In the last couple of weeks, thousands of Trucks were seen passing through the main cities and freeways of the United States.
But let me stop you right here. This convoy of trucks is not bringing any supplies for Americans but they are supplying a special message to the White House. And the message is a simple one-word “FREEDOM”.
This is the reason this convoy is called “Freedom Convoy”.
What did Freedom Truckers demand in Canada?
The “Truck Convoy” also called the “Freedom Convoy” was initially announced in Canada by a group called “Canada Unity”[1]. This group was founded by James Bauder and supported by Tamara Lich and millions of supporters demanding their constitutional democratic freedom values.
The Freedom convoy was seen in all major Canadian Cities including their capital city Ottawa. For several weeks, downtown streets in Canada’s capital have been snarled by a convoy of semis, trucks, trailers, and many other vehicles as protesters rail against COVID-19 restrictions and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
A blockade of hundreds of pickups, thousands of trucks, and uncountable cars had once been seen as the only traffic at the Ambassador Bridge, the busiest border crossing between Canada and the United States. The blockades were also held at two other crossings as well.
Much of it can be tied to anger against Trudeau, a Liberal Party politician who has been prime minister since 2015.
In 2019, well before the current protests, demonstrators drove a convoy of hundreds of trucks from western Canada to Ottawa in opposition to the Trudeau government’s new carbon tax, an environmental measure they said would hurt the oil industry. Many wore yellow vests in solidarity with a French protest movement that same year against perceived economic injustice.
Arrogant Trudeau had called the protesters a “Fringe” who believe in conspiracy theories and wear “Tinfoil Hats” which has only incensed them further.
However, Trudeau who has lectured the largest democracy “India” on the “Farmers Protest” had crushed the “Freedom Convoy” by invoking the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history, empowering police to move against peaceful protesters.
During a three-day operation, Ottawa police deployed pepper spray and stun grenades to disperse crowds, towed away over 70 vehicles, and arrested 191 people, bringing a total of 389 charges against 103 of them.
Trudeau's Government cruelty didn’t stop here. Trudeau administration ordered a freeze on 206 bank and corporate accounts managing millions in funds related to the protests. The RCMP also flagged 253 Bitcoin addresses and forbid local crypto exchanges from facilitating transactions with the accounts.
After throwing a series of brutalities on Canadian Citizens, every citizen of the North American continent has one question
“Is Justin Trudeau a Democratically elected government or a dictator regime”?.
Freedom Convoy Reaches United States
In the first week of March, hundreds of passenger vehicles and trucks snaked up and down Route 17 in Bergen County in New Jersey, honking at the throngs of supporters waving signs at them from overpasses and highway shoulders. The convoy is called the “People Convoy”.
Constitution-loving citizens waved American flags and signs decrying vaccine mandates. Hundreds of people lined overpass bridges and highway shoulders around New Jersey to cheer on a truck and vehicle convoy, part of an organized series of protests around the USA.
“Take the masks off the kids,” said Jason George, a West Paterson resident who watched trucks roll by and planned to join the convoy later. “We really just want to get back to normal.[2]”
Truckers, joined by supporters in cars and SUVs, then zigzagged down Routes 3, 46, and Interstate 80 toward 287, where more supporters gathered in Morristown to cheer them on as they drove past on their way to the New Egypt Speedway in Ocean County, where there was a planned rally.
“We have to have our freedom of choice. This is our last straw,” said Sylvia Schankereli, who held aloft a sign reading “No jab, no mandate” at a gas station on Route 17 in Mahwah Saturday morning.
Republican state Sen. Edward Durr, a career trucker who ousted powerful former Democratic Senate President Stephen Sweeney in an upset election, introduced a resolution supporting the convoy. Durr said the truckers would “send Governor Murphy and President Biden the message that the pandemic is over, it’s time to get back to normal life.
“It’s time to end all of the overbearing mandates that have taken away our rights, choices, and freedoms,” he added.
Peaceful Convoy in Capital City Washington DC
The “People Convoy”, which first departed from Adelanto, Calif., on Feb. 23 had planned to end the demonstration in the Washington area.
Steve Girard, 59, who joined the convoy about five days ago in Indiana with his 1998 white Chevy van, said he felt compelled to join the protest since he wanted to see an end to the Covid-19 vaccine and masking mandates.
While on the road, Mr. Girard said he felt encouraged to see some supporters waving at the group, and he hoped that the demonstration would lead to meetings with lawmakers and the end of the national emergency declaration.
On the first Sunday of March 2022, a long line of huge semi-articulated trucks, recreational vehicles, and cars circled Washington DC, in preparation for what their protesting drivers have pledged to end all coronavirus pandemic-related restrictions.
Although The “People’s Convoy” has its temporary base at a speedway vehicle racing site in Hagerstown which is 80 miles north-west in Maryland all 1,000 vehicles will be driving slowly around Washington on the already notoriously congested Beltway, or ring road, at the minimum legal speed in an attempt to get their message across to the politicians in Capital Hill.
The gathering had a giant American flag slung between cranes attached to the beds of semi-articulated trucks.
At the speedway site, the drivers said their frustrations included workplace vaccine mandates and other pandemic measures. The crowds also chanted anti-Biden slogans and displayed support for Trump.
“I decided to create a Facebook page where I and my buddies could gather to shoot the s**t about the policies that will be implemented if Trump is no longer the president,” StoptheTires2020 (US spelling of tyres) founder Jeremy Riewoldt told The Trucker publication in November 2020.
Most of the vehicles bore license plates from all over the US with many drivers honking their horns.
“We’re not going to shut anything down today. We’re just going to do a convoy so that they can see that we’re in their backyard and that we are huge,” Mr. Brian Brase, one of the organizers said. “We’re doing this to let them know that we are very serious.[3]”
Ron Dimaline, 67, a pastor and retired coal industry worker from Pike County, Ky., started riding in his dump truck with the convoy two days ago. On Sunday morning, he said he had grown frustrated with the rising cost of gas and feared that the United States was drifting toward communism. But anti-Covid measures particularly irritated him.
“Left people alone. If you want to wear a mask, wear a mask,” he said. “I’ll stay away from you.”
People Convoy “A Peaceful Protest”
At Hagerstown, an estimated 1,000 protesters who gathered started their protests by kicking off with a prayer service during which a pastor told them they were “heroes”.
They raised their morning coffees in salute before setting off for the capital.
The truckers heard from organizer Brian Brase who instructed them to drive between 45 and 55 miles per hour and stay in one line on the roads to and around Washington in order to best show the size of the convoy.
“We’re not anti-vaxxers. We’re not. We just want freedom, freedom. We want to choose. We just want the choice. So, this is basically a show of just how big we are and how serious we are.” Brase added that it was not clear how long the protest convoy would last.
Christopher Rodriguez, the director of the District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, said the Protest did not result in NY major disruptions to the city’s transportation routes, although he said that it was a “fluid and unpredictable event[3]“
He further added that the city government was urging residents to prepare for increased traffic levels around the region and said he expected more convoys from across the country to join.
As it was a peaceful march, so no citations were issued, and a Virginia State Police spokeswoman said no tickets were given to members of the convoy.
William Smink, 31, who routinely commutes from Baltimore to Washington for work, said the convoy didn’t have a big impact on him. Mr. Smink, who works for a local TV station, said that while his commute, which typically takes 45 minutes, was derailed by the truckers and ended up taking about an hour, he still made it to work on time.
“For the most part, they were very respectful,” he said. “If there was a big enough space, in between the trucks, they were letting people merge in and out of the lanes. They were just driving well below the speed limit.” He would go about half a mile, he said, and then everybody would slam on their brakes. Then, they would crawl for another mile, and then traffic would pick back up.
Spreading the Message of “True Freedom“
In Hagerstown, Maryland number of drivers from the trucker convoy protest made their way to a private Christian school Thursday to show off their big rigs to the children.
The elementary school was flooded by several popular convoy live streamers who filmed themselves and young students at the Baptist school.
“Oh, these are little kids!” said one of the live streamers upon rolling up. “I thought it would be teenagers and stuff, but these are kindergartners and such.”
The truckers quickly led the children in chants of “Freedom!” as tinny renditions of “It’s a Small World After All” and “Jingle Bells” played over a PA system.
Convoy co-organizer Mike Landis announced plans to stop at the school at their daily meeting “This gentleman has organized some trucks to go over and hang out with the kids,” Landis said. “They’re gonna go over and pay a visit to those kids[4].”
The children were given tours of the trucks and honked the horn, with a long line of kids waiting to get inside the big rigs.
“You’re on YouTube now, you’re famous!” one of the streamers told the kids.
A live streamer trucker who goes by “Sasnak” and has 126,000 subscribers, videoed kids as they clambered into his truck and pulled the horn. “We watch you on YouTube!” one exclaimed.
THE LINEUP OF KIDS WAITING TO GET INTO ONE OF THE PEOPLE’S CONVOY TRUCKS. PHOTO VIA YOUTUBE SCREENSHOT.
Many teachers, students, and parents were elated by the interviews done by the live streamers although the parking lot was drowned out by the cacophony of truck engines, horns, and jake brakes.
At the meeting, organizers called up a member of the crowd who said she was a nurse and read off an anti-vaccine’s speech.
“The people I work with know me as the ‘psycho ivermectin nurse,’ and my husband sometimes jokes and asks if I ‘want a foil hat’ lovingly, and my nurse counterparts in North Carolina yell at me,” she said in her speech.
“When you take your kids to the carnival, you trust the ride operator to take care of your kid. He’s a stranger,” one person wrote. “These truckers are (the) best people out there. I would surely allow my child to ride with them.”
“Freedom rings in the laughter of children,” someone else added.
Trucker’s Peaceful Convoy supported by Senators
Republican senator Ted Cruz had also supported peaceful protest led by truckers and was seen in a Livestream, at the trucker convoy in Hagerstown.
“Ted is sketchy, but at least he showed up,” said one supporter[5].
Cruz, wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses and standing on an improvised stage built on a truck bed, addressed the crowd—a motley crew of truckers, anti-vaxxers, and right-wingers with vague grievances about government overreach—and railed against “petty government tyrants.”
“They ask, ‘What do you want?” Cruz said. “I’m going to put it really simple for the reporters who aren’t that bright or that honest: What the people want here is for the government to leave them the hell alone.”
After his speech, Cruz, riding shotgun in a big rig, helped lead the convoy in its ceremonial loop around the Capital Beltway.
Cruz’s appeared second time within a week sending a clear message to Capitol Hill that the convoy had got face time with the Texas senator. Some of the convoy’s organizers went to Capitol Hill to meet with Sen. Cruz, Sen. Ron Johnson, Rep. Matt Gaetz, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other lawmakers, to discuss their demands.
Why so much Hatred against Truckers Peaceful Protest?
On one hand, the trucker’s protests have been very peaceful in the USA. Minimal traffic disruption has happened during their whole journey, whether at the point, truckers embark on their journey or at Hagerstown Speedway in Maryland where they finally parked their trucks.
Local Commuters and even Law Enforcement Official has given testimony on the Trucker’s Peaceful Protest.
But on other hand, the biased Media Group had very articulated in spitting venomous fodder against these hard-working truckers.
Media Group should not forget that in 2020 when the United States of America was worst hit by the century’s Pandemic “Covid 19”, it was these brave truckers who put their life at risk to bring essential commodities to our doorstep. These brave men also have their family and friends who may at one point have asked them not to drive thousands of miles as they are at high risk of getting a virus on their way as there were no vaccines available at that time but despite all odds, they decided to drive to bring food, medicines and all the mandatory supplies needed not only by the “First Responders” but also to the common man like me and you who may not have contacted Virus spread by China.
Just imagine a situation if these Kind-hearted truckers had decided not to drive when the Pandemic was at its worst in 2020, then America had not only faced a severe medical supply but also a food shortage as store’s aisles would have emptied in a short duration and there is no refilling.
Moreover, Media and Capitol Hill should not forget that these Truckers are as American as them and are using their constitutional rights to protest.
These truckers whom these Media groups are citing as villains are the actual heroes not only in times of emergency but in our daily lives.
[1] Explainer: A look at what’s behind the protests in Canada – nj.com
[2] Hundreds of trucks, vehicles roll through N.J. on ‘freedom convoy’ – nj.com
[3] Trucker Convoy Protesting Covid Mandates Slows Traffic Around Washington – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
[4] Trucker Convoy Casually Discussing Arresting DC Mayor, Cops (vice.com)
[5] Ted Cruz Joins Trucker Convoy, But Not Everyone Is a Fan (vice.com)
[…] the “Freedom Convoy” was initially announced in Canada by a group called “Canada Unity”[1]. This group was founded by James Bauder and supported by Tamara Lich and millions of supporters […]