re: #28 No Nay Meh

You need to go back to the early days of unions to see how disrupting commerce has an effect. There is a long history of being a pain in someone’s ass to affect social or business change. The ’60s was full of sit-ins, demonstrations, takeovers and other forms of civil disobedience that in fact did bring their causes notice and help affect social changes.

The idea that demonstrations do nothing but alienate people is nothing more than a manipulative method of reducing the effects.

Without the demonstrations, and the civil strife that may be associated with it very little of importance will happen. People as a group tend toward the norm rather than the divergent if they aren’t pushed.

As it happens, I was there in the 60’s, in the civil rights movement (tagging after my mother) and the antiwar movement. I’m not arguing against demonstrations, the more the merrier. I”m not necessarily arguing against shutting something down — if it’s something directly involved in the problem. We shut down military installations (or tried to) and sit-ins and the like shut down places that were actually part of the problem by (e.g.) keeping blacks from eating or shopping there. The subway isn’t in that category.

I’m arguing against major disruptions like closing down a third of the subway line for the entire area, which is what they did. While it was closed, no-one could move between the east bay and San Francisco by that route. And how does it aid the random shooting of black kids? I promise you, that will antagonize people no matter how pure your intentions are.