Angry Driver Runs Over Protesters

[IronLionZion]

It's Brazil. The protestors are against austerity. The asshole trying to make Brazil great again was arrested and charged with attempted murder. Many Trumpers are posting the video with supportive comments on various social media sites and blogs encouraging people to bravely stand up to oppressive liberals and do this here in the US. It is becoming legal in some red states.

http://www.snopes.com/run-over-trump-protesters/

And some red states have bills to make peaceful protest illegal.

[LOL Lib]

1. Eh stay outta the street.

Peaceful protests don't clog up traffic or shut down roads. I have no sympathy for idiots who play chicken with cars.

[arithia]

2. ... wow.

These people are not idiots. Calling them such is dismissive assumptive fallacy on your part. It's also pretty rude, considering there are probably more than a few DUers who have engaged in street protests (with and without permits).

Modern history is chock full of examples of peaceful protests in streets, bridges and other thoroughfares. By occupying public spaces in ways that cannot be ignored, they are drawing attention to causes that typically ARE ignored by the greater population and major news outlets.

If you are ignorant of history and the effect these types of marches generate in terms of media exposure and their impact on public sentiment, please research the following subject (preferably beyond this limited wiki entry).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches

[cab67]

10. history is indeed replete with examples.

Last edited Fri May 19, 2017, 08:01 AM - Edit history (1)

And those that were effective shared two things in common:

1. A clear goal or desired outcome. In the 1960's, civil rights protesters specifically wanted Jim Crow laws overturned and segregated facilities integrated.

2. Those inconvenienced by the blockages were mostly the people most likely to be opposed to the marchers. They would either change their minds or not, but few additional enemies were generated.

This is why I think road blockages related to Black Lives Matter and the Trump election were not such a good idea. There's no clear goal - for example, BLM wants to make people aware of violence against African Americans, but there are no specific legislative goals in mind. What, exactly, were the blockages supposed to accomplish that other forms of protest could not? The blockages also inconvenienced a lot of people sympathetic to their cause; had I missed a flight because the exit ramp to the airport was blocked, I would probably lose sympathy for those blocking the exit. In that sense, they were absolutely counterproductive.

The interstate near my home was blocked by protesters following the November election. Local coverage focused on a couple of families who were trying to visit relatives in the ICU at a local hospital; they were upset at the results of the election, but they were just as upset at the people who prevented them from getting to the hospital when their loved ones might have been about to die. In terms of the message sent, the blockage backfired very badly.


Added on edit - I am not, in any way, in favor of laws allowing drivers to run over protesters. I'm merely pointing out that not all forms of protest are effective in all cases.

[LOL Lib]

12. Blah blah blah.....Didn't read as soon as I detected your condescending attitude. :)

Stay out of the street. It's pretty goddamn simple. There is no need to impede traffic in order to peacefully protest. Go play in the freeway if you feel compelled. Don't cry when you get run over.

[Warpy]

3. Yeah, because inconveniencing some yuppie driver is a capital offense

Sheesh.

[byronius]

4. Wow. That's cold and ugly. Really, really dark comment.

Doesn't match your avatar, I can tell you.

[ET Awful]

5. Yeah! Nobody should EVER block a street in protest

[LakeArenal]

8. I suppose you aim for the dog who runs out into the street, too,

just to show those irresponsible dog owners.

[IronLionZion]

11. Some people just look for a reason to teach someone a painful lesson

and claim it's for your own good, or you were asking for it.

[lambchopp59]

13. I'm unsure if I'm responding to a troll here.

I'm debating whether to report your comment for plain indecent level of insensitivity.

[IronLionZion]

6. More videos

[LakeArenal]

7. Stand up to oppressive pedestrian liberals with a speeding vehicle

Those right wingers sure are a brave sort.

[kiri]

9. spike strips

The answer: protestors need to put down "spike strips" that ruin the tires if you drive over them. These are easily home-made, with 10 or 12 penny nails.

[lambchopp59]

14. I'm going a bit off topic here, but in the fear vein:

I'd taken a job in largely rural northern california just over two years ago now. It was comfortable at first, but Trump's election has changed all that for me here.
Regardless of extending LGBT rights and protections from the parent company I'm signed with:
I don't feel safe here any more.
These well armed Trumper idiots are getting bolder, and with the meltdowns of their fuhrer, I believe more of them will snap.
I'm dealing with some latent homophobia here, but it's clear to me now that an entity that I reported for less-than latent disrespectful actions is looking for more sly ways around trashing my life or professionalism.
I don't see this getting better.
I do see a few of the Trumper's I know of being extra non-sociable with me, extending the ten-foot-pole when possible.
And I've seen this movie before.
It concluded with me running for my life.
There's a lot more complexity to this than I have the time and energy to go into now, it may not even be totally safe to address much of what I see brewing on any public format.
I don't know what it will take, I know it will take every dollar I have to do so, but by fall, I'm moving back to the relative safety of the bay area.
And leave the scheming assholes who would have me imprisoned or murdered to reading their "Focus on Other People's Family" rags in the lunchroom in peace.

[IronLionZion]

15. Why highways have become the center of civil rights protest

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/13/why-highways-have-become-the-center-of-civil-rights-protest/?utm_term=.b6e09f98bfc0

"If you can find a way to jam up a highway — literally have the city have a heart attack, blocking an artery — it causes people to stand up and pay attention," said Nathan Connolly, a historian at Johns Hopkins University. "Highways still perform their historic role from a half-century ago. They help people move very easily across these elaborately segregated landscapes."

Block a highway, and you upend the economic life of a city, as well as the spatial logic that has long allowed people to pass through them without encountering their poverty or problems. Block a highway, and you command a lot more attention than would a rally outside a church or city hall — from traffic helicopters, immobile commuters, alarmed officials.

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It's more of a size and scale problem. Dr. King marched in the streets (as did lots of white liberals for anti-war, occupy, etc.) but it was organized large marches with a specific goal in mind, to end the idiotic Jim Crow laws and segregation. We still have some of that btw. I didn't have my first white coworker until my early 30s and lived in cheap apartment complexes where nobody is white. Dr. King and his followers took beatings, dog bites, and even got shot and killed because someone didn't want them to vote or go to school or sit next to them at a lunch counter.

BLM and other groups now might have honorable intentions, but not the same level of organization or specific goals they can articulate. "stop killing us" is not specific since America is a killing nation that kills like it's our way of life.

So this is probably why a lot of liberals don't sympathize with the young idealists blocking traffic for an ambiguous cause, and many well-intentioned liberals are irritated by sitting patiently in traffic in their luxury imported hybrid cars coming home from a hard day's work in a nice air-conditioned office job with health insurance and 401K to pay their mortgage on a house they own and share progressive thoughts on blogs like DU while sipping fair trade soy lattes before planning out their next European vacation. It forces people like me to think about it and talk about it. The first question has to be someone asking why?

Part of it is that the All Lives Matter folks go online and share vivid fantasies of ending the lives of people through driving over them or shooting them. Probably pro-life too.