The truckers now snarling Ottawa and the US-Canadian border are spoiling for a fight in America, too.
For the last two weeks, a noisy cavalcade of several thousand anti-vaccination protestors have taken over the downtown core of Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, to demand an end to the country’s vaccine mandates and the resignation of its Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. A thicket of several hundred 18-wheeler trucks and campers are still parked there, many right in front of the Parliament Building on Wellington Street, where they’ve essentially shut down all traffic and built an encampment complete with a kitchen, saunas, and a stage for speeches that turns into a DJ booth and dance party hub at night. Some of the trucks have been doing loops around downtown, snarling traffic, honking their horns, and shouting abusively at passersby, demanding they stop wearing masks.
By all descriptions, the protestors have been a mix of ordinary Canadians tired of the pandemic along with many believers in fringe conspiracy theories about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. At the very heart of the movement are far-right organizers like QAnon believer James Bauder, whose group Canada Unity promotes fantasies of invoking international conventions to force the Canadian government to unwind public health measures and even dissolve Parliament and force Trudeau from power. In October, Bauder led a small convoy to Ottawa to deliver these demands, but only a few dozen people joined him. Then, as he began planning a second convoy, the Trudeau government, along with the U.S. government, announced that it would start enforcing vaccine mandates for truckers crossing the border. Suddenly, thousands responded. (For a detailed description of the current scene in downtown Ottawa, see journalist Justin Ling’s conversation with UN Dispatch’s Mark Goldberg.)
Now, the “freedom convoy” phenomenon is making headlines because a bunch of truckers have blocked two border bridges in the mid-West, and several automakers have announced halts in production as their supply lines have been snarled. Here in the United States, a long list of rightwing political figures have declared their support for the Canadian truckers. Online, dozens of groups on Facebook, Gab and Telegram are organizing in solidarity with their fellow travelers to the north, and it seems like it is only a matter of time before the same rough beast now vexing Canada’s authorities arrives at the gates of some major American cities as well. Some of those online groups appear to have hundreds of thousands of members, and while there are signs those numbers could be artificially inflated, there’s no doubt in my mind that the “freedom convoy” movement here in the US is drawing on the same kinds of people and feelings that have led one-third of Americans and most of the Republican party to reject the 2020 election results and claim that we are living under “tyranny.”
How one feels about all of this is inextricably tied to how one feels about the public health response to the pandemic. If you think decisions about vaccine and mask mandates are best left to government health experts who are subject to democratic oversight, then these “freedom convoys” smack of vigilante-ism, even incipient fascism. If you think it’s time to loosen the COVID-19 restrictions and get back to “normal,” then maybe these truckers are your heroes.
This isn’t the first time since the pandemic began that people chafing under the kind of tough public health measures needed to “flatten the curve” and keep hospitals from overflowing have organized themselves to protest. In the late spring of 2020, for example, there were a proliferation of Facebook groups opposed to “extreme quarantines” that organized rallies at state capitols with the encouragement of then-President Donald Trump. While these groups often started with a broad and somewhat understandable concern — the pandemic lockdown was hurting small businesses and they needed relief — it was striking to watch these groups morph into hubs for more hateful ideologies. In Pennsylvania, for example, an anti-quarantine Facebook group I joined out of curiosity became obsessed with attacking the state’s health commissioner, who was a trans woman. And when some group members tried to steer the conversation away from attacking her, even noting that it was “un-Christian” to mention her personal life choices, they were drummed out. It’s notable that anti-vaxxers are far more upset about kids needing to wear masks in school than kids needing to practice “active shooter” drills because of America’s notoriously loose gun laws; the idea that we all need to give up a little of our personal freedom to protect the most vulnerable among us is not part of their world-view.
Personally, I’m torn. When it comes to free speech, I start with the French philosopher Voltaire, and defend the right of people I disagree with to express their views peacefully. I also think that protestors should be able to nonviolently mass and blockade symbolic or actual power centers in order to elevate awareness of their grievances. But using heavy equipment or sound amplifiers to disturb the peace of civilians going about their daily business is a different matter. So I applaud 21-year-old Ottawa resident Zexi Li, who last Friday filed a class action lawsuit against the convoy organizers, citing laws governing private nuisance and seeking $9.8 million in damages for emotional and mental distress, headaches, sleeping difficulties, challenges concentrating and interference with the quiet enjoyment of her home. Li’s claim notes that she has been subjected to immediate heckling by truckers whenever she ventures from her home, yelling at her to stop wearing her mask, and that when she’s ignored them they’ve responded by honking loudly at her and jeering when she flinches. A judge agreed that the honking, which has risen to 105–120 decibels for long periods, was causing harm and issued a 10-day injunction authorizing police to arrest truckers if they continue.
If anti-vaxxers want to peacefully rally in the heart of Washington, DC, of course they should be allowed to. But I’m hoping that city police will make them park their trucks and walk to the Mall, the same way every other movement that has come to the capitol to protest has been asked to behave. Otherwise, we could be looking at the start of something much more dangerous.