Shutting down major highways as a protest tactic is extremely dangerous.
Not only does it create the possibility of car accidents, it also traps motorists behind the road blockage, making it impossible for emergency vehicles or vehicles with people in distress to pass.
This tactic was used by anti-Israel protesters who hijacked a Martin Luther King Day protest on the San Mateo Bridge and blocked the span at its highest point, trapping hundreds of motorists.
In that instance, there were in fact motor vehicle accidents and at least one report of a vehicle with a child in medical distress who could not pass.
The San Mateo Bridge blockade was led by students from Stanford University supporting the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions movement, including “intersectionality” activist Kristian Davis Bailey, who is leading the effort to connect Israel to the problems of non-whites in the United States. (Seriously, it’s a vicious anti-Semitic ploy, but it’s having some success.)
But even where the anti-Israel activists have not hijacked protests, there have been shutdowns of highways elsewhere as part of Black Lives Matters protests, including a highway blockage in San Diego, and in Boston in which protesters chained themselves to barricades on the highway:
Now the tactic of road blockages can be added to the arsenal used to try to disrupt Donald Trump events.
Even worse, as The NY Daily News reports, the protesters chained themselves to stalled cars:
Anti-Donald Trump protesters blocked an Arizona highway and created a traffic nightmare in an attempt to keep the GOP frontrunner from attending his Saturday rally in Fountain Hills.The Trump haters parked their cars in the middle of the three-lane road that leads to Fountain park — where the candidate is scheduled to speak at 2 p.m. EST — and some protesters even chained themselves to their vehicles to slow down cops’ efforts to clear the blockade.“We don’t want Donald Trump in Arizona. We don’t want his hatred,” the lead protester told an NBC News reporter on the scene…..Arial video showed cars backed up for miles behind the mid-road protest.The Trump-blocking barrier included two pick-up trucks parked lengthwise across the road and three layers of cars behind them. When police arrived to start towing the idle vehicles, some activists strapped themselves to their cars with cables and chains.“I want to stop Trump,” one demonstrator who chained her car said. “He doesn’t have a place in this state. He doesn’t have a place in the U.S.”
The protesters abandoned their own cars on the road to make clearing the blockage harder, which is exactly what happened on the San Mateo Bridge shut down.
Expect a serious escalation in tactics if Trump gains the Republican nomination.
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