I've participated and watched critical mass any number of times. I've never seen cyclists target cars randomly.
The only time you will be surrounded in a minivan is if you try to drive through the cyclists, or otherwise act aggressively or unsafely.
Critical mass is a protest movement. If you drive your vehicle into the middle of a protest against vehicles in a way that puts people in danger, don't be surprised when people react defensively.
> Drivers don't know what to do because if they push too hard they'll knock over and injure a cyclist.
They should do nothing. You cannot knock over a cyclist in a stationary car.
Swarming a car and preventing it from moving- sure, the safest thing for the car to do is stop driving, but... I don't think that's really a good defense of confrontational bikers.
Most of the incidents involving cars were instigated by the drivers of cars. I couldn't find an instance where a car wasn't trying to ride through the cyclists, or the driver hadn't picked a fight verbally.
Can you highlight an incident where cyclists antagonized an otherwise passive observer in a car?
> a mother from Redwood City, California, traveling with her two young daughters in the vehicle, tried to drive through the mass of riders. A witness claimed to have observed the driver strike a cyclist and flee before cyclists chased and surrounded her vehicle.[68][69] The driver denied striking a cyclist
Like I said: the incidents are largely instigated by drivers. It is unclear if she hit someone, but it IS clear that she drove into a mass of cyclists. Again, don’t drive your vehicle into an anti vehicle protest, or any protest for that matter. It sounds like if she had just done nothing, nothing would have happened. I’m not saying the cyclists are in the right. I am saying that if you drive a multi ton vehicle into a mass of cyclists protesting the dominance of multi ton vehicles it is an actual and perceived threat to their safety. Even if the driver doesn’t think it is. You shouldn’t be surprised when people respond.
"It's a peaceful protest as long as you don't engage with it". This is you. What actual reason is there for society to find this kind of attitude acceptable or compelling?
Not sure what you expect here. If you become violent in response to provocation, you are still a peaceful protester (within some limit of violence, which surrounding a car so it can't move certainly fits with).
A non-peaceful protest is one where protesters actively attack people and property that are not engaging with them in any conceivable way.
If protestors organized in front of a police station to protest police violence and then attacked a police officer who tried to make her way through the crowd to the office, would you still be defending the protestors?
It’s not an excuse to just be in the way and then attack people who try to get through.
If they in any way used disproportionate force? Yes.
This is what needs to be understood: a car moving through a group of cyclists can easily cause death or injury, and regularly does. The cyclists aren’t going after people who disagree with them. They are going after people who willfully try to use a multi ton vehicle against the human body to get their way.
The two critical mass's I participated in blocking traffic was limited to everyone passing through an intersection and then continuing on. Annoying for drivers no doubt but never as egregious as locking someone in specifically for an extended amount of time.
The riders tend to move pretty quickly so it was at most a few minutes and never swarming vehicles to a standstill.
The only time you will be surrounded in a minivan is if you try to drive through the cyclists, or otherwise act aggressively or unsafely.
Critical mass is a protest movement. If you drive your vehicle into the middle of a protest against vehicles in a way that puts people in danger, don't be surprised when people react defensively.
> Drivers don't know what to do because if they push too hard they'll knock over and injure a cyclist.
They should do nothing. You cannot knock over a cyclist in a stationary car.