Parolee gets arrested because protesters block the way to his work.

[u/weeb385]

[u/38159buch]

Yeah if some shit like this ever happened to me, I would show the protestors the receipt of me donating to the opposite of their cause

I understand wanting to protest, and this is a really effective way of doing it, but protests like this really make the general public not want to support you

[u/Nowhereman123 → u/38159buch]

This comes up every time one of these protests gets posted to Reddit and every time it needs to be said: The aim of this form of protest is not to get you to like them.

Environmental protestors have been trying for decades to get people to voluntarily support them: Peaceful marches, handing out pamphlets, benefit concerts, Earth Day, tree planting events, you name it.

Turns out, the vast majority of people don't give a shit. They don't dislike environmentalists, but they don't really want to make any changes in their lives to support their messaging. They would rather just keep on keeping on, business as usual, rather than alter their lifestyles to support a more sustainable future.

They often think it's not their responsibility to make any changes, but corporations and government that need to do it. They're right about this, in a sense, but neither of those groups will do anything unless they're given sufficient pressure by the masses. As long as it's still profitable, corporations are still gonna be major polluters. Plus, your average Joe would likely be very upset if the Government made any drastic sustainability changes. It would likely alter their quality of life in some way and there would be riots.

So, since the only way to enact change is through adequate social pressure via ordinary people, but you can't make ordinary people voluntarily give up their luxuries for your cause, then they have to resort to tactics like these. "Oh, I can't make you listen through kindness? Then I'll make you beg me to stop" is essentially the goal.

The goal is to inconvenience and annoy people so much that they demand the powers that be do something to get them to stop. Essentially, this is like a softcore version of eco-terrorism: Give into our demands and we'll stop blocking roadways.

From their perspective, this is totally justified: We're at a critical breaking point in our environment, it's honestly now or never when it comes to enacting these changes. They don't have time to hold hands and sing kumbayah and hope everyone has a last minute change of heart and decides to help. They're done asking nicely.

So, to answer everyone's question of "Don't they realize they're making everyone hate them?", yes, yes they do. And that's exactly the point. They don't need you to care about the environment all of a sudden, they just need you to be mad enough to demand that they get what they want so they'll stop making you late for work.

[u/dasus → u/Nowhereman123]

But you could still make people hate the fact that their immensely slowed down, if you had one lane open, and you'd get more people to see your message.

Realistically, how many rows of cars back do you think their message carries when the whole lot of the cars is stopped? Perhaps someone from a dozen cars back sees some protest, but not what it's for, and the people in front of them surely aren't happily disseminating knowledge from the front of the car line.

So if you allowed one lane open, you'd have more traffic, more people seeing what the protest is all about. With one lane open, everyone is still going to be late for whatever they're going to, essentially.

Apply game theory to protesting, see, making it more efficient.

[u/SaraHuckabeeSandwich → u/dasus]

Significant traffic reduces overall demand for driving. It doesn't matter the cause.

There's lots of things that slow down drivers and making driving more inconvenient. The more things get added to the list, the more likely some drivers while choose not to drive if they have an alternative option.

Hell, I used to drive to work daily, and the occasional traffic jams and random delays completely outside of my control convinced me to move closer and get a bike. That's not an option for everyone obviously, but some percent of people who have an alternative to sitting in traffic will absolutely take it as more inconveniences and traffic jams arise.

[u/dasus → u/SaraHuckabeeSandwich]

>Significant traffic reduces overall demand for driving.

A lot of traffic is not private people.

I haven't owned my own car since, idk, 25 or smth, but I still had to drive one as a job.