Quick solution.
Get the names of the people that are denying access to the freeway.
Put them and their cars on a “no-drive” list for that same piece of road.
Enforce vigorously for 3 months.
.
Problem solved.
You are assuming that
- They drive on that road
- They have cars
- They drive at all
I lived in Chicago for 15+ years. Never needed a car in all that time. It’s not unusual to encounter adults in Chicago that never bothered to get a driver’s license. Even if they are drivers, I mentioned just three of many alternates to Lake Shore Drive up thread. There are alternate ways to get around that don’t involve the Dan Ryan or Eisenhower, either. That sort of ban is not as inconvenient as you think it is.
This protest does relate to what they are protesting, unlike some of the black lives matter protests that shut down unrelated highways. On the other hand, if you feel that the other parts of the city are not getting an unfair shake, you can be against the protest for having a stupid cause, which I have no opinion on. But you can’t really say the method of protest doesn’t have relevancy.
If I were a Chicago resident this wouldn’t really affect my views as long as it happened only once. If it happened frequently I would move toward the “beatings will continue until morale improves” side in wanting to interfere with the lives of people who interfere with mine. If I got delayed by it as a visitor, it would make me less likely to want to go to Chicago in the future. If it happened a lot, it would make me less likely to go even if I wasn’t delayed by it, much like the seemingly frequent road protests in France make me less likely to want to travel by road there if I ever go there.
I really do not understand how this wins over people.
There are three categories of people on any particular issue - those who support Stance X, those who oppose Stance X, and those who are undecided or don’t care.
Now, let’s say Stance X is something like, “Ban all abortion.” If you are pro-choice, then you already oppose the folks who oppose abortion, and their blocking of the highway, when you want to go to work or run errands, will only make you hate them all the more. The protesters don’t win any support.
If you are pro-life, then maybe you cheer these protesters blocking the highway - but you were already going to support their cause no matter what, and in the meantime you really want to get to work because it’s now 8 AM and you have a PowerPoint to present and your boss is going to ask why you’re late again and the demonstrators are really inconveniencing you now - so the protesters again don’t win any additional support.
If you are someone who is undecided, or does not really care about the issue, then when you see these anti-abortion protesters blocking the highway and inconveniencing you, then aren’t you going to think, “Wow, I didn’t really care or know about this issue, but now I am going to strongly support abortion just to spite these people who are rudely blocking my way when I’m desperate to get to work on time?”
It brings attention to an issue that prior to this, people were not even aware of.
I don’t know about your uncle, but I already mentioned a few of the reasons why I mock BLM as well as these protesters. But these are people who take “why don’t you go play in traffic” as serious advice, so equip a few cop cars with a few cowcatchers and presto - problem solved.
Regards,
Shodan
This x2…I have no bull in this fight and have only ever visited Chicago, but if ANYONE shut down a major road or highway to protest during rush hour where I live, I would be incandescently pissed at them and their cause, and would look for organizations doing whatever the opposite of what they want is, so I could donate just to spite them. Save the whales? I’m donating to a nuke the whales fund. End animal testing? I’m going to send gift baskets to animal testing labs.
There’s 9 million people in the Chicago MSA - let’s say 1/3 of them were impacted by this trip, and it added 20 minutes to their commute home. That’s 60 million minutes of time these wankers stole from the people of Chicago - that’s 114 years, literally a lifetime!
And non-consensually stealing that much time is okay because they’re worried about economic development in their area? Even at minimum wage, they just stole $7M worth of time from the people of Chicago, and at a more likely wage, somewhere in the neighborhood of $20M.
So yeah, stealing time and money from millions of people by making people already pissed at traffic even more pissed can’t be the best way to get your cause addressed productively.
Protests like this one and the Anthem protests by pro athletes aren’t at all about winning anyone over.
(Pause for understanding. Let it sink in.)
They are about forcing attention to an issue that would otherwise be ignored.
I guess I can see that. That acting out of spite can be preferable to understanding the issues, and making rational decisions. That punishing people unrelated to the inconvenience you suffered is a chosen response to being inconvenienced. That learning of a problem in a way that you didn’t like means that you contribute to furthering the problem, rather than empathizing with those who are harmed by it.
I suppose they are thinking that the population is made up of rational adults with the ability to make independent choices under their own agency, rather than vindictive spiteful reactionaries who lash out at anything that threatens to inconvenience them.
What were they thinking, indeed?
I seriously doubt that this will effect 1/3 of the population of the MSA. 10% is probably stretching it.
Even if your 1/3 was right, that’s not how things work. The time spent in a car on the commute home is not time that could be spent doing economic development.
Trump had a rally in my town a month ago, causing traffic jams and backups that cost me much, much more than 20 minutes. Does he lose support?
Whenever there is a football game, traffic gets completely screwed. Do people stop supporting football?
There was an accident, with only minimal injuries, that completely stopped the interstate at rush hour a few days ago that delayed people by hours. Should they be given a bill for the delays they caused?
Or is it only when someone schedules, in advance, an inconvenience that is to bring attention to a cause that one already is against hearing about, that suddenly, it’s stealing time and money from millions?
Ha! Yes, that would be a pretty colossal misjudgment on their part, indeed. I mean, have they SEEN what half the country puts into office these days, and for what reasons?
But just between you and me, people stuck in soul-crushing rush hour traffic aren’t at their most rational and generous, and if your “changing society for the better” plan revolves around making those people’s situations directly worse and then appealing to their better natures, things aren’t going to go well, even if they might be inclined to your cause in more rational and generous moments.
I really couldn’t think of a way more calculated to diminish support for your cause. If there were causes I hated, and I had control over their venue and timing, scheduling their protests to disrupt and make rush hour traffic worse is EXACTLY what I would do, because I would bet on it generating more attention and donations for causes antithetical to them.
Even if people don’t actively act out of spite, they’re not likely to be inclined to give due consideration or even a fair shake to the ideas of the group who just made them late to work/late to their date/late to their kid’s piano recital/made them miss visiting hours at the hospital.
That’s what I think a lot of us are saying - not all press is good press, and especially so when you’re doing disruptive and annoying things to the general public who likely have nothing to do with it.
They’d probably have better luck and sympathy if they targeted the decision-makers themselves with the disruption; targeting the general public with this sort of disruption is more likely to just cause them to vote for higher penalties for this kind of thing, or for more law-and-order oriented politicians, because they’ll be tired of having this kind of thing happen.
Disruptive protests and civil disobedience are a tool, that can be used appropriately or misused. When normal and “civil” protests aren’t resulting in needed change, and if the injustice is great enough, then it’s appropriate. But of course everyone will have to make this judgment for themselves. I doubt anyone would quibble if Jews in 30s Germany had disputed traffic to protest Nazi treatment. And on the opposite end, I doubt anyone would support disrupting traffic to protest trains that run 5 minutes late. Somewhere in between lies the cause of BLM.
IMO, of course.
If they aren’t “at all about winning anyone over”, why do they need to bring attention to the issue in the first place?
I disagree - that time has value even when you can’t directly bill for it.
Arguably, in a lot of cases, that time may have more value than your usual hourly rate. As a thought experiment, if there were a magical solution such that you could cut out an extra half-hour of sitting in miserable rush-hour traffic, by paying half your hourly rate and you are magically home, are you telling me you wouldn’t do it? I and tens of millions of others would do that in a heartbeat.
What if you would never have to wait in traffic again, but you had to take a permanent 10% pay cut? Again, I and tens of millions of others would do that in a heartbeat.
The time spent waiting in traffic still has value even if you can’t bill for it.
People get inconvenienced by things all the time. They don’t lash out against them unless they are already inclined to dislike them.
Any press is preferable to being ignored.
I’d agree with this. That is why, back during occupy wall street, I suggested changing it to “occupy golf course.”
In Cincinnati, for instance, there was an express bus that picked up from one block away from where those protests were going on, and went directly to John Boehnor’s (speaker of the house at the time) back yard (well, the golf course that is his backyard). I had suggested getting on that bus, and bothering him, but no one listened to me.
Because awareness is one way to foster change. It isn’t guaranteed, but it’s something.
OK, so they are trying to win people over. I thought so.
Listen, it’s not a big deal. It’s about winning people over. So when you say it’s not at all about that, it looks kind of silly.
Silly is pretending to not understand what protests are about. The complaint was that the people stuck in traffic would be unsympathetic. But argue away over what a protest is about.
That may be a part of it, but another part is almost the opposite - sort of like saying “treat us with dignity and respect and join us in demanding change, or society will experience escalating inconvenience”.