Ethical Tactics

As far as grassroots, small-scale creative campaigns are concerned; none have recently interested me more than the annual stopping of traffic in NYC by the Black Label Bike Club. The Black Label Bike Club is a small anarchistic organization that, at its heart, opposes modern materialism and consumerism including the use of gasoline. As a counter cultural group, they are very interesting let’s say and uses interesting tactics to make their point heard. Their annual blocking of traffic in NYC is one of their less controversial practices. The club members in NYC ride their bikes in large groups and literally stop all traffic in the streets of NYC. Police always get involved and it is always a very violent protest in the end, but it is an interesting tactic to speak out against gasoline usage. Some members of the bike club eat thrown away food out of garbage cans in order to speak out against modern consumerism. I found the guerilla public relations tactics and staging interesting – as well as extreme. There is a trailer for a movie that chronicles the bike club up at YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=black+label+bike+club&search=Search

Just a warning, it is very loud. In cases other than the reasons the club members were protesting, do you feel that it is ethical to inconvenience other people from their daily lives in order to send an initial message of a statement as in the case of the traffic stopping? As an ethical consideration, is it ethical to inconvenience thousands of people in order to raise their awareness to an issue supposing that they will be better off knowing how harmful gasoline is to the environment at the cost of being late to work? Chapter 5 pages 119 to 122 is especially helpful on varying perspectives.