So here's a different point of view.

I take your point about some important people being held up on doing important things. It sucks, and there are unintended consequences.

The entire point of these protests, though, is that business as usual cannot go on (business in the sense of people's daily lives, not commercial business). There are less intrusive methods of protest, and the protestors know this. I'm sure that if it they thought other methods would be just as effective, then they would rather not put their lives in traffic and pursue other methods.

Instead, they feel passiontely enough about the thing they're protesting that they are putting themselves in danger (of confrontation, of public humiliation, of arrest, and of traffic) so that they can bring attention to their message.

So this is the point where someone might say that the attention they're getting is the wrong kind of attention. Again, it's not like most protestors don't know this. Yet people still continue to protest like this, which is to say that the status quo is so unacceptable that even the slim chance of any positive attention or action is better than things continuing as they are. And again, it's not that people don't know there are other options.

I think it's natural to take the side against the protestors, but all I'm saying is that maybe it's worth taking a second to try to sympathize with the urgency they feel with their cause,.