Follow this authorMegan McArdle's opinions

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Back-of-the-envelope math suggests that those 80 people consumed thousands of hours of other people’s time, and perhaps tens of thousands. Moreover, the protesters, unlike the drivers, got to schedule important things around their disruption, such as medical treatment, day-care dropoffs and job interviews. When such havoc can be wreaked at such minimal personal inconvenience — some time on the road, a little more at the police station and later, for most of them, five hours of community service and a modest fine — it’s hardly surprising that, only months later, San Francisco experienced another disruptive protest. These will continue in cities that don’t impose stiffer penalties for blocking the roads.

This is the opposite of my usual prescription for dealing with crime. I typically argue for better policing to increase the likelihood that criminals will be caught, but for relatively light punishment — a policy both more effective and more humane than draconian mass incarceration strategies. Unfortunately, this won’t prevent road closings because the protesters are already almost certain to be arrested. The only remaining option is to make the punishment hurt.

Progressive jurisdictions have been reluctant to do this because so many in the political class view the protesters’ actions as benign — a justified expression of outrage, youthful exuberance, a victimless crime. They are none of these things.

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They are unjustified because, no matter how righteous the cause, the tactics won’t advance it. Most Americans view road-blocking protests as illegitimate — as I’d bet most progressives did when Canadian truckers used similar tactics to protest vaccine mandates. There is no First Amendment right to halt the movement of other people, any more than there is a First Amendment right to burn down the White House, even if you sincerely believe that’s the only way to fully express your views on U.S. foreign policy.

These forms of expression are forbidden for good reason; both fires and road closures are dangerous and potentially deadly. A 2017 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine examining road closures for marathons found a small but significant increase in mortality among people with heart trouble on marathon days, apparently........

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