You Shut Down a Freeway. But did you Vote?
There's a difference between meaningful and trendy activism.
Photo by Yoav Aziz on Unsplash
Shutting down freeways has become the new trend in social movement protests. When I was in college at Berkeley students shut down I-80 for BLM. Recent protests for Palestine have done the same in the Bay and LA area. The goal of these protesters is straightforward enough: demand policy changes from elected officials.
Which begs the question: how does shutting down a freeway help their cause???
The practice is no doubt inspired by the Civil Rights Era, where activists boycotted bus services, conducted diner sit-ins, and held marches to protest racial segregation. If you want to enact change, the reasoning goes, then sometimes it takes some civil disobedience to make it happen.
But there’s a major difference between how Civil Rights leaders approached activism & how today’s (mostly liberal) protesters are doing it: one group made targeted protests combined with strategic democratic activism like voting drives, running for office, and writing to officials; the other just makes a lot of indiscriminate noise.
Civil Rights leaders held sit-ins at diners to protest segregation at those specific lunch counters. Same goes for the Montgomery bus boycott - they boycotted the bus system because of the segregation on the buses. Their activism was specific, targeted, and focused. They didn’t just attack any group, they went after the ones they wanted to change.
Fast forward 80 years and my fellow college students at Cal decided that shutting down the freeway during rush hour was the optimal path to support police reform.
Ummm. What?
By all accounts that protest (and contemporary ones like it) accomplished very little. It enraged thousands of Bay Area residents, many of whom were just trying to get to work. It was a public safety hazard, as ambulances and emergency vehicles were delayed or stopped from getting to where they needed to go. Unlike the bus and lunch counter protests that were targeting institutions that Civil Rights folks wanted to change, these protests addressed…. Random civilians in their cars???
“It was awesome,” my friend Tina recounted to me after the protest, “we marched and actually shut down the freeway. It was crazy.” Tina didn’t do any socio political activism in our college years besides taking part in that protest. And there’s nothing wrong with that - to each their own - but it begs a major question relating to the efficacy of these freeway shutdowns: are these people truly committed to the cause, or are they participating because it’s trendy?
Truly committing would mean, at a minimum, voting in each election. The next level would be writing to elected officials, coordinating voting registration campaigns, perhaps partaking in further protests, and making the leap to run for office themselves.
I reckon half of the folks who shut down the Bay Bridge didn’t vote in the midterm elections. I hope I’m wrong and 100% of them voted, but I know voting rates in my generation and - spoiler alert - they suck.
Roughly 40% of eligible voters aged 18-29 vote in our elections.
That’s a pretty preposterous situation. Folks who feel so passionately about a cause they’ll join a group and stop traffic but not even bother to tick a box when real power is being determined.
Such activism lacks focus. It lacks integrity. And it ironically turns people away from your cause (if you think getting someone stuck in two hours of traffic will convince them to join you, you’re kidding yourself). But clout-chasing millennials and Gen Z’ers relish the feeling that accompanies “sticking it to the man” by shutting down a freeway. It makes news headlines. They can post about it on social media. And they can feel spiritually connected to the Civil Rights Leaders who instrumentalized civil disobedience to push policy changes.
A protester at a recent Bay Bridge shutdown calling for a ceasefire in Palestine recording themselves. I wonder if they voted? If they got their parents and friends to vote?
It’s just that these folks aren’t the Civil Rights Leaders. And so long as they fail to complement their freeway shutdowns with targeted, relevant, and meaningful activism, they never will be. Instead, they’ll just be kids who shut down a freeway and got in trouble for it.
PS Democracy is on the line in this year’s presidential election. So are women’s rights. Register to vote at iwillvote.com and make a plan to vote!
Your posts are very appreciated! I don't regret going to law school for a master's degree in law by the way.