I was asked this and criticized harshly for being unsympathetic after seeing a video of a road-blocking protest that turned nasty when a driver who had had enough, decided to hit the gas:
I was told "Think Ghandi, think civil rights movement.." and how could this driver be so belligerent to these virtuous heros?.. It seemed necessary to put some thoughts together on this...
There's a major difference between whats going on here and what Ghandi did. Ghandi and his followers directly targeted and confronted the British powers and police that had caused them so much harm. Not by blocking roads wherever any random British people traveled but taking measures that would directly remove government control over them. At least in the beginning. Things went wrong later... Here on the other hand, no one knows who all the people in the cars are, just that they're not 'us' but 'them' and therefore the enemy. The people in those cars are not thinking 'white people thoughts'. They are individuals thinking their own unique thoughts. The protesters think that as long as they target people from a particular group or whoever is not their group, they have succeeded with their actions. It doesn't matter that they have wronged people who have never wronged them. Innocents are fair game as long as they can be categorized in a particular group. This is the same kind of thinking that leads a suicide bomber to blow them self up in a crowd of people of some other race or culture. The individuals killed may never have harmed anyone but they are part of the target group so close enough. Or the Sikh leader in Vancouver some years back that said "we must kill X number of Hindus" to get 'revenge' for something or other. It doesn't matter which Hindus as long as they're Hindus. Then they blew up an airliner. They didn't target people who had actually wronged them but relied on identity politics, group think. Now before you start, objecting to comparing a protest to a bombing, the actions taken are not the relevant point here. The way of thinking that leads to these action, is. The collectivist thinking of the so-called 'left' is a dangerous and sick thing. People begin to identify as what group they feel they belong to rather than as the unique human beings they are. This leads to a requirement to have others adhere to the standardized thinking of said group and anyone who differs from the group must be attacked and forced to make the groups concerns, their concerns. Them and the 'other' group they point their fingers at are now two 'sides' that can go to war. These things are moving western civilization toward an authoritarian collective something like a Stalinist disaster, slowly but surely. The erosion of free speech we are seeing lately is a major warning sign. 'Free country' was an oxymoron from the start but things will be a great deal worse if things like this are allowed to proliferate...
So does someone deserve to be run over just for being a protester? Of course not but causing harm to other people who have not wronged you or if you don't even know who they are or what they've done or not done, then these 'protestors' deserve what ever consequences their actions lead to. The skewed group think that leads to this cannot be tolerated by anyone who values any semblance of freedom.