If they can get to the protestors. Traffic doesn't just occur at the single spot where this happens, and this is especially true on a bridge.
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Republican Tom Cotton Suggests Pro-Palestinian Protesters Would Be Thrown Off Bridge in Home State
- Thread starter Coyote Starrk
- Start date
You know the civil rights movement didn't make a lot of white people happy right? Like it literally pissed a lot of people the fuck off, it was not seen as a good thing by the white majority so this always confuses me when people say stuff like this. That's the one thing that's guaranteed with a protest, that you're gonna piss folks off. There's a reason white folks hated Martin Luther King when he was alive. And the putting yourself in danger part too,. I don't even need to explain that part. I understand the emergency vehicle part tho, but I mean, folks gotta protest.
I mean. If you see a protest and you start running through hypotheticals where you gotta run them over..idk
lol stfu Cotton. What is this posturing? "Regular people" won't do shit, because you conditioned people to believe protestors are criminals. They'd most likely just stay at home cowering.
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While this can happen, it often doesn't as it requires the protesters and police to be coordinating and allow that portion of traffic, which in this particular instance in San Francisco did not happen.
Uh huh. Sure is horrible for a bunch of people to be mildly inconvenienced. I'd hate for them to have to ACKNOWLEDGE A FUCKING GENOCIDE. You're probably one of those people that says "I can acknowledge that we need more housing, but this isn't the area to build low-income apartments!"
"It's counterproductive" - It's not
"dangerous" - Only because of fucks like Tom Cotton
"Can cause serious issues..." - Oh no, please don't mildly inconvenience people. So long as we support a genocide, even through silence, EVERYONE has something to do with it. No one is innocent.
"Delaying..." - Already a proven myth
What would be a more effective protest? Quietly saying "gee wizzz guys maybe we shouldn't support the destruction of an entire population?"
Protests should always be uncomfortable and inconvenient. Because marching, thus far, has done absolutely nothing to move the needle.
The only significant victories by social movements were done by movements that pissed people the hell off. It is in fact the best form of protest :)
As a queer person, I wouldn't have rights if we hadn't pissed off people with your arguments the hell off.
There's already been suppression of speech with the anti-BDS laws in a number of states, so it's only natural of the mainstream right to promote violence against pro-Palestine supporters. Sickening to see, but that won't stop the movement from calling out the injustice going on in Palestine rn.
Good, because the example you posted before you deleted it literally told the exact opposite story you thought it did, with the ambulance being blocked by police, not protesters, which were not even blocking that road's direction to begin with
Tom Cotton continues to advocate for violence.
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The classic Republican quadruple down on their horrible statements.
View: https://twitter.com/TomCottonAR/status/1780230397252518127
View: https://twitter.com/TomCottonAR/status/1780230397252518127
The only reason I don't like blocked road protests is that I have very little faith in my common man and pissing off people in giant battering rams is a big risk to the protesters. But if they accept that risk then more power to them. Protests are meant to be disruptive. Cordoning people off where they're easy to ignore does nothing.
Cotton is a murderous fascist, but I'm always surprised how widespread the "don't block roads though" sentiment is around here. Protests need to be disruptive and at least a little aggravating to be at all useful. An argument against disruption is an argument in favor of the status quo.
If you're not conservative but you're still channeling the "but what about emergency vehicles" argument in the context of a protest, well, I'm no doctor but that may be a mean case of "boomer mindset."
Also shouldn't there normally be side roads or alternative routes that don't use major highways that protestors would block?
The truth is that Pro-Palestinian protests really have some people showing themselves. Many of these people who would have even supported BLM protests(which people like Cotton called riots btw) suddenly demand decorum for Palestinian protests. A bunch of Fettermans.
No, these protests are typically designed to block things like bridges or other limited roads (as also happened yesterday in Chicago at the O'Hare entrance road) where there are no alternatives. Otherwise traffic would just flow around them with minimal impact.
Getting strong vibes of conservative people I've known who say they'll do A because you know manly or w/e and then when actually confronted with the situation they stfu and sit down. Garbage person pushing garbage dangerous ideas because the world is about THEM always.
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Normally I would agree. These people are essentially cowards when it comes down to it, but for some reason when it comes to these kinds of protests the right wingers suddenly have the guts to do something. I think it's because most protesters don't fight back.
There are endless videos of angry drivers and police clearing out these protests and moving people out of the way by force. Or worse you get the psychos that start waving guns or try to run people over.
I mean the GG bridge is the only direct road bridge connecting Marin county to SF so it kinda sucked for people that needed go commute. My spouse works at a cancer clinic and a lot of people had to miss their chemo appointment due to that
Law enforcement doing it is one thing, I was more responding on the premise encouraging civilians into murdering protestors by chucking them off a bridge. I'm sure the more you unpack it the worse reality actually is but tbh it's Tuesday, I'm good not going further than just chastising all these bitch people with such fragile self important egos.
This and the supreme Court ruling are clear indicators as to what kind of world Republicans aspire to create.
What if the protest was for religious liberty? Against unfair taxation? Would it be different then? I'm all for local regulations but they must leave recourse for free assembly, with services and support (read: state capacity) to help organizers so that the regulations promote effective protest instead of suppressing it.
Yesterday a group blocked the entrance to Seattle-Tacoma airport. I can't think of an experience more counterproductive than sticking people in cars with the crushing anxiety that they will miss a nonrefundable flight. That protest was not for a cause. That protest was to show moral superiority and righteousness, an event about the protestors themselves. It was rightly condemned by everyone.
But dehumanizing the protestors and doing harm is disgusting (as all dehumanization is) and all that's needed is for law enforcement to disperse the protest peacefully and quickly (which they did).
Yesterday a group blocked the entrance to Seattle-Tacoma airport. I can't think of an experience more counterproductive than sticking people in cars with the crushing anxiety that they will miss a nonrefundable flight. That protest was not for a cause. That protest was to show moral superiority and righteousness, an event about the protestors themselves. It was rightly condemned by everyone.
But dehumanizing the protestors and doing harm is disgusting (as all dehumanization is) and all that's needed is for law enforcement to disperse the protest peacefully and quickly (which they did).
One argument about the future of governance in the US is that we'll basically fall into warlordism when a future chud president dissolves large portions of the federal government so there's nobody to step in when a red state decides to never press charges for killing protesters or minorities within their borders. That's what Cotton and people like him are banking on, literal open season on the libs.
Yes, of course. US Republicans are not even a little bit concerned about hypocrisy. If a conservative is deplatformed or jeered at or even discussed negatively after the fact, that's anti-free speech. If a liberal is deplatformed that's fine and normal. Liberals complaining about Florida kids being taught that slavery was actually helpful to slaves are just whiners who want to brainwash kids with DEI, but banning "critical race theory" from classrooms is very good and important. etc. It's fine when we do it, it's unconscionable when they do it is just a way of life for Republicans, and they see no problems with that. Thus the now well-known quote about conservatives believing in in-groups that the law protects but does not bind and out-groups that the law binds but does not protect.
Per a few news stories I just found from googling, this was a pro-Palestine protest? Possible it was ill-advised, certainly, but it's a little odd to say it wasn't for a cause.
We actually didn't coordinate ahead of time it just developed that way. At the end of the day though...
First bolded point is why I'm unsure what some people are revering when they speak fondly of MLK and other civil rights leaders.
Second, you ram through a crowd of people, you're more likely to just injure and kill a bunch of people and still not get your loved one to a hospital because you fucked up your vehicle.
You can see the reason in this thread itself. No one here will overtly support the calls for violence but there is enough "well they shouldn't protest like that" even on a fairly liberal platform.
When even people opposed to the fascists see the protestors as a danger or a nuisance, you can understand why they get emboldened.
"Look at how many people agree with me, I will do something about it."
Just putting something on a poster doesn't give the protest a cause, though. You must look at the actions of people! This protest wasn't intended to persuade, affect change, convey understanding. It's about them.
Taken from the left-leaning Seattle reddit:
What the protestors did was cruel. I get that people naturally polarize against Tom Cottom and the GOP's agenda to suppress all forms of protest that they don't like, but I urge people to fight that polarization and have compassion for people. There's plenty of streets in Burien or SeaTac to make a protest but they picked the entrance to the airport specifically out of cruelty against other people that they dehumanized.
Protests that target ordinary people with zero power to change things doesn't make sense in many instances. Unless your goal is to generate publicity/awareness, which is needed sometimes. A blockade of our elected representatives driveways would be a lot more effective in this instance. Target the people with the power to do something.
Yep. And folks would rather critique the methods of the protestors than put that energy into formulating an action plan or engaging in the action themselves.
I'd like to know the mythical "right way to do it" because I promise you, folks were saying the same shit in the 1950s and 60s.
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That's what I was trying to say earlier. Go after the source. Make their lives hell.
When the sources come from all over and mass inaction helps perpetuate the problem and single out individuals that's easier said than done.
Mhmm, and folks hate to be inconvenienced more than they hate the problems that protests are addressing, so much so that we're coming up with hypotheticals in order to hate on them even harder.
Soooo they just might get away with it because they know folks won't do anything about it.
It sounds good in theory, but I think there is the risk of it turning into intimidation tactics. It'd be hard to feel bad about objectively horrible politicians having protesters demonstrating outside their house because of that politician's terrible policies / ideas, but I think that could pretty easily be flipped the other way to awful effect, if you just imagine it being the opposite: far-right (and probably armed) people protesting outside democrat houses, demanding their own change.
This article is so bad the only thing it convinced me of is that some of you will post anything as long as the title agrees with your existing position.
Agreed. Plus even if you think Cotton wouldn't ever do something, his rhetoric reaches far and it just needs to convince one person to take action. It's not a question of if or when. It's already happened multiple times in recent history.
As to the whole "blocking traffic" debate, I more question how effective it is. If you block traffic that means people are backed up and may not actually see what you're protesting. So you have to rely on the news telling them why they were rerouted or stuck in traffic or whatever. And these days that means you're getting highly curated, often biased reporting telling you about it either pushing the worst aspects or hiding any real issues created by it.
For example:
That you have to tell somebody what the protest was about after the fact means it may not have been as effective as some people are assuming.
We used social media to spread the word of it, got it into some papers, including having a small independent outfit who was more connected with the community accompany us.
Out of it we managed to get a meeting with city officials to discuss qualified immunity for the police, youth engagement, and further support for accessible housing and services for the unhoused. Unfortunately, I had to relocate so not sure how long the engagement lasted between them and the government.
Not to say it will have a perfect success rate but not sure what form of protesting will when people deem issues too hard to solve or they are indifferent unless they're directly affected by them.
How bloodthirsty US republicans are is honestly pretty fucking weird. Literally encouraging the public to commit mass murder and don't even recognise it as a crime but instead consider the would be victims criminals. They're just openly terrorists and they're growing more and more extremist as time goes on
I'm confused. Are you talking about other protests you were a part of that involved blocking traffic? Because I thought this was about supporting Palestinians.
Congrats on agreeing with the conservatives that protests should be invisible and convenient for everyone.
It mostly is. The legal standard for inciting violence is almost never met because it requires someone to knowingly call for a specific violent act to be carried out immediately.
How do protests that annoy/anger everyday people just going about their lives with absolutely zero power to change anything help bring about positive change?
When people protested outside the homes of Supreme Court justices that really rattled/scared powerful people. That's what we need, not blockading a bridge thousands of people use everyday to go to work/school/appointments/etc.