Okay, I can see that but I think some aren’t going about it the right way. There are two major carpool routes in Arlington County, the protest which inspired this thread was held on a bridge directly served by one of them. Those protesters were disrupting the lives of many people who already are doing their part to reduce the number of vehicles on the road.
Not to mention that everyone who was stuck in traffic was probably burning more fuel than they usually do.
I talk about SPAM too, doesn’t mean I like it or buy from spammers.
But the ones who stayed home because it wasn’t worth it to get stuck in traffic, or walked or took a bike to where they wanted to go used less gas than they would normally do.
I’m not saying that this was the protester’s point, or that I necessarily support that position. I just meant that it would be a legit point to make.
-lv
At least in Chicago, it wasn’t apparent the protestors were going to block traffic until the evening, when people were trying to get home at the end of a workday. Those trapped on LSD didn’t have a choice to leave their cars at home and make other arrangements, so I don’t particularly see the protestors’ actions as a cogent political or social statement on the war.
THUNDERBUG WROTE: The one thing they will cause me to do is vote straight Republican on all future elections."
Don’t worry. Those very same protestors will one day drive cars with “Bush '32” bumperstickers. George P. Bush, two-term governor of Florida will be the Republican nomineee for President…
You know, since you hate free speech and democracy so much, and support murder to squelch dissent, it’d be a much faster route for you to just move to a dictatorship instead of trying to turn America, which is currently billed as a democracy, into one.
I thought the more radical of the SF protests were idiotic, too. Pissing people off is not the way to get the message out. I can just imagine Bush giggling with glee to hear that the city of San Francisco was crippled by protesting. But the vomit thing was funny. And what the guy said made some kind of sense – this war is so far beyond rationality that maybe the protests need to cross some lines, too.
Oh God yes! This happened live while my stepdad and I were watching. The driver looked like some huge dude with a long black mohawk. He got out and just CLOCKED somebody twice in the face. The other guy folded like a rag doll. My stepdad and I cheered. It was the funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks!
In my time as a student journalist, I observed plenty of protesters for and against all kinds of causes. A basic rule of thumb I developed is the faster a certain group appears in response to a situation, the less seriously they should be taken. This is because the first people who appear are usually the Professional Protesters, who don’t have real jobs, a regular address, and think creating a scene is somehow exerting real influence.
You know, you protesters would really get your message across more effectively if you held your rallies - say - in the middle of a field in Nebraska or somesuch. Don’t let anyone know you’re gonna be there - don’t want to risk any congestion, news coverage, or waste of government resources. While you’re at it, could you keep it down? And are signs absolutely necessary?
[sarcasm]Really sorry you guys were inconvenienced on your commute.[/sarcasm]
:rolleyes:
Yes, that is it. I REALLY wanted people to be gassed and I REALLY wanted to see multiple cases of murder by octane. Did I mention :rolleyes:
Man, mention voting Republican and people loose all grasp of reality.
I see nothing wrong with having a protest where it will attract the most attention but blocking traffic on a major thoroughfare is never a good idea. As Fenris pointed out, what if some emergency vehicle had to get through?
I’m not going to start a new thread because it’s about the same damn thing.
I am so pissed off right now. The protesters in my hometown, not wanting to miss out on the possibility of being run over, threw a protest in the middle of the road today. They lay down in the street and had someone dressed as Uncle Sam throw blood on them.
Their primary message was, “war kills.” According to the local newspaper. Sorry, no link, i’m so pissed right now I can’t figure out how to code it.
Really? You don’t fucking say? I didn’t know that dropping a bunch of bombs on a city would fucking kill people! Thanks for the brainwave cause I really wasn’t sure about that one. And you’re against it? Really? Well, gee, I guess that those of us who don’t fucking throw ourselves on the street like you did are FOR it.
The problem is, they did this right by our law enforcement center. IF there had been a real emergency somewhere, there would have been a bit of a problem getting out there.
Protest: contact your congressmen, badger your state reps. write the fucking president. Figure out a way to get support to the survivors of the war. Do something fucking constructive with your life!
I don’t think your comparison is apt. In a war protest, the message is key. The goal of spam is to make money. Now you can say that doing dangerous things to protest war is wrong because there are more benign ways to do it, and I would agree with you. But I don’t think you can say that they are hurting their cause only because they irritate you. I find it hard to imagine a scenario where any person would think “Well, I was against war, but since those lousy hippies blocked traffic, now I’m for it.”
I wonder how these “protestors” would feel if we boarded up all the doors and windows in their houses from the outside. Because, y’know, we have an opinion, therefore we get to dictate their lives for a while.
And people didn’t have a chance to avoid the wandering goons. You really think they put out flyers saying, “So, yeah, we’re gonna meet at the Embarcadero, march up Market, end up at City Hall. Meanwhile, a bunch of assholes are going to try to block every street in the downtown area, and attempt to shut down the Bay Bridge.”
Folks, a closure of the Bay Bridge means hours and hours of wasted time and wasted fuel. Golden Gate-Richmond Bridge-80 (?) and 280-Hayward Bridge-580 would both be at least two hours out of the way for anyone, even if that’s their normal route.
Shit, even the human shields have a point and a purpose.
I have to disagree. If you see a group of white men with shaved heads beating up a black man, and you think what they’re doing is wrong, do you harass other white men with shaved heads while they’re walking home from, say a Baptist congregation? No. If you feel you must punish someone, punish those who are in some way responsible. Not people going home, 59% of whom agree with your supposed message. Voice your message to all, but do not harass, intimidate, or vandalize. That’s being a common crimnal.
blowero- they may not of switched people’s minds, but they sure as hell didn’t help themselves.
LordVor- I think that the hike in gas prices got people to think about their dependency on oil well enough. If someone feels a need to place a bunch of newsstands in front of my Honda while I’m trying to get home, it’ll only make me think, “You’re an asshole.”
Your stance against the war, now matter how worthy and useful and all warm and fuzzy it may make you feel, does not give you the right to interfere with my life. I have the right to unimpeded passage on public thoroughfares.
Oh, that is rich. You suggest steamrolling and gassing protestors and yet I’m losing grip on reality. You get to use hyperbole but I don’t? How sporting of you.
You still missed my point, though. If you don’t like political protest, go somewhere where it’s illegal (or, in the true spirit of protest, start a grassroots movement here in the U.S. to make your voice heard. But then you’d be a left-wing commie cockmonkey, wouldn’t you? What to do, what to do…). If I’ve completely misread you and you actually adore peaceful protest but are only objecting to the disruption caused by this particular brand of protest, then I apologize for misjudging you but you should definitely rethink your words in this thread because you’re not representing yourself very well.
Troy, the protestors, even the Vomit Brigade, did have a purpose. It was to get attention, and they did that.
But I agree with you. I think it’s ironic, actually. They were pissing off a lot of people that agreed with them. All I was really saying earlier was that I thought there was a certain bizarro logic to the whole vomit-on-the-steps-of-City-Hall thing.
From **Antiwar.com**: “San Francisco Rabble Brings Discredit on Antiwar Movement.”
Sure, if the protestors never drive.
We are all aware that we depend on oil consuming devices to go about our business. However, people don’t wake up one morning and suddenly say to themselves, “Gosh, it would really be just marvellous to consume twice twice as much petroleum as the average European, or twenty times as much as the average Congolese*”. They do it because the very fabric of American life, over several generations, has evolved in such a way as to make daily driving necessary for most of us.
This situation has evolved over many years, especially around the phenomenon of fast interurban rail lines being ripped up and replaced by buses. In most places, this was the result of deliberate decisions that seemed progressive at the time. Whether or not this can be blamed on companies like GM and Firestone, who really did in some cases buy up streetcar companies and replace them with buses, is debatable, as the Perfect Master points out. But what’s clearly true is that we are living with the consequences of decisions made by our grandparents. People seem far less willing to subsidize mass transit through their taxes; I doubt if the New York subway could be built today. Above ground rail is much cheaper, but hampered by people’s perception of it as an “eyesore”–in this regard it’s hard to understand why so many mini-malls have been built; IMHO they’re a far worse eyesore than the Redondo-Beach-to-Norwak light rail line. These perceptions have to change if any progress is going to be made, and if any of the protesters are focusing on that I’m on the same page with them. But just yelling “no blood for oil” and inconveniencing Joe Commuter is stupid.
I wonder how much extra gasoline was consumed by cars idling in traffic caused by protests? :rolleyes:
*these figures plucked out of air; whether they’re correct or not doesn’t detract from my point.
Wow. In two days they became a Movement.
No, I think the best thing for a movement that depends on popular support to do is to piss off as much of the populace as they can. And then all of us who got to or from work three hours late will see that’s it’s really the United States government that we should be angry at.