[defrost]

Perhaps sometimes a simplistic take like this is true - people destroying just for the sake of destruction and indifferent to the target.

However when destruction is targeted toward specific brands or toward infrastructure being used for specific purposes such takes can no longer be true.

[seanmcdirmid]

Boycotting Waymo? Sure, it sends a message. Bashing in a car so someone else can’t ride it? It just makes the other side look like the good guys and their side look like the bad guys. Is that what they intended? No, obviously not, they just wanted an excuse to do property destruction.

This is why protests are hard. You have to somehow keep it peaceful by dissuading hooliganism who are ultimately attracted by the chaos to do carnage. Those hooligcans aren’t on your side and don’t care about your cause, they just want to bash things in and do some looting. They might as well be working for ICE with the bad rep they are giving to the anti-ICE protestors.

[viccis]

>Bashing in a car so someone else can’t ride it? It just makes the other side look like the good guys and their side look like the bad guys

Not really. If your definition of "good" and "bad" (always a sign of a simplistic mind btw) is "good for Waymo's bottom line" and "bad for Waymo's bottom line" then sure. But if your community's people are suffering and looking to rideshare gigs for a lifeline, and then a company threatens them, then destroying their assets is easy to justify as "good" from a humanistic perspective, even categorically.