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Can anyone point out how blockading a bridge could possibly lead to political change? The only scenario that seems obvious is if the police overreact and shoot

Can anyone point out how blockading a bridge could possibly lead to political change? The only scenario that seems obvious is if the police overreact and shoot some of the protesters. That would cause a massive public outcry and bring their cause to the front and center stage. What are some other ways that blocking a bridge could be productive?

castis 9y ago
It lets other people know that theres a general unhappiness with something. Events like that usually make the news. Others who may not have heard about the cause hear about it and get involved. That, or if the man is doing something you don't like, do something they don't like. It's better than sitting on the couch and reading about the things you don't like in the world.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Sure, I respect that. I guess I was just curious if their goal was to enact political change or just to express themselves. It's not clear cut: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15103654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15103654 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/is-there-any-point-to-protesting https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/is-there-any-p... She places its start at the moment of a famous failure: the Mayday Vietnam protest of 1971, when twenty-five thousand people blockaded bridges and intersections around Washington, D.C. A manual describing the demonstration’s tactics allowed Nixon’s Attorney General to summon the police, the military, and the National Guard preëmptively. More than seven thousand protesters were arrested. Mary McGrory, a journalist who was sympathetic to the cause, described it as “the worst planned, worst executed, most slovenly, strident and obnoxious peace action ever committed.” Kauffman disagrees. The spectre of the protest rattled the Administration, she points out. What’s more, it marked the shift toward the tactics-driven approach that we still follow today. “The last major national protest against the Vietnam War, Mayday was also a crucial first experiment with a new kind of radicalism,” she writes. It was less about moral leadership than about the fact of obstruction. It embraced whatever—and whoever—forced the hand of power. “You do the organizing,” the Mayday manual read. “This means no ‘movement generals’ making tactical decisions you have to carry out.”
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    The recent Vietnam War PBS documentary covers the Mayday protest as one of many different protests as public opinion turned against American involvement against the war. Whether the tide turned because the protests were leading or trailing public opinion is probably arguable. There were also signficant organized violent counter protesters in favor of the war/against the antiwar protesters. A bit of the info in the documentary is covered in The Fog of War but it's pretty interesting for the similarities to today. Also, there was a Vietnam vets against the war protest in DC immediately preceding the Mayday protest that the administration specifically did not oppose with police/national guard in order to not generate positive press/sympathy for the antiwar effort.
- tambienben 9y ago
  >It's better than sitting on the couch and reading about the things you dont like in the world. Or killing people you don't like. Or injuring others. Or looting. Or destroying property. Basically anything that isn't those 4 things can be a viable form of protest, if executed correctly.
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    So it's a pressure valve? It's strange because if it's really just a pressure valve, that means all the authorities need to do is sit back and do nothing. The protest will burn itself out. But that's just another way of saying the goal of protesting isn't to accomplish anything except to feel better. I'm just trying to understand the goals and motivations. Protesting has a long history in the US but it's rarely taught anywhere, so these answers aren't inherently obvious.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      > Protesting has a long history in the US And elsewhere! Most recent large example of somewhat successful protests was the whole "Arab spring" series of events. Or the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine. > but it's rarely taught anywhere Of course it's not going to be taught in school ...
    - sdenton4 9y ago
      It's more than just a pressure valve. Protest brings people together. When it's a small protest, it's like a convention for the chronic opposition. But when a protest starts bringing in more attention, it brings people who show up in contact with new ideas, and creates a fertile ground for new collaborations. This happens in big ways (the idea of the 99% and the public understanding of accelerating wealth gaps owe a lot to Occupy, and the Bernie campaign is pretty much a direct consequence) and in smaller ways (Occupy led to many people switching from standard banks to credit unions, and also led to some excellent work opposing predatory student loans). When you sit back and let the protest burn, you risk allowing the discontent to generalize and grow. But, sure, maybe it will just fizzle out, if there is still enough bread and circus to go around.
ribosometronome 9y ago
Can anyone point out how walking to Montgomery could possible lead to political change?
- craftyguy 9y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15446807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15446807
  - cpmsmith 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches
- nl 9y ago
  There are numerous examples, but Gandhi's salt march is one of the best known: Gandhi led the Dandi March from his base, Sabarmati Ashram, near the city of Ahmedabad. 78 people began the march with Gandhi, who intended to walk 240 miles (390 km) to the coastal village of Dandi, which was located at a small town called Navsari in the state of Gujarat. As Gandhi and the others continued on what would become a 24-day march to Dandi to produce salt without paying the tax, growing numbers of Indians joined them along the way. When Gandhi broke the salt laws at 6:30 am on 6 April 1930, it sparked large scale acts of civil disobedience against the British Raj salt laws by millions of Indians. The campaign had a significant effect on changing world and British attitudes towards Indian sovereignty and self-rule and caused large numbers of Indians to join the fight for the first time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March
  - notzorbo3 9y ago
    Let's also quote the relevant parts: > However, it failed to result in major concessions from the British.
    - nl 9y ago
      True. But also: The Satyagraha campaign of the 1930s also forced the British to recognise that their control of India depended entirely on the consent of the Indians – Salt Satyagraha was a significant step in the British losing that consent.
pvg 9y ago
The only scenario that seems obvious is if the police overreact and shoot some of the protesters. That's a really strange thing to say. There are lots of examples of disruptive protests that have helped bring about change. As an example, take a look at: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-Decade-of-AIDS-Activism-Changed-America-and-2849161.php http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-Decade-of-AIDS-Activism... Includes some bridge-blocking.
- deleted 9y ago
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KGIII 9y ago
THIS IS GOING TO BE LONG. I have some actual moral qualms about typing this out. I'll try to make it as short as possible. Will blocking a single bridge help? Nope. The whole "raising awareness" and "starting a conversation" are irrelevant, for the most part. So, let's say you live in America and want to effect meaningful change. In order to do so, you want to get the attention of the politicians and the media. I should probably title this, "How to get the FBI Party Van Parked on Your Street." However, unless they really stretch the laws, this is probably perfectly legal. I'll leave the morality judgment up to you, the reader, and simply tell you how to do this. Some history: I modeled traffic. This doesn't actually come in handy very often, but sometimes it does. Of course, when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. I like to say that I built the greatest traffic simulation game ever made. Of course, I'm biased. Eventually, we'd even be able to output some of that simulation as graphical representations, but that's a story for another day. Traffic modeling concerns itself with optimizing - it's not always optimizing the greatest throughput. Sometimes, it's optimizing for speed, simplicity, or efficiency. In order to understand traffic, it helps to realize that traffic is a chaotic system. A chaotic system is a system that appears to have random elements but, with enough data, you can tease out certain patterns. This is all very complicated and has varied accuracy depending on your ability to know the initial starting state. However, with enough information, you can bring any city's traffic to a crawl with minimal effort. Give me a month to study the data (well, longer now as I'm retired and don't have the hardware to hand, the code, or current models) and some two way radios. After I've studied the data, give me a dozen drivers and I can almost certainly reduce throughput by greater than 50% - and that's without breaking any laws or being the direct cause of an accident. It's really not hard. Start ahead of time and coordinate to merge slowly, to move at the posted speed limit in specific areas, to change lanes and brake, and to do this at key points where you can create bottlenecks. I only say I can do it. To be completely frank about it, I've never yet met a municipality that would consider allowing me to actually try this. However, I can replicate this time and time again - and I have reasons to believe this would be as effective as it is in the models. It won't even take much to do so. A dozen cars may actually be overkill, depending on the infrastructure. You can actually (I don't recommend doing so) test and see the results of some of the methods. Find a spot in traffic where there is room in front of you. Speed up slowly until you're exceeding the speed of the vehicle in front of you. Brake late and hard. For bonus points, change lanes as you brake. What will happen is the people behind you will increase their speed and will still be adapting to your speed increases. When you brake, they'll need to brake harder because they braked later due to reaction times. This will increase and ripple its way back through traffic - you can actually watch it happen. If done "right," it will spill over into the other travel lanes. All you had to do was be the butterfly and you've now sent a cascading wave of confusion and reaction behind you. Not only will the person behind you have to brake harder, the people behind them will have to do so and, depending on their distances between cars, will have to keep on doing so for many cars behind you. This also gets compounded by people being unable to see the first braking car(s). They are unable to see the cars way ahead in the line and they begin acting in what they believe is a rational manner. They brake hard and seek to change lanes. (If you want to stop the ripple, brake and leave space between you and the vehicle in front of you - and allow people to safely merge into that space while making room to maintain that space in front of you. One car can significantly impact throughput.) Why do I type all this? Well, imagine you had a government that you felt was a tyranny. Imagine you had a bunch of people who agreed with you? See, it's VERY important that you have a bunch of people who agree with you - otherwise, you're just an asshole. This way, you're an asshole with a legitimate democratic complaint. And, trust me, you are an asshole if you do this. Let's assume that you're right in your presumptions about how people feel concerning the political arena. Let's just say you get 100,000 people who agree with you. If you can't get 100,000 people who agree with you - and want to effect change - perhaps you're message really isn't important? Now, pick a day... Go on, pick one. I recommend picking a day that is a Friday. I'd specifically recommend that you pick a Friday that marks the end of a week-long legislative session. So, you have a date and 100,000 people. Now, you need a time and a place. I'd suggest 12:00 noon and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Not to worry, you're not getting there. Those 100,000 people will then set their GPS to arrive at 1600 Penn. Ave and they'll set it to arrive at the same time. From across the country, people will leave and head to that address. They'll leave at different times because their goal is not the same departure time - but the same arrival time. Their goal is to all arrive at 1600 Penn. Ave at noon. Of course, they can't do this. No, no... The urban area simply can't adapt to that much traffic all arriving at the same time and trying to get to the same place. So, eventually you're going to reach a point where your car can go no further. If you're the first to arrive at 1600 Penn. Ave, just stop your car. (Impeding the flow of traffic is a minor offense, not subjecting one to jail time.) Everyone else, when you get as close as you can, do the same thing. Stop your vehicle, exit your vehicle, lock the doors, and go have a drink. Plan on being there for a while. You might want to bring food, water, blankets, prescription medication, camping gear, and be prepared to wait for a long while. This will cause a giant wave of congestion that brings traffic to a halt - not just in DC but in the wider area. I once did the math, based on just 100,000 participants and current populations and existing local traffic, and my estimate was that it would create a snarl of traffic that's about 50 miles across - covering all primary, secondary, and tertiary travel lanes. Here's the fun part... You've locked your vehicle and exited it. You've simply walked away. (Other than the first few people, this is a reasonable choice after a period of time.) They also won't be able to sort all the vehicles from those who were there to intentionally cause mayhem and those who were there for more "legitimate" (subjective) reasons. They will be weeks moving these vehicles. They will be calling in tow trucks from around the country. They will initially clear single lanes for emergency traffic and this process is almost certainly not going to be gentle on your car. They'll be bringing in the National Guard and yanking your vehicle out of the way with chains. And they haven't got anywhere to park that many additional cars. You're not just going to have 100,000 cars - you are going to have many of the local cars caught in it as well. You're going to have delivery vehicles, giant trucks, people towing trailers, and all that sort of stuff. You'll have RVs and limousines, people towing ATVs on their way out to the country for the weekend, taxis, police cars, etc... This will shut down vehicular traffic for quite a while. Not only that, it will slow it down for even longer. This affords you plenty of time to talk to the media and you'll absolutely have attention from the politicians. Caveats: This is VERY severe. This will hamper emergency responses. This will negatively impact people who are innocent. This will seriously mess things up - probably for weeks. Do NOT do this unless you're damned certain you're right. Do NOT do this unless you're able to accept that people will be harmed. This is very, very likely to result in indirect deaths. So, blocking one bridge isn't very effective. However, blocking a lot of them, all at once, almost certainly will get attention. (Depending on your cause, the attention may be negative or positive.) Blocking one bridge isn't going to do much attention getting. Shutting a city down for multiple days and slowing it down for weeks, on the other hand, probably will. I'd like to stress, again, that this isn't something to be taken lightly. It's a near certainty that multiple people will suffer because of this. However, if your choice is this or violent revolution... This is very, very much a "second to last choice option." Finally, I'm sort of sorry for the length. However, I figured I would try to explain it in full AND stress that it's a horrible idea - but almost certain to get attention. What you do with that attention is up to you, but it's going to get attention. I am ABSOLUTELY not suggesting you do this, at least not at this time.
beedogs 9y ago
"Can anyone point out how blockading a bridge could possibly lead to political change?" Open a history book and read up on the Civil Rights Movement, specifically the Selma to Montgomery Marches. Blocking roads and bridges is one of the oldest and most effective forms of political protest in America.
dfabulich 9y ago
It's a protest. Protests work. For example, this paper used rainfall as a source of exogenous variation to measure the effect of the Tea Party protests. https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/128/4/1633/1849540/Do-Political-Protests-Matter-Evidence-from-the-Tea?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/128/4/1633/184... Can protests cause political change, or are they merely symptoms of underlying shifts in policy preferences? We address this question by studying the Tea Party movement in the United States, which rose to prominence through coordinated rallies across the country on Tax Day, April 15, 2009. We exploit variation in rainfall on the day of these rallies as an exogenous source of variation in attendance. We show that good weather at this initial, coordinating event had significant consequences for the subsequent local strength of the movement, increased public support for Tea Party positions, and led to more Republican votes in the 2010 midterm elections. Policy making was also affected, as incumbents responded to large protests in their district by voting more conservatively in Congress. Our estimates suggest significant multiplier effects: an additional protester increased the number of Republican votes by a factor well above 1. Together our results show that protests can build political movements that ultimately affect policy making and that they do so by influencing political views rather than solely through the revelation of existing political preferences.
- csomar 9y ago
  There is a fine line between a peaceful protest/rally, a form of demonstration that I support; and blocking a road (which should be 100% unacceptable in any condition). You understand that the road is being used by multiple people and sometimes for urgent and life-threatening reasons?
  - nardi 9y ago
    Your understanding of the term “peaceful protest” is flawed. Civil disobedience has always been one of the most effective tools of protesters. The best way to protest is to do something which cannot be ignored.
    - zdkl 9y ago
timthelion 9y ago
If you beleive, as the protesters probably do, that capitalism is an unjustice which is perpetuated by violence, then you have two options. You can have unjust peace. Or you can fight back. Peace is when you don't fight back.
roywiggins 9y ago
>The only scenario that seems obvious is if the police overreact and shoot some of the protesters. Indeed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches
ionised 9y ago
How exactly would protesting out of the way where you don't bother anyone or cause any commotion be useful?

castis 9y ago

It lets other people know that theres a general unhappiness with something. Events like that usually make the news. Others who may not have heard about the cause hear about it and get involved. That, or if the man is doing something you don't like, do something they don't like. It's better than sitting on the couch and reading about the things you don't like in the world.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Sure, I respect that. I guess I was just curious if their goal was to enact political change or just to express themselves. It's not clear cut: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15103654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15103654 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/is-there-any-point-to-protesting https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/is-there-any-p... She places its start at the moment of a famous failure: the Mayday Vietnam protest of 1971, when twenty-five thousand people blockaded bridges and intersections around Washington, D.C. A manual describing the demonstration’s tactics allowed Nixon’s Attorney General to summon the police, the military, and the National Guard preëmptively. More than seven thousand protesters were arrested. Mary McGrory, a journalist who was sympathetic to the cause, described it as “the worst planned, worst executed, most slovenly, strident and obnoxious peace action ever committed.” Kauffman disagrees. The spectre of the protest rattled the Administration, she points out. What’s more, it marked the shift toward the tactics-driven approach that we still follow today. “The last major national protest against the Vietnam War, Mayday was also a crucial first experiment with a new kind of radicalism,” she writes. It was less about moral leadership than about the fact of obstruction. It embraced whatever—and whoever—forced the hand of power. “You do the organizing,” the Mayday manual read. “This means no ‘movement generals’ making tactical decisions you have to carry out.”
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  The recent Vietnam War PBS documentary covers the Mayday protest as one of many different protests as public opinion turned against American involvement against the war. Whether the tide turned because the protests were leading or trailing public opinion is probably arguable. There were also signficant organized violent counter protesters in favor of the war/against the antiwar protesters. A bit of the info in the documentary is covered in The Fog of War but it's pretty interesting for the similarities to today. Also, there was a Vietnam vets against the war protest in DC immediately preceding the Mayday protest that the administration specifically did not oppose with police/national guard in order to not generate positive press/sympathy for the antiwar effort.
tambienben 9y ago
>It's better than sitting on the couch and reading about the things you dont like in the world. Or killing people you don't like. Or injuring others. Or looting. Or destroying property. Basically anything that isn't those 4 things can be a viable form of protest, if executed correctly.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  So it's a pressure valve? It's strange because if it's really just a pressure valve, that means all the authorities need to do is sit back and do nothing. The protest will burn itself out. But that's just another way of saying the goal of protesting isn't to accomplish anything except to feel better. I'm just trying to understand the goals and motivations. Protesting has a long history in the US but it's rarely taught anywhere, so these answers aren't inherently obvious.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    > Protesting has a long history in the US And elsewhere! Most recent large example of somewhat successful protests was the whole "Arab spring" series of events. Or the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine. > but it's rarely taught anywhere Of course it's not going to be taught in school ...
  - sdenton4 9y ago
    It's more than just a pressure valve. Protest brings people together. When it's a small protest, it's like a convention for the chronic opposition. But when a protest starts bringing in more attention, it brings people who show up in contact with new ideas, and creates a fertile ground for new collaborations. This happens in big ways (the idea of the 99% and the public understanding of accelerating wealth gaps owe a lot to Occupy, and the Bernie campaign is pretty much a direct consequence) and in smaller ways (Occupy led to many people switching from standard banks to credit unions, and also led to some excellent work opposing predatory student loans). When you sit back and let the protest burn, you risk allowing the discontent to generalize and grow. But, sure, maybe it will just fizzle out, if there is still enough bread and circus to go around.

ribosometronome 9y ago

Can anyone point out how walking to Montgomery could possible lead to political change?

craftyguy 9y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15446807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15446807
- cpmsmith 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches
nl 9y ago
There are numerous examples, but Gandhi's salt march is one of the best known: Gandhi led the Dandi March from his base, Sabarmati Ashram, near the city of Ahmedabad. 78 people began the march with Gandhi, who intended to walk 240 miles (390 km) to the coastal village of Dandi, which was located at a small town called Navsari in the state of Gujarat. As Gandhi and the others continued on what would become a 24-day march to Dandi to produce salt without paying the tax, growing numbers of Indians joined them along the way. When Gandhi broke the salt laws at 6:30 am on 6 April 1930, it sparked large scale acts of civil disobedience against the British Raj salt laws by millions of Indians. The campaign had a significant effect on changing world and British attitudes towards Indian sovereignty and self-rule and caused large numbers of Indians to join the fight for the first time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March
- notzorbo3 9y ago
  Let's also quote the relevant parts: > However, it failed to result in major concessions from the British.
  - nl 9y ago
    True. But also: The Satyagraha campaign of the 1930s also forced the British to recognise that their control of India depended entirely on the consent of the Indians – Salt Satyagraha was a significant step in the British losing that consent.

pvg 9y ago

The only scenario that seems obvious is if the police overreact and shoot some of the protesters. That's a really strange thing to say. There are lots of examples of disruptive protests that have helped bring about change. As an example, take a look at: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-Decade-of-AIDS-Activism-Changed-America-and-2849161.php http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-Decade-of-AIDS-Activism... Includes some bridge-blocking.

deleted 9y ago
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- deleted 9y ago
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- deleted 9y ago
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KGIII 9y ago

THIS IS GOING TO BE LONG. I have some actual moral qualms about typing this out. I'll try to make it as short as possible. Will blocking a single bridge help? Nope. The whole "raising awareness" and "starting a conversation" are irrelevant, for the most part. So, let's say you live in America and want to effect meaningful change. In order to do so, you want to get the attention of the politicians and the media. I should probably title this, "How to get the FBI Party Van Parked on Your Street." However, unless they really stretch the laws, this is probably perfectly legal. I'll leave the morality judgment up to you, the reader, and simply tell you how to do this. Some history: I modeled traffic. This doesn't actually come in handy very often, but sometimes it does. Of course, when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. I like to say that I built the greatest traffic simulation game ever made. Of course, I'm biased. Eventually, we'd even be able to output some of that simulation as graphical representations, but that's a story for another day. Traffic modeling concerns itself with optimizing - it's not always optimizing the greatest throughput. Sometimes, it's optimizing for speed, simplicity, or efficiency. In order to understand traffic, it helps to realize that traffic is a chaotic system. A chaotic system is a system that appears to have random elements but, with enough data, you can tease out certain patterns. This is all very complicated and has varied accuracy depending on your ability to know the initial starting state. However, with enough information, you can bring any city's traffic to a crawl with minimal effort. Give me a month to study the data (well, longer now as I'm retired and don't have the hardware to hand, the code, or current models) and some two way radios. After I've studied the data, give me a dozen drivers and I can almost certainly reduce throughput by greater than 50% - and that's without breaking any laws or being the direct cause of an accident. It's really not hard. Start ahead of time and coordinate to merge slowly, to move at the posted speed limit in specific areas, to change lanes and brake, and to do this at key points where you can create bottlenecks. I only say I can do it. To be completely frank about it, I've never yet met a municipality that would consider allowing me to actually try this. However, I can replicate this time and time again - and I have reasons to believe this would be as effective as it is in the models. It won't even take much to do so. A dozen cars may actually be overkill, depending on the infrastructure. You can actually (I don't recommend doing so) test and see the results of some of the methods. Find a spot in traffic where there is room in front of you. Speed up slowly until you're exceeding the speed of the vehicle in front of you. Brake late and hard. For bonus points, change lanes as you brake. What will happen is the people behind you will increase their speed and will still be adapting to your speed increases. When you brake, they'll need to brake harder because they braked later due to reaction times. This will increase and ripple its way back through traffic - you can actually watch it happen. If done "right," it will spill over into the other travel lanes. All you had to do was be the butterfly and you've now sent a cascading wave of confusion and reaction behind you. Not only will the person behind you have to brake harder, the people behind them will have to do so and, depending on their distances between cars, will have to keep on doing so for many cars behind you. This also gets compounded by people being unable to see the first braking car(s). They are unable to see the cars way ahead in the line and they begin acting in what they believe is a rational manner. They brake hard and seek to change lanes. (If you want to stop the ripple, brake and leave space between you and the vehicle in front of you - and allow people to safely merge into that space while making room to maintain that space in front of you. One car can significantly impact throughput.) Why do I type all this? Well, imagine you had a government that you felt was a tyranny. Imagine you had a bunch of people who agreed with you? See, it's VERY important that you have a bunch of people who agree with you - otherwise, you're just an asshole. This way, you're an asshole with a legitimate democratic complaint. And, trust me, you are an asshole if you do this. Let's assume that you're right in your presumptions about how people feel concerning the political arena. Let's just say you get 100,000 people who agree with you. If you can't get 100,000 people who agree with you - and want to effect change - perhaps you're message really isn't important? Now, pick a day... Go on, pick one. I recommend picking a day that is a Friday. I'd specifically recommend that you pick a Friday that marks the end of a week-long legislative session. So, you have a date and 100,000 people. Now, you need a time and a place. I'd suggest 12:00 noon and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Not to worry, you're not getting there. Those 100,000 people will then set their GPS to arrive at 1600 Penn. Ave and they'll set it to arrive at the same time. From across the country, people will leave and head to that address. They'll leave at different times because their goal is not the same departure time - but the same arrival time. Their goal is to all arrive at 1600 Penn. Ave at noon. Of course, they can't do this. No, no... The urban area simply can't adapt to that much traffic all arriving at the same time and trying to get to the same place. So, eventually you're going to reach a point where your car can go no further. If you're the first to arrive at 1600 Penn. Ave, just stop your car. (Impeding the flow of traffic is a minor offense, not subjecting one to jail time.) Everyone else, when you get as close as you can, do the same thing. Stop your vehicle, exit your vehicle, lock the doors, and go have a drink. Plan on being there for a while. You might want to bring food, water, blankets, prescription medication, camping gear, and be prepared to wait for a long while. This will cause a giant wave of congestion that brings traffic to a halt - not just in DC but in the wider area. I once did the math, based on just 100,000 participants and current populations and existing local traffic, and my estimate was that it would create a snarl of traffic that's about 50 miles across - covering all primary, secondary, and tertiary travel lanes. Here's the fun part... You've locked your vehicle and exited it. You've simply walked away. (Other than the first few people, this is a reasonable choice after a period of time.) They also won't be able to sort all the vehicles from those who were there to intentionally cause mayhem and those who were there for more "legitimate" (subjective) reasons. They will be weeks moving these vehicles. They will be calling in tow trucks from around the country. They will initially clear single lanes for emergency traffic and this process is almost certainly not going to be gentle on your car. They'll be bringing in the National Guard and yanking your vehicle out of the way with chains. And they haven't got anywhere to park that many additional cars. You're not just going to have 100,000 cars - you are going to have many of the local cars caught in it as well. You're going to have delivery vehicles, giant trucks, people towing trailers, and all that sort of stuff. You'll have RVs and limousines, people towing ATVs on their way out to the country for the weekend, taxis, police cars, etc... This will shut down vehicular traffic for quite a while. Not only that, it will slow it down for even longer. This affords you plenty of time to talk to the media and you'll absolutely have attention from the politicians. Caveats: This is VERY severe. This will hamper emergency responses. This will negatively impact people who are innocent. This will seriously mess things up - probably for weeks. Do NOT do this unless you're damned certain you're right. Do NOT do this unless you're able to accept that people will be harmed. This is very, very likely to result in indirect deaths. So, blocking one bridge isn't very effective. However, blocking a lot of them, all at once, almost certainly will get attention. (Depending on your cause, the attention may be negative or positive.) Blocking one bridge isn't going to do much attention getting. Shutting a city down for multiple days and slowing it down for weeks, on the other hand, probably will. I'd like to stress, again, that this isn't something to be taken lightly. It's a near certainty that multiple people will suffer because of this. However, if your choice is this or violent revolution... This is very, very much a "second to last choice option." Finally, I'm sort of sorry for the length. However, I figured I would try to explain it in full AND stress that it's a horrible idea - but almost certain to get attention. What you do with that attention is up to you, but it's going to get attention. I am ABSOLUTELY not suggesting you do this, at least not at this time.

beedogs 9y ago

"Can anyone point out how blockading a bridge could possibly lead to political change?" Open a history book and read up on the Civil Rights Movement, specifically the Selma to Montgomery Marches. Blocking roads and bridges is one of the oldest and most effective forms of political protest in America.

dfabulich 9y ago

It's a protest. Protests work. For example, this paper used rainfall as a source of exogenous variation to measure the effect of the Tea Party protests. https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/128/4/1633/1849540/Do-Political-Protests-Matter-Evidence-from-the-Tea?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/128/4/1633/184... Can protests cause political change, or are they merely symptoms of underlying shifts in policy preferences? We address this question by studying the Tea Party movement in the United States, which rose to prominence through coordinated rallies across the country on Tax Day, April 15, 2009. We exploit variation in rainfall on the day of these rallies as an exogenous source of variation in attendance. We show that good weather at this initial, coordinating event had significant consequences for the subsequent local strength of the movement, increased public support for Tea Party positions, and led to more Republican votes in the 2010 midterm elections. Policy making was also affected, as incumbents responded to large protests in their district by voting more conservatively in Congress. Our estimates suggest significant multiplier effects: an additional protester increased the number of Republican votes by a factor well above 1. Together our results show that protests can build political movements that ultimately affect policy making and that they do so by influencing political views rather than solely through the revelation of existing political preferences.

csomar 9y ago
There is a fine line between a peaceful protest/rally, a form of demonstration that I support; and blocking a road (which should be 100% unacceptable in any condition). You understand that the road is being used by multiple people and sometimes for urgent and life-threatening reasons?
- nardi 9y ago
  Your understanding of the term “peaceful protest” is flawed. Civil disobedience has always been one of the most effective tools of protesters. The best way to protest is to do something which cannot be ignored.
  - zdkl 9y ago

timthelion 9y ago

If you beleive, as the protesters probably do, that capitalism is an unjustice which is perpetuated by violence, then you have two options. You can have unjust peace. Or you can fight back. Peace is when you don't fight back.

roywiggins 9y ago

>The only scenario that seems obvious is if the police overreact and shoot some of the protesters. Indeed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches

ionised 9y ago

How exactly would protesting out of the way where you don't bother anyone or cause any commotion be useful?