Every once in a while, someone who sees herself as a radical reveals more than they intend. This twit is one such time.

I can't imagine wanting to go to work at @citi this badly. Get a coffee dude. Listen to the scientists. #summerofheat pic.twitter.com/muUNJJYytD

— Valerie Costa (@valeriecosta) June 12, 2024

The protest was directed at Citibank because of their funding fossil fuels. But the only people affected by the protest were people going to work. Maybe they were SVPs, or maybe they swept the floor, but the hand-holding protesters nonetheless forced them to push their way through the gauntlet to arrive at the place where they earn a paycheck to feed their families.

What’s revealed is what so many assume about the protesters, that they have no employment  and thus can’t conceive of how people who need to work for a living can’t enjoy the freedom to indulge their whims. Perhaps their food is paid for by mommy and daddy, or perhaps they are so passionate in their beliefs that they will do without food to join the protest. Either way, they fail to appreciate that the only people who are put out by their conduct are people who have jobs and need to get to work.

Some suggested it was “unfortunate” that the people forced to duck under the hands of the unduly passionate to get to work were unable to use a little force to make their way through the protest line. After all, what right do protesters have to block others from passing? They may not be punching the Citi employees, but they are physically blocking them. Why shouldn’t the Citi people walk upright to their place of employment and, should someone’s arms or body get in their way, use whatever force is necessary to remove the obstacle?

It’s an enticing theory, but it is not consistent with the law. They cannot use force except to defend themselves from force.  It will strike most of us as unfair, that the protesters get to block others who have every right to walk unimpeded to their job. Why do the protesters get to do that and the employed are constrained to duck and pass through their line? This is another example of exploiting the law’s limits on the use of force. The actions of the protesters may be unlawful, but it is not violent. The Citi employees are caught in a conundrum created by the law’s reluctance to empower people to engage in violence when they are not threatened with physical harm.

Then again, people are reaching their boiling point with these exploits with good reason. And yet the unduly passionate have little better to do than to make life miserable for the gainfully employed, whether by blocking traffic or blocking the door to their job. And ironically, the people who suffer at the whims of the terminally indulgent aren’t the people doing whatever the protesters deem to be wrong, but mostly regular folks trying to feed their families. These are the people whom these protesters want to make miserable, since misery wants company.