Well its in the news so it worked. Protest is literally one of the only thing that’s ever actually effected change in this country so stick with it. The more people it pisses off, the better. If a protest leaves people feeling safe and comfortable, it wasn’t a protest, it was a parade.
I would say that this kind of protest just makes people mad at you and your cause. If I was stuck in traffic for X hours I would probably be mad at the protestors and not sympathize with their cause.
See, in this image, you would be the one standing in the back pissed off they can’t just get their lunch and would be mad at the protestors.
History happens every day. You need to not be mistaken where you stand in it.
Firstly, getting food is different than literally being imprisoned in your car. Secondly, they could go to a different place and these people are actively attacking them not being victims of their protest.
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice
If your devotion is to order, where your allegiance is to the polite convenience you’ve come to accept and expect as a first world consumer, you are no ally of justice.
For those that don’t know and because TropicalDingdong was a ding-dong and didn’t cite their quote, this is a quote from a letter written by Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr during his time in jail after a protest.
Edit: He was a Reverend and a doctor, so I got mixed up getting his titles right.
I dont know what you are trying to get at. I think you should realize that getting on freeway and making everyone mad = bad protest; doing a sit-in and getting the harm visable = good protest.
Its that you make this comment without any comprehension of history.
In 1958, you would have been writing this exact same comment about a sit-in protest being “bad protest”. Your worldview just rewrites you into being on the right side of history on things, when now, when you have the opportunity to be on the right side of history while its happening, you aren’t.
Dude, I literally havent take a side, I am just telling you what I think works and what doesnt. If you think getting people fighting mad on a freeway is a way to win people over, I would have to disagree.
Again with another poorly thought out opinion that does not logically connect your message with any real measure of virtue. Here you’re excusing the conduct of people who would block traffic by chalking it all up to countering the white moderate preferring an absence of tension, which is not a logical conclusion whatsoever as it could be similarly used to argue for hanging racists in the street. It’s ignoring the severity of the impact of the protest to break it down into a binary of support/nonsupport. “Either you’re with us or you’re against us.” is the mantra of forced conformity of thought. Seriously, do better.
Nah. Its you that needs to do better. No protest needs to apologize for inconveniencing you.
Your hand wringing is precisely what MLK was talking about.
oh noooo, they were stuck in car prison for 20 minutes, with the A/C on and their favorite music playing! the horror 😱😱
Illogical take and a false equivalence. These people could just go somewhere else and obviously do not support the rights of the protesters. In the freeway blocking situation, you’d be stopping the people who support Gaza from getting home to their kids the same as everyone else and they are literally trapped on the freeway vs. choosing to be in this pictured restaurant. You’d be trapping people who might not have water in the car, might not have A/C, might not have the gas to idle and wait, might be rushing to the hospital to meet the ambulance with their wife/child in it.
Your take is morally wrong in a demonstrable way and I hope you can learn to recognize that.
Nah.
“And what is it America has failed to hear?…It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr
I mean, you’re right about the people directly impacted, but if you’re on the 405, this shit happens all the time. I was stuck for a few hours cause of a jumper. It’s annoying, and it’s hot outside, and in the moment I would certainly be anti-protester if not anti-everything. But that’s just people there at the time inconvenienced.
So, it’s probably a net good for their cause since more people aren’t in traffic than are, although at this point I feel like everyone has made up their mind on Gaza (and honestly, images and recounts from people on the ground there are a thousand times more persuasive than whatever this is)
That makes sense, I would just be mad at them if I was on the freeway. I am personally not very positive on them because they do things that seem pretty shitty on a regular basis.
Exactly, the worthy message is completely lost in the immoral delivery.
I can see it would be good if it were done on a smaller road that is visable, but fuck keeping people stuck in their car when they dont have any way around it.
Nah, the message is getting lost in the delivery. I support BLM too but had the same issue with their freeway-blocking tactics. Nobody is going to swing to your side of the argument because you blocked their route home…nobody. People have emergencies, parents and kids need to get places…people have important jobs and need to be able to get to work such as doctors, first responders, air traffic controllers etc etc… Yes, Gaza and BLM are both worthy causes but there are many other worthy causes as well. You can’t block traffic for every worthy cause…block people from living their lives to put what you personally feel is the most important social issue at the top of their world by forcing it on them through essentially trapping them. It’s just plain wrong and nothing is going to change that. Yes what’s going on in Gaza is more wrong, and yet it’s still illogical af and morally wrong to pretend that this provides justification to trap people on freeways.
Is there anything you feel strongly enough about to protest like that?
In trying to look at it from the perspective of “what could make me do that” I can only think of some downright heinous shit. To get to the point that you’re willing to stand in front of cars and have people hate you for preventing them from living their lives? It’s pretty hard to imagine.
And on top of that, to know that your actions are going to ruin you in some way or another; that you’re facing jail time, bodily harm, or extreme financial burden? Either they’re being both sensitive and stupid or they’re so fed up that they feel like there’s no other recourse. It’s insane to me to think about being pushed so far that that seems like a good idea.
But then I think about how they must have gotten there, and the things that would get me there, and they’re not so different.
“Americans will tolerate anything [(even genocide)], provided it doesn’t block traffic.”
Not sure how shutting down roads has anything to do with Israel, but I’m glad the roads are shut down. If only it could be done permanently.
Because West Los Angeles is just full of people who have any say about what happens in Gaza… 🙄
What’s happening in Gaza is being directly funded by all of our taxes, there’s not a particular location that the protesting needs to be done, it just needs to be done.
If you want to protest tax dollars, take it to the Mall in D.C. and shut down their infrastructure.
If you actually care about what’s happening in Gaza, take it to Tel Aviv.
Anything else is a pointless “look at me!” protest.
lol “if you wanna protest, literally travel across the whole ass country or the world. Nothing local matters.”
You’re either a supporter of Israel or you don’t know history. I can’t think of any other way to get to what you just posted.
So do you support Israel or do you not understand how every expansion of civil rights in the 20th and 21st century were won?
Local very much matters, for local issues. See the protests directly in Ferguson for example.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_unrest
The related protests outside Ferguson accomplished fuck all.
If the issue is an international issue, a local protest means and accomplishes NOTHING other than a mild inconvenience for people completely unrelated to the problem.
Not everyone can just ship themselves off to DC and like, shut down infrastructure. Let alone travel internationally. Being in a financial position where you can do that is an incredibly privileged position to be in. We have to do what we can, where we are to make change - and for people living in LA that means protesting in LA. A lot of protesting IS about visibility, and doing it so you can be noticed is far from pointless! Blocking traffic anywhere in this country is directly making sure that you and your message cannot be ignored.
Not everyone can be part of an effective protest then…
You really haven’t established that that’s the case. Wherever you protest, you’re getting visibility and costing the state money to manage.
Local and state governments absolutely have a say through their investments to Israel. It’s just as important to pressure them for divestment as the federal government and corporations on the BDS list.
Not only are state and local lawmakers more accessible to constituents than federal lawmakers, but local investment portfolios also hold billions of dollars in funding to Israel sourced from the everyday taxes of community members. State and local governments across the U.S. hold more than $4 trillion in all investments in their investment portfolios. At least $1.6 billion in Israel Bonds is held between state governments, municipal governments, and public pension funds nationwide. Those investment dollars come from every individual, household, and business within the municipal or state borders that pay property taxes, income taxes, and sales taxes, making them some of the most representative pools of dollars invested on behalf of the public. Saper says that campaigns targeting the investment of these local dollars “invite people to reckon with how implicated we are here at home with the atrocities we are witnessing abroad.”
The people screaming for divestment have no idea what’s involved. In many cases there are contractual obligations that make it impossible.
The people screaming for it have no idea how any of it works, they just want it stopped and will continue to get angry when it doesn’t.
This is nonviolent civil disobedience to protect the financial support of an ongoing genocide. Acting like this isn’t a valid form of protest or that the BDS movement have “no idea what’s involved” when putting pressure on corporations and institutions to Divest is ridiculous.
These kind of protests do put pressure and bring the issue to the forefront of the local and state administrative bodies. The BDS movement was successful in the divestment of Apartheid South Africa, this isn’t too different
“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue,” King wrote. “It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”
- MLK Jr. on the nature of nonviolent protests
MLK protested where the offenses were actually happening. That’s why they were effective.
Yeah dude, that’s why the anti-apartheid protests and BDS movement in the United States were so unsuccessful and not effective when it came to South Africa
The offenses are actually happening in the US, too. That’s where the voters voting for genocide enablers are located, that are sending all the bombs to Gaza to blow up schools and hospitals.
Ahh yes. Gatekeeping of what is considered valid protest and white liberalism, name a more iconic duo.
An effective protest reaches the hearts and minds of people who can actually have an impact.
Protesting in L.A. does neither of those things.
I’m 100% disinterested in your opinion of what you consider a valid protest.
What you or I consider a valid protest is irrelevant unless we organized it.
Fine, tell me who in LA on the 405 freeway can stop investment in Israel. It’s cool… I’ll wait.
Oh, right, nobody. They are protesting to nobody so they can feel good about themselves while not actually having a chance at changing anything.
Since you seem to lack reading comprehension.
I’m 100% disinterested in your opinion
I’m not interested in the opinions of reactionaries masquerading or deluding themselves into thinking they are revolutionaries.
Well you chose to be in a thread literally about reactionaries masquerading or deluding themselves into thinking they are revolutionaries…
