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Comment by tuna-piano | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting that protests generally happen in dense parts of cities. Now imagine a city without a dense part - protesting becomes more difficult. Myanmar's non-democratic military government actually moved their capital from a dense city to a new city so spread out and with no downtown area - potentially to prevent the ability to protest the government.

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/inside-burma-s-ghost-to...

I don't think that's why Houston is the way it is, and while there is still a downtown there, imagining mass protests in Houston seems much different than Hong Kong - due to the density.

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IMO this is part of why why protests started marching down freeways. In LA, if you protest by marching down basically any freeway, you snarl up that freeway (and likely more) for tens of miles, at least (AFAIK).

(the 101 between hollywood and DTLA is essentially a single thing, the 10 between DTLA and West Side, the 405 from culver city up to over the pass in sherman oaks...)

AKA, the "center" isn't geographic, but... transit-based? Arterial?

It also gives a great sense of your own power (which is very important to protest movements) in marching along and shutting down a freeway, which you could never in any other situation just calmly walk down the middle of. Critical Mass is invigorating for the same reasons.

As a commuter nothing would turn me against the protestors goals faster than clogging a freeway. I have a long and frustrating commute and the idea of that commute becoming a multi hour trapped parking adventure after a long day doing a job that is agonizingly depressing is quite souring.

The experience is so decidedly wonderful that if, for example, the protest were a Black Lives Matter movement I would change from a whole hearted support to complete opposition in every objective they promote.

If interrupting your commute is enough to turn you to "complete opposition in every objective they promote," I have a hard time believing you were ever a whole-hearted supporter.

That sounds like a problem with empathy.

Protests aren’t supposed to be convenient for the uninvolved. They’re literally designed to force you to pay attention.

I read that as designed for angst and animosity not influence, because the intention completely disparages the audience.

So protests are ok while they don't inconvenience you?

I don't understand what is your point here, protests are supposed to be disruptive, disparaging the audience is not by design, if you feel that way then you don't really believe in the value of the protest, no?

Its like yelling at a customer and slashing their tires only to be confused why that customer doesn't wish to continue being your customer. Then blaming the customer for their lack of commitment and being somehow dumbfounded by their change of opinion.

That's an extremely poor comparison: you are not a customer, you are a co-equal citizen.

If that were true we wouldn't need crowds to impose influence. Any one individual would be enough to influence any one other individual on the merits of the argument, but that's not how most people operate. Any attempt to influence is a sell no different than selling a hand bag.

You might disagree with it as a tactic, but I'm not sure how you got to the idea that it's designed for animosity and not influence. Can you read the minds and intentions of the protestors? How would you know?

As the delayed driver, the audience, I know absolutely how I would feel. This is the perception.

Which is completely different.

You do understand how what you perceive and what they intend are different things, right? And that jumping from "it is inconvenient for me" to "they only intend to cause me harm" is a serious leap.

> You do understand how what you perceive and what they intend are different things, right?

If the protestors are utterly incapable of bridging that gap it doesn't matter what their intentions are as they are failing to win hearts and minds. That leap you speak to is only a minor baby step. If they really wanted to convince me of the value of their message they could start by not intentionally pissing me off.

This isn't rocket science. This complete lack of common sense on behalf of the protestors typically indicates youth. Everybody else has since either developed a few drops of empathy or moved on to anything more self-indulgent.

> That leap you speak to is only a minor baby step.

It absolutely is not a baby step. In fact it is a really big deal to jump from your own experience to assuming the intent of other people. That is actually a really fast way to anger people in my experience, because it requires that you pretend that you understand what is going on in another person's head. Saying "your actions caused X" is pretty straightforward, but "you intended to cause X" or "you intended to cause X and X alone" requires mind reading ability on your part.

Again, you can disagree with it as a tactic, I genuinely do not care about that. What bothers me is that you're unilaterally asserting that you personally understand the intention of the protestors, which is quite the assertion, and one that you have only backed up by "this is how I feel about it".

And even if he personally is turned off the issue at hand because he experiences some personal convenience, so what? He's not the target audience of the protests, just collateral "damage" (if you can even call it that). Government officials and all the millions of people reached by news media coverage of the protests are the real target audience. And you can't deny that it's working; year-on-year nationwide opinion polls show an astounding reversal from majority disapproval of the Black Lives Matter movement to majority approval. It's been the most successful modern protest movement going possibly all the way back to the 70s.

So who fucking cares if some people got stuck in traffic. The protests are working, and the people who weren't even stuck in traffic but are complaining anyway because they hypothetically could have been (like this guy) should just be roundly ignored. Listening to their opinions is a terrible idea if your actual intent is to further the movement.

> It absolutely is not a baby step. In fact it is a really big deal to jump from your own experience to assuming the intent of other people. That is actually a really fast way to anger people in my experience, because it requires that you pretend that you understand what is going on in another person's head.

That is not correct. If you are blocking a freeway causing hours of traffic delays then I am not making assumptions about what's in somebody else's head. I don't care what their intentions are. They have made me disgruntled and digusted with their protest message completely alienating me from their cause. From that moment forward I would vote against and fund in opposition to everything they advocate.

As the audience all that matters is what's in my head, which I don't have to guess at. The inability for people to accept that reality tells me the things they are protesting about aren't important to them.

> From that moment forward I would vote against and fund in opposition to everything they advocate.

So given the protests in the U.S.recently have been about the treatment of minorities by the Police specifically the killing and abuse of black people. Are you saying that if you were to be stopped in traffic due to a such a protest you would then support, fund, and vote for more Police abuse and killing of black people? Is that really what you're saying?

That’s literally a different argument. You’ve moved from “they’re intending to cause harm to people like me” to “I believe this tactic alienates people like me”.

As I’ve said repeatedly, the latter is an argument about the efficacy of this type of protest. You’re free to believe that, I don’t care. But understand that “it doesn’t work” is a completely unrelated argument from “its intended to do X”.

The protests are working. It doesn't matter if you hypothetically would be pissed off about being stuck in traffic because of one, they are demonstrably working. So they absolutely continue despite your objections. See:

https://thehill.com/homenews/news/502267-support-for-black-l...

https://news.gallup.com/poll/317321/believe-protest-actions-...

I think you should take a step back and really consider why you're arguing so vociferously over hypothetically being caught in traffic because of a protest when there are much larger issues at play here.

Neither of your links mention anything related to blocking freeways. Your second link mentions that violent protests are viewed extremely negatively. Where I live blocking a freeway would be viewed similarly. As negative as the numbers in your source suggest doing that a few times would tank support for any protest movement.

For those curious about power and mass protests, John Berger's piece from 1968[0] provides an excellent overview on mass demonstrations.

[0]: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj/1968/no03...

(Deleted: not worth it)

What a horrid comparison to make between those crimes and a constitutionally-guaranteed right.

Would the moral status of rape, or, say, slavery be any greater if it was written into the Constitution? (Note that one of those was, extensively, written into the Constitution.)

If not, what is the point of your argument?

You're just continuing the horrid comparison of somehow equating people exercising free speech with heinous crimes. Stop it. It's not a good look nor a valid argument.

I'm not even going to waste my time explaining how free speech is different morally from rape, because I guarantee that this is crystal clear to everyone else except for you somehow.

"a constitutionally-guaranteed right"

You absolutely don't have a right to suppress others with your ideology.

'Freedom of expression' has nothing to do with shutting down highways.

And people who need to get somewhere to save lives are suitably invigorated, I'm sure.

Yeah, actually. I saw a huge fucking grin on the face of the guy riding shotgun in the ambulance as the crowd of cyclists parted like magic in front of them and they had a personal escort of two vested corkers. Guy was even filming. They got where they were going faster than if the usual stop and go car traffic had been there.

The great thing about people on foot or on bike is that they can easily get out of the way of emergency vehicles, vs cars and trucks which often can't.

If you’ve created a logjam however, how does the ambulance get through the stopped traffic?

(I’m not arguing against protesting on the freeway, to be clear, just genuinely curious how often it helps vs hinders emergency vehicles.)

I've experienced this outside of protests. My wife and I were driving somewhere near downtown St. Louis, on a part of the interstate where there are tall concrete barriers between the directions of traffic. There was a complete log jam due to an accident ahead, and we heard sirens coming up from behind us to the left. We were in the left of two lanes. The right shoulder was either filled up or too small (can't remember), so people couldn't really pull right more than a foot or two to allow the ambulance through.

The ambulance didn't let that deter them. They took the foot or two we and the other left-lane drivers could give by getting REALLY close to the car to our right, and used it to careen down the left shoulder, scraping the side of their vehicle along the concrete barrier much of the way.

Damn, that's dedication. Kudos to the drivers!

I'm not talking about emergency vehicles or people who get escorts. I'm talking about the doctors who have to make their own way in their own vehicles.

It's okay, the minor negative effects of that are never going to be more important than the ability to protest effectively.

Just like nobody blames normal traffic for killing people via doctor delays.

> Just like nobody blames normal traffic for killing people via doctor delays.

That's because normal traffic jams aren't intentional.

"It's okay, the minor negative effects of that are never going to be more important than the ability to protest effectively."

No way. You do not have the right to arbitrarily lock down traffic for some arbitrary reason.

Wait until Trump supporters lock down traffic in LA all day because they legitimately believe the 'election was stolen'.

You can protest in the park or city square or somewhere where it doesn't stop a large number of people from going about their business.

You don't get to suppress others with your ideology.

You definitely get to supress infrastructure when you have enough people willing to protest.

I don't get it, are you trying to imply that protests should have no disruptive effect? That is a good recipe for complete political dysfunction. Civil disobedience is based upon disruption. It is our right as citizens.

Besides, if an ambulance or doctor needed to go through a protest, the vast majority of the time just asking gets them through.

You have a vote. Use it.

You also have a voice. Use it.

You have no right to undemocratically wield power over others by physical force. You have no right to force others to suffer to compel them to your will which they did not choose.

Limiting the political engagement of your citizens to only voting in a two party system is madness. When people stop being engaged, and stop voting, and your country turns to shit, I can say that I warned you.

No, seriously, this is insane. You want to, functionally, ban protests. There is absolutely no way you can have a functional country if you can't even have peaceful demonstrations.

Funny, I never said "only voting". I also said you have a voice, use it. You seem to have completely ignored that paragraph.

Perhaps you'd like to take a shot at actually responding to what I wrote.

It is absolutely possible to protest without hurting innocent bystanders.

If your standard for "hurting innocent bystanders" is to mildly inconvenience some people by causing them to seek an alternative route, then no, it's not possible to have an effective protest under that standard.

The right to protest is generally accepted to mean that people are allowed to walk in the street in an effort to be heard.

I responded to what you wrote, and your arguments fall flat. Even during massive protests with millions of people ambulances get where they need to get and doctors go where they need to go.

When you're blocked on the highway, you cannot leave. You're confined. No matter how sick you are, how hungry the baby is, how hot the car is getting, how low on gas or how late you are for work.

Stop being disingenous about what you're advocating. You're advocating confining people to their cars on the highway. Including old people, little kids, sick people. To force them to listen to you.

> If your standard for "hurting innocent bystanders" is to mildly inconvenience some people

No, the standard is potentially killing people.

"You want to, functionally, ban protests."

You have a misunderstanding of what is legal, what is not, and what a peaceful protest is.

Blocking traffic is already banned.

That's 100% illegal in all cases.

'Protests' which infringe on the rights of others are just another form of fascism.

'My Fascism is Worthwhile' is not a civic or moral argument.

You can protest peacefully, vote, engage in other forms of civic obedience, but you can't do it at the expense of others, full stop.

As soon as someone starts trampling on your rights for a cause you don't agree with you'll scream 'victim' and then maybe have a different perspective.

Walking in the street is not fascism. This is seriously ridiculous. Are you going to claim that the Hong Kong protests, or the Climate Protests are fascists because people were walking in the streets?

"You definitely get to supress infrastructure when you have enough people willing to protest."

No - you don't.

This is illegal, and it happens only by virtue of force.

You absolutely have no right do do this - you just have he power to do it 'if you have enough people'.

So yes, if you have an aggressive mob, you can get away with illegal things, that doesn't mean it's lawful.

> Wait until Trump supporters lock down traffic in LA all day because they legitimately believe the 'election was stolen'.

Good for them? That's a valid protest. You don't have to stay out of the way in the free speech zone. (Not to say that separation is never appropriate, but not most of the time.)

"That's a valid protest."

It's valid to protest things which are not true?

So we can block traffic in LA to raise awareness that 'Aliens are coming'?

No - absolutely not.

Your arbitrary definition of what you consider to be a 'valid protest' is not relevant.

You 100% do not have the right to block highways under any circumstances. Full stop.

You can of course, block highways if you use force to do it, i.e. by amassing such a large, unlawful group so that 'nobody can do anything about it' - which is of course illegal and completely trampling other people's basic rights.

I firmly believe that if you have enough people who think it’s important enough to block traffic to make a point — if their belief is that aliens are coming to destroy earth — they’re allowed to do that. Sure, it’s illegal, but they’ll do it anyways. I think it’s unlikely that so many people will come together to block traffic, but if it’s so important to them, then I’m all for it. They’ll definitely get to make their argument to the news and American people, who get to decide if their point is valid or not. But that’s the point of free speech.

I doesn't matter if you are 'all for it'.

The rest of us are 'not for it' - and that's why it's well enshrined into law.

Your pet ideology is no reason to obstruct others.

If you can convince LA County to shut down the highway for a 'march' over the 'weekend' - then that's fine.

Otherwise, fines or jail.

Blocking traffic is not speech, it's physical harassment whose only outcome and whose intended mechanism of effect is to inject suffering into random innocent peoples' lives.

You have no right to do that any more than you have a right to randomly slap people on the street to make them listen to you.

Use your vote and your voice.

> It's valid to protest things which are not true?

If you set the bar at "your point has to be true before you can protest", then goodbye free speech. Because who exactly gets to decide what is true, and therefore is legitimate to protest over? The government? The media? That is an insanely dangerous power to give any institution, which is why the first amendment is purposefully interpreted to put the minimum number of restrictions on what is forbidden.

"If you set the bar at "your point has to be true before you can protest", then goodbye free speech."

This is not true at all.

These arguments are purposefully conflating 'speech and protest' with the right to block traffic and infringe on other people's rights.

You can 100% stand in front of city hall to tell us about 'Alien Invasions' if you want.

You can 100% not block traffic to do it.

You have more opportunities for expression today than at any time in history, use those 'vehicles' instead of blocking 'vehicles'.

That is literally a different argument though.

Now you're arguing about the difference between civil disobedience (which necessarily involves breaking norms or laws) and simple protest. This is a fair distinction, but genuinely a tedious one. Yes, standing around in the street is illegal, that's the point. We're not going to work out anything new here that hasn't been discussed over the past century.

What I'm reacting to is you setting the bar based on the content of the speech. That is super dangerous territory, one that I would strongly condemn. The moment you say that tactics become legitimate or illegitimate based on the content of the speech, which is something the highlighted quote was saying, then you're heading into the land of no more free speech.

???

So you fully support anti-abortion protestors blocking the entrance to abortion clinics?

That's 'civil disobedience' and 'breaking the law' for the 'content of speech' (in their view) of 'saving lives'?

Seems pretty legit? Saving lives?

What about White Supremacists burning down 'desegregated schools' in protest of 'desegregation'?

Or some 'burning crosses' on the streets in front of the NAACP? I mean, hey, it's their right to 'protest'?

How about 'Anti-Vaxxer' protesters surrounding evil big corporate pharma research centres and not allowing anyone in or out (civil disobedience) because 'big pharma' is giving everyone autism?

Or a much more mild case: two days ago in Montreal a small group of protestors brought down a national monument, as police watched and refused to intervene.

So how many protestors do I need exactly to tear down monuments? What's the 'headcount' threshold for the Washington monument coming down? I mean, he did own slaves ...

It's not tedious to distinguish between what is illegal and what is not, it's literally at the heart of civilization.

And no - we generally don't care what your 'cause' is - if someone really wants to 'protests' for 'segregation' - that's totally fine, they can make nice placards and sit in the park.

It's incredibly naive to ignore the damage and harm caused to a lot of people in the wake of a lot of unfortunate protests which have turned violent, let alone the problems caused but otherwise more basic civil acts.

There are 1000 ways to protest, if you want to sit on the sidewalk and get dragged away, that's fine, just don't get in other people's way.

This response is so completely unrelated to what I actually said that it’s genuinely hard to respond to. If you want to continue to discuss this matter, respond to what I said, rather than making up what I said and then arguing against it.

The transit system in Los Angeles is always so close to the edge, it doesn’t take a huge push for rush hour to turn into total gridlock.

Assuming that’s their goal, which seems probable, it’s not clear if that strategy would be reproducible in say, Ohio.

AFAIK, the goal is "now things are different", and the tactic at play is "be unignorable".

The impression I've always gotten is that what you're permitted to do when you're doing a legal protest is to minimize the disruption it has, which is (IMO) within epsilon of "make it as ignorable as possible".

Ohio might have a more centralized city center, where LA doesn't, or have other forms of "center" the way the transit system in LA is "central" to the metropolis.

"Some of Haussmann's critics said that the real purpose of Haussmann's boulevards was to make it easier for the army to maneuver and suppress armed uprisings; Paris had experienced six such uprisings between 1830 and 1848, all in the narrow, crowded streets in the center and east of Paris and on the left bank around the Pantheon. These critics argued that a small number of large, open intersections allowed easy control by a small force."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...

This is pretty widely thrown around, but it should be noted that the central purpose of Haussmannization was public health and beautification: tearing down the slums, building proper infrastructure like sewers and aqueducts, and pretty parks and streets. The article you link to emphasizes this.

The wide boulevards did very little to prevent the Paris Commune, for instance. Napoleon III just wanted to build a second Rome, not some martial panopticon.

The wide boulevards certainly helped the French Army in drowning the Commune in blood soon afterwards, though.

The Commune was also fairly unique among French revolts as it did not begin in Paris, rather it was Paris reacting to their emperor getting captured in battle.

There was a bit more than just Napoleon III getting captured. Paris was subsequently sieged and captured by the Prussians. Afterwards, the Prussian troops were kept nearby and occasionally paraded through the streets. The Commune arose also due to power disagreements with the new Third Republic and an attempted seizure of cannons in Paris.

The Paris commune was tripped off by a political failure, a war lost in a single battle, and the siege of Paris by the Germans followed by mass starvation. I doubt that any city design could possibly have stopped the commune from happening.

Not directly related, but the US Interstate Highway system was at least partially designed with military concerns in mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Hist... . I'm reminded of it every time I see military vehicles on the highway.

Obviously not the same thing that you're talking about here - but just interesting to me, and vaguely related!

There's a reason why the Eisenhower Interstate System signs have the 5 stars of a general.

If I'm not mistaken, the 5-star logo only applies to sections of interstate highway that have at least one mile of level and straight road in any given 5-mile stretch. The idea was that an "Eisenhower Freeway" could be used as an impromptu landing spot for Air Force planes. While I'm sure this ability was tested at the beginning I don't know if there are regular drills and exercises making use of this feature.

This is an urban legend debunked in the linked Wikipedia article: "According to urban legend, early regulations required that one out of every five miles of the Interstate Highway System must be built straight and flat, so as to be usable by aircraft during times of war. There is no evidence of this rule being included in any Interstate legislation."

The Eisenhower Interstate Highway System is designed for military purposes only in the sense that it's very important to be able to quickly move your troops and materiel around to where they're needed (i.e. logistical reasons). In other words, it's important to the military for the exact same reasons that it's important to anyone else.

It has some merit. Sweden built an entire system based on road bases to deter any invasion attempts from the Soviets, including aircraft able to operate out of them. Still happen upon them to this day, just notice the road get straighter and a tiny bit wider.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas_90

I'm not saying it doesn't have merit or isn't true of other countries, just pointing out that it's not true of the United States. The US is a lot different from Sweden in two salient points here -- we're much bigger, and we're protected by entire oceans from potential enemies on all sides.

Completely agree with you. Just pointing out that the idea that I guess many technically minded people come across actually exists, although in a completely different environment.

In contrast to oceans there's 600 km by air from St. Petersburg to Stockholm which leaves minutes to respond.

I would love to see a plane try to decelerate from 200+ mph with the surface quality changing every 200 yards and with 18-inch-deep potholes every so often. I wonder what sort of maintenance budget the original interstate plan envisioned

Several planes land on highways per year, I don’t find the source but it was from AVWeb and the order of magnitude is ~10 per year. It’s actually much safer han fields. But those are Cessnas at 80mph, not Boeings.

Thanks for the link, very interesting! I love the US

is there any further explanation of this? it strikes me that narrow chokepoints would be more advantageous to the numerically inferior but better-equipped/trained force.

more advantageous to the numerically inferior who know the lay of the land, because it's much easier to conduct urban guerilla warfare in such instances.

Armies during this period were all still about marching in formation, which doesn't work well in confined spaces where you can't really keep a formation.

It was also in the context of a long history of barricades being put up by popular uprisings and stymying and trapping troop formations.

I guess I'm thinking too much in terms of modern times, where police are mostly aiming to contain a larger crowd. didn't consider that demonstrators might actually intend to trap security forces.

You're thinking about modern protests that are relatively peaceful and in which deaths are rare. The Paris riots looked a lot more like outright urban guerrilla warfare with lots of deaths, in a manner that is more similar to actual declared wars here in the US (e.g. the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Civil War), not mere urban unrest.

Now that we have the ability to decouple most administrative work from location thanks to remote working, I wonder how long it will take for the first fully decentralised authoritarian government to appear.

Can't have protests in the capital if you don't have a capital.

I guess authoritarians have risen to power over the internet but it's hard to imagine someone exerting that much influence over zoom

The police force would still be centralized. The population would be forced to decentralize.

We'll just have an executive order banning the use of Zoom. If you don't like something, make it illegal. Problem solved!!

Decentralized authoritarianism is an inherently weird concept. Sounds more like a vicious type of mob rule to me.

I meant physically decentralized - as in, no grand palaces or other government buildings that can be stormed, because the whole administration is working from home.

Imagine a 100% remote company, except, it's not a company.

The power structures are of course not decentralized at all.

... that being said, an authoritarian state with decentralized power structure is also an interesting concept. The episodes about social scoring from Black Mirror [1] and The Orville [2] might go into that direction.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)

[2] https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule

This article is specifically about the specific tactics BLM protest used in the suburbs and small towns. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-06-19/protests-...

That's one of the reasons I chose not to live in a city center.

People can drive to the location of the protest. Less dense means more transportation, protests could also mean blocking off major freeways.

Where would you find parking for a hundred thousand cars? You can't really get protests like this without a dense city:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/March_fo...

You'd be surprised. Most of cities like this is parking lots. But yeah, in a protest situation they may not be available. Big marathons and marches happen just fine.

Reminds me of Brasilia.

Where people have no problem protesting in front of government buildings.

That "people always protest at the densest areas of the city" is just that, correlation. The targets of their protests happen to be in those areas.

yeah I live in New York and I definitely went to more protests this summer because they were happening literally right outside my apartment than I would have if I had to deal with driving and finding parking (probably hard if it's a big protest).

I think generally American style suburban sprawl decreases social capital just because you're more isolated, and that includes protests. I think mask wearing is another example.

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