Hacker News Reader

It only depends how the government of the day responds for a particular kind of people blocking a road.

Brazilian example: a few months ago, truckers (who are mostly in favor of our proto-fascist president Bolsonaro) blocked highways country-wide, while threatening (physically!) others to join or people who tried to pass through their blocks, and got no big response from police. The joke at the time was that the best way to get police to act was call them saying that schoolteachers were conducting a peaceful protest and wait a few minutes for them to come with full force, SWAT-style.

Rather similar in Canada, where the suggestion was to tell the police that the trucks contain aboriginal people rather than largely white males.

An unarmed, native blockade over a pipeline being rammed through their territory gets an over-the-top response, from heavily militarized federal police.

To some people, blocking a road is an act worthy of invoking the Emergency Measures Act.

When it affects 25% of the value of the goods that come into the US...yeah

That's not what the measure was used for, the border blockades were shut down easily with existing laws. Yeah.

Blocking a road is actually much worse. Emergency medical services use roads.