Last spring, while sitting in the parking lot of a Home Depot, I made a calculation that most parents of very small babies make: feed my baby in the parking lot or hurry home and do it there. With an eighteen-month-old child also in the car, I decided on the latter, so that she wasn’t also stuck waiting in the parking lot for her new brother to nurse. I figured the trip would only take seven minutes (according to my GPS); instead, it took well over an hour.
As I pulled onto the main road, a Black Lives Matter protest took over the entire roadway, stopping every car in its path. We waited for their protest to pass, and as I did I noticed that the air conditioning in my car was broken. I usually drive with the windows slightly open and hadn’t noticed so far, but soon, the temperature in the car became stifling, which only added to my son’s distress, as he sat strapped in the back seat hungry and, eventually, crying so hard he was choking on reflux. As any mother can tell you, there is absolutely nothing worse than hearing your baby cry and not being able to do a darn thing about it. As I watched his face turn colors of the rainbow from screaming, I saw the twenty-something protesters meandering down the median, and I won’t lie and say my impulse wasn’t to run them over. Fortunately for those who decided shutting down the roadway would bring positive publicity to their cause, police officers, the target of the protest, were there to protect them, lest I (and the many other annoyed drivers I saw on the road) might have been tempted to hit the gas.
We later learned my son’s reflux was due to several food allergies, and I shudder to think what might have happened had we run into an actual emergency that day on the highway, as there was no way for an ambulance to reach us trapped in a sea of cars.
I thought of this incident as I watched protesters shut down other transportation hubs this week—this time, it was airports, in order to signal their anger at President Donald Trump’s new executive order targeting citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries. The New York City taxi union decided to stop shuttling passengers to and from JFK airport, and when Uber announced it would be turning off surge pricing in order to make it possible for passengers to get back and forth without paying an arm and a leg, they soon became the target of hashtag activists who declared they would be removing the car-hailing application from their phones.
Why are people so upset with Uber? The major issue is the fact that, unlike yellow cabs, Uber refused to strand its passengers and force them to participate in a protest they didn’t choose to join of their own free will. Uber understands its role in the lives of its customers: to drive them to and from places like the airport. If passengers flying into and out of JFK wanted to protest, they had the choice not to call an Uber; but protesters didn’t want them to have that choice, just as my choice to get home to feed my crying and hungry two-month old baby was taken from me in a stifling car last spring.
While protesters may think their principled political stand is more important than the transportation needs of others, they may feel differently with a crying baby in the backseat or a dying mother in the hospital (I flew home once to say goodbye to mine; another experience which sprang to mind as protesters attempted to trap travelers inside the airport instead of allowing them the freedom to leave if they chose to do so).
What do these protests accomplish, ultimately? In airports across the country, those with stories more tragic than I can bear were trapped in transit, their lives in limbo as they waited for court orders to determine if they were going to be allowed out of the gates or sent back to the hellholes from whence they came. Despite that ugly fact, the story that dominated my Twitter feed out of JFK airport was this: Free pizza distribution for protesters in Terminal Four. Lost in the chatter about the protesters were stories like this one, about an Iraqi interpreter who risked his life to serve American servicemen and was stuck in limbo at JFK. The media narrative became about protesters instead of people like Hameed Darweesh.
Does blocking transportation for average Americans help protestors’ cause, or hurt it? As a traveler inconvenienced by a Black Lives Matter protest, I can attest that my feelings towards the political movement have never resembled anything positive since then, despite the fact that I feel some of their positions have validity. It is likely those stuck in airports across the country because of Trump protests feel the same as I do; while perhaps sympathetic, being trapped in an airport does little to help move the needle in a positive direction.
While showing up at an airport may have made for social media popularity for those taking selfies amid the chaos, there’s little proof these protests do anything to help those they are intended to aid. It was the ACLU’s judicial efforts, not people handing out pizza, which helped individuals like Hameed Darweesh get out of detention. So before you take an Uber out to your local airport (and then virtuously delete the app, of course), it might be useful to consider whether protesting is the best way to help the people you want to help—or if you’re just indulging in an easy bit of virtue-signaling to your social media followers. And if you’re going to block roads and airports, don’t expect much sympathy from the fellow citizens whose lives you disrupt with your actions.
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