With the increased prevalence of protests involving roadway blocks, some have called for stronger penalties for protesters who engage in this disruption. Director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at New York University, Mitchell Moss, opined that, “political protest today is now almost totally focused on transportation systems, whether it’s a road, a bridge, in some cases a tunnel – rather than buildings.” With protests in July 2016 in St. Paul, mere blocks from Mitchell Hamline School of Law, local communities must consider protesters’ actions and those consequences with added gravitas. By reviewing the historical background for roadway blocking protests, the recent increase in protests, available penalties and consequences, and the motivations of protesters, we can better understand the landscape regarding urban roadway protests. While it seems to be in the best interest of public safety to prevent roadway blocking protests, increasing criminal penalties would not have this intended effect and should be avoided for this purpose.

Protests and demonstrations have been a common thread throughout American history, oftentimes blocking traffic and roadways. Roadways are a common target for protests because they have significant potential for disruption and thus, attention to the protesters’ cause. For almost 200 years, “blocking city streets has been [a] . . . tactic since there were urban protests.” Research has shown that more than half of the urban protests related to the Black Lives Matter movement that occurred from November 2014 to May 2015 in the United States focused on shutting down roadways.

The prevalence of roadway shutdowns shows that instances of these demonstrations are certainly not unique to the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. Nathan Connolly, an historian at Johns Hopkins University, compared blocking a highway to blocking a city’s artery, creating a blockage akin to a heart attack. “Block a highway, and you command a lot more attention than would a rally outside a church or city hall — from traffic helicopters, immobile commuters, [and] alarmed officials.” While the impact of an “artery” blocking protest is significant, and often the motivation, there is concern about the frequency of these blockages and their potential threat to public safety.