There are protests, and then there are protests.
Some protests are peaceful non-disruptive demonstrations. They gather large groups of people in places where they cause minimal disruption to the lives of non-protestors. If they manage to attract lots of people, and if their cause is morally appealing, they succeed in raising awareness and creating political capital for the goals of their protest. Off the top of my head, modern Tea Party protests and Occupy Wall Street are good examples of this.
And then you have the other kind of protests. Protests that are explicitly designed to disrupt the lives of people who aren’t involved in the protests at all. For example:
- Environmentalists blocking highways to protest climate change
- German farmers blocking roads and border crossings in protest of subsidies being eliminated
- French pension-reform protesters spraying manure at government offices
- Canadian covid-vaccine skeptics blocking major roads and border crossings to disrupt the economy
- Canadian First-Nation Protestors blocking railways in response to a Pipeline construction
Depending on your political beliefs, you probably endorse some of the protests above, but not others. Some of the above protests even enjoy widespread support – an astounding 91% of the general public supports the German farmers’ protest.
In light of all this, let me suggest something that I think is common sense, but is seemingly controversial:
Nobody should be allowed to disrupt other people’s lives, in order to raise awareness or extort society into supporting their favored political cause.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re doing it in the name of a morally righteous cause. It doesn’t matter whether you’re doing it to “save the planet” or “help the downtrodden”. If you’re living in a democracy and a nation of laws, you should follow the democratic and legal processes to achieve your political goals.
Anyone who resorts to metaphorical arson to achieve their political goals, should be held fully accountable for their actions by the criminal justice system. A group of political activists caused you and a million other people to be stuck on the roads for an extra hour during your evening commute home? Even if you conservatively valued your time at $10/hour, these activists just stole $10M from you and others. Treat them the exact same way you would treat a group of people who stole $10M from a bank or burnt down a $10M building. Make them pay back every single cent they stole.
Imagine living in a world where
- every time an election is held, the losers barricade the highways to vent their displeasure
- every time a public policy decision is made, its opponents bring all public transit to a standstill, to extort the government into reversing it
- all you want is to go home to your kids, but you can’t, because people on the opposite side of the political spectrum are standing in your way and refusing to move
That is not a world any of us want to live in. If you are going to complain about this childish petulance when vegans or covid-skeptics disrupt your life, you also need to speak up when your friends and allies do the exact same thing.
Outlook Zen 