[freediddy]

They blocked the Golden Gate Bridge which included ambulances, other emergency vehicles and thousands of people trying to get to work. I'm happy that the DA is throwing the book at them, I hope they bankrupt themselves trying to defend themselves and then spend a lot of time in jail.

[trhway]

While politically i'm on the opposite side of those guys, i do think that such severe prosecution is unwarranted and politically motivated (and may be intended to create chilling effect on all future protests no matter the cause) - blocking a road is a well established traditional form of protest which traditionally is expected to end with (if the judge is in a bad mood) something like disorderly conduct citation/fine, not anywhere close to felony.

[crubier]

Absolutely not.

At the VERY least, the road blockers should be fined the cost they caused to society.

Block Golden gate bridge for 1h30min for 10,000 people (Avg salary $50/h)? That will be 1.5 * 10,000 * 50 = $750,000 damage.

[trhway]

Well, if they caused you any specific loss nothing prevents you from suing them in civil court like in any other situation when somebody causes you a specific loss. That though is a completely different thing from criminal prosecution.

[kortilla]

And if someone died in ambulance that couldn’t get to a hospital in time?

[trhway]

you're talking hypotheticals while in real life for example:

"A Waymo self-driving car blocked a road near a deadly fire, hindering first responders. " https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6uhcVYhmULU

"Waymos blocked roads and caused chaos during San Francisco power outage" https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/waymo-san-francisco-po...

Waymo and specific people there responsible for that programming/bugs could probably be charged with criminal negligence by an enthusiastic prosecutor, yet haven't been. Why? Probably common sense. Like recognizing that there weren't criminal intent. And such situations is a price of progress. The same with protests. They weren't conspiring to block ambulances. And such situations is a price of freedom of protests and speech. Though if somebody dies that way, i think they would have a civil case against the protesters. The same way like affected people can have a civil case against Waymo in the situations mentioned above.

[kortilla]

Neither of those are acceptable. Why would you think Waymo not following the law is somehow a justification for it to continue to put people’s lives at risk to enable protesters to do the same?

[text0404]

Except the defense has shown that the police blocked opening an additional lane even after the protestors specifically requested it for emergency traffic, and in fact blocked more lanes unnecessarily.

> Defense attorneys argued that many of the risks to people stuck in traffic could have been mitigated — including the traffic itself — if the median had been moved to open a fourth lane on the southbound side. They said a protester designated to communicate with the CHP specifically asked for that to happen to allow emergency vehicles to access anyone who needed one.

> Northbound traffic was also stopped by the CHP as a multitude of emergency vehicles responded to the bridge, which defense attorneys pointed out would have created the same type of risks the prosecution said people were experiencing because of the protesters.

https://localnewsmatters.org/2026/05/29/gaza-protesters-gold...