When truckers in Canada were first considering how to protest, they looked at historical precedents for ideas.
During the Vietnam war Buddhist monks poured gasoline on themselves and lit themselves on fire. Self immolation was not acceptable to the truckers (go figure) and the word was too elitist. The government acted by arresting people who brought fuel to the truckers. If they wanted to stay warm, lighting themselves on fire was one of the last ways available so it backfired.
In the US, war protesters burned their draft cards. Truckers considered burning their vaccine passports. However, this backfired as most do not have passports. Those that do had it on their phones and after a few burned their phones, communication suffered so that was nixed.
During women’s Lib, women burned their bras. This would not work because most truckers were men so they considered having women burn their bras and men burn their jockstraps. The truckers and supporters should burn their masks but this was already done in Idaho without success.
Book burning is top of the charts for authoritarians. Modern equivalent is Facebook and Twitter censoring but look for Trudeau to do this because he is decades behind.
BLM protesters burned police precincts and cities. This was unacceptable because Canadians don’t burn cities. Burning flags is an oldy but goody. So too burning government buildings but again this is not a Canadian thing. CNN and Justin Trudeau have been working overtime to come up with ways to disparage the Protesters with little success because they didn’t light anything on fire.
In the end, they decided to have a convoy drive to Ottawa for a picnic and street fair. The result was probably bad for climate change but got some results from provincial governments. Truckers are now concerned that they need to find a new protest if the convoy comes to an end. They need something that will stand against the government emergency decree preferably not burning something (although banks are concerned).
We at DogFacePonia wonder what the next step is. We will attempt an answer soon. The Police Chief of Ottawa has resigned. We can only hope Trudeau will go!
Image From: “Anti Media Convoy, Feb 5th, 2022” (CC BY 2.0) by GoToVan
