people to bring a city to a stand still, maybe we deserve to be stopped and forced to listen to them.

    • @EatATaco@lemm.ee
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      68 months ago

      Oakland and san fran combined have a total over 1.2 million people. And that’s just the cities themselves. The article notes 70 people shut down the bridge between them. That’s 0.006% of the population, and I’m generously assuming they all came from those two cities.

      I’m not saying it should be criminalized, but in light of those numbers, your claim that if it’s an insignificant amount of people you can just drive around rings ridiculously hollow.

    • EbbyA
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      -78 months ago

      Nope, one person is all it takes. It has happened in my city.

    • @aleph@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Disrupting the public just trying to go about their lives is a particularly ineffective way of rallying people to your cause, though, even assuming it’s not outright detrimental. You end pissing off significantly more people than you persuade.

      I don’t think it should be illegal, mind you, but it’s a pretty counter productive way to go about it imo.

        • @GBU_28@lemm.ee
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          48 months ago

          Miss. They aren’t mad at the system, they are mad at the group that blocked them (and often vandalizes their car and threatens them while they are boxed in, safety stopped.)

          • @snooggums@midwest.social
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            118 months ago

            Attention to the problem.

            You can act like it doesn’t work, but the Civil Rights movement had no traction until white people were inconvenienced.

            • @aleph@lemm.ee
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              -48 months ago

              There was a lot more to the success of the civil rights movement than simply blocking traffic.

              • @snooggums@midwest.social
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                68 months ago

                Sit ins, marching in the streets, and other disruptive actions that are comparable were a significant part of it.

                Not being the whole thing doesn’t mean it wasn’t important.

              • @conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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                68 months ago

                There’s this weird idea that the civil rights protestors were met with people clapping and cheering and waving American flags. They were not. Those protests were wildly unpopular in their time. It was only later on, after they succeeded in getting some change, that the attitudes and rhetoric around those protests changed.

                • @aleph@lemm.ee
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                  8 months ago

                  I’m well aware. I was specifically talking about the modern tactic of sit-ins in the middle of busy intersections and protestors glueing themselves to the tarmac, and so forth.

                  I never called into question political protest in general, even though that’s apparently what people are assuming I said.

        • @Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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          08 months ago

          Stopping ambulances, firetrucks, someone in labor, someone having a medical emergency is not cool. Getting someone fired for being late or not showing up is a dick move.

          Go protest outside of a politician’s or CEO’s home, hurting the average person will only harm the cause.

            • @EatATaco@lemm.ee
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              48 months ago

              The article we are responding to notes how some of the protesters who blocked the bridge threw their keys into the water. Even if we ignore the absurdity of jamming up traffic for miles, but magically allowing emergency vehicles to get through ins timely manner, you can’t let people through if you can’t move your car.

            • @Lemmy_Cook@lemmy.world
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              38 months ago

              Did you read the article? The amount of people in this thread who straight up want anarchy is insane. I agree it should be a felony these people do not have a legal right to block public roads. No matter what people on Lemmy think.

            • @GBU_28@lemm.ee
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              38 months ago

              If the protest causes a mile long backup it can still be much harder for emergency vehicles to navigate the stopped traffic far away, out of the direct control or observation of the protesters.

            • @afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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              28 months ago

              Bullshit. If you had bothered to read the article you would have seen that people used their abandoned car as a blockade some of them throwing their keys away. You can’t move your car for an ambulance when that happens. How can you move a car when you aren’t there to move it?

      • EbbyA
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        -68 months ago

        The cause is second to the desire for attention.

        But the people suffering in the wake are everyday americans. Not perple in charge of implementing changes.

        There are more appropriate ways to be heard. Write a letter like the rest of us.

        • @snooggums@midwest.social
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          98 months ago

          Do the absolute least effective thing that can be ignored in private away from the eyes of the general public.

          Great idea!

          • EbbyA
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            28 months ago

            Yup, it sucks sometimes. And it’s slow. But it’s the system we have in place for exactly this.

            • @Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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              -18 months ago

              And since it’s working as designed, you want to make felons of anyone who wants to use effective means to fix it.

              If they’re gonna be felons anyway, may as well do real felonies while they’re at it.

        • Flying Squid
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          88 months ago

          The Estates General thought sending a letter to the king in France in 1789 would work too.

          Spoiler: It did not.