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
Apparently if you are a farmer in Europe people support your right to block traffic
I don’t support them either
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.
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.
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.
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.
Actually the right to travel is a human right. You are the oppressor in this because you are inflicting your will on everyone else.
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
Our first world inconveniences are more important than us willingly pay taxes that slaughter “human animals” overseas. The West deserves to collapse.
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.
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
Emergency vehicles are usually let through protest crowds and have contingency plans in place when there is a highway blockage. This was brought up during the oil protesters in the UK a couple years ago and it turned out no emergency vehicles were impeded from reaching their destinations. The point is to disrupt normal traffic flows.
A good employer would reschedule due to the unforeseen circumstance. If they dock you over something that much out of your control in the interview process, they will absolutely fuck you over as your employer.
That’s what customer service at airports are for. This is no different than a car accident on a highway blocking you from getting to your flight. There’s gonna be another flight. Call the airline and let them know you’ll need help with changing your flight schedule. I fly for work every month or so and shit happens. Leave early as if there’s gonna be the worst traffic imaginable and take an alternate route if needed.
Being inconvenienced sucks. But more often than not the protest is over something much bigger than a day of being stuck in traffic. Protests that don’t cause a disruption aren’t heavily reported on and struggle to garner support or bring about change.
They block ambulances and I have zero problems with people kneeling for the anthem.
It’s not common for ambulances to be blocked. Every protest I’ve been to or seen has made way for emergency vehicles when sirens are on. When paramedics are aware of a protest blocking a major artery, they usually will reroute. It’s an issue people use for virtue signaling that isn’t widespread, like the Seattle one where the vehicle was not using sirens or lights. Sirens turn on, people will move.
“common” “usually”
How about don’t do things like that and you won’t have to have faith in backup plans?
Do you give a shit when traffic is blocked during a commercial shoot? What about for a car accident? How about traffic jams? No, you don’t. Backup plans exist for a reason. And there’s plenty of reasons for a bridge to close. How about you grow up and learn how the world works.
Yes, yes, and yes. How about you stop playing in traffic and murdering people?
It is always morally acceptable. It is very useful to show how blood-thirty the average car-driver is. Under each of those news are calls to murder (see below).
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.
If it’s an emergency an ambulance will drive an alternate route because they have contingency plans in place for blocked highways like with major car accidents or infrastructure failure. Protesters will let an ambulance through.
The point isn’t to sympathize with the blockers. It’s to raise awareness on an issue and let lawmakers and people with power know that their cause is worth causing a disruption for. The more a protest disrupts the status quo, the harder power will try to quash it before budging. Change doesn’t come from being quiet and invisible like by standing on a sidewalk with some signs.
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.
Are you familiar with the Bay Area by chance? The Golden Gate Bridge isn’t the only bridge nor are the hospitals in downtown SF the only accessible options. An ambulance is going to take you to the nearest emergency room that will meet your needs. On the north side of the bridge, there’s the entire Marin Health system. Across 580 you have the Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda hospital centers. In the rare event that an ambulance is on the bridge prior to being aware there is a protest blocking traffic, odds are the protesters will let the ambulance through.
This round of protests was cleared out pretty quickly anyways. The November protest delayed an organ transplant by a few hours but did not put the patient in a life-threatening scenario per USCF Medical. Anything more urgent in the rare case a diversion isn’t possible and would require some sort of transportation across the bridge would use a helicopter, even during rush hour traffic.
I get your concerns about people’s lives being put in jeopardy are probably very real. Honestly, if I didn’t have experience working with local government and health districts that helped me understand what goes on during a protest blocking a major avenue, I’d likely be just as upset as you. However, dispatchers are trained and ready to work in a variety of tough scenarios, and protests blocking Golden Gate is absolutely one of them. Dispatch finds out about blockages faster than the public does, so guarantee they were already changing routes before the story even broke.
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.
What? Are you having a stroke? Do you smell toast?
Nah but full disclosure, I hate cars. Blocking the traffic is a way to gain my sympathy, that’s for sure.
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
With most people it depends on what they support. Me personally, I say run them over even if I support them, they don’t belong on the road but I might be a bit extreme.
someone needs to spend some time on !fuck_cars@lemmy.ml
Truly a gathering of the most level headed people on Lemmy
Run them over?!
Rotting car brain syndrome.
I wish we could block more than traffic
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 won Sunday. They deliberately chose low traffic times and announced it well in advance.
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.