An interesting piece here is how this has moved from protest to civil disobedience, except the protesters have no expectation of having to suffer the consequences of it. Nor do they actively seek to suffer for it. They’ve opted to breaking the law for shits and giggles.
I seem to recall, on this very forum, the idea that what’s the point of protesting if you don’t make life inconvenient for others. Again, all this gnashing of teeth and the calls for the military of all things to intervene seems awfully hypocritical.
At some point, it must be realized that what one advocates and/or rationalizes away in a most contrived manner can be used by others to one’s own detriment.
There’s a difference between being an “inconvenience” and the systematic abuse of the local population. These assholes were blowing truck horns virtually non-stop for days on end, keeping the entire downtown core awake almost all night. Sleep deprivation is recognized as torture by pretty much everyone who isn’t pro-torture.
Add in multiple unsafe practices, like storing fuel containers near open fires, having open fires on city sidewalks, public urination and defecation, blocking of emergency vehicles like ambulances, and random harassment and assault of locals trying to live their lives, and this goes far beyond being an inconvenience.
If these jerks had just parked their trucks so as to make normal driving a pain in the ass, it would have gotten them just as much attention, while still making it possible for those who live in the area to live their lives. All the rest of this crap is unnecessary, and done solely for the cruelty factor.
So does every small group of uneducated, incapable-of-critical-thinking, entitled a-holes, get to hold an entire downtown (and Ottawa does have a small downtown) hostage, until they get every fantasy-driven, anti-science and healthcare wish fulfilled?
Why should the entire staff of a downtown shopping mall (the Rideau Centre) and numerous small businesses have to lose their income because of these jerks? And why should the residents have to avoid their own downtown because of a bunch of outsider thugs setting up their own shanty-town on Ottawa’s main streets?
It’s also worth noting that there are also massive blockages at multiple border crossings now.
While annoying, I haven’t seen anyone suggest using the army to clear those blockades, because they’re not going out of their way to torture any local populations.
And as a practical matter, these blockades are far more likely to have an effect, since they strike directly at the bottom lines of large companies, that have a lot more influence over the government than the citizens of downtown Ottawa.
No, no, you don’t understand. The issue doesn’t have anything to do with what these protesters are doing. The issue for octopus is that you weren’t displaying similar levels of outrage when a different group of people where protesting in a different fashion (and mostly in a different country) about an entirely different issue, and it is therefore hypocritical of you to suggest that anything at all be done to put an end to this protest.
Ah, yes, I arrogantly engaged in nuanced analysis of the situation. I’ll flog myself and throw myself in the river in penance.
Am I right in assuming most of the truckers taking part in these protests are owner operators? I can’t imagine most big trucking firms would be all right with their drivers absconding with their trucks and then sitting around doing nothing for weeks at a time.
Well, I’m not a fan of any sort of protest that occupies public or private property. But as Chaz/Chop/OWS etc have demonstrated support for disrupting and even destroying critical infrastructure is highly correlated to ideological congruence.
That seems to be the case, there’s been some stories in the news about how the companies they are affiliated with aren’t happy about having the company name on the trucks, but that there isn’t much they can do about it.
There was one story about a company sending its goon squad to retrieve a truck, but it was just an F150 type vehicle.
To some extent.
A lifetime ago but just before Covid, Indigenous protesters were disrupting Canadian business by blocking trains. I opposed this at the time. More recent results have increased my sympathy for their cause, but it is still the wrong way to approach it.
A friend of mine teaches. They decided to protest years ago via a “work to rule” campaign where they would not issue report cards or administer clubs. My friend explained “we only have so many ways of getting our point across. Perhaps. But what is effective may not always garner sympathy. Teachers in Canada also do important work.
So it is with the truckers. I sympathize with truckers. They do an unlauded and important job. But this is not really about vaccine policies - not now. They are gone in Alberta but the protestors are not.
And – between you, me, and the grand piano – a job that is quite likely going to yield to self-driving trucks before (relatively) too awfully long.
First Nations people got shot in just such a protest, met by police, removed by force. That was called an occupation when they did it.
I maintain these people just wanted an opportunity to be righteously obnoxious, to Trump rage! Their industry is nothing but safety mandates, and these restrictions will likely disappear in a few weeks regardless.
On the news tonight they were saying ‘we just want to be heard’. But they’ve been heard, they want their way, and said they weren’t leaving till they got it. That’s not a negotiation.
They want this to make Trudeau look bad, but it’s just making them look like children. First Nation’s protests never closed the busiest land border crossing, or gridlocked the nation’s capital or the country’s largest city. They’d have been violently removed if they had.
This is getting worst by the day and it’s because with Ford at the helm he won’t act as these are conservative voters.
Basically, the bros want to be obnoxious to the libs and get some revenge on Ontario, who are always getting their way because they have more people. This IS US political tactics being adopted by the Conservatives.
It’s absolutely frightening.
Cite?
During the ‘occupation’ at Ipperwash, Dudley George was shot by police. Easy to google.
Ostensibly the protest is about the federal mandate that truckers entering the country be vaccinated. That hasn’t been lifted. Of course, it’s irrelevant because there’s a matching US requirement to cross the border in the other direction, but anyhoo. Two dozen Timbits says every last one of the people honking horns was outraged at the rail blockades and thought they should have promptly been removed by force.
Meanwhile the Premier of Alberta has lifted covid restrictions while comparing the stigmatization of the unvaccinated to that of AIDS patients in the 80’s, apparently forgetting that back then he lobbied for laws that would have removed visitation rights for gay couples during the AIDS epidemic.
Simultaneously, the Premier of Saskatchewan has lifted restrictions, saying that they were creating two classes of citizens which was unprecedented in our province, apparently forgetting about how indigenous people used to have to get permission from the Indian Agent to leave their reserve, and how they had their children stolen away to residential schools.
So friend @octopus will just have to excuse me if I’m not as preoccupied as he is with the hypocrisy of the left for being frustrated at the moment but having failed to loudly denounce BLM demonstrations. (I’m reasonably sure he’d never heard of the Wet’suwet’en protests prior this thread and wasn’t referencing those.)
Imagine what this is doing to our supply chain, in addition to the havoc already wreaked by COVID. It’s not just the border disruptions, it’s also the trucks in Ottawa. Most of the 450+ trucks there seem to be big rigs of the kind that are used to haul semi-trailers. 450 trucks making life miserable for the residents and businesses in the Ottawa core is also 450 trucks that are not hauling cargo.
Young Trudeau is extremely hesitant to consider military intervention because of the legacy of his father doing so during the October crisis of 1970. That brought strong backlash from certain quarters, although I personally felt it was exactly the right thing to do. It was a genuine civil emergency.
The problem in this situation I think is the more practical one of just what the military could do.
It’s Ford’s call first, JT knows it’s a no win for him to do anything till requested by the Premier. Ain’t gonna happen any time soon, in my opinion. At least not till people start calling it the ‘occupation’ it clearly is.
Ford seems to be trying to tread a fine line between supporting the truckers, who are an important part of his conservative coalition (redneck division) and being genuinely fed up with the chaos and economic damage they’re causing. I’m sure his dearest wish is to just foist the problem off on Trudeau.
A friend sent me this Tweet. It’s from “the residents of Ottawa,” and makes a couple of good points about “not hauling cargo”:
A couple of excerpts. First from the top of the letter:
And it finishes off with this bit of information: