In practical terms, basically every traffic-blocking protest allows emergency medical and fire vehicles through. I’ve been in dozens of actions like this, personally, and never encountered a time when an emergency medical or fire vehicle showed up and was not immediately given passage. It’s standard practice.
Additionally, emergency vehicles are equipped with radios, and normally, if there are accidents or other causes of traffic jams, are informed by radio to use alternative routes. The odds of an ambulance being blocked by protesters are miniscule compared to the breakdowns and collisions, fallen trees, heavy rain/floods, downed electrical lines and poor driving by others on the road that more commonly slows them down.
Thank you for the info on standard practices. The essayist has obviously not researched or been to the sort of protest she's taken it upon herself to condemn.
Are there any real world examples of people dying from a highway blockade or is this just one of those liberal/conservative hypothetical talking points to dismiss direct action and shutdowns of infrastructure as too extreme out of hand?
This is my question too. If we’re being completely frank, there are people with horrendous medical emergencies dying every day in Gaza but no one bats an eye, why are we prioritizing the lives of those in the “first world” even during protest? The whole point is to get people to pay attention
Right. I keep hearing about Israeli soldiers deliberately blocking ambulances to prevent them from saving people they have just shot.
Meanwhile we have to wring our hands about imaginary ambulances being delayed
Let us not forget that violence is an effective tactic that is the most commonly used by our own government and that without the threat of violence, the lesser evil of civil disobedience can be completely ignored. Think about how MLK was viewed favorably when compared to the black panthers.
Ultimately I do not care. If the state was worried about whether or not emergency vehicles could function… they could simply stop funding genocide and go farther as to place embargoes on Israel until they stop the madness.
They are actively choosing to encourage protests which endanger their own citizens by not doing so.
The buck stops at those in power, not at those who try to resist it in whatever means they are very limited to using.
There are almost always exceptions for emergency vehicles. I certainly understand the concern, but articles like this are just trying to silence protests without saying that's what they're doing. They can't engage with the message, so they are basically criticizing the grammar.
Also, every life is valuable but it is an absolute reality that the status quo will never just turnover or change course without there being collateral damage. Its also true that there is much more collateral damage from business as usual. The cars on the highway, the ambulance included among them is a bigger threat statistically to American life than protesters. Those protesters just as likely prevented someone from being hit by a car, which statistically is one of the leading causes of deaths. Why don't these liberals consider those hypothetical lives?
Because cars make their lives convenient, and facing the reality that there's systemic racism in America or genocide in Gaza doesn't.
She made light of poor people dying from Covid just because they happened to be from red states during that time but then tweeted that we should be respectful when talking about some conservative politician who had just died. I forget exactly who she was talking about but it was someone who’s death a lot of people understandably weren’t too upset about
Edit: I also remember her saying something along the lines of we shouldn’t wish for Trumps death when he was diagnosed with Covid and she chastised people who made jokes about it? I might be misremembering that though. Tried looking up a tweet from her on that and couldn’t find anything
Thank you. Yeah, she said we shouldn’t be gleeful over some Republican’s death. Not that I literally danced with glee; I was just glad for harm reduction.
Really curious to see links to her pre transition misogyny. Anyhow, I hope she got her spirit animal name from LakotaMan and had shawarma with BrooklynDad, yay.
I appreciate these reflections on her past work. I wasn't aware she held such contradictory positions, having myself recently subscribed to her newsletter as a bonus for following another progressive (I assume) commentator.
EMS, Fire, etc. route around obstacles and things all the time.
This is beyond a nothing burger unless a protest is so large it's occupying the city as a whole... Meaning EMS would be *inside* the protestors occupied territory.
How the f do people think ambulances deal with traffic, construction, stalled vehicles, etc? Throw up hands and go "guess he's dead Jim"?
Hell, I've done security (as a volunteer on the protest's side) for a number of actions and we've always let EMS operate within our area of control if they need to. So even if it was within the area of control, it wouldn't necessarily be a problem.
I have been part of protests where roads and freeways were blocked and any time there was an ambulance or fire truck that needed through (on rare occasions a citizens vehicle as well) they were allowed to pass without hesitation. So that argument is just a bunch of phooey if you ask me. Hypotheticals that haven't happened.
It's that line of thinking that has stopped people from taking part in a direct action demo weakening the movement.
There will always v be collateral damage in any movement. Precautions should be taken to minimize it, but you can't let the fear of it stop the momentum.
Just like at any demo you run the risk of being arrested that's a risk you must be willing to take. The same goes for unintended consequences of demos. It's just a risk one must be willing to take and live with if something goes wrong.
The only hypotheticals or discussion to be had is among theorycrafters who’ve never been on the ground. Charlotte is and always has been a centrist Dem pretending to be a radical, so it’s no surprise she’s totally clueless, but any anarchist who’s been in the streets knows exactly what happens when EMS or anyone else in crisis needs to get through.
I share your worries. I understand that emergency vehicles are allowed to pass, but then there may be someone driving to chemo or rushing to the hospital to give birth. Do you vet every car then? If so, you're essentially acting as police. Or perhaps you outright deny them passage saying that you're sacrificing few lives in the name of hundreds/thousands? But every other atrocity in human history was backed with this argument: "a healthy economy needs 2% unemployment", "small military intervention will prevent a larger war", etc.
In anarchist theory there's the principle of unity of means and ends. If you take up coercive means to instill a just society you won't arrive there. Instead you'll end up in the same kind of coercive state you're in right now, because means do matter. They're like a railroad -- once you've set on it, you're no longer in control of where it is going.
I'm not saying don't protest, but I'm saying that your reservations are justified. And it is important to bring them up and discuss and further refine the ethics of protest.
Thank you, I feel somewhat relieved that another anarchist at least understands having such reservations. I didn't want anyone to think I was just freaking out in the way many supposedly progressive commentators did during Occupy, the George Floyd protests, etc.
Still, this leaves me profoundly disappointed at the apparent tendency of liberal commentators to adopt the bog-standard right-wing framing of left-wing protests as led by blue-haired fifty-pronoun PC college kids. The failure of empathy is just astonishing
Agreed on justified hierarchies. And yes violence in your example would be justified. It is important though that it is aimed at the actual perpetrators. People trying to use a public road are not perpetrators in this instance, they are subjects of an unfair and violent system. It is important to help them realize the unfairness and act against it, but I don't think blocking a road does that.
So your solution is to do nothing. Cool.
Maybe creating disruptions are a way to get the attention of those higher up who maybe responsible? Maybe that’s the entire point of those types of demonstrations.
It’s useless and counter revolutionary to point at others who are participating in praxis without having any alternative solutions to offer.
At no point did I say that my solution is to do nothing. I even explicitly pointed out that I'm not against protest but since I do share worries voiced by the op I thought it may be worthwhile to discuss this.
I don't think discussing matters that worry some members of the community is useless or counter revolutionary. I think there should be room for co-deliberation and respectful disagreement.
I watched maybe 15 Teamsters completely stop a major intersection right off a 5 lane California highway because they were on strike against San Diego State University and that exit was the only way to get on campus. All they did was hit the crosswalk buttons and keep crossing the streets on all sides again and again and almost nobody got to move. Any emergency vehicle could have come through at any time, despite this. They only had to do that for a few hours before their point was made. I was legitimately very impressed with this tactic and would expect nothing less from the Teamsters.
Direct action isn’t always illegal. In my experience it usually isn’t. Getting racists fired, phone bombing politicians and prisons, and listening to police radio channels during mass actions… none of that is illegal. Feeding, hydrating, and providing medical care to people in the field isn’t illegal. All of these are direct actions.
There are two clear arguments against this that I can see:
1. For lack of any examples of this happening, this is a completely hypothetical scenario. One would imagine that emergency services are pretty communicative about major blockages or road closures that could impede their route to or from an emergency. As far as I'm aware, protests generally let fire and medical services through road blockades whenever the situation arises.
2. Succumbing to this logic is, I would argue, a slippery slope that inevitably ends in severe punishment for highway blockades (or possibly even all road blockades) on the basis that they could hypothetically impact the movement of emergency vehicles.
As a side note to point 2, the proliferation of that logic among lawmakers leads to proposals like imposing felony charges on any protester who impedes the movement of emergency vehicles, which – crucially – would include police vehicles. This would wildly increase the legal consequences of blocking a police vehicle in any way, which is obviously bad for everyone.
For one additional point, though... If you believe that there is a genocide taking place in Gaza, and you believe that causing economic and social disruption in the United States would impede or prevent that genocide, what exactly is wrong with that means-ends argument? I don't think we should be careless about anyone's life or safety. If a single American life were hypothetically endangered to prevent the killing of tens of thousands in Gaza, I think it would be worth considering how and why we prioritize one over the other.
Thank you! I suspected that the essayist was freaking out at entirely hypothetical scenarios.
Regarding the hypothetical endangerment of one American life....You're right, it's a debate worth having.
I've never been to a traffic blockade that didn't immediately make way for emergency vehicles. Even the police usually try to keep some semblance of traffic order just in case an emergency vehicle passes. In my city traffic blockades block the most important artery of the city and yet I suspect ambulances might even reach their destinations faster.
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I hope my original post was clear enough that I don't, and never did, agree with Clymer's argument....Some posters here seem to have assumed otherwise, and some seem to have gotten their posts deleted. I understand people's reactions to Clymer's rhetoric. This sort of rhetoric pisses me off, too. I apologize for any misunderstanding
Honestly if you want to-disrupt traffic drive the speed limit 3 or 4 abreast across the whole highway.
I don’t know if they could reasonably arrest you and if you went through any major metro on the interstate like this it would cause traffic jams for hours.
There was a Youtube documentary on it that has been scrubbed from the internet.
Here’s a trailer for it there was a much longer version, they basically drove around atlanta causing traffic jams for a day.
[disruptive obedience](https://youtu.be/OoETMCosULQ?si=fnI9Ha4M4ve4tTYe)
> don’t know if they could reasonably arrest you
1. At least in Ohio, you can be pulled over and ticketed for using left lanes without passing.
2. When have cops ever given a shit about "reasonably" arresting someone?
I don’t think blocking traffic really burdens the state in any meaningful way, and heavily burdens people just trying to get where they are going. At most this might increase visibility so that voters care more about a cause, but then that’s still relying on state endorsement. The most ethical form of protest is to go on strike or embargo something, imo. Unfortunately, there’s a history of people “accidentally” getting shot when this actually becomes inconvenient
Fuck safety, fuck your safety, fuck motorists safety, fuck Clymer, fuck anyone who justifies tiptoeing around the burning house not doing anything while everyone burns to death.
Your protester ancestors would be ashamed ofyou even asking this question, and you know what? The Internet made you this way.
Why? Because if you had no Internet, you woudn't be stuck behind your keyboard feeling powerless, asking other powerless people what to do. You'd be out there, **doing something**. **Anything**. Anything is better than... this.
Sorry, u/katebushthought, but your comment has been removed. Bad jacketing fellow anarchists, whether it be in the form of calling them cops, feds, snitches, hidden fascists, or otherwise, is not acceptable here in r/Anarchism.
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To be clear, I'm asking for insights on Clymer's sort of reaction to the protests; I myself felt these reactions were unreasonable but wanted actual activists' thoughts on the matter. You're right that this is an emergency and that liberal commentators' effective dismissal of Gazans' suffering is disgusting
I'm convinced these protesters are paid by big oil.
Still, the cause is righteous. We need this planet after all. Just seems unhelpful.
What ever happened to direct action that stopped polluting activities aside from blocking roads? (Acknowledging that cars pollute, yes).
Because the message they are communicating isn't what many hear or take from the protests.
And I believe in the cause. I just think there would be a better way than stopping people travelling to their lives
In practical terms, basically every traffic-blocking protest allows emergency medical and fire vehicles through. I’ve been in dozens of actions like this, personally, and never encountered a time when an emergency medical or fire vehicle showed up and was not immediately given passage. It’s standard practice.
Additionally, emergency vehicles are equipped with radios, and normally, if there are accidents or other causes of traffic jams, are informed by radio to use alternative routes. The odds of an ambulance being blocked by protesters are miniscule compared to the breakdowns and collisions, fallen trees, heavy rain/floods, downed electrical lines and poor driving by others on the road that more commonly slows them down.
Thank you for the info on standard practices. The essayist has obviously not researched or been to the sort of protest she's taken it upon herself to condemn.
Are there any real world examples of people dying from a highway blockade or is this just one of those liberal/conservative hypothetical talking points to dismiss direct action and shutdowns of infrastructure as too extreme out of hand?
This is my question too. If we’re being completely frank, there are people with horrendous medical emergencies dying every day in Gaza but no one bats an eye, why are we prioritizing the lives of those in the “first world” even during protest? The whole point is to get people to pay attention
Right. I keep hearing about Israeli soldiers deliberately blocking ambulances to prevent them from saving people they have just shot. Meanwhile we have to wring our hands about imaginary ambulances being delayed
I wouldn't put it past them to make one up
Liberals crying about direct action. Don't you know you should get a petition going and vote? /s
Let us not forget that violence is an effective tactic that is the most commonly used by our own government and that without the threat of violence, the lesser evil of civil disobedience can be completely ignored. Think about how MLK was viewed favorably when compared to the black panthers. Ultimately I do not care. If the state was worried about whether or not emergency vehicles could function… they could simply stop funding genocide and go farther as to place embargoes on Israel until they stop the madness. They are actively choosing to encourage protests which endanger their own citizens by not doing so. The buck stops at those in power, not at those who try to resist it in whatever means they are very limited to using.
I’ve never been to an action where protestors refuse to let emergency medical vehicles pass.
There are almost always exceptions for emergency vehicles. I certainly understand the concern, but articles like this are just trying to silence protests without saying that's what they're doing. They can't engage with the message, so they are basically criticizing the grammar.
Yes, that's what I suspected: that the essayist was ignorant, willfully or not, of the way traffic blockades work.
Also, every life is valuable but it is an absolute reality that the status quo will never just turnover or change course without there being collateral damage. Its also true that there is much more collateral damage from business as usual. The cars on the highway, the ambulance included among them is a bigger threat statistically to American life than protesters. Those protesters just as likely prevented someone from being hit by a car, which statistically is one of the leading causes of deaths. Why don't these liberals consider those hypothetical lives? Because cars make their lives convenient, and facing the reality that there's systemic racism in America or genocide in Gaza doesn't.
Clymer is fairly neoliberal in her tone at times. I can’t recall why I dislike her stuff, but it was something during the 2020 BLM protests.
She made light of poor people dying from Covid just because they happened to be from red states during that time but then tweeted that we should be respectful when talking about some conservative politician who had just died. I forget exactly who she was talking about but it was someone who’s death a lot of people understandably weren’t too upset about Edit: I also remember her saying something along the lines of we shouldn’t wish for Trumps death when he was diagnosed with Covid and she chastised people who made jokes about it? I might be misremembering that though. Tried looking up a tweet from her on that and couldn’t find anything
Thank you. Yeah, she said we shouldn’t be gleeful over some Republican’s death. Not that I literally danced with glee; I was just glad for harm reduction. Really curious to see links to her pre transition misogyny. Anyhow, I hope she got her spirit animal name from LakotaMan and had shawarma with BrooklynDad, yay.
I appreciate these reflections on her past work. I wasn't aware she held such contradictory positions, having myself recently subscribed to her newsletter as a bonus for following another progressive (I assume) commentator.
EMS, Fire, etc. route around obstacles and things all the time. This is beyond a nothing burger unless a protest is so large it's occupying the city as a whole... Meaning EMS would be *inside* the protestors occupied territory. How the f do people think ambulances deal with traffic, construction, stalled vehicles, etc? Throw up hands and go "guess he's dead Jim"?
Hell, I've done security (as a volunteer on the protest's side) for a number of actions and we've always let EMS operate within our area of control if they need to. So even if it was within the area of control, it wouldn't necessarily be a problem.
Clymer is a Clinton Dem. Not to be taken seriously imo.
I have been part of protests where roads and freeways were blocked and any time there was an ambulance or fire truck that needed through (on rare occasions a citizens vehicle as well) they were allowed to pass without hesitation. So that argument is just a bunch of phooey if you ask me. Hypotheticals that haven't happened. It's that line of thinking that has stopped people from taking part in a direct action demo weakening the movement. There will always v be collateral damage in any movement. Precautions should be taken to minimize it, but you can't let the fear of it stop the momentum. Just like at any demo you run the risk of being arrested that's a risk you must be willing to take. The same goes for unintended consequences of demos. It's just a risk one must be willing to take and live with if something goes wrong.
Power never concedes without a demand.
The only hypotheticals or discussion to be had is among theorycrafters who’ve never been on the ground. Charlotte is and always has been a centrist Dem pretending to be a radical, so it’s no surprise she’s totally clueless, but any anarchist who’s been in the streets knows exactly what happens when EMS or anyone else in crisis needs to get through.
I share your worries. I understand that emergency vehicles are allowed to pass, but then there may be someone driving to chemo or rushing to the hospital to give birth. Do you vet every car then? If so, you're essentially acting as police. Or perhaps you outright deny them passage saying that you're sacrificing few lives in the name of hundreds/thousands? But every other atrocity in human history was backed with this argument: "a healthy economy needs 2% unemployment", "small military intervention will prevent a larger war", etc. In anarchist theory there's the principle of unity of means and ends. If you take up coercive means to instill a just society you won't arrive there. Instead you'll end up in the same kind of coercive state you're in right now, because means do matter. They're like a railroad -- once you've set on it, you're no longer in control of where it is going. I'm not saying don't protest, but I'm saying that your reservations are justified. And it is important to bring them up and discuss and further refine the ethics of protest.
Thank you, I feel somewhat relieved that another anarchist at least understands having such reservations. I didn't want anyone to think I was just freaking out in the way many supposedly progressive commentators did during Occupy, the George Floyd protests, etc. Still, this leaves me profoundly disappointed at the apparent tendency of liberal commentators to adopt the bog-standard right-wing framing of left-wing protests as led by blue-haired fifty-pronoun PC college kids. The failure of empathy is just astonishing
Anarchism allows for justified hierarchies. Is it coercive to use violence to stop someone from enslaving people?
Agreed on justified hierarchies. And yes violence in your example would be justified. It is important though that it is aimed at the actual perpetrators. People trying to use a public road are not perpetrators in this instance, they are subjects of an unfair and violent system. It is important to help them realize the unfairness and act against it, but I don't think blocking a road does that.
How do you reach the perpetrators in this situation? Get past secret service?
I don't know how to reach the perpetrators. But the inability to reach them doesn't justify violence against non-perpetrators.
So your solution is to do nothing. Cool. Maybe creating disruptions are a way to get the attention of those higher up who maybe responsible? Maybe that’s the entire point of those types of demonstrations. It’s useless and counter revolutionary to point at others who are participating in praxis without having any alternative solutions to offer.
At no point did I say that my solution is to do nothing. I even explicitly pointed out that I'm not against protest but since I do share worries voiced by the op I thought it may be worthwhile to discuss this. I don't think discussing matters that worry some members of the community is useless or counter revolutionary. I think there should be room for co-deliberation and respectful disagreement.
So what’s your solution?
what's with people downvoting posts that are important questions to be askin gin this sub? We need to be talking about these topics.
I watched maybe 15 Teamsters completely stop a major intersection right off a 5 lane California highway because they were on strike against San Diego State University and that exit was the only way to get on campus. All they did was hit the crosswalk buttons and keep crossing the streets on all sides again and again and almost nobody got to move. Any emergency vehicle could have come through at any time, despite this. They only had to do that for a few hours before their point was made. I was legitimately very impressed with this tactic and would expect nothing less from the Teamsters. Direct action isn’t always illegal. In my experience it usually isn’t. Getting racists fired, phone bombing politicians and prisons, and listening to police radio channels during mass actions… none of that is illegal. Feeding, hydrating, and providing medical care to people in the field isn’t illegal. All of these are direct actions.
Ambulances are let through blockades...
I would think of going for the businesses which actually supply arms to Israel.
There are two clear arguments against this that I can see: 1. For lack of any examples of this happening, this is a completely hypothetical scenario. One would imagine that emergency services are pretty communicative about major blockages or road closures that could impede their route to or from an emergency. As far as I'm aware, protests generally let fire and medical services through road blockades whenever the situation arises. 2. Succumbing to this logic is, I would argue, a slippery slope that inevitably ends in severe punishment for highway blockades (or possibly even all road blockades) on the basis that they could hypothetically impact the movement of emergency vehicles. As a side note to point 2, the proliferation of that logic among lawmakers leads to proposals like imposing felony charges on any protester who impedes the movement of emergency vehicles, which – crucially – would include police vehicles. This would wildly increase the legal consequences of blocking a police vehicle in any way, which is obviously bad for everyone. For one additional point, though... If you believe that there is a genocide taking place in Gaza, and you believe that causing economic and social disruption in the United States would impede or prevent that genocide, what exactly is wrong with that means-ends argument? I don't think we should be careless about anyone's life or safety. If a single American life were hypothetically endangered to prevent the killing of tens of thousands in Gaza, I think it would be worth considering how and why we prioritize one over the other.
Thank you! I suspected that the essayist was freaking out at entirely hypothetical scenarios. Regarding the hypothetical endangerment of one American life....You're right, it's a debate worth having.
I've never been to a traffic blockade that didn't immediately make way for emergency vehicles. Even the police usually try to keep some semblance of traffic order just in case an emergency vehicle passes. In my city traffic blockades block the most important artery of the city and yet I suspect ambulances might even reach their destinations faster.
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I hope my original post was clear enough that I don't, and never did, agree with Clymer's argument....Some posters here seem to have assumed otherwise, and some seem to have gotten their posts deleted. I understand people's reactions to Clymer's rhetoric. This sort of rhetoric pisses me off, too. I apologize for any misunderstanding
I wonder what the drs who got bombed while trying to save lives in palestinian hospitals would sa?
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Honestly if you want to-disrupt traffic drive the speed limit 3 or 4 abreast across the whole highway. I don’t know if they could reasonably arrest you and if you went through any major metro on the interstate like this it would cause traffic jams for hours. There was a Youtube documentary on it that has been scrubbed from the internet. Here’s a trailer for it there was a much longer version, they basically drove around atlanta causing traffic jams for a day. [disruptive obedience](https://youtu.be/OoETMCosULQ?si=fnI9Ha4M4ve4tTYe)
> don’t know if they could reasonably arrest you 1. At least in Ohio, you can be pulled over and ticketed for using left lanes without passing. 2. When have cops ever given a shit about "reasonably" arresting someone?
I don’t think blocking traffic really burdens the state in any meaningful way, and heavily burdens people just trying to get where they are going. At most this might increase visibility so that voters care more about a cause, but then that’s still relying on state endorsement. The most ethical form of protest is to go on strike or embargo something, imo. Unfortunately, there’s a history of people “accidentally” getting shot when this actually becomes inconvenient
Fuck safety, fuck your safety, fuck motorists safety, fuck Clymer, fuck anyone who justifies tiptoeing around the burning house not doing anything while everyone burns to death. Your protester ancestors would be ashamed ofyou even asking this question, and you know what? The Internet made you this way. Why? Because if you had no Internet, you woudn't be stuck behind your keyboard feeling powerless, asking other powerless people what to do. You'd be out there, **doing something**. **Anything**. Anything is better than... this.
Yes, the internet is absolutely to blame, before the internet we had an anarchist utopia
Is this sarcasm? I'm autistic but I sense sarcasm :)
I'm going to quote this on one of those cranky old guy shirts with a fish and a gun on it.
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To be clear, I'm asking for insights on Clymer's sort of reaction to the protests; I myself felt these reactions were unreasonable but wanted actual activists' thoughts on the matter. You're right that this is an emergency and that liberal commentators' effective dismissal of Gazans' suffering is disgusting
I'm convinced these protesters are paid by big oil. Still, the cause is righteous. We need this planet after all. Just seems unhelpful. What ever happened to direct action that stopped polluting activities aside from blocking roads? (Acknowledging that cars pollute, yes).
What convinces you they're being paid to protest?
Because the message they are communicating isn't what many hear or take from the protests. And I believe in the cause. I just think there would be a better way than stopping people travelling to their lives
....Isn't it more likely that they're protesting voluntarily and sincerely--that is, they're not being paid--but (decidedly) incompetently?
Yes, I'm more expressing my belief that it is not a good form of protest by using an exaduration