How do you feel about "inconvenient" protesting

[MrFalconfly]

Never. I don't give a fuck what you're protesting, you do not stop a business from profiting, or shut down an entire fucking highway cause "our issue is important *whine*. Every protester who does should be arrested. It's selfish, childish, and an asshole way to protest.

Is it just a European thing to register a protest?

You know, call the police, call the town-hall, agree on a location and time of day to protest?

I mean the protest is usually pretty contained, so if one road is "blocked" there are other roads to utilize.

 

[Dirty Hippy]

Maybe I'm strange, but protestors blocking off places I need to be does not make me want to give them whatever they want. Their cause won't be remembered, just that some jackasses were in my way.

 

[Kevlar Eater]

A level head won't attract attention nowadays. Look at any news station or publication for proof; what would attract the most attention? Murder, ISIS/ISIL, celebrity bullshit, the occasional scandal involving a high-profile anti-gay politician and a transvestite, yanno, the usual, innit? None of that stuff is committed by level heads, thus we won't know of these things if no one writes about them (or if the editors are asswipes that block stories not involving the aforementioned shite).

Extremes are the name and the game. Extremes (whether good or bad) can raise up a stink faster than a level, "mature" head (swirls glass full of red wine while laughing snobbishly). People get more inconvenienced by extremes, but they're getting their message spread faster. It may go over the heads of possibly more annoyed people, but there's bound to be enough people who may look into whatever cause is being broadcast, to see whether or not it's just. Cast your net wide enough and you're bound to catch something. What that something is, remains to be seen.

There's an awful lot of ya that would simply dismiss a cause (or even kill its protesters) just because it "inconvenienced" you. If something as important to US history as the Civil Rights protests was simply a door-to-door petitioning, it would not have gone anywhere. And I'm certain many people were inconvenienced by a bunch of "negroes walkin' up and down the street", but they eventually got their message heard and acted upon, for good and ill (though a few level heads did their damnedest to keep the crowds in check and were sorely needed).

tl;dr: I see the good and bad of inconvenient protesting. Sucks for those caught in the crossfire and they've a right to be pissed, but the extreme protesters know their message won't get heard unless they say or do something radical to catch the attention of publications.

(How do I feel about it? If your cause ain't as obviously bullshitty as Kony 2012, Occupy Wall Street or most women's breast cancer awareness fundraisers, I'll look deeper into it.)

 

[tippy2k2]

You protest to get noticed, not for your own health, so how it happens can vary. But whether or not I agree with how inconvenient they're allowed to be depends on what people are protesting. Boston tea party for example was largely criminal and hurt trade by throwing perfectly good stuff into the ocean, but it was for a good reason.

What's going on now? I disagree with it almost entirely. I don't care that you're clogging up the road as much as that you're doing it for a dumb misguided reason.

I guess my thing with that is who gets to decide if it's for a dumb reason and who gets to decide when it's justified?

MLK did a lot of things that were incredibly inconvenient to people during his marches and rallies. I can't imagine there are many of us who would say what MLK did was wrong.

The highway was blocked by a group of people rallying against racism. Are they justified in blocking the highway and clogging up travel for hours because they feel racism still exists? A lot of people agree it's fine.

The highway is then blocked by the "$15 a hour fast food workers" movement. There are people with college degrees not making that much a hour and burger flippers are arguing that they deserve $15 a hour for what they do. Are they justified in blocking the highway and clogging up travel for hours because they want more money? You're losing a lot of people.

I don't like that Target pulled GTA V from their shelves (Note: The other two examples did just happen but for arguments sake, pretend Target in America pulled GTA V the same with TA did). I get a group of like-minded gamers together and we go block the highway because we feel that Target is censoring our game. Are we justified in blocking the highway and clogging up travel for hours because Target pulled GTA V? I think except for those protesting, you'd almost certainly would find no one who would support it.

Maybe I'm looking at it too Black & White but I saw plenty of people here in Minnesota state that they were fine with people protesting the racism thing but NOT fine with the $15 a hour thing. What's the difference? Why does one cause allow people to block the highway and the other cause get met with hatred and scorn? I'm pretty sure those fast food workers are just as passionate as that man lying in the street doing a "die-in"...

Is it just a European thing to register a protest?

You know, call the police, call the town-hall, agree on a location and time of day to protest?

I mean the protest is usually pretty contained, so if one road is "blocked" there are other roads to utilize.

For it to be a "legal" protest, you have to have a permit here in 'Merica as well (so I suppose yes, you would agree on a location and time of day to protest). In general, unless it becomes violent, the police will not use a ton of force to get people to go away (in my example, the police escorted the people on the highway and blocked the ramps to enter the highway).

 

[MrFalconfly]

For it to be a "legal" protest, you have to have a permit here in 'Merica as well (so I suppose yes, you would agree on a location and time of day to protest). In general, unless it becomes violent, the police will not use a ton of force to get people to go away (in my example, the police escorted the people on the highway and blocked the ramps to enter the highway).

Oh thank goodness.

See that's the kind of example I was thinking of too.

People gathering, to create awareness, in a legal manner.

 

[tippy2k2]

For it to be a "legal" protest, you have to have a permit here in 'Merica as well (so I suppose yes, you would agree on a location and time of day to protest). In general, unless it becomes violent, the police will not use a ton of force to get people to go away (in my example, the police escorted the people on the highway and blocked the ramps to enter the highway).

Oh thank goodness.

See that's the kind of example I was thinking of too.

People gathering, to create awareness, in a legal manner.

Yeah but that's the thing.

When I'm talking about an "inconvenient" protest, I'm more talking about the illegal ones (not necessarily the same but if it's going to be a big inconvenience, it'll probably be an illegal protest).

Like the highway examples I gave in my OP; those weren't legal protests. They had no legal right to be on the highway like that (and City Hall would NEVER give a permit to protest on a highway like that). As I stated, unless it gets violent, the police will generally not intervene and start tear gassing people and whatnot but it was still illegal what they were doing.

 

[Rednog]

In my city people blocked an express way and some major streets. The people who did this are quite simply short sighted idiots. Most of these douchebags are people who either have work or school during the day...so basically fuck anyone who works in the afternoon or overnight. I facepalmed hard when I saw that the protesters had basically closed off 3 main roads to a campus with 3 hospitals. Good job idiots, really hope one day when you or a loved one really need to get to a hospital ASAP you get totally boned by protesters.

Go protest in front of city hall or in front of police stations, stop fucking over the common guy. I honestly don't know why the cops didn't just start arresting people in droves.

 

[Something Amyss]

Also:
RIOTING does nothing but make you, your cause, and your community look like SAVAGES.

Isn't it weird how virtually nobody says this when white folks riot?

I was under the impression that ALL protesting was inconvenient.

Not since slacktivism became a thing.

 

[Grumman]

Speech is protected, physically restraining people to subject them to your speech is not. If someone wants to pass along a public thoroughfare, you have no legal authority that permits you to stop them.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

"I agree with your right to state your case so long as you don't force me to actually consider it in any way, shape or form."

I guess that if you've exhausted every "polite" form of protest but haven't gotten things changed, you should just realize you're not worth troubling anyone over and should just go home?

 

[Grumman]

"I agree with your right to state your case so long as you don't force me to actually consider it in any way, shape or form."

I guess that if you've exhausted every "polite" form of protest but haven't gotten things changed, you should just realize you're not worth troubling anyone over and should just go home?

False imprisonment is a /crime/, Wolf. If people do not consider your complaints to have merit, that does not give you the right to illegally detain them or commit any other crime against them.

 

[Saetha]

Snip

Look, I don't generally like politics and I don't want to get into a fight over whether or not one cause is justified over another or... anything like that. But you asked how does one decide if a cause is "worthy" enough or not to get to protest in a highly disruptive manner. The answer's pretty easy -- the public decides.

Protesting is an appeal to public opinion. It's an attempt to bypass politics and law and get straight to the people. Thus, if the majority -- or a big enough percentage -- believe your cause to be just, you get the right to protest disruptively, because the public approves of what you're protesting for. If people think your cause is pointless, or not important enough? Then they'll ***** and moan about how you blocked the I35 and they missed little Jimmy's dance recital or whatever.

Any disruptive protest will have people against it. The line between worthy and unworthy is an arbitrary numbers game of how many people are against it. Because there are no absolutes with public opinion. It's messy, stupid, selfish, irrational. If the majority of people think you're wrong, you're wrong. That's the danger of it -- it grants a lot of power, but there are no strict guidelines or rules to follow. You can't define worthy, because worthy is ever-changing.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

I?ve never personally been inconvenienced by a protest, so I?m rather neutral about the whole thing. I imagine, though, if I were to be inconvenienced, I?d be pretty pissed off about it, because I?m naturally a selfish person and only care about things that affect me (or will affect me in the future). You might get noticed, but you might also garner even more opposition to your cause from people that are annoyed you fucked up their commute to work/their trip back home to their family.

When you protest, you?re trying to work with the people, not against them. The Michael Brown protestors? All they?re doing is giving the right-wing press more fuel to their argument that these working-class black folk are nothing more than inarticulate savages. ?Cos that?s what they look like. Inarticulate savages. It makes you look less like a campaigner and more like an extremist. (And I?m saying this as a black man myself; albeit, a British one who admittedly was raised in a middle-class household with very little discrimination, despite growing up in a heavily white-dominated city)

Btw, the reason Martin Luther King, Malcom X, and other civil rights campaigners managed to obtain anti-discrimination legislation for America was not because they inconvenienced people and got attention through that. It was because they were consistent with their arguments, were organised, and knew what they wanted to happen. MLK and co. had their brushes with radicalism (Malcom X especially and notoriously), but they got back on the right track and eventually got white Americans to support their side. These Michael Brown protestors are anything but, and are more likely to shout ?RACISM!? than focusing on the non-racial issue of the police being too trigger-happy and not doing their fucking jobs properly. And I?d be saying the same thing about white protesters too.

If they are going to hold up a road or something for their protest, I?d prefer it if I and others were told about it in advance, so we could make plans around it. That way, it?s not an unhappy surprise.

 

[Sanderpower]

It's a gamble. On one hand if your protest is out of the way it can be easily ignored and it becomes pointless. On the other hand if your protest begins to seriously disrupt the lives of normal people, then you're hurting others for your own beliefs and you might end up driving people away.

There's a balance somewhere. You have to be heard, you have to make yourselves unable to be ignored, but you can't piss off everyday person otherwise your movement won't go anywhere.

 

[K12]

Honestly I think that non-disruptive protests are largely pointless. A protest is a show of (non-violent) force. It isn't really a protest if you aren't making yourself conspicuous.

Most of the time protests aren't done for issues that people aren't aware of, it's the issues that people are vaguely aware of but try to ignore. The protest is a clear message saying "we aren't going to put up with this quietly". My reaction to protests usually just reflects my reaction to the issue.

There are quite a lot of laws surrounding the acceptability of protests and I don't think we need more restrictions on them (if anything new restrictions could make riots even more likely)

 

[lowtech redneck]

What right? The right to get to places in a timely fashion? The right to not be inconvenienced? Governments don't like giving permission to protest, especially when that government is, say, wantonly allowing police to murder its citizens.

The right to freedom of movement, long-established as an essential right for hundreds of years, now. And, just as the drivers have certain necessary limitations on their rights to accommodate the rights of others (i.e. they can't just drive on the sidewalk or deliberately run over people standing in the middle of the road), protestors have their right to peacefully assemble and protests limited so that they cannot impede the free movement of others.

 

[Something Amyss]

The right to freedom of movement, long-established as an essential right for hundreds of years, now.

Are traffic jams, then, massive oppression?

 

[Scow2]

The perfect answer to protests that block streets is Monster Trucks.
The answer to Riots (The type with store looting and car flipping/burning) is Heavy Machine Guns - their lives are worth less than the property destruction they inflict.
If you want to block a street, better bring your own cars to form barricades to dissuade Monster Trucks.

No sympathy to those who defend a robber and bully who got shot assaulting a police officer, especially after my own experiences with 'Harmless Teenagers" (Such as the trio that beat, raped, and mugged an elderly woman on a bus.)

That said... protests directly blocking businesses (Infanticide clinics, offensively-run companies) is fine.

 

[Muspelheim]

Unless the place you live gives you no choice, apply to the police. They're usually rather good at arranging bypasses and making sure things go smoothtly, at least in my experience. Yes, a detour is a detour. But honestly, that is not exactly a heavy price to pay for sodding democracy.

However, protests that haven't been previously planned and block off access without rerouting done is a different matter. It's not a very good idea.

The answer to Riots (The type with store looting and car flipping/burning) is Heavy Machine Guns - their lives are worth less than the property destruction they inflict.

That solution might need rather careful application. Leaning too hard on machine gun fire was at least a partial reason to why Khadaffi spent the last minutes of his life in a drainpipe, wasn't it?

 

[lowtech redneck]

The right to freedom of movement, long-established as an essential right for hundreds of years, now.

Are traffic jams, then, massive oppression?

No, but blockading an important road simply to promote an agenda rather than as a means or byproduct of providing a public good qualifies as a violation of rights, albeit relatively minor due to its transitory nature (small comfort for anyone in an emergency situation), and as such is not something to be casually tolerated or reflexively dismissed.