None of my six readers should really expect me to often talk about elephants in the room, because when the day is over I’d be saying nothing that couldn’t be read anywhere else and I’d rather try to not be talking about such disparaging news in the world. However, occasionally I’ll touch on particular things, because they’re a little close to home, or maybe I’ve actually got something to say.
I was reading this article about how highways are popular targets when it comes to protests. More importantly, clogging them up and effectively shutting them down, by means of human congestion on swaths of asphalt meant to transport people from point to point. This does hit a little close to home, because in light of the current rash of protests on account of black people feeling that their lives aren’t perceived as being mattered as much as the lives of other ethnicities, Atlanta has been one of the cities where swarms of people, in defiance of the law and consideration of mostly innocent, uninvolved people, have decided clogging up the highway seems like the best method of “getting people’s attention.”
There are those who believe that “there’s no such thing as bad exposure,” and then there are those who believe that if you make a point to ruin their day, they will oppose whatever it is you’re doing that is ruining their day.
I’ve been fortunate that I’ve avoided getting stuck in a protest-related highway traffic jam, but given my propensity to wait until rush hour(s) have passed, I could just as easily been caught in one of the several attempts to block the highway in Atlanta.
Personally, safety aside, I think highway protest blockades are about the worst things in the world a group could do, especially when they’re just trying to get exposure and attention. Pissing off hundreds and thousands of motorists who are just trying to get to a destination in a timely manner isn’t necessarily the attention they might want. I just know that if I were caught in a protest-blockade, I would instantly be opposed to whatever cause or reason it was. Instantly.
Black lives matter? They don’t if I have to sit in unnecessary traffic because of a protest. Protest to support opposition to Somali pirates? Fuck you, block the highway, and I’ll fund the Somali pirates myself when I get a chance. Shut down the highway because Koreans are getting discriminated against? I’d try to deport my own parents for that kind of injustice!*
*hyperbole, naturally… maybe
But enough of the social commentary. The primary reason why this post even came to fruition is of a rather amusing to me chunk of the article, that I felt needed a little bit of lead up to, before getting to the point. Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed, a rather incompetent swindler of a politician (Oxymoron? Oxymoron.) was quoted about how Atlanta has fallen victim to some protest highway blockades:
“We’re the home of Dr. Martin Luther King,” anxious Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said on Saturday, acknowledging the city’s legacy of protest but drawing a line at the interstate on-ramp. “The only thing I ask is that they not take the freeways. Dr. King would never take a freeway.”
The Washington Post however, was quick to rebut Reed’s remarks, with actual facts, which is always lol-worthy whenever a bitch like Reed gets corrected:
That is not strictly accurate: King led the 1965 march that iconically occupied the full width of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.
It’s amusing to me that Reed would even say something like that, when it was so easily debunked by actual, historical evidence. There’s a difference between a rando like myself spouting off without cross-referencing the facts, and a guy like Kasim Reed doing it: people actually listen, hear and scrutinize the things Reed says, and only six people read my drivel. I can get away with it, he cannot. And when he doesn’t, it’s funny. Especially when he tries to backpedal:
Reed, who angered many activists with his comments in Atlanta, later defended them on Facebook by saying that King prepared for weeks and worked with Selma officials to ensure public safety, rather than flooding the bridge in a spontaneous and “dangerous” way.
Kasim Reed is such a dumbass. As pathetically incompetent of a mayor he is, I’ll actually be sad if and when he goes away, because it’s hard to imagine anyone taking the reigns of this fiscally deteriorating city that’s worse, but then again never say never. But the ironic entertainment of the city is hanging in the balance on this future.
