It doesn’t. That was my point. You cannot say, “I do not concern myself with the legality of the protester’s methods”, implying that concern lies with law enforcement, and be a proponent of protest against abuse of authority (which I am assuming you are).
TO some degree, sure. But one can easily say "That's a separate conversation." When it's being used as an active distraction from a conversation about the content of the message. And also that conversation has to cover more that jsut the fact of its legality, because, in many cases, the action should, under normal circumstances, be illegal because of the need to not only put a cost on the behavior, but toad value and impact to its being engaged in as a protest action.
Again- there are good reasons to make obstructing traffic illegal that have nothing to to do with protest actions. I'm sure I'd be unhappy if someone obstructed traffic when I was trying to get somewhere. But that illegality, that discomfort - they're things that actually give it value as a protest action. Without it being against the law, there'd be no value or voice in engaging in it as way to raise consciousness of a given issue.
I am suggesting you MUST have an opinion. It can be either that the laws of permissible protests are wrong, or correct or on how those laws should be enforced. By washing your hands of all concern for it, you are granting others the power to abuse authority or manipulate you. Maybe it’s not even abuse, since you gave them consent through your lack of concern.
And I gave it-= in this case I do think laws about obstructing traffic are reasonable. But I also point out that that has no relevance to the message of the protestors in this case, especially because they're not staging the protest here to contest traffic laws, so we're not even dealing with the corner case of staging protest actions to push on the laws or enforcement practices that are being protested. This is a completely different issue and trying to pretend that ever protest must be judged on anything but it's own message (never mind based on every possible injustice that might be protested) is and absurd degree of concern trolling.
If you focus only on the message and ignore law enforcement cracks down you put yourself in danger and may miss that the corruption of law enforcement is a graver threat than the message which drew them to act.
Which is why it's important to protest against abuses by law enforcement when it occurs, or laws taht are abusive. But taht doesn't mean that all law enforcement and laws are abusive, or that one should opposen them when they're reasonable and allied in the context of a protest that's violating them in order to communicate its message.
If proponents of a cause choose a method that vilifies them in the eyes of the majority they can do grievous damage to their cause. Does the average citizen care about your cause if you murdered 10’s or 100’s to get the attention; or do they just see a terrorist and ignore the message?
This only matters when the protest is intended to evoke the direct sympathy of the average citizen, rather than to reach out to those that are actually receptive and perhaps able to take action in regards to the content of the message. Particularly when protesting supremacy- tyranny of the majority/majorian group- is part of the point of the protest. How is does it even make sense to tell someone who is objecting to being oppressed by the majority that they should only do so by bowing down to that majority and doing things to make it happy?
Our system of governance has systems and safeguards built in so that it's not simple majority rule- so that a group that is right can press its case and be protected _even if_ the majority doesn't like them. So hat they're not forced to subserviently bow down to oppression in order to gain respect. Protests are actions that put pressure on those systems to to their job, they're not marketing campaigns for majority approval.
If something is unjust, does it become less unjust because you've behaved poorly as well? THe validity of a complaint about an unjust system has nothing at all to do with the behavior of the messenger, though the extremes they have to go to in order to be heard can say a lot about the degree of suppression or denial of their message within a given system.
(And this does not mean that all messages are equally valid. Not all messages actually highlight an injustice, just the nominal perception of it by the person trying to speak. But against, that validity has noting to do with the tolls used to express it; dismissing it because of them rather than based on the independent merits of the message is suppressive and exactly the kind of behavior that leas to an escalation in the extremity of protest actions.
The method of protest IS the message (or at least a large part of it).
Only when it's explicitly meant to be. Otherwise it's not. It's an indication of the degree of action the speakers felt was necessary to be heard, but the validity of the message itself has inherent relevance to the tolls used communicate it. Slavery is not more unjust is I write a sternly worded letter to the editor about it, it's not less unjust if I lead rebellion against it; it's injustice is an independent feature of the system, not a variable based on how polite I am when I make my objections.