If 1967 gave America the Summer of Love, then 2024 will likely go down as the Summer of Lunkheads.
The students and their allies chanting “from the river to the sea” with no clue as to the name, location and symbolism of said waters on campuses across the country have branched out, disrupting events and access to roads in noteworthy displays of useful idiocy.
In April, protesters blocked roads in Illinois, California, New York and Oregon and temporarily shut down travel into Chicago O’Hare International Airport, onto the Golden Gate and Brooklyn bridges and on a busy West Coast highway.
According to reports, A15 Action was one of the activist organizers behind the demonstrations. Its web site announced the “economic blockade” as “blocking the arteries of capitalism.” Which makes them essentially the trans fats of political discourse.
Last month, as the New York Post reported, a small group of anti-Israel protesters from a Florida chapter of Queers for Palestine blocked access to Walt Disney World.
The keffiyeh-clad crew used their vehicles to block the Disney exit of Interstate 4 in Orlando, alleging that the company “supports genocide.”
Even the Boston Pride Parade wasn’t off limits. As the Herald reported, Liberate Boston Pride, a coalition of 70 groups, organized a pro-Palestinian protest at the corner of Berkeley and Boylston streets. The reason for temporarily blocking the parade route? The group says the parade organizer, Boston Pride for the People, “has not spoken out in support of a Free Palestine.”
A police officer was assaulted during the event.
Although anti-Israel demonstrations are the radical chic activity du jour among professional disruptors, they’re not the only tantrums in town.
Just Stop Oil, infamous for throwing soup on a Van Gogh in a bid to halt oil and gas projects, brought a hammer and chisel to the game last month. Two protestors glued themselves to a glass case containing an original copy of the Magna Carta at the British Library in London before smashing it. The historic document was undamaged.
Anti-fossil fuel activists have a summer activity planned on this side of the Pond as well.
Climate Defiance has its sights set on the Congressional Baseball Game set for Wednesday. As RollCall reported, the annual game which raises money for local charities, pits Republican and Democratic members of Congress against one another at Nationals Park.
Where do fossil fuels come in? They don’t.
“The Congressional Baseball Game is a useful symbolic target,” said Evan Drukker-Schardl, an organizer with the group which wants to end government support for fossil fuels. “Congress is literally playing games while subsidizing the fossil fuel engine industry.”
It’s a semantic stretch, but logic doesn’t figure into this sort of thing. As we’ve seen and heard from campus protests, many have no clue as to what they’re demonstrating for, or against. They have sound bites, but there’s no substance behind them.
This doesn’t stop them, or other “just stop” whatever protests.
As Republican Rep. Roger Williams said of the planned baseball game protest: “It’s on the stupid radar.”
If the protesters haven’t figured it out yet, the further they strain their messages, the more likely they are to land on the stupid radar.
