On a Monday morning earlier last month, several hundred people gathered at New York City Hall, where a small cadre of professional activists gave them lock-on arm tubes, banners, fluorescent vests, and instructions to disperse to either the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, Williamsburg Bridge, or Holland Tunnel. There, they locked themselves together and strode into oncoming traffic, effectively blocking four of the most heavily traveled entryways into the borough. The tactic, they later proudly declared to the press, was to simulate a siege. “In Gaza, of course, people have limited mobility, no freedom of movement, they cannot leave, even if they wanted to,” one participant told The New York Times, “we wanted to create that condition temporarily in Manhattan.”

What followed is a familiar story that has played out in major cities across the country: the traffic obstructors managed to block drivers for hours until police intervened, arrested hundreds, and cleared the roads. As River Page recently covered, these kinds of disruptive protests are almost never spontaneous expressions of outrage from organically mobilized crowds, but highly coordinated, well-funded attempts to block major thoroughfares at peak transit hours to make political statements. (The Manhattan “siege,” for instance, was sponsored in part by Jewish Voice for Peace, which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from donor-advised funds run by Schwab, Morgan Stanley, and Fidelity.)

The First Amendment protects the right to peaceful assembly, but not to intentional traffic obstruction — a serious offense that can slow drivers headed to urgent appointments (like the emergency vehicle carrying transplant organs held up at the recent Bay Bridge shut-down). Those who intentionally block bridges or roads could face charges like false imprisonment, obstruction of public ways, and public nuisance, some of which carry considerable civil and criminal penalties. Given the risks, why do so many feel emboldened to break the law?