A pro-Palestinian protest action briefly blocked all traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Wednesday morning.

A pro-Palestinian protest action briefly blocked all traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Wednesday morning.

Starting at about 7:45 a.m. Protesters stopped cars and stretched banners across the roadway denouncing Israel’s bombing of Rafah in the Gaza Strip and demanding that the U.S. stop arming Israel.

Northbound and southbound traffic on the bridge was at a standstill as of 8 a.m.

  • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
    72·
    9 months ago

    I’d argue there are no “rational” protests because protests only exist when there is no path to a legal or democratic resolution available.

    You don’t protest your landlord fixing your broken heating because there’s laws saying they have to. You don’t protest the elected government, you protest when the elected government breaks the law without recourse.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
      21·
      9 months ago

      I don’t think you understand what democracy is. Protest is a right in a democracy, because it can lead to positive change. It’s part of the process. A protest can influence elected leaders.

      Emotional protests are poorly thought out and can often lead to negative outcomes. You of course have a right to do an emotional protest, but you aren’t accomplishing anything.

      The Palestinian protests are the worst thought out protests I’ve ever seen. We just had one this week where I live and they protested a hospital founded by Canadian Jews. So everyone rightly condemned the protest as antisemitic and it didn’t help their cause at all. But I guess they got to spend some time with others that are upset by the same thing they’re upset about, that seems to be the only thing that’s important to them.

      • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        9 months ago

        Protest is only a right in a democracy because of… well… protest lol. If they banned protests they’d get worse protests than if they didn’t, or else they have to murder dissidents (See Russia)

        If we could’ve voted to end the war in Iraq, there would have been no protests about ending the war in Iraq because people would have just gone to the polls.