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"Don't believe the hype" #BlackLivesMatter and Public Safety
By Anonymous on Sun, 01/18/2015 - 12:23pm
Long before Nelli Ruotsalainen protested on I-93, Massachusetts government decided to eliminate the breakdown lane and use it for rush hour traffic. That is not on Nelli Ruotsalainen, that is on us.
The government's concern is that the Interstate 93 protest in Milton broke the way we provide public safety services. In fact, we know of not one death nor one injury caused. I'm not saying it couldn't have happened, I'm saying it didn't.
That we act as though it did or that the protestors are solely responsible for inhibiting south shore ambulance access to level one trauma care is a load of carp. Rhode Island has a level one trauma center that is closer to Easton than Boston. An ambulance could have gone to Rhode Island-- it was even closer-- or used the HOV lane or the Mass Pike or medevac.
We could also make Interstate 93 safer for patients in ambulances by restoring the breakdown lane and instead of having commuters use it, reserve it for emergency vehicles.
29 people arrested in Boston after #BlackLivesMatter protest shuts down a major highway http://t.co/KBFNjkv326 pic.twitter.com/OxJTC5TevB
— MTV Hip-Hop (@mtvhiphop) January 15, 2015
Here is a lunch counter that back in the day (1960s) didn't serve black people. When these black men came in and sat down, the counter closed for the day 'in interest of public safety.' Let that sink in.
It is 'public safety' Mayor Walsh, State Police and Boston news channels cited as the basis of their principled objection to the protestors' method. I'm not calling them racists. I'm saying they're falling for the same poorly reasoned but emotionally powerful excuse to condemn the protestors' method and "righteously" punish protestors for their "dangerous" expression-- their speech. The protest was a massive disruption. If the facts still count, they did not endanger anyone: No one was injured.
These guys inconvenienced me. I couldn't even get my ham sandwich that day. #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/FXOeeKIR5q
— Robin (@caulkthewagon) January 15, 2015
The civil rights leaders we roundly approve of now, like Martin Luther King Jr, did not have popular support for his protests. He was viewed as threatening, albeit less threatening than Malcolm X, a Bostonian. (Also MLK went to BU for his doctorate.)
The black kids that sat at lunch counters were not hailed as heroes, they were challenging the status quo and everyone wanted them to find another way to make their point.
It wasn't until people across the country saw the use of state violence to suppress civil rights protests such as marching from Selma to Birmingham, that the public changed their minds.
These protests wont work the same way, they don't count on state violence to change public opinion. Instead, they're saying we will disrupt until the issues are addressed.
We have a forward thinking legislature. Between December 3 and January 15, three state legislators have written bills that address the issues.
Now if we could get Marty Walsh to recognize that Bostonians who are black and who are not criminals and who live in Dorchester and Roxbury and who do not want to be stopped repeatedly by police because they're "suspicious" should be able to have that. Let's figure out a way.
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Comments
Don't forget that
The early to mid 1960's were much, much different times, with definite, concise goals, and concise strategies to achieve them. I don't advocate state-sanctioned violence, or individual violence which also can and does result from such activities, and it's too bad that people really did get beat up or whatever, in the process.
I disagree with the notion, however, that the blacks who had sit-ins at lunch counters to break the status quo weren't regarded as heroes. Maybe they weren't by a certain element of people, but there were plenty of people who considered them courageous for standing up and having these sit -ins.
goals I've heard discussed
Although these are legitimate goals,
resorting to the kinds of tactics that the protestors have resorted to, imho, is NOT the way to reach those goals. As other posters have succinctly pointed out on here, it's just going to turn more and more people off.
Police brutality, especially in poor and non-white communities is a huge problem. Not enough is done to bring cops who overreach and abuse their power to justice, and change is needed, but the kind of tactics that the protestors have been resorting to, especially the blocking of interstate highways, has really detracted from this issue in a big way.
the cause is legit
You're saying the cause-- the goals are legit.
You're saying protestors should find another way to advocate because their tactics will be ineffective because the key to their success is getting more popular support for the cause.
So, you'd prefer that they
So, you'd prefer that they use the sort of tactics that people can comfortably ignore forever, is that it?
No need to answer, I think we all get it.
Wait on time
???
"Stop killing unarmed black people (apparently it happened almost once a day, every 28 hours) "
OK, so it happened a hundred or two hundred times since last summer? Damn, where's the media? If this is true, why isn't it on every channel?
Cite your source.
"Hold police who use lethal force accountable ".
Most 'cop shootings' are totally justified by the situation. Armed people (the police) confront a possible criminal situation. Maybe you could explain to the City what you mean by that. They already have an Internal investigation and the Suffolk County DA investigates. They would welcome your insight.
"Solve the conflict of interest between investigators of police-involved homicide, the police, and the District Attorneys office".
If it's a police shooting, the word 'homicide', by the MA definition, might be a bit premature, pending an investigation of the facts. Just because it's a shooting, doesn't make it a homicide.
"End racially disparate policing "
OK, um, I believe the City is open to suggestions...maybe look for illegal guns in the Blake Estates? Have you ever talked to a cop?
"Make the police force representative of the city it serves"
I don't think any of your one percenters would patrol Beacon Hill for what the City pays...
Every 28 hrs
This explains the methodology used to reach the "28 hrs" stat.
http://www.operationghettostorm.org/uploads/1/9/1/1/19110795/new_all_14_...
A rebuttal (and a rebuttal to the rebuttal.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/12/24/the-viral...
Here's a list of 76 black men and women killed by police between 1999-2014. It doesn't include people killed by security guards or vigilantes i.e. Trayvon Martin. See methodology in first article.
http://gawker.com/unarmed-people-of-color-killed-by-police-1999-2014-166...
not what I've seen
FWIW the group that staged a demonstration in the red line car I was on quickly pivoted from Eric Garner and Black Lives Matter to the occupation of Palestine, the genocide of Native Americans, and wage inequality. They threw in some bad paraphrases of Marx for good measure.
I didn't see any actionable policy positions on improving the relationship between the police and the public, just sophomoric venting of rage at a cruel world.
Can we see some documentation of this?
It sounds so wonderfully stereotypical and truthy ... a video, perhaps?
The same sort of
The same sort of indecisiveness was the essence of Occupy. I wholeheartedly believe his story.
Calling bullshit. Why don't
Calling bullshit. Why don't you just own up to the fact that you'd like all those uppity fillintheblanks to shut up and go away? Oh, and were you shaking your fist in outrage when "celebrating" Ohio State fans rioted after their team won?
improving the relationship between the police and the public
Police commissioner Evans and Mayor Marty Walsh say community policing will improve the relationship between the police and the public.
In a CA town, body cams had a dramatic positive effect on decreasing complaints about police and reducing incidents of police use if violence.
I'm not saying it wouldn't
I'm not saying it wouldn't work but that town is also 1/6th the population of Boston, has about 2000 less police officers and isn't a state capital.
I disagree with the notion,
I disagree with the notion, however, that the blacks who had sit-ins at lunch counters to break the status quo weren't regarded as heroes. Maybe they weren't by a certain element of people, but there were plenty of people who considered them courageous for standing up and having these sit -ins.
Some of us consider the folks who risked their arms and commuter road rage to bring attention to these concrete, necessary demands to be heroes, too.
Jane
Sit-ins
Sit-ins:
There's a difference between "helping"
and making yourself the public face of a movement. We all know that many white people--a lot of students, an awful lot of Jewish people--were deeply supportive of and actively involved in the civil rights movement, but they were not the leaders of that movement and there was a pretty conscious attempt to garner broad support without taking over things or giving the impression that they were in charge. There's a reason you're not posting iconic photos of white Columbia students at 1960s sit-ins and yet what your average Globe reader will remember from this event is Mr. White Hippie Dreadlocked Guy. There is no way that any remotely clued-in, media-savvy person should have allowed this.
First of all,
the 'Mr. White Hippie Dreadlocked Guy' was there. He is news. There are no black faces there.
'There is no way that any remotely clued-in, media-savvy person should have allowed this.'
This is part of the liberal dilemma. It doesn't fit the narrative.
It's a pretty stark contrast to the other protests we've seen
which have been predominantly black and certainly led by black organizers, so no, this is not about the "liberal narrative" it's about this particular action.
Posted by Anonymous,
Posted by Anonymous, naturally.
I was just going to say...
Not sure what's going on here but as a long-time reader/commenter and a huge fan of UHub, I think the last thing we need here is Anonymous editorializers.
Agreed. This is a propaganda
Agreed. This is a propaganda piece by someone who isn't Adam. This is shady. Adam, are you paying attention?
Yep, paying attention
I'm the one who put it on the home page.
Anonymous is not the hacker group but some long-time UHub poster who grabbed that as a user name before I thought to lock it down for use only by anonymous users (which is why they go as anon). Anybody can get an account here and post "articles" in addition to comments on stuff I post.
I put it on the home page because I thought it was an interesting counterpoint to all the articles about how horrid those people were to shut down a major road at rush hour. Obviously, many (most?) people won't agree with what he's saying, but I thought it worth at least considering.
I think
there's been plenty of argument and counterargument but as I've mentioned before, while I've been an unwavering supporter of #blacklivesmatter and the protests that have gone on in Boston, NYC, etc. I was completely dismayed by the way this whole protest was executed. It's been cringe-worthy from start to finish--alienating and enraging a vast swath of people by targeting ordinary commuters without drawing any connection between the action and the injustice (it's not as if black people are banned from driving on 93 or living in the suburbs), having the entire thing run and executed by a bunch of privileged young white people, and now trying to draw comparisons between these protestors and...black people who sat in at lunch counters and marched on Selma? Really?? Honestly...the pretension here is jaw-dropping. Until the Mass. Staties start up with the dogs and firehoses, Anonymous and his or her ilk should shut. their. traps with the self-aggrandizement. Really. Please just stop.
it's not as if black people
it's not as if black people are banned from driving on 93 or living in the suburbs
Actually, have you heard of red-lining? It's not just luck and coincidence that led allowed white flight to stay so... white.
Yeah, thanks.
I've heard of redlining. Were they protesting redlining? No. Again...no comprehensible connection between the activity and the topic at hand.
Actually...
...redlining is more insurance-based. No insurance, no bank loan. No bank loan, no fixing up of the house. House goes downhill, rest of neighborhood hurts. It's a spiral.
I'm not a social justice warrior, but I am an old warrior. I fought that battle and I have the file cabinet to prove it.
One must bear in mind that "redlining" was created
in order to ensure that blacks and other non-whites couldn't buy housing outside of the "red-lined" area(s). Inotherwords, the "redlining" of certain areas was done in order to keep the black and other non-white homebuyers ghettoized, if one gets the drift.
Blacks and other non-whites who found better housing just afew blocks outside the "redlined" areas were denied the FHA (Federal Housing Administration)-insured loans, and forced to stay within the "redlined" zones.
Sally's says the protestors fail to draw a connection between..
Sally says the protestors fail to draw a connection between the action and the injustice(s) they want address(ed.)
Was there one or more statements of purpose published in the Boston Globe? I heard they didn't mention it until the 12th paragraph. If the protestors are counting on the press to get their message out, it's not working well.
Well, exactly...
These are young people--how do they not understand the importance of visuals, quick impressions, headlines, a message that's short enough to be summed up in a tweet, preferably a bumper sticker? If anyone is expecting their "mission statement" (buried or not in a newspaper article( to be the main avenue of communicating their message, then they need schooling in basic marketing and media.
Sorry for the rant, but again...this is a cause I support. I'm frustrated at seeing it lose momentum due to mishandling.
And how exactly are you
And how exactly are you "supporting" the cause, Sally? What concrete actions are you taking? Or are you just awarding yourself a get out of jail free card for your "get off my lawn" attitude?
Honestly?
None of your gd business, but I should've expected you to turn up with your usual ad hominem BS. Now can you please get back on topic and offer a single way in which this protest advanced its cause? Just one?
Put up or shut up
You get to say it's none of my "gd" business. You don't get to proclaim claim your alleged support for the cause at the same time you're saying that other people are doing it ALL WRONG, and then tell me it's none of my"gd" business what that support consists of. You went there, ya know? So either claim to be a "supporter" or don't, I don't care, but if you do, expect to be asked to show your bona fides.
AAAAAAAAAAAAH yes
The holier than thou protester, who thinks anyone who isn't chaining themselves to the freeway isn't doing enough.
You need to learn something about how change happens. It doesn't happen by calling the people that are sympathetic to your cause bad names.
But keep up the good work, Ibb.
I'm honestly less likely to support this cause simply because I know people like you support it.
Thanks Adam
Thanks Adam for putting this post on the front page. I know this is not a popular position because, in my opinion, many many people have already bought into the argument that the problem with the Interstate 93 protest was the public safety implications not that it was a huge inconvenience or an unpopular cause or illegitimate protestors-- some of these arguments put forward by officials from the state police to Mayor of Boston to Boston Police Commissioner.
I had a lot to say on the your thread about the woman Marty Walsh fired for protesting but then I had leave and go work on a project. So I didn't know you put this on the front page. Thank you for that. If I have more energy for Universal Hub commenting after the Pats game, I'll jump back in. Go Pats.
Of course Adam's paying attention.
He comments here quite a bit. I doubt someone could post a story without his noticing.
If you bothered to look, it's
If you bothered to look, it's not any anonymous poster... it's the registered user Anonymous, who has been active on here commenting and posting articles for 6 years 9 months.
I missed the Guy Fox mask too
Adam, need photos/icons for registered users! (joke, please don't!)
Fawkes...Guy Fawkes.
Fawkes...Guy Fawkes.
I don't own one of those, a Guy Fawkes mask.
Isn't it funny how people try to discredit you by association?
Not to discredit
The mask is just the uniform of the group calling itself "Anonymous". When you call yourself Anonymous, you gain ownership of all associated with it. You picked the user name.
Now, I see why you inferred Guy Fawkes from my UHub name
Yes, that's a false inference in my case.
But note
'Anonymous' is their log-in name, so while one may think this is a confusing choice of handle, they don't really fall into the same box as the more common anon contributor, and are just as identifiable as 'gotdatwmd', 'Sally' etc etc.
ps - if you are taking issue with anybody apart from Adam posting stories: sorry, misinterpreted your comment.
As a long-time reader
As a long-time reader/commenter and a huge fan of UHub, you should be able to recognize the handle of another long-time reader/commenter (clearly differentiated from posts by unverified, anonymous users), as well as the fact that Adam promotes user posts and blogs to the front page quite often.
The only thing that's going on here is the same thing that has been going on here since the site began.
It's not.
Sorry, no--if someone wants to ID themselves as "Anonymous" why would I bother to recognize them as anything but, uh...Anomymous?
And of course--is is Adam's site and he's free to post anything he chooses. But what I've seen him post before from other commenters is news, not opinion. That I think this particular opinion is hopelessly weak and unsupported fuels my irritation, no doubt, but I'm just saying--I'm not interested.
Don't waste another second being unhappy about what I write
Let me introduce myself. Hi, my Universal Hub friends call me anonymous. I've been around here for 6 years.
You think this post is "hopelessly weak and unsupported" and it "fuels my irritation" (I think the word you're looking for is aggravation) and you're "not interested." Hey, don't waste another second of your time being unhappy about what I write.
I found it mildly annoying...
But then again, that's why I'm here.
Long live freedom of the press.
Yeah
I don't care.
If I cared about how you feel
If I cared about how you feel about my post, it would be schadenfreude that you were annoyed but really, I don't care.
Ah, but you do...
Ah, but you do...
no really, I don't.
.
If it's keeping you up at night...
Look. Expecting me to recognize "Anonymous" as a screen name/persona is like going out in a snowstorm wearing a white sheet and then wondering why nobody sees you. And yes, we disagree completely about the wisdoms and effectiveness of this particular protest. I come here mostly for news and obviously to read comments--I don't need the comments to become the news posts. Again--completely Adam's call, just offering an opinion.
honestly
I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.
FWIW
I had never seen a comment from Anonymous before the other day. It took all of 30 seconds to notice that that's not how unregistered people's comments are labeled on this site, and I assumed somebody had registered that as a nic. Which is something people have been doing since long before the mask-wearing agitators appeared.
I recognize the screen name Anonymous
I was even thinking, just lady week "whatever happened to Anonymous?"
It's an awesome screen name that stands out.
The fact I disagree with him (or her) is regardless. No different than anyone else posting, including myself.
Okay, "Sally"?
Break down lanes on I-93
The points in this article were also buried in with all the comments on the protest. A point made there falsely claimed travel lanes needed to be removed to restore important breakdown lanes.
Small thinking. I-93 is in dire need of greater capacity. Its long overdue for widening or an upper deck to greatly increase capacity. World class cities like LA and Atlanta have highways far wider than the small town ones in Boston. Inadequate roadways constricts growth and properity besides making us less safe. Blockage of any one major road cascades impasse to other roads. Redundant capacity is sorely needed.
Imagine if tens of thousands of people lost electric or Internet service every time just one trunk got overloaded? That's how bad local roads are. Protesters (and terrorists) know this, and combined with trivial penalties are exploiting the failure of public officials. Instead of wasting hundreds of millions on military toys for police, make us safe with adequate road capacity and safe bridges.
What fueled global dominance of the US economy in the 1960's-1990s was the transportation capacity we had then. China knows this and is building roads like mad, while the northeast chokes on road building stalled in the 1970s which hasn't kept up with demand.
LA and Atlanta are excellent examples..
..of why we shouldn't do this. It certainly has not solved the traffic constraints there. It also comes with human costs, especially to those who happen to live nearby.
But ill bite, lets say it did help. Lets say the human costs are limited. Widening roads / stacking highways isn't cheap. In urban areas your talking 10s of millions per lane mile in urbanized areas. Now show me the money.
Perhaps we should look towards more cost efficient options. The expanded highway mentality is no longer feasible in this day and age.
Elevated is cost efficient
Far less expensive than putting road or rail underground! It also solves the problem of expensive and politically challenging right-of-way acquisition.
Some people mistakenly believe the fable "build them and they will come", that expanded roadways will just produce more traffic to fill them. It ridiculous. People don't decide to drive on roads because they are uncongested. The free-flowing road produces more economic activity to then add more traffic, and that's a good thing. Motor vehicle traffic=economic vitality.
Route 2 in Lexington and much of Arlington is 8 lanes wide. In the 40+ years its been 8 lanes, its still not congested! Word should have gotten around to go drive on it for no reason! In Lincoln, 4 lane wide route 2 is virtually empty after 10pm, again, nobody out driving on it because its there. In these cases, zoning regulations hold back economic development and resulting traffic.
Not a fable
Induced demand is an established tenet of highway planning. You could have looked it up.
There's a simple reason that those 8 lanes of Rte 2 are not crowded: the choke point at Fresh Pond, where there are only two lanes each way, throttles outbound traffic and discourages inbound traffic (and don't try to tell me that Fresh pond doesn't get congested at rush hour.) A better example is Rte 3 north of 95. Ten years after that widening project ended, it's just as congested as it was before the project began, and the alternate routes are also clogged like they used to be. All the project accomplished was to convince more New Hamsters that they could get to jobs in Greater Boston, so they pour across the border twice a day. You're going to call that a good thing, because of "economic activity," but MA residents of the area will universally disagree.
One paper makes it truth?
Lots of papers are published making all sorts of claims. Many get refuted by other papers. You cite one paper that gets referenced countless times and that makes it true? If one paper claimed global warming from humans was a farce, would you believe it?
Why doesn't the theory work for sidewalks and waterways? They have unused capacity. When do they fill up? Is there something magic about cars that doesn't extend to motorcycles, scooters, and dump trucks? We don't see them filling roads because a road is there.
There are plenty of on and off ramps in the 8 lane section of route 2 for drivers to make use the road, so your claim lacks merit. People can drive back and forth all day long using up those 8 lanes
Route 3 is an example of poor planning. Two lanes each way should have been added instead of one! The road was so overcrowded to begin with that not enough was added. The ten year exhaustion shows shortsightedness of planners and the economic growth resulting from the expansion. Those added NH residents working in Mass add to Mass income tax receipts.
Route3 north history shows how Route3 south of Boston needs expansion by at least 2 lanes in each direction. Same for much of 128.
I-495 provides a history lesson too. It was quite vacant for years when first built. But, over time, it brought development, residents, and jobs to former farmland areas.
Roads make housing more affordable. People commute to work from more distant, less expensive housing rather than paying sky high rents or purchase costs+taxes to live near where they work (when they move). Changing jobs is much easier than buying and selling new homes, so smart growth is a myth. People won't move every time their job location changes, they will most likely drive there.
Not just one paper
Many papers. You could, as I said, look it up. I'm not going to do all the work for you and link to every one of the dozens of studies going back decades that found evidence of induced demand. You don;t want to believe it, but until you show some evidence, it's just your opinion against the research of a bunch of experts.
Roads induce economic growth
and that growth results in more traffic. I don't dispute that. The fallacy is thinking a road in itself induces use, simply for being there.
The areas near Route I-495 used to be more affordable,
which is why a great many people moved out there, but it's gotten considerably more expensive as more and more people who've been priced out of Boston and/or the surrounding cities and towns have opted to move out to the area in the Route I-495 range.
if you take my meaning
The question of whether it makes economic sense to convert a public safety resource (breakdown lane) into a transportation resource, isn't a question I posed or addressed.
The fact we did it, and the implications for public safety, is an issue that interests me. As well as how the implied values inherent in making that decision informs the public debate about the protests and whether it represents a vast departure from the priority we put on public safety, if you take my meaning.
Atlanta is far from a world
Atlanta is far from a world class city. LA is famous for its gridlock. Both cities have poor public transit because they focused on highways instead. If someone wants to commute 100 miles round trip each day I shouldn't have to pay more for their highways because they made a poor decision on where to work/live.
Really?
This maybe the dumbest thing I read in awhile. You're comparing a bunch of overprivilaged punks to Jim Crowe? This........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbhn5kt2bPo
Really, this.......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkIdyoSReK8
Who's Jim Crowe?
The Australian rules footballer who played for Carlton and Collingwood in the Victorian Football League?
The fact that the protestors that reporters asked to interview
The fact that the protestors who shut down I-93 were so evasive when reporters came around to their homes and began interviewing them, or who, in some cases, refused interviews altogether, speaks volumes about them, and not positively, either. All it shows is that these protestors have an agenda....and not a good one, either.
Are you kidding?
Unless I was a designated spokesperson, I would never speak to reporters who showed up uninvited at my home. You may not have had personal experience with the distortions that they routinely introduce when reporting interviews, but I have. The most they'd get out of me would be notice that they're trespassing. I'd much rather be someone who "refused to speak" than someone whose offhand remarks were evidence of some noozman's fantasy.
Lunch Counters are a great example
of a protest with a purpose. Cafeteria won't serve me, so I'll sit here until they do.
Great. Congrats.
However on our highways, the protest seems to be, "Our entire society has some inherent unfairnesses. Therefore, even though those unfairnesses are very wide-spread and without any clear fix (i.g., a law making it illegal not to serve a customer lunch due to race) , I will do my best to cause havoc on everyone else until ... until... until.... Oh, I don't know, until the world becomes perfect to my liking".
Although there are similarities, there is no one law or conspiracy or great white power that killed Eric Garner, Michael Brown, or the boy in Cleveland. There is no one power that causes $12.99/hr security guards in Macy's to follow young black men. We have plenty of room to improve as a society, but a bunch of professional rabble-rousers blocking the highways won't do much to get us there.
You've thought about this a lot, South End Neighbor
Knowing all you do, how would you design a protest for this cause?
Finally, a real discussion
Anonymous posted some goals he/she/ze has 'heard discussed'. I'd love to continue this discussion for real, instead of chained to a barrel in the cold.
'mous posted the following
Stop Killing unarmed blacks.
a) There are 18,000 +/- police forces in the US, meaning hundreds of thousands of officers. Great idea, but exactly how do you propose we do this?
b) Speaking specifically of Brown, from everything I've read, it's clear he attacked the officer. His blood was inside the car...
Hold the police accountable
a) Grand Juries are the way we do this. I AGREE these grand juries may not have been set up the way we want them, so let's talk about how those work. But it's the system we have right now, and frankly, I think it's a pretty good system in most cases.
Solve the conflict of interest
a) AGREE, a distant and impartial way to investigate these cases would go a long way. I'm happy to help work on this as a citizen. Please point me in a direction.
End racially disparate policing
a) Not sure exactly what this means or how to do it. But let's also stop racially disparate crime, while we're at it.
Make Police forces representative of their cities:
a) AGREE! This may not have been the case historically, but today, I bet Commissioner Evans would pay just about anything right now for a big bunch of black, Hispanic, Cape Veridean, etc. candidates who can score high on the Police exam, don't have criminal records, and want to be cops. Where are these people?
Bonus: In the Eric Garner video, 2 or 3 of the cops in the background are black. And from everything I've heard, the neighbors, who I presume aren't white, were complaining about Garner; the cops were trying to react. Some blame goes to whoever in NY made "selling cigarette's" a crime!
Occupying roadways is smart, but dispicable
Occupy didn't get much traction or attention with its refugee-inspired, trustafarian/homeless tent camp. It was an eyesore, environmentally damaging, source of police overtime, and had minor impact on the public consciousness.
With the closure of Long Island homeless shelter, Occupy could be of actual value by once again setting up a homeless tent village with trustafarians sharing their meals and drugs with the homeless.
Occutards blocking tens of thousands of people from getting to work in one day got a whole lot more notice and reaction than a tent camp. In that way, the idea is smart, effective, and wrong. Negligible punishments for the form of attention-getting make it all the smarter. When roadways or subways are overcrowded, they also become prime targets for terrorists. The lesson is to greatly increase criminal penalties and make single points of failure less impacting.
Yup, we need another gas tax increase right now, before prices go back up. Will politicians do what is needed? Not likely considering how they have neglected roads and bridges for decades.
Boston Fire Department Did It -- Halted Traffic on 93
In the early 80's after prop 2 1/2 passed, a group of firefighters and allies marched onto the Southeast Expressway and stopped traffic in protest for job security.
All of those articles are behind the firewall at the Boston Globe but someone at Blue Mass Group dug them out and wrote a blog post. You can get the details there.
Here' an NY Times link (via
Here' an NY Times link (via Reddit): http://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/30/us/boston-s-rush-hour-traffic-blocked-...
Well, in the 1981 firefighters' blocking of I-93,
the city and the police never should've let them block I-93 to begin with, and they should've arrested the firefighters who did insist on doing so. I don't care what their grievances were.
BFD did it in the 80's
a) BFD, when away from a burning building, is hardly a paragon of civic responsibility
b) It was 25 yrs ago
c) Two wrongs don't make a right
d) If they were marching on the highway, they presumably could have gotten out of the way at any time. Not so 1200 lb cement barrels, which nobody really knew how to remove.
Breakdown Lane
Why is it assumed that if there was a dedicated breakdown lane, it would have been left open by the protesters?
That's not the point,
the point is that the breakdown lane's purpose includes passage of emergency vehicles during a traffic jam. Thus the breakdown lane is useful for public safety through emergency vehicle access.
The state closed the breakdown lane to allow more lanes of traffic, sacrificing public safety and emergency vehicle access to alleviate traffic. So if your objection to these protests is their interference with emergency vehicle access, we should also expect you to support eliminating a lane of traffic to open breakdown lanes.
Personally I'm not making a statement here either way, but that's the argument. It's not that the protesters wouldn't have blocked a breakdown lane, it's that we as a state gave up a breakdown lane and emergency vehicle access ourselves, so faulting protesters for denying further emergency vehicle access could be construed as hypocritical.
What is the extent of a
What is the extent of a public nuisance act where it WON'T get be held in high regard by fringe groups and compared to the noble selfless actions made by civil rights activists in the 60s?
At this point it seems any random cause with goals that don't even need to be realistic or obtainable can have people commit acts of criminal mischief and be called referred to as modern day Rosa Parks
Anonymous, there's a lot to
Anonymous, there's a lot to be said for maintaining breakdown lanes through the entire run of the highway, but it is an absurd premise to think it would've made any difference in this case.
I believe these people set out TO CLOSE THE ROAD, not "to close the travel lanes".
It was trespassing. It was illegal. It wasn't a legitimate forum of protest where passers-by were simply inconvenienced.
It put the health and safety, even the lives, of a lot of people at risk.
To argue that death or injury didn't happen because of what they did is to miss the point (and ignores the facts).
They aren't being faulted for causing injury. They aren't facing false criminal charges of causing injury.
They are being charged with breaking laws that are in place precisely for public safety. They are being criticized for actions that were (at best) clueless and thoughtless and (at worst) malicious,
Frankly, it's really hard to believe that anyone with enough familiarity with the road to "plan" this was unaware that ambulances are ALWAYS moving through there.
Medflight is an irrelevant argument. I haven't seen any authoritative statement (though I could easily have missed it) that they were grounded because of weather or were already engaged someplace else, but it doesn't matter. Even if they were completely available, there's criteria to when they're called in - such as "can ground response be reasonably expected to meet an emergency patients needs under normal circumstances?" "Normal circumstances" includes understanding the "normal" poor-functioning extremes of a bad rush hour. These people took it upon themselves to create a non-functioning situation.
More reasons why the lack of a breakdown lane is a straw argument - Even if there was a completed insulated emergency response lane at all times (that was somehow completely accessible to ambulances despite any spillover gridlock on local roads caused by the highway shutdown) and an impartial observer could say with complete confidence that this stunt didn't present any risk to the health or safety of anybody depending on ambulance transportation through the area - they put a whole lot of other people in serious danger (some potential danger, some clear and present).
- Several ambulance crews were pulled to be on standby duty on the scene as the trespassers refused to cooperate with police, That could have interfered with response time to emergencies elsewhere in the area, as alternative units may have had to respond from further away.
- The protesters put themselves in danger, and not just the risk of traffic trying to move around them. What would've happened if they had triggered their stunt and a police officer happened to be right behind them? Seeing a bunch of people who were clearly not DOT personnel stop in the middle of a highway and open a truck with large drums in the back, the officer would've been faced with a question needing split-second evaluation: Are those bombs? (Think Oklahoma City, and World Trade Center 1993) What would've happened if the split-second answer was "Maybe"?
- They put all nearby motorists at risk, as they could easily have triggered a chain-reaction crash when they stopped their truck, jumped out, and started unloading stuff onto the road.
- They put all the police and DOT personnel in danger because they had to be out there protecting them and extricating them (when they didn't cooperate and immediately surrender)
breakdown lanes to public safety crisis
That we traded off breakdown lanes (a public safety resource) for an additional traffic lanes means we value transportation over public safety. Do you agree? Do you hear anyone proposing we reverse that decision?
That said, if we still had a breakdown lane it would have been blocked. But the HOV lane was open as was Mass Pike. And although the medevac flights were grounded, that is usually another alternative for emergency medical trans to Boston. In addition, the man who needed access to trauma care had it in Rhode Island, which was closer than Boston.
My point is that all the reasons we're are told about why this was a public safety crisis amount to a load of carp.
The truth is the 'public safety' objection is a red herring so don't believe the hype.
Public safety is not a red
Public safety is not a red herring at all. I outlined several public safety problems they created by arbitrarily creating an extreme condition - purposefully causing a complete stoppage of that portion of the system.
You ignored most of the examples and continued to hammer away with the one poor point of reasoning you've got.
To flesh it out for you, breakdown lanes don't generally serve public safety by being bypass lanes. They serve public safety by being safe refuge for vehicles unable to proceed, so that normal traffic can resume past them. Only in the most serious of crashes will traffic obstruction continue after the immediate need of extricating victims has been attended to - when evidence from a serious, usually deadly, crash (i.e. the actual scene) needs to be preserved for investigation. In most cases, they pull stuff out of the way - over to the breakdown lane - as quickly as possible. Again, this "protest" group created and prolonged/perpetuated the situation.
Newsflash for you, Anonymous - roads can be somewhat adequately (though nowhere near ideally) served by frequently-spaced non-continuous breakdown lanes. In this case, there's a segment of breakdown lane just a half-mile before where they pulled this stunt, an exit between, and another breakdown area a half-mile after. Those are segments that are only ever breakdown areas. I'd say you'd make a much more convincing complaint about safety and transportation priorities if you were to complain about the roads where the breakdown lanes ARE used as travel lanes (128 and 3). Thankfully, that is being phased out (albeit slowly).
Irrelevant
Were the protestors there due to the closing of the breakdown lane? No? Then the fact that it was closed is irrelevant. No matter how much you twist around to make it relevant;
Walking out onto an interstate is inherently dangerous, regardless of your reasoning to do so. Drunk and lost or trying to raise awareness of a worthy cause; there is a true public interest reason to discourage, even through punishment, such behavior.
Sitting at a lunch counter is demonstrably not dangerous. So you've got yourself a ludicrously false equivalency here.
And may I mention how condescending it is to assume that everyone on that road was ignorant of the issues at hand, and simply delaying their commute was going to cause them to rise up and solve the problem overnight?
Lastly; I think there could be some honest conversation about how "peaceful" this protest was. In this day and age stopping a box truck in the middle of crowded rush hour traffic, having it disgorge people with large barrels of unknown material...The protestors were apparently totally blind to those optics.
#WhiteLivesMatter
There have been two police shootings nearby in the last couple days. Both victims where white.
1. Friday night in Lowell an alleged thief of a sanding truck backed up into a police car while trying to evade arrest. The cop got out of his car, went up to the side of the truck and discharged several bullets through the door of the truck at its driver, striking him. Cop claimed his life was in danger. Doesn't seem like it once he got out of his vehicle, though. The officer is now on paid administrative leave.
2. Monday morning. Two police officers simultaneously shot Paul Campbell holding a knife, killing him. He allegedly stabbed his mother to death. Was lethal force needed by the two officers?
I hope some black protesters don't shut down I-93 over this.
[UPDATE]: Paul Campbell was the biological father of Mayor Marty Walsh's girlfriend's daughter.
Is there any evidence they
Is there any evidence they were shot because they were white?
Is there any evidence that the police considered them more dangerous because they were white?
We've already covered the "were they armed" bit. I'd say a sanding truck backing into you or a knife constitutes a weapon. I'm sure you'd agree, Markkkkkk, since you apparently consider a bicycle a weapon, and a sanding truck is a lot bigger than that.
But here's the rub
Were Michael Brown, Eric Garner, or others who have famously died at the hands of law enforcement recently killed because they were black? I think there were reasons given besides race (assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest in the named incidents) that had nothing to do with race.
Now, the deeper question is- does law enforcement, or society at large, treat African American males worse than white males- that's the question, but Markk's point about the propensity of law enforcement to shoot when it might not be warranted is an interesting talking point.