To be fair, protestors blocking a highway, or the busiest avenue, are annoying the most people so they protest n their place. They should block City Hall, or Congress, or the houses of congressmen. Make the life of those assholes difficult, not the lives of thousands of bystanders.
They already do: there are pretty much always protestors at the Capitol. Congresspersons often live in gated communities that can kick people out or not allow entry. How many of those protests are you aware of, compared to those protests that disrupted your daily life?
A protest that doesn't affect anyone is an ineffective protest. Protests are not billboards for a cause, they're an attempt to force people in charge to enact change. One of the ways of doing this is to make their problem is your problem by getting in your way.
Protests that affect bystanders are an attempt to embarrass people in charge by making it evident they're not doing what the protesters want from them.
I agreed with the Reddit protests, even if they affected people that just wanted to browse their communities, cause they were affecting the people in charge. The bystanders, while affected, were not the target.
Ad a counter example, fuck the protestors (supposed teachers but they're just thugs that probably never attended a classroom) that close the railroads/highways in Mexico because they want the government to give more money to their corrupt union (CNTE).
Protestors are not always in the right, and affecting innocent bystanders is an abusive, selfish way to put indirect pressure. I'd feel more sympathetic to people who try to twist a politician's arm instead of my own.
Yeah no I totally agree. I think it is a mismanagement of action both by the protesters and the bystanders. For protesters talking to bystanders they should make it more fun for bystanders to get involved.
Yes, there's a huge difference between "Honk if you support X" outside the White House, and "get angry about X because you're wasting hours in this bottleneck we caused".