Should the NYC Protesters Blocking Bridges be Prosecuted?
“protesters are not free to obstruct movement; the First Amendment protects only speech and assembly, not unlawful obstruction of roads, transit, or sidewalks”
People are already sick of this garbage. The protesters are just trying to make people miserable.
Nicole Gelinas writes at City Journal:
Prosecute the New York Bridge Blockers
On the first commuting morning of the first full workweek of 2024, New York’s permanent “protesting” class demonstrated its tactical approach for the year: to make us miserable on our daily trips, even as the city struggles to attract pre-2020 commuting and tourism crowds. Under the rubric of “Shut it Down for Palestine,” a few hundred people on Monday managed, indeed, to shut down all three Lower Manhattan bridges to Brooklyn, as well as the Holland Tunnel to New Jersey, just after the morning rush. They created gridlock that inconvenienced tens of thousands of drivers, bus riders, bike riders, and walkers. Following months of smaller-scale actions, it was agitators’ most disruptive action yet—and organizers will continue to escalate their behavior unless Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul make clear that blocking key transportation corridors is not “peaceful protest.”
Protests on all sides of any issue are a fact of urban life. But protesters are not free to obstruct movement; the First Amendment protects only speech and assembly, not unlawful obstruction of roads, transit, or sidewalks.
Such illegal obstruction is the core tactic, though, of the post-2020 left-wing shut-it-all-down movement, and it started before George Floyd summer. On the last day of January 2020, a self-styled anarchist movement called “Decolonize this Place” swarmed Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal. The few hundred masked agitators wanted to “disrupt” commuting until New York met their demands, including free transit and eliminating all policing in the subway system.
They didn’t succeed in disrupting much of anything (though they did vandalize property), and the commuters who made their way through the mob might have seen the whole thing as a one-off aggravation. Even Occupy Wall Street, the precursor movement of nearly a decade before, hadn’t regularly interrupted New Yorkers on their daily journeys to work or to run errands.
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Comments
Prosecuted? Of course. Actually I think they should be run over, treated and then jailed. If a few were then that would end that. Remember those clowns up in Seattle on I-5? Blocking the road came to an abrupt halt when a few were mowed down
Of course they should be prosecuted. When the same people take over city streets for Friday prayers they should be prosecuted then as well.
They should be treated like registered sex offenders.
I’d prefer they’d just be thrown off the bridges. Efficient and cost-effective.
No question about prosecution; the question should be “what should be the punishment if found guilty”.
A modest punish proposal (if found guilty, of course)
Forty-eight hours in the stocks (medieval) placed in a No-Parking zone on a busy Manhattan street
Drive-by eggings! Remembered fondly from my own youth. Good times…
Oh, man. I remember driving around one Halloween having an egg war with another car. Both of us had old beaters, mine a 72 Caprice with a 402. Roll both front and back windows down and it was a 6ft bunker slit to lob out of. When I joined the military my buddy sold the engine to a guy who was rebuilding a Chevelle SS.
Prosecuted? No. Just throw them off the bridge. Saves time, money and feeds the fish.
They should be prosecuted convicted by a jury and sit down for a while in Rikers