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Back-of-the-envelope math suggests that those 80 people consumed thousands of hours of other people’s time, and perhaps tens of thousands. Moreover, the protesters, unlike the drivers, got to schedule important things around their disruption, such as medical treatment, day-care dropoffs and job interviews. When such havoc can be wreaked at such minimal personal inconvenience — some time on the road, a little more at the police station and later, for most of them, five hours of community service and a modest fine — it’s hardly surprising that, only months later, San Francisco experienced another disruptive protest. These will continue in cities that don’t impose stiffer penalties for blocking the roads.
This is the opposite of my usual prescription for dealing with crime. I typically argue for better policing to increase the likelihood that criminals will be caught, but for relatively light punishment — a policy both more effective and more humane than draconian mass incarceration strategies. Unfortunately, this won’t prevent road closings because the protesters are already almost certain to be arrested. The only remaining option is to make the punishment hurt.
Progressive jurisdictions have been reluctant to do this because so many in the political class view the protesters’ actions as benign — a justified expression of outrage, youthful exuberance, a victimless crime. They are none of these things.
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They are unjustified because, no matter how righteous the cause, the tactics won’t advance it. Most Americans view road-blocking protests as illegitimate — as I’d bet most progressives did when Canadian truckers used similar tactics to protest vaccine mandates. There is no First Amendment right to halt the movement of other people, any more than there is a First Amendment right to burn down the White House, even if you sincerely believe that’s the only way to fully express your views on U.S. foreign policy.
These forms of expression are forbidden for good reason; both fires and road closures are dangerous and potentially deadly. A 2017 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine examining road closures for marathons found a small but significant increase in mortality among people with heart trouble on marathon days, apparently caused in part ambulance delays. November’s protest on the Bay Bridge delayed a transplant organ en route to the University of California at San Francisco, while Monday’s protests risked making at least two drivers late for major medical treatment. One of them told a local news reporter that he was on his way to colon surgery, and the other was worried about missing a stem cell infusion.
Now consider the lesser suffering of all the other people stuck in those man-made jams — the ones trying to visit sick relatives, get to an appointment with their parole officer, make it to class, open their shop, catch a flight, have coffee with an old friend or just work through a list of errands. Think about how little the protesters considered them when they decided to block the road. Then ask whether they might not have reconsidered if they’d known that courts would impose jail sentences long enough to make them miss important events.
This is how a civilized society solves such problems, not through vigilante violence — or benign neglect.
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Sen. Tom Cotton is developing a habit of saying controversial things about protesters. During the summer of George Floyd, he published an op-ed in the New York Times calling for the federal government to deploy the military to quell rioting, touching off a firestorm that ended with the resignation of one of the newspaper staffers involved and the reassignment of another.
More recently, on Monday night, after pro-Palestinian protesters closed roads across the country, including two groups that tied up traffic for hours on an Oakland highway and the Golden Gate Bridge, Cotton (R-Ark.) tweeted, “I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way.”
It’s not clear exactly what he wanted drivers to do, but a few things are clear.
First, let’s be honest: Cotton was voicing a fantasy that was probably harbored by many of the motorists stuck behind protests (and some following along at home).
Second, he was wrong to give it voice. It’s not cute when one of America’s highest elected officials suggests a little vigilante action; it is, rather, a dereliction of his duty. Any citizen who took the senator’s suggestion seriously would be in the wrong and, soon, in jail.
Third, Cotton’s trolling is nevertheless politically effective because it addresses justified frustration with the government’s failure to stop ultra-disruptive protests, which seem to be on the rise. This, too, is a dereliction of duty, one that tempts citizens to take matters into their own hands.
In too many jurisdictions, the costs of these protests are inflicted mainly on the people stuck in traffic and not the ones blocking the roads. In November, a similar protest shut down San Francisco’s Bay Bridge for more than four hours and resulted in the arrest of 80 people. According to the San Francisco Standard, the bridge had carried more than 22,000 people between 5 and 9 a.m. that morning. From 10 to 11 a.m., only 11 vehicles made it across.
Back-of-the-envelope math suggests that those 80 people consumed thousands of hours of other people’s time, and perhaps tens of thousands. Moreover, the protesters, unlike the drivers, got to schedule important things around their disruption, such as medical treatment, day-care dropoffs and job interviews. When such havoc can be wreaked at such minimal personal inconvenience — some time on the road, a little more at the police station and later, for most of them, five hours of community service and a modest fine — it’s hardly surprising that, only months later, San Francisco experienced another disruptive protest. These will continue in cities that don’t impose stiffer penalties for blocking the roads.
This is the opposite of my usual prescription for dealing with crime. I typically argue for better policing to increase the likelihood that criminals will be caught, but for relatively light punishment — a policy both more effective and more humane than draconian mass incarceration strategies. Unfortunately, this won’t prevent road closings because the protesters are already almost certain to be arrested. The only remaining option is to make the punishment hurt.
Progressive jurisdictions have been reluctant to do this because so many in the political class view the protesters’ actions as benign — a justified expression of outrage, youthful exuberance, a victimless crime. They are none of these things.
They are unjustified because, no matter how righteous the cause, the tactics won’t advance it. Most Americans view road-blocking protests as illegitimate — as I’d bet most progressives did when Canadian truckers used similar tactics to protest vaccine mandates. There is no First Amendment right to halt the movement of other people, any more than there is a First Amendment right to burn down the White House, even if you sincerely believe that’s the only way to fully express your views on U.S. foreign policy.
These forms of expression are forbidden for good reason; both fires and road closures are dangerous and potentially deadly. A 2017 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine examining road closures for marathons found a small but significant increase in mortality among people with heart trouble on marathon days, apparently caused in part ambulance delays. November’s protest on the Bay Bridge delayed a transplant organ en route to the University of California at San Francisco, while Monday’s protests risked making at least two drivers late for major medical treatment. One of them told a local news reporter that he was on his way to colon surgery, and the other was worried about missing a stem cell infusion.
Now consider the lesser suffering of all the other people stuck in those man-made jams — the ones trying to visit sick relatives, get to an appointment with their parole officer, make it to class, open their shop, catch a flight, have coffee with an old friend or just work through a list of errands. Think about how little the protesters considered them when they decided to block the road. Then ask whether they might not have reconsidered if they’d known that courts would impose jail sentences long enough to make them miss important events.
This is how a civilized society solves such problems, not through vigilante violence — or benign neglect.
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