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.

  • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    The problem with a lot of protests is the protesters don’t understand the point of a protest.

    Sometimes people get so emotional over a cause they can’t understand things from the perspective of other people.

    So they end up coming off like selfish crazy people which at best convinces no one, and at worst turns people against their cause.

    Many times protests are just about people wanting to be around other people that share their emotions about the cause. This results in a need to find an outlet for these emotions. But because it’s an emotional thing they can’t think out a logical way to further their cause. So instead it’s just about expressing emotion. Which may be cathartic for the protesters but doesn’t do anything to further the cause.

    Israel is obviously not going to stop until they get the hostages back. Blocking bridges won’t change anything. It’s just unnecessarily inconveniencing people and only serves to make people think Palestinian movement is an irrational movement that doesn’t care about anything other than themselves.

    • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      I’d argue there are no “rational” protests because protests only exist when there is no path to a legal or democratic resolution available.

      You don’t protest your landlord fixing your broken heating because there’s laws saying they have to. You don’t protest the elected government, you protest when the elected government breaks the law without recourse.