No mention of what they’re protesting but hopefully this isn’t some sort of attempt to repeat the literal shit-show from last year.
Edit: apparently it’s people gluing themselves to roads to promote trains. https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/national/traffic-disruption-warning-by-police-ahead-of-restore-passenger-rail-protest/
The problem I often run into is, what IS a protest that isn’t disruptive that DOES get your attention? Constant bashing of anyone who disturbs the status quo because you should “only target the people directly causing the issue”, but they’ve made so many layers between them and us that the only people who can be appealed to is your fellow every day man. And he’s too busy being frustrated about not driving fast enough on the road to get to the next place he’s being fucked that the only thing he considers about your message is that it inconvenienced him.
So, what are good non-disruptive ways that get your attention and cause some form of action within the population? It can’t just be non-disruptive, people have to engage with the concept and learn/question something about their every day life from it or else it’s ineffective and people should just keep gluing themselves to things because at least that gets your attention.
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As I said in another comment, it’s hard to ignore a protest of tens of thousands of people that literally cannot fit on Parliament grounds.
Sheer numbers is the way to get a protest noticed.
I agree 100%.
The strike for climate change protest was a genuinely impressive sight to see, enough people to fill a street, and they just kept coming. They also completely filled Parliament grounds.
So, if you genuinely want to make an impact? Get tens of thousands of people to protest.
One of those “thousands of people protests” was literally canceled because the council didn’t want to provide traffic management. For the protests that did happen, people were squeezed into as small space as possible and quickly moved out the way, so as to not waste the time of the climate destroying cars we were protesting. It was pathetic. But the status quo is going to protect the status quo.
They can’t have cared that much about the cause, in that case.
I totally agree. The whole point of a protest is to protest the government, letting yourself be repressed by their rules defeats that point. That’s why disobedient protests like RPR are necessary.
So protest the government, not people trying to get to work.
They’re protesting in Wellington, so many of the “poor normal people trying to get to work” do work in the government. Protests are inconvenient, that’s the point.
No, protests are supposed to get public support for a cause.
How often do tens of thousands participate in a protest though? We had mass protests. This is just a reminder that politicians really need to do more.
I mean, that’s kinda my point. It’s easy to ignore a handful of nutters, less so a crowd of tens of thousands.
I wish they’d glue themselves to politicians instead of roads. It’s not the roads who decide to defund light rail.
I wish Wellington council had proceeded with LGWM after the first consultations, they had overwhelming support for light rail, and the extra tunnels. And it would be well under construction by now.
That’s not what these guys are about though, they want intercity passenger services restored, IE heavy rail.
I’m in favour of public transport, but these people are an embarrassment. I’ve told them that civil disobedience is great, but please don’t block roads. I suggested they block the door to national and labour party events, as an alternative.
As a civil disobedience tactic I can see why you’d do this. Its pretty straightforward to pull off and hard to prevent, which if disruption and attention is your goal is kind of ideal.
By comparison, any political party event of note will have security and therell be only a few key points to disrupt. Roads are everywhere and way harder for the police/security to anticipate and prevent ahead of time.
There is the rather large downside, in that you are disrupting the lives of ordinary people, many of whom, like myself, need to be driving for work reasons.
Consequently, everyone will hate you. These guys aren’t popular at all, especially among Wellington tradies.
I want to be clear I think it’s fairly annoying and potentially dangerous to glue oneself to a major arterial road. That said, the goal is to annoy people like you until you stop driving and start taking the train. It’d be a better plan if the trains weren’t wildly unreliable.
I’ve got a van full of tools I need to do my job, dumbass. Public transport simply isn’t an option for me.
Rude much? I didn’t say anything at all about what you should do, I only said what their goal was. Way to be an asshole about it, dickhead.
annoy people like you until you stop driving and start taking the train.
This isn’t saying anything about what I should do? And what do you mean by “people like me”, anyway? You get back what you give out, sunshine.
Don’t make assumptions about me, you know nothing about my like.
The goal is
But you ignored that part. As well as everything else I had written.
You’re the one making assumptions here. Or you’re being deliberately obtuse just to pick a fight on the internet. Either way, fuck you for being nasty to me when all I was trying to do was talk about the subject of the thread.
They’re not trying to be popular, they’re trying to get attention
I mean, punching someone will get their attention, but it won’t get them on your side.
They’re not punching people though
It’s a metaphor.
“I understand, but please don’t inconvenience me”
I get where you’re coming from, it may take you longer to get to work or something. But man…
Their cause is intercity rail services, which, by all accounts, will be expensive to run, and require heavy subsidies.
All while a decent network of intercity buses are operating.
Heaven forbid pedestrians cause congestion!
clutches pearls
a person walking rather than travelling in a vehicle.
They’re not pedestrians.
So, did anything happen?
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Oh man, those guys are fun to wind up.
None of them have ever used a vehicle for anything other than personal transport, they seem to think everyone with a pickup truck is driving it purely for the sake of their ego, even if they have a rural property, or need it for towing.
They don’t seem to understand the concept of towing capacity, and seem to think a van can do anything a pickup can do, including tow 3+ tonnes and travel off road.
Carrying on with the anti pickup line, they made a post making fun of a Ford Ranger, because they had a ladder on the roof that wouldn’t fit in the bed. It was an extension ladder almost as long as the vehicle. Another poster pointed out that some cargo vans have storage above the driver’s head, meaning the ladder could go in the van. This is a vehicle that would have been taller, longer, and wider than the Ranger.
They’re completely out of touch with reality.
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Restore Passenger Rail spokesman James Cockle told media the group’s demands are for affordable nationwide passenger rail and free urban public transport.
What do these people have against buses? We have a fairly decent intercity bus network, which is affordable and reasonably fast, in fact faster than the train in most cases. Let rail handle freight, it’s what rail does well.
In addition to being out of touch with reality, this is also not how you get people to support your cause.
Yeah busses are potentially part of the solution, but decent rail connections can be more disruptive (positively) over longer distances e.g Welly - Palmy, Auckland - Hamilton etc.
Having previously lived in China and experiencing the amazing train network there I definitely see the benefits of a solid rail system. Way more efficient than busses too.
Nuts to me that places like Wellington had pretty good electric bus systems with trolley busses but replaced them largely with diesel. Not sure what the bus fleet is like now though.
Also not sure why you are being downvoted for a pretty reasonable discussion.
Reddit is fucking weird about trains, and it looks like that has filtered over to here.
Our bus fleet is mostly battery electric now.
Didn’t all the trolley busses get scrapped in favor of Diesel some time ago?
The plan was to replace them with battery electric buses, with the diesels being a stop-gap measure.
To nobody’s surprise, the new buses took a lot longer to arrive than expected, but they are mostly there.
Ah nice. It’s been a while I’ve been in Welly, so I wasn’t sure what the current status is.
I think they want rail between suburbs and cities. Definitely if there was rail direct from Porirua to Lower Hutt a huge amount of people who live in one place would suddenly be willing to work in the other, or vice versa.
They probably would, but that would be ridiculously expensive, as it would require extensive tunnelling.
I’ve read some of their demands, mostly they want the old level of intercity services restored. Which, as I’ve already said, is currently served quite well by bus services.
Bus services in the regions seem to have really nosedived since covid.
