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.
Commuted on that bridge for many years. I wouldn’t stand in front of that traffic. Lucky they didn’t have any fatalities
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No, he said that he wouldn’t trust other not to do it. Also, you don’t know how much people are being inconvenienced by it, assuming that it’s a small inconvenience is quite the stretch.
I did indeed misread the first sentence of comment, apologies.
They are preaching to the choir in San Francisco. They should be protesting in D.C.
They do
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.
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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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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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.
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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.
your way of thinking about it is suspiciously close to the one of those who want protesters run over.
I’m just going to pretend you didn’t write this absurd sentence.
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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.
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.
When does it become morally acceptable to block traffic?
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
I don’t understand. Every shill in this thread explained that literally everyone blocked from the bridge was a white wealthy tourist and it was only for 15 minutes. Your “creative” meme implies direct control over the situation. Which is the truth?
Are they tourists or are they political elites?
Wait, do you think people continuing to drive would somehow cause more Palestinian deaths? Is that what you are claiming? You do know the vehicles are not carrying weapons for Israel or anything like that?
The fact is, this protest saved not one life. It changed no one’s mind. It accomplished nothing but making a lot of people have a bad day.
deliberately misunderstanding the point of protests doesn’t make you look smarter than the protesters.
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.
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.
What are you on about? There is an entire procedure for lawful protest.
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What does it say about your cause when the leadership can’t be bothered to fill out a piece of paperwork?
Me not playing in traffic and blocking ambulances makes me smarter.
If you think that trolley problem meme accurately reflects the point of the protests, you look pretty stupid.
I was talking about the drivers and driving in the OP article.
Well, I was responding to the meme suggesting that blocking traffic was directly saving lives somehow.
The banner says “STOP ARMING ISRAEL”. Is “pro-Palestinian” really the best way to describe them?
Yes, if Israel stops attacking it’s the Palestinians in Gaza who will benefit. But, you don’t have to be pro-Palestinian to want that to happen. You can just be anti-killing-of-civilians, whoever those civilians happen to be.
Based.
I’m happy with leftists doing shit like this to support Palestine as long as they vote for Joe Biden too - even if they disagree with the DNC on foreign policy - out of respect for the minorities of the US and the western world at large who would be thoroughly fucked under Trump.
Doing anything else just means you’re just an accelerationist POS who wants everyone to suffer so we can all bask in your narcissistic vision of revolution/rapture as salvation.
Being silent on the Israel-Palestine war and not opposing all right-winger warmongers who started it (Netanyahou, Hamas) is also wrong.
I voted for Biden, and I’ll be doing so again. I voted for Hillary as well. Each time made me feel a little sick, like I had given my support to the atrocities that would now be committed with the “mandate of the voters”.
It won’t change the fact that I will vote for Biden (it is the best option after all). But comments like yours, that feel the need to throw accusations and bully people into selling that little piece of their soul, even when no one brought up withholding votes from Biden, make that sick feeling worse.
If there are people who are at the cusp of withholding their votes from Biden, your comment is not the kind of argument that will shame them into joining your side. Rather it will push them further towards abstaining. And while you might feel you have the moral high ground over people like that, you are still contributing to the problem.
Edit: To those considering their vote for Biden, I think this comment does a good job putting it into perspective. It talks about some of the good he has actually accomplished, and makes a decent case for how voting can’t become a zero sum game or we will lose more than we gain.
Yeah, some people haven’t learned that “if you do x, you’re an (insult)” doesn’t turn people considering x against x, it more often turns them against the one saying it. Even if they ultimately agree that x is bad, they often also continue considering the one who said that an enemy.
How to Win Friends and Influence People and The 48 Laws of Power were a couple of books that helped me learn this, because we have instincts that lead us astray in these regards (I used to think insults were a viable persuasion strategy myself). So much of it is obvious in hindsight, just by considering things from how I would receive them instead of how to convince someone of something.
Edit: fixed formatting for angled brackets
Edit 2: looks like they just remove angled brackets, escaped or not, switched to boring curvy brackets
I’ve already learned all this but your mistake is thinking I give a fuck. No one’s opinion changes, and the world will end in like 30 years tops.
Ah, so you’re going with the accelerate the end strategy. Can’t say I really blame you. Things aren’t looking good regardless of who wins.
30 years? An optimist I see. /s
Even if people will still vote for Biden we need public opinion to swing so drastically that the Dems will at least panic and do something different than unconditionally support israel.
Openly saying that you are going to vote for Genocide Joe while he does the Genocide is absolutely useless.
There is definitely some truth in what you are saying. But for me, that has to be weighed against the risks of another Trump presidency. Which from what I’ve seen, will be worse for the Palestinian people, as well as many others. There are people very close to me whose rights were infringed upon by the shifts in laws enacted during the Trump years, and fighting for their rights isn’t useless to me.
I do my best to take direct action to show support for the Palestinian people, and would encourage others to do the same. But I worry that if we genuinely want to affect change to benefit the greatest number of people, we can’t just pick our hills to die on, we have to push for solidarity.
What risk? We have seen 2016. Trump will only be marginally worse than Biden. People are still working 20 jobs for little money and have no housing but we sure have 14 Billion for israel lying around.
If you keep confirming to the Democrats that they will never lose by being Republicans Lite, then the Democrats will never change. In fact your direct vote confirms you don’t want them to change
Only by making Democrats lose votes (or at least polling numbers) will they actually start to care. Especially when they see those lost votes directly go to third parties
Due to electing Trump in 2016, we have the majority of U.S. states where women no longer have body autonomy, tons of anti-lbgt laws, and a Supreme Court that continues to weaken voting and civil rights. The Republicans publicly have a plan to install a “deep state” the next time they get a Republican in the presidency (project 2025). It’s quite possible the U.S. will never have “fair” elections after another Republican presidency. Trump and friends have learned from their previous coup attempt, and will try a different method next time.
And how do LGBT and abortion rights in the US protect the Palestinians from genocide? They are important issues too, but right now there is a president who supports genocide. If he is not punished for it, it will show every future president, that genocide is somewhoe politically acceptable. It shouldn’t be acceptable.
There is no incentive for the Dems to actually stop commiting the same atrocities like the Reps, if they will be voted either way.
You cannot parent a child without good consequences for good behaviour and bad consequences for bad behaviour. It is the same for polticians.
I don’t think there will be real elections anymore if a Republican wins the next presidential election, so it makes no sense to me to punish the Dem party by locking them out of control of the federal government forever. Furthermore, Trump and Reps are hinting at committing more genocide-like actions on U.S. soil (“rounding up” all the undocumented immigrants, eradicating trans people from public life, etc).
Bleh every other thread on Lemmy has “leftists” (usually suspiciously pro-Russia tankies) constantly threatening to shoot themselves and their neighbors by abstaining from democracy, I ain’t reading all that but I’m glad you’re not one of them and thus a comrade of mine, I meant no offense, I was just putting out there something that needs to be said. On reddit I’d usually just tell them to kill themselves and call them goobers but I’m trying to be nice here.
Honestly people hate to hear it, but voting for or against Biden won’t change anything in the US.
What can change things is a greater involvement in local politics, changing our local community and continuing upward to the state level. Then we can talk about abolishing the two party system, introducing term limits, and abolishing lobbying. These are the true plagues of American democracy imo and we’ll be stuck in this cyclical cycle of Biden vs Trump for far longer than the two will be alive for in the form of different names.
Protesting and voting are two separate acts.
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Bruh you’re an idiot. Do you blame Russians for “voting” for Putin too when that mfer literally tortures the opposition to death in prison?
Me, no. My governement? Totally.
If 70% of Palestine people passively and actively support Hamas, are the protesters Pro-Hamas?
Edit: downvoters are just in denial. I mean, really, ask yourself this question. And it’s a hypothetical question nontheless so… no shame
Protesting for the right of Palestine to exist and not have thousands of their children bombed to death can hardly equate to support for Hamas.
Palestinian support for Hamas rises as Israel bombs them, their houses and their families. This suggests that supporting Hamas is an act of desperation for the Palestinians, as to them Hamas are simply the only group that actually do something against what they perceive as the Israeli oppressors.
Regardless, the vast majority of protestors would like to see a two-state solution that brings lasting peace to the region, with Hamas as well as Israeli warhawks removed from power. That doesn’t really equate to support for Hamas at all.
So the kilometers of tunnels under civilian houses and institutions were not built for decades with at least consent from the people living there?
The two state solution was rejected, several times, in the past from Palestine.
So do i understand you right, that you advocate for the genocide of the Palestinians, as is currently carried out by Israel?
If not, then why the fuck would you have a problem with people protesting for children, women and unarmed men not to be bombed and given access to food, water, shelter and healthcare?
No need to frame anyone. It’s just a question and if there would be so many supporters if they wouldn’t count at least as collaborateurs.
You were the one framing Palestinians as Hamas supporters, you got called a genocide supporter now and you’re backtracking.
Oh boy. I’m out. Sorry to have y’all disturbed in your echo chamber opinions.
Have fun with the downvotes.
So yes, you’re pro-genocide.
Anyone thinking that protesting genocide means you’re collaborating with a terrorist group has the analytical capability of a moldy banana.
No need to frame anyone. It’s just a question
JAQing off is a bullshit defense, otherwise I could just ask questions about where you were when someone was murdered. After all, I’m not saying you murdered anyone, I’m just asking questions about the murder and your possible involvement.
Again, the question is why you have a problem with protesting for children and women not getting killed?
Do oyu understaand the concept, that children cannot be criminals, and most certainly never “deserve” to be killed?
And I suppose all the Americans protesting the Vietnam War were dyed-in-the-wool Communists, huh?
What? How can you compare these two scenarios??? Oh my god, there really is nothing to be achieved with talking to the likes of you.
If those situations are incomparable, surely you can explain why, right?
What’s the difference?
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That’s not even a comparison
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how is it legal to protest on a bridge? that’s got to be breaking at least one law
This is called civil disobedience, it’s a well established method of protest. When law-abiding protests fail to stop people from being murdered, then the next natural step is civil disobedience. Unfortunately the powers-that-be have learned that the most effective status-quo response to any protest is for them to do nothing, neither interfering with the protest itself nor actually responding to the protesters’ points.
this is what’s called “peaceful protest” that the anti-riot people wanted so bad instead of riots, and now that they’ve got it they still aren’t happy. guess it’s time to start anti-genocide riots since we’ll be hated by ignornats either way. if they don’t want riots they should just appreciate peaceful protest
Liberals oppose every war, except the current one. They support all protests, except the current one.
Did it work?
The point of civil disobedience is to refuse to obey unjust laws, like refusing to abide by segregation laws. Unless they’re arguing that it’s unjust to prohibit blocking of traffic, whatever point they’re making by blocking traffic is probably lost on those around them.
I’m not sure who gave you the impression that that’s the definition, but it’s not correct. It includes that, but isn’t limited to that.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civil%20disobedience
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4725008/suber_civ-dis.htm
Admittedly other things can fall within the definition of “civil disobedience”, but as for what is useful civil disobedience I’d probably listen to this guy:
One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
MLK Jr, letter from a Birmingham Jail
Thanks for digging up that quote. I’ve always felt iffy on if these things actually help the causes or not, and I think MLK Jr answers that question. Civil disobedience along these lines would be to refuse to pay your taxes and being jailed for it because you don’t want any of your money to contribute to the genocide.
I worry that making busy traffic even worse actually hurts the cause. Making tired working class people frustrated doesn’t do much unless that frustration can be directed in the right direction.
It reminds me of when Greenpeace did something similar to protest climate change. That at least made some sense since commuting generates a lot of emissions. Although that said, making traffic worse also makes emissions worse.
I don’t know. This is tricky.
It’s worth noting that blocking traffic has been a common tactic since the start of the civil rights movement, and we have been having this discussion over and over again for decades now.
Looking at this from a civil disobedience standpoint, the reasoning for civil rights or foreign policy protestors blocking traffic may be less direct than for climate protestors, but is in my opinion equally valid. Highways are the arteries of the capitalist economic system that both powers the US war machine and reinforces the social structures that keep black communities in poverty.
The main problem with this tactic is that recognizing how the action of blocking traffic relates to the protesters’ cause requires a political and class consciousness that most people lack. I personally still support the tactic because I believe we should be collectively working towards instilling that class consciousness in as many people as possible.
While many who choose to remain ignorant will continue to be annoyed and angry at such tactics, there will be some who stop to reflect and consider the arguments being made, and that is progress.
I think a more apt criticism here would be that there’s better ways to bring attention to their cause and affect change. I don’t disagree with you, I just think there’s better ways they could’ve approached this. I’m a firm believer that carrots work better than sticks.
Say they were giving away Palestinian cuisine for instance downtown, and using the free food as a way in to talk to people about the humanitarian crisis.
don’t give the dude any concessions. your definition is correct. even the links he provided proves YOU correct. they all state that usually the unjust law is the law that’s broken and the examples in the definitions back up your definition. that dude is just getting defensive you corrected them.
At least I have chicken 🍗
It is unjust lol. It’s hard for car-drivers to have the moral high-ground where under each of this kind of news, you get comments calling for them to get run over.
Car drivers overall are more concerned about getting to their destination than not hurting people.
it’s not wrong to break the law, it’s wrong to commit genocide.
forcing traffic to halt on a bridge isnt going to stop a war on the other side of the planet.
It’s funny, they said the same thing about the protests against the Vietnam war.
Yeah, but it wasn’t the dead Vietnamese that were putting them off.
And it didn’t. The protests started in earnest a full 8 years before the war ended.
So the protests weren’t blocking enough bridges for 8 full years.
Yes clearly it wasn’t the method that was wrong it was the humans weren’t noble enough.
We solve problems in democracy by peaceful protest, voting, lawsuits, and swaying public opinion. We don’t solve problems in a democracy by blocking ambulances and pissing the hell out of regular people. No one just trying to pick up their kids is going to want to hear about your cause when you are blocking the road.
they don’t block ambulances, they let them through. you’ve never been to a protest and it shows
You do realize that your democracy is founded on violent revolution? And that slavery had to be abolished in a civil war? That the civil rights movement was shunned in the same way, now the protesters against genocide are shunned, because it inconveniences the white man on his day to day business?
If you truly object to non violent civil disobedience, than you need to object to violent revolution and civil war even more so, and reintegrate the US into the UK and offer yourself up for slavery, to reinstate what was unjustly overturned.
Hardly any american soldiers are dying in Gaza, though. The number might be zero.
Why are there 37 missing replies? Was Godzilla here?
They should go protest somewhere out of the way where no one can see them!
I believe it is a misdemeanor in california if police bother to arrest you
Oh no breaking a law while the US sponsors a genocide. Those poor vacationers getting inconvenienced is surely more terrible than genocide.
A. Two wrongs don’t make a right
B. I question how you know that literally every single person on that bridge is on vacation and even if they were why that is acceptable
Shit like this never works.
Civil disobedience is required for protests to have effect.
There is no comparision between having to stand in traffic for a while and having your entire family annhilated, being dragged out of the rubble, getting your limbs amputated without any anesthetics, only to then die of starvation and disease. And that is if you are among the “lucky ones” that werent killed by the bomb or died in agony after two days of being stuck under the rubble of a bombed house, while Israeli snipers shoot at the people trying to pull you out.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right” is a fallacy if the consequences are so grossly out of comparision. Also we recognize in law the right to self defense and the right to prevent a crime. In many countries it is even your legal obligation to do so.
B. I question how you know that literally every single person on that bridge is on vacation and even if they were why that is acceptable
I never said anyone being on vacation. Are you that morally corrupt, that being 20 minutes late somwhere is worse in your eyes than a continued genocide?
Nice strawman
I bet you’d feel differently if you were in an ambulance trapped behind that mess of traffic or had a loved one in that situation. or maybe you’re a sociopath, I dunno.
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