Throw the book at every protester who blocks traffic
Zachary Faria
Video Embed
The pathetic trend of protesters blocking traffic for any number of terrible causes is dangerous for everyone involved and embarrassing for the cities that allow them to happen. City leaders must start throwing the book at people blocking traffic before things turn deadly.
One such protest in Los Angeles resulted in 75 people being arrested. The protesters blocked the 110 Freeway, which eventually led to some of the delayed drivers exiting their cars and attempting to move the protesters. It isn’t clear how many of the 75 who were arrested were protesters or how many drivers were arrested for doing the job of police officers in trying to remove them from the road.
BIDEN MUST BE CLEAR WITH CHINA OVER CYBERATTACKS
Blocking roads, especially freeways, is not a legitimate form of protest and should not be tolerated. Not only does it put protesters themselves at risk of being run over, but it creates traffic hazards for the stopped commuters that could result in car crashes. It is also illegal, even in lawless California.
More importantly, it is a form of lawlessness that can and will lead to violence. We saw during Black Lives Matter riots examples of “protesters” swarming cars, threatening the safety of drivers and their passengers, leading those drivers to attempt to escape and hit several “protesters” in the process. When law enforcement fails to swiftly end these illegitimate forms of protests, it both emboldens the protesters to become more antagonistic toward drivers and leads to a rapid decline in social trust that makes drivers quicker to think their lives are in danger.
There is no reason to tolerate this, especially on behalf of protesters who think keeping cars idling in traffic will solve climate change or, in this case, that the U.S. needs to force Israel to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas after Hamas broke two ceasefires in the past two months. Los Angeles officials must throw the book at every protester who blocked traffic, and every city must make it clear that this illegitimate, illegal form of protesting will result in the maximum penalty allowed by the law.