On this much police and activist South Side priest Michael Pfleger can agree: Saturday morning’s anti-violence march on the Dan Ryan Expressway is all about danger.

Pfleger — and perhaps hundreds of others — plan to shut down traffic on the expressway to send a message: Elected leaders must fix neighborhood schools and create better job prospects to supplant the violence plaguing some pockets of the city. In 2016, gun violence reached levels that had not been seen in 20 years, according to data kept by the Tribune. And while the number of shootings victims has decreased since then, it’s still higher than 2015 and 2014.

READ MORE: Emanuel backs Pfleger's planned Dan Ryan anti-violence march

“We’re still on target to go,” Pfleger told the Tribune Thursday. “I can’t predict anything right now, but we’re taking a page from the civil rights movement. When nothing else was working, civil disobedience is what eventually made authorities and the government listen.”

Law enforcement officials have asked Pfleger to reconsider, saying the protesters are putting their lives on the line by walking onto a busy expressway. In fact, Illinois State police troopers, who have jurisdiction over Chicago expressways, will try to stop protesters from getting on the Dan Ryan — and arrests will be made, if necessary.

READ MORE: How to get around Saturday if anti-violence protest blocks the Dan Ryan »

“If people break the law, we may have to arrest people. But that’s not what our goal is here,” Illinois State Police Director Leo Schmitz said at a news conference earlier this week, adding: “Our goal is to save lives, whether it be the young children or people in the city or motorists. We just don’t want anybody to get hurt.”

Pfleger and other protesters are demanding sit-down meetings with Gov. Bruce Rauner, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other elected officials — along with those running for office — to discuss solutions to gun violence.

But will the protest lead to change, or just to protest fatigue? Here are five things to know ahead of Saturday’s protest.

This isn’t the first time protesters have shut down traffic

This isn’t the first time protesters have shut down a major roadway in Chicago and beyond.

In recent years, Black Lives Matter activists have halted traffic in cities to draw attention to police-involved shootings, said Pamela Oliver, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She has followed news reports of the BLM protests on expressways and highways, a tactic used more and more to bring attention to their cause.

In July 2016, protesters marched on the southbound lanes of the Dan Ryan Expressway for an estimated five to 10 minutes in response to the deaths of two African-American men who were killed during confrontations with police in Minnesota and Louisiana. Last year, activists and homeless protesters briefly halted traffic on Lake Shore Drive to protest the city’s decision to clear viaducts in Uptown. There also were a few Lake Shore Drive shutdowns by protesters after grand juries decided not to indict police officers in the police shootings of men in New York and Ferguson, Mo.

This is one way to bring attention to a problem ‘not being properly addressed’

Aldon Morris, a professor of sociology and African-American studies at Northwestern University, said shutting down a highway is a classic nonviolent, civil disobedience type of protest. He pointed out that Martin Luther King Jr., and other civil rights leaders shut down entire cities to draw attention to the plight of African-Americans.

“It’s supposed to cause a crisis so that business as usual is disrupted,” Morris said. “So that attention could be brought to an issue, a problem that is not being properly addressed.”

During the civil rights era, acts of civil disobedience created a crisis that then led to activists getting power, Morris said.

“The only way that they can generate power was to create a crisis in the community where the authorities had to pay attention and negotiate with the protesters to bring about change,” Morris said. “And this (Saturday’s protest) is what it’s about.”

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Pfleger said his decision to shut down the Dan Ryan was inspired not only to make a statement about stopping violence, but also by a variety of movements including those pushing for immigration reform and the teacher’s union in Chicago.

The University of Wisconsin’s Oliver said the expressway shutdown will generate attention, but getting the group’s long-term demands met will mean navigating the politics of who controls funding in the neighborhoods.

At a news conference this week, Pfleger said the group does outreach to victims and perpetrators of violence. But they feel they need to look at the system that creates it, which is why they plan to take such a drastic measure.

The other side: Another protest may create fatigue

Oliver said there has been a wave of protests for various causes that predate U.S. President Donald Trump’s presidency. She does worry that all of the causes competing for attention will lead to some sort of protest fatigue.

However, she thinks the protesters are evolving as the causes evolve. For example, she suspects some of the BLM activists are part of the movement to change the country’s gun laws.

But whatever people think of the protest, Morris said motorists on the Dan Ryan Expressway this weekend will have to confront the issue the activists want to bring to the forefront.

READ MORE: As state police warn of arrests, a defiant Rev. Pfleger moves ahead with planned Saturday march, shutdown of Dan Ryan »