The red shirts took their rally to the streets today, blocking the Ratchaprason intersection. This caused major traffic problems, and forced the major down town stores and shopping centers to close down. The costs of this to retailers may be in the tens of millions of dollars.
The UDD leadership promised members that this will result in the government caving into its demands for new elections in the next two weeks. Former PM Thaksin praised the blocking of traffics, saying that the protesters are sacrificing themselves for democracy. He called for more Thai people to join in.
Unfortunately for the red shirts, I don't think this latest move is going to endear their movement to anyone other than those already strongly predisposed to support them. A lot of people are tired of red and yellow shirts. In fact, their was a 4,000 person pink shirt rally sponsored in part by the tourism businesses whose purpose was to tell the reds to stop protesting. Even so, so long as the the red shirts were peaceful and contained in an area that didn't impact too many other people, they probably wouldn't alienate too many people. By disrupting the lives of more people, I think they are going to alienate them.
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