this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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No more business as usual," the organization leading the protest said on social media.

Dozens of Jewish protesters and their allies were arrested on Wednesday morning after they blocked rush hour traffic on a busy Los Angeles highway to demand a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Palestinians in Gaza.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I always feel conflicted when I see things like this. On one side good for them, they found a way to get their message across to a nation news. But on the other hand they are intentionally disrupting infrastructure people rely on everyday. I don't think it's a bad thing that people want global change, but I do think it is a bad thing that people feel powerless to influence this change so they have to resort to more disruptive methods like this. More representation in the federal government could help prevent this.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 11 months ago (4 children)

A non-disruptive protest just gets ignored. You need to impact people’s daily lives to make them think why the problem arose in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago

People will find a way to get mad at any protest no matter how little it impacts others. See kneeling for anthems or just wearing shirts at events

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (3 children)

But, you need to impact the lives of the people who have the means to make that change. A traffic jam isn't going to do that.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago

I mean, is a major highway in the second largest city of the primary colonial sponsor a bad place? I guess if we had free teleportation they might find marginally better success in DC or Tel Aviv, but if you’re located in LA I can see why you’d choose to protest there and not somewhere else.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

If it happened in a vacuum, probably not. But traffic jams don’t happen in a vacuum. They ripple out and cause effects that hit millions of other people. Such as this news article, this lemmy post, and all of the people here discussing it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Traffic jam equals lots of news coverage lots of pissed off voters, lots of attention lots of eyes, that is how you get to people who can make a change.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

And a disruptive protest just makes people hate you and your cause.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I'm not really asking you to look it up or anything, but this gets parroted around a lot, and I wonder if there's actually any data to really support it or if it's just a statement that kinda sounds nice.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago

I mean maybe not data but it's telling that almost every successful movement goes beyond the "quietly protest on the side of the road" step.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What does a non-disruptive protest even look like? The entire purpose of protest is to be disruptive, and every protest is disruptive in some way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Adding a flag to your profile pic.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

I wouldn’t consider that a form of protest personally. Just a way of expressing support.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

This post itself provides a new data point as a piece of evidence to support that claim. There is a news article written about it, and we are talking about it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Also conflicted: I don’t think the disruption itself is a bad thing if it’s disrupting a part of society that derives benefit from the whatever is being protested against.

That said, I’m not sure how disrupting traffic in Los Angeles is going to affect the change they want to see. You can’t get much further from Washington DC than the West Coast.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

This is the dumbest way to protest. Out of the book of any publicity is good publicity: “any protest is a good protest”.