The right to protest is important, but there have to be limitations. If you stage a protest where you commit crimes to disproportionately harm other people, then there have to be consequences.
Proportionality is important: if there’s a protest march with tens of thousands of people just walking from one place to another place, then obviously traffic will be a massive clusterfuck, with thousands of other ordinary people stuck in traffic. But if your protest can only get a few dozen people together and you set about creating the same amount of traffic gridlock, that’s something that can only be achieved by doing stupid shit and then there have to be consequences.
If you can’t even get enough people together for your protest to not have enough space when walking on the sidewalk, then you should not be protesting in the road and hindering thousands of other people. Apart from how disproportionate it is that a few dozen people want to hold thousands hostage for hours, a protest like that also has the reverse effect and it creates loads of antipathy.
Climate action is very important to me and I do believe that we are not doing nearly enough to address it, but I hate those ludicrous climate protests, where there’s a handful of protesters blocking roads. Those pricks generate so much antipathy and they do nothing to explain to the general public of how important climate action is. Those people are classic self righteous pricks with a holier than thou attitude and they are just making things worse for everyone.
The right to protest is important, but there have to be limitations. If you stage a protest where you commit crimes to disproportionately harm other people, then there have to be consequences.
Proportionality is important: if there’s a protest march with tens of thousands of people just walking from one place to another place, then obviously traffic will be a massive clusterfuck, with thousands of other ordinary people stuck in traffic. But if your protest can only get a few dozen people together and you set about creating the same amount of traffic gridlock, that’s something that can only be achieved by doing stupid shit and then there have to be consequences.
If you can’t even get enough people together for your protest to not have enough space when walking on the sidewalk, then you should not be protesting in the road and hindering thousands of other people. Apart from how disproportionate it is that a few dozen people want to hold thousands hostage for hours, a protest like that also has the reverse effect and it creates loads of antipathy.
Climate action is very important to me and I do believe that we are not doing nearly enough to address it, but I hate those ludicrous climate protests, where there’s a handful of protesters blocking roads. Those pricks generate so much antipathy and they do nothing to explain to the general public of how important climate action is. Those people are classic self righteous pricks with a holier than thou attitude and they are just making things worse for everyone.