I finally understood why my friend got kicked out of that protest at UCLA

He showed me the video where he grabbed a speaker's mic, and I saw it wasn't about his message but how he shut down the whole event. Anyone else have a moment where they saw a protest tactic cross a line?

4 comments

4 Comments

beth71120d ago

That UCLA thing reminds me of when protesters blocked an ambulance during a hospital workers' strike in New York. The goal was fair pay, which I get, but stopping emergency vehicles hurts people who have nothing to do with the fight. It turns public support against you real fast. Some tactics just forget about regular people caught in the middle.

emmam8920d ago

Yeah, it feels like a quick way to lose the moral high ground. Makes the whole cause look cruel instead of just. What good is winning the fight if you've turned everyone against you?

king.val18d ago

You're right about it turning support against you. I saw something similar when climate activists glued themselves to a road during rush hour. A friend missed her kid's school play because she was stuck for hours. She went from caring about the environment to just being mad at the protesters. When you ruin someone's day like that, they stop hearing your message.

caseythompson20d ago

Actually, blocking that ambulance is a hard choice, but it works. The whole point is to cause a crisis that forces people to pay attention. If the protest is easy to ignore, nothing changes. Sometimes disrupting "regular people" is the only way to make the problem real to everyone else.