Discussion for article #234247
Brave people are able to end injustice. These are brave and noble people. I wish them the best.
4 Likes
I noticed yesterday that TPM used the language “police accountability protest” for a particular demonstration. I find that highly useful language which I might adopt for a category of present actions for which #BlackLivesMatter serves as the lead and paradigm.
3 Likes
I think the “brilliant tactics” the writer is so impressed by may well be the reason for the heavier official crackdown.
Shutting down a mass transit system is an order of magnitude greater disruption to a city than blocking a single road or intersection. That the action was essentially carried out by 14 people who conveniently identified themselves with chains and locks make a targeted prosecution much easier for authorities as well. The 14 are likely victims of their own “brilliance”.
Finally, the BART mass transit system serves many people for whom there is no alternative. That one woman from Holland found the disruption exciting is not an accurate indicator of the reactions of the many people who depend on BART and who don’t have alternative ways to get where they need to go.
As an environmentalist, shutting down mass transit is something I would only do as a last resort. Shutting down highways and forcing motorists to use BART is something I find easier to support.
Activists should be very conscious about the dangers of picking targets based on how easy they are to disrupt without considering the effect they may be having on the liveability of urban areas they are trying to “help”.
14 Likes
I assume you’re not from the Bay Area and wouldn’t know this, but shutting down the San Mateo bridge is not “blocking a single road or intersection”, it’s blocking a major traffic artery in the area, very much on par with blocking BART.
3 Likes
These folks are just looking for another FREE LUNCH.
I can’t support shutting down public transport to protest anything. Anytime. Find a better way.
4 Likes
Preventing working people from getting to and from their jobs may not get the public on your side.
9 Likes
I agree. I am a BART rider and shutting down BART does not make me sympathetic to anyone’s cause. As to those who shut down freeways being treated more lieniently, I support charging them in the same way the BART blockers were charged, not letting the BART protesters off.
5 Likes
A lot of the people who ride BART are just trying to get to work, that includes many, low paid, retail workers who work on Black Friday. I’m a BART rider, and a supporter of the BlackLivesMatter movement, but I disagree with their tactic of shutting down transportation. All it does is make people made and steer them away from their cause. People have jobs to do, and bills to pay. They directed their protest at the wrong people. I hope BART reduces the fine, but I don’t think they should be off the hook entirely.
7 Likes
I think they had noble intentions, but as someone who was born and raised in Oakland, I think that it was a mistake to try to shut down BART. It did not make BART riders feel at all sympathetic to the protestors argument, but rather had the effect of making the riders feel that THEY were the ones being protested.
4 Likes
Orso, with all due respect, what other tactics can have an impact like this one did? Nothing will change if the only call to action is holding up signs in a picket line somewhere. Violence isn’t the answer, picket lines aren’t the answer, so what is? This is a non-violent protest that has teeth. There are some things in this world bigger than any one individual. If it inconveniences some people, so be it. I’m sure there were critics of the lunch counter sit ins, and the Selma marches too. I’m sure there were many who found fault with all those, now historic, forms of non-violent protests. People probably complained that Rosa Parks made them late for work! SO WHAT? TOUGH! Deal with it! This is about justice for those without it. Something bigger than getting fired from a job, or not being able to save %50 on a gaming system. This is about a persecuted group of people in this country who are fighting for something bigger than themselves, bigger than all of us. What if Dr. King said, “hmm, maybe we shouldn’t march today because it’s going to make some people late for work!”? I think some priority and perspective needs to shifted around here. That’s just my opinion. I’m a white man who has no idea the trials and the tribulations of the African-American plight, and I won’t even pretend to have any idea of what they have gone and go through. I only can surmise, based on what I read, hear, observe and see, that it’s wholly unjust. I applaud and support the 14, and other groups like them, unequivocally, as long as it stays in the form of non-violent, peaceful protests like this. The long arc of history doesn’t bend towards justice on it’s own, it needs to be pushed there. These BLM14, and groups like them, and Gay Rights activists, as well, are fighting the good fight. They have my support. I say to them, well done!
2 Likes
Black lives don’t seem to matter when blacks kill other blacks.
1 Like
The fine should be bigger. There should be jail terms, too.
1 Like
I wanted to be favorably impressed by the article, but I wasn’t. I wanted to read persuasive reasons for shutting down BART, but I didn’t. In fact, I came away from the article much less sympathetic to the “protesters” than I was before I read it. There is a fine, but clearly discernible line between non-violence and violence, and these “protesters” crossed it. Millions of people in the Bay Area depend on BART, many of them the lower income residents that these “protesters” say they are helping. But they are not helping them at all. I found particularly unimpressive and self serving all their arguments about how BART was somehow oppressing the poor and destroying Oakland. Poppycock. BART has made a revival of Oakland possible, to the benefit of everyone and increasing the tax base of the Bay Area. In my view, the best that can be said about the article is that it advocates coddling self-serving “protesters” who ought to get a job and then advocate for more affordable housing in the community.
6 Likes
You want to commit civil disobedience then be prepared to pay the price, like MLK, Thoreau, Ghandi, or any other practitioner will tell you.
That aside, the tactics of this group, blocking public transportation chokepoints, or interrupting brunches in places filled with sympathetic liberals, is in dire need of a rethink. These are basically your most likely supporters. You’re either annoying potential allies or preaching to the choir, either way worthless.
Go out to Danville, or better yet Cupertino and Palo Alto, that makes a lot more sense and disrupt people’s routines. You won’t even have to take BART to get there.
3 Likes
You wouldn’t be saying that if on that day they shut that train down. You were on your way to a job interview that you needed badly. I disagree with these kind of protests. You want to rally and protest. Fine do it. Interrupting others lives for your own protest is selfish. That goes for the protest at the American Mall in Minnesota around Xmas time. Pissing people off who are not involved in your protest is not the way to get your point across. I totally support Rallying at a college campus, gov’t building or public square to protest. BUT disrupting others mundane lives to protest I disagree with.
Would you support some group shutting down the entire electrical grid in Ferguson for a day to protest the obvious racist police department policies? I wouldn’t support that. I support going to the police station and publicly protesting.
4 Likes
Civil disobedience means breaking the law. Breaking the law has consequences that shouldn’t be a surprise to the people doing it. That’s the bottom line. You can’t get something for nothing and sometimes that means going to jail.
1 Like
I happen to live in tha Bay Area. I don’t commute on BART, but if the freeways I use were shut down I would have been pretty pissed off.
And I think that is the point. People have been killed- unjustly.Being slowed down on the way to work is pretty minor when you compare it to being shot. So I think the BART Board ought to back off.
I’m going to guess that there weren’t too many job interviews scheduled on Black Friday. Certainly not in the Bay Area. And even if there were, employers would have been aware of the transit shutdown and would have been understanding about delays.