PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 A retired Penn professor was arrested on Wednesday, Oct. 14, and issued a citation for blocking an Uber Eats delivery robot from completing its order.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
For Dr. Carolyn Marvin, a former communications professor at Penn, it wasn\u2019t the first time she\u2019s impeded a robot delivery.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople ask me a lot why I\u2019m doing it, and it allows me to engage them in a conversation about what\u2019s going on with these robots,\u201d said Marvin.<\/p>\n
She said it\u2019s not something she\u2019s written down or thought methodically about, but whenever Marvin sees a delivery robot on her daily walks \u2014 and she has the time \u2014 she\u2019ll stand in front of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe I\u2019m exercising my First Amendment rights as a citizen to protest in public space on a public sidewalk,\u201d said Marvin.<\/p>\n
But what is she protesting?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ruthless way that rich corporations are casting aside human workers \u2014 and here, we\u2019re talking about the humble delivery folks \u2014 in order to enrich their bottom lines,\u201d said Marvin.<\/p>\n
Her protest on Oct. 14 drew a crowd just a block from Reading Terminal Market on Filbert Street.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were two groups. One was on my side, and one wasn\u2019t,\u201d said Marvin. \u201cIt\u2019s not about being on my side. It\u2019s about the issues of the workers that these corporations are replacing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Someone also called law enforcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe police came out, and they decided to side with the people that think I shouldn\u2019t be standing in the way of the robots,\u201d said Marvin.<\/p>\n
She was handcuffed, taken to police headquarters, and then released with a citation for disorderly conduct. <\/p>\n
Marvin plans to fight the ticket in court, and said she will not stop blocking delivery robots when she has the time. She also asked others who are uncomfortable with the robots to block them with her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I see a robot, and I have enough time, I\u2019ll probably do the same thing,\u201d said Marvin. \u201cI think if there\u2019s enough pushback to these corporations, they might stop using them. And that would be fine with me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 A retired Penn professor was arrested on Wednesday, Oct. 14, and issued a citation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":887611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,2085,74,39708,16722],"class_list":["post-887610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-philadelphia","tag-technology","tag-uber-eats","tag-workforce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=887610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/887611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=887610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=887610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=887610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}