A pro-Palestinian protest action briefly blocked all traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Wednesday morning.
Starting at about 7:45 a.m. Protesters stopped cars and stretched banners across the roadway denouncing Israel’s bombing of Rafah in the Gaza Strip and demanding that the U.S. stop arming Israel.
Northbound and southbound traffic on the bridge was at a standstill as of 8 a.m.
The banner says “STOP ARMING ISRAEL”. Is “pro-Palestinian” really the best way to describe them?
Yes, if Israel stops attacking it’s the Palestinians in Gaza who will benefit. But, you don’t have to be pro-Palestinian to want that to happen. You can just be anti-killing-of-civilians, whoever those civilians happen to be.
I’m happy with leftists doing shit like this to support Palestine as long as they vote for Joe Biden too - even if they disagree with the DNC on foreign policy - out of respect for the minorities of the US and the western world at large who would be thoroughly fucked under Trump.
Doing anything else just means you’re just an accelerationist POS who wants everyone to suffer so we can all bask in your narcissistic vision of revolution/rapture as salvation.
Being silent on the Israel-Palestine war and not opposing all right-winger warmongers who started it (Netanyahou, Hamas) is also wrong.
As an non-american, I would blame american voters for supporting the US military complex. It doesn’t matter what you vote for and that you’ve been propagandized into the “lesser evil” thinking. The blood is on your hand.
Bruh you’re an idiot. Do you blame Russians for “voting” for Putin too when that mfer literally tortures the opposition to death in prison?
Me, no. My governement? Totally.
I voted for Biden, and I’ll be doing so again. I voted for Hillary as well. Each time made me feel a little sick, like I had given my support to the atrocities that would now be committed with the “mandate of the voters”.
It won’t change the fact that I will vote for Biden (it is the best option after all). But comments like yours, that feel the need to throw accusations and bully people into selling that little piece of their soul, even when no one brought up withholding votes from Biden, make that sick feeling worse.
If there are people who are at the cusp of withholding their votes from Biden, your comment is not the kind of argument that will shame them into joining your side. Rather it will push them further towards abstaining. And while you might feel you have the moral high ground over people like that, you are still contributing to the problem.
Edit: To those considering their vote for Biden, I think this comment does a good job putting it into perspective. It talks about some of the good he has actually accomplished, and makes a decent case for how voting can’t become a zero sum game or we will lose more than we gain.
Bleh every other thread on Lemmy has “leftists” (usually suspiciously pro-Russia tankies) constantly threatening to shoot themselves and their neighbors by abstaining from democracy, I ain’t reading all that but I’m glad you’re not one of them and thus a comrade of mine, I meant no offense, I was just putting out there something that needs to be said. On reddit I’d usually just tell them to kill themselves and call them goobers but I’m trying to be nice here.
Yeah, some people haven’t learned that “if you do x, you’re an (insult)” doesn’t turn people considering x against x, it more often turns them against the one saying it. Even if they ultimately agree that x is bad, they often also continue considering the one who said that an enemy.
How to Win Friends and Influence People and The 48 Laws of Power were a couple of books that helped me learn this, because we have instincts that lead us astray in these regards (I used to think insults were a viable persuasion strategy myself). So much of it is obvious in hindsight, just by considering things from how I would receive them instead of how to convince someone of something.
Edit: fixed formatting for angled brackets
Edit 2: looks like they just remove angled brackets, escaped or not, switched to boring curvy brackets
I’ve already learned all this but your mistake is thinking I give a fuck. No one’s opinion changes, and the world will end in like 30 years tops.
30 years? An optimist I see. /s
Ah, so you’re going with the accelerate the end strategy. Can’t say I really blame you. Things aren’t looking good regardless of who wins.
Wait, do you think people continuing to drive would somehow cause more Palestinian deaths? Is that what you are claiming? You do know the vehicles are not carrying weapons for Israel or anything like that?
The fact is, this protest saved not one life. It changed no one’s mind. It accomplished nothing but making a lot of people have a bad day.
deliberately misunderstanding the point of protests doesn’t make you look smarter than the protesters.
The problem with a lot of protests is the protesters don’t understand the point of a protest.
Sometimes people get so emotional over a cause they can’t understand things from the perspective of other people.
So they end up coming off like selfish crazy people which at best convinces no one, and at worst turns people against their cause.
Many times protests are just about people wanting to be around other people that share their emotions about the cause. This results in a need to find an outlet for these emotions. But because it’s an emotional thing they can’t think out a logical way to further their cause. So instead it’s just about expressing emotion. Which may be cathartic for the protesters but doesn’t do anything to further the cause.
Israel is obviously not going to stop until they get the hostages back. Blocking bridges won’t change anything. It’s just unnecessarily inconveniencing people and only serves to make people think Palestinian movement is an irrational movement that doesn’t care about anything other than themselves.
I’d argue there are no “rational” protests because protests only exist when there is no path to a legal or democratic resolution available.
You don’t protest your landlord fixing your broken heating because there’s laws saying they have to. You don’t protest the elected government, you protest when the elected government breaks the law without recourse.
What are you on about? There is an entire procedure for lawful protest.
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What does it say about your cause when the leadership can’t be bothered to fill out a piece of paperwork?
how is it legal to protest on a bridge? that’s got to be breaking at least one law
it’s not wrong to break the law, it’s wrong to commit genocide.
forcing traffic to halt on a bridge isnt going to stop a war on the other side of the planet.
It’s funny, they said the same thing about the protests against the Vietnam war.
And it didn’t. The protests started in earnest a full 8 years before the war ended.
So the protests weren’t blocking enough bridges for 8 full years.
Yes clearly it wasn’t the method that was wrong it was the humans weren’t noble enough.
We solve problems in democracy by peaceful protest, voting, lawsuits, and swaying public opinion. We don’t solve problems in a democracy by blocking ambulances and pissing the hell out of regular people. No one just trying to pick up their kids is going to want to hear about your cause when you are blocking the road.
they don’t block ambulances, they let them through. you’ve never been to a protest and it shows
I don’t get it. When does it become morally acceptable to block traffic?
Between Just Stop Oil and Stop Arming Israel, they both have equally valid points. So why is it that blocking the Golden Gate Bridge is “based” while blocking various feeder roads in Britain makes you a twat?
Edit: messed up the titles
It’s absolutely acceptable. Driving isn’t some untouchable human right that goes above everything else and can’t yield to something else for a little bit.
Nah brah. There could be an ambulance carrying your child to a hospital in that queue.
Or a dude on its way to an interview after more than two years trying to land a job.
Or a person about to catch a flight.
So, not absolutely acceptable. No.
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They block ambulances and I have zero problems with people kneeling for the anthem.
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“common” “usually”
How about don’t do things like that and you won’t have to have faith in backup plans?
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They are preaching to the choir in San Francisco. They should be protesting in D.C.
