If you are expecting protests to force someone's hand, that isn't protest or protected political speech, that's coercion. Some forms of that are legal (e.g., strikes), but there are pretty sharply defined limits.
As a sympathizer to the HK protests, I've heard all these talking points before -- that the protesters are ruining the economy and making things miserable for everyone. Usually the protests can really only get so big when there is a shared grievance that keeps getting ignored by the administration.
In the case of HK, the grievance was the possibility for criminals to be extradited to Chinese mainland.
In the case of convoy protests, the grievance was the vaccine mandate in order to work a trucking job that's mostly solitary with minimal human contact.