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Please Don't Protest At Intersections [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2026-01-20  

Look, I get it.

Lots of people are really pissed off right now. And they’re not wrong.

Some of those people want to express their pissed-offedness iin public.

Those people are also not wrong.

Some of those people are deciding to make those public expressions at intersections, especially the busy ones.

Those people are wrong.

When you set up on your busy intersection, and lots of people honk their horns in support of you, it feels, and may even be, really good. But what you hopefully haven’t grokked in fullness, (I say ‘hopefully’ because I really hope you didn’t already know it and decide to proceed anyway,) is that every person who’s honking in support is doing so because they looked you and read your sign. And, because human eyesight works the way it does, and only the way it does, all of those people are spending a second or two not looking at the fucking road.

For medical reasons, I don’t drive a car. (Adult-onset sleeping epilepsy, if anyone’s interested.) I do most things by bicycle. I live near downtown Oakland. And in the last few days, I have almost been hit several times by support-honking, protester-watching, oblivious drivers. (And I watch the cagers’ heads and eyes… I usually know what they’re looking at.)

Yeah, you’re gonna get a bunch more response by setting up at, (just to pick an example at random), Grand Avenue & Lake Park Drive than you would further up the street, in the middle of a long block.

You’re also going to put a lot more people in actual danger of actual harm. You very well might get someone killed.

The Law of Unintended Consequences is a real motherfucker. And it doesn’t give a shit about the righteousness of your cause. Nor does the righteousness of your cause, which in this case I freely grant, justify your risking the lives of random strangers.

Please stop.

You are going to get people killed.

--Shannon

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/1/20/2364482/-Please-Don-t-Protest-At-Intersections?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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