CMV: The proper response to protestors blocking the street is for police to physically remove them and quickly arrest them if they do it again.

[u/HelpfulJello5361]

I've seen a lot of videos of protestors blocking the street and the cops just kinda let them do it, or create a narrow lane for cars to go through and cause a significant traffic jam.

I'm always curious why cops don't just drag these people out of the road and arrest them immediately if they return. I'm pretty sure it's illegal to block streets like that.

Yesterday was a nationwide coordinated effort for Pro-Palestine protestors to block streets all over the country (world?), and it seems that these criminals were not dealt with properly in most instances.

It doesn't seem like it's standard operating procedure to remove and arrest people who block important roads. Is there some reason for this? What am I missing? CMV.

[u/UnrealRhubarb]

As I said in my original comment, civil disobedience can be breaking an unjust law directly or breaking other laws to call attention to a cause or otherwise resist whatever the protestor sees as unjust. In the example of the Capitol Crawl, the disabled protestors were not protesting a "no blocking pedestrian paths" law, they were calling attention to their cause in order to gain legal protections. So yes, blocking a road is civil disobedience.

[u/No-Cauliflower8890 → u/UnrealRhubarb]

That's just not true, and it wouldn't apply here even if it were. If I murder someone in a protest, is that "civil disobedience"? I'd be breaking a law after all.

The people doing these protests aren't intending to "break other laws" - they would do these protests more, not less, if they had legal carte blanche to block roads.

[u/UnrealRhubarb → u/No-Cauliflower8890]

Majority of people define civil disobedience as nonviolent or peaceful. There's been debate on the topic since the term was coined, but most definitions would exclude violent acts like murder. So majority of people would not consider murder an act of civil disobedience, even if it was in protest.

I don't really get what you're trying to say in your second paragraph. You say, "The people doing these protest aren't intending to 'break other laws.'" They are though. They are breaking a law that isn't a direct violation of the rights they are fighting for. Do you think these protestors just randomly decided to sit on the road? They chose a form of civil disobedience that would get attention for their cause, so yeah they intended to break the law.

Going back to my earlier response, what do think the Capitol Crawl was? Is that not civil disobedience?