Navigating a Protest—Feeling Unsafe
Update Sunday January 30th
The original article I wrote is a first-hand account of what I saw in Vancouver when I accidentally got stuck in the convoy while driving to North Vancouver. I cannot speak to what Ottawa was like, only here. I want to take a moment to think about the Ottawa protest to provide more context to Vancouver.
Emboldened racism is terrifying. When did it become okay to fly overt symbols of racism and hate? Never. Was the police presence in Ottawa overtly different for the Idle No More protest? Yes. Is it okay to deface monuments such as the tomb of the unknown soldier and the Terry Fox monument? Absolutely not. Here is the extent of protest euphoria and mob mentality. One protester probably thought ‘Terry would have been with us because he fought for Canada’…and that became everyone starting to add things to his monument. Terry fought for a cancer free world and science. He would have been appalled. Emboldened racism and mob mentality are driving Ottawa.
I have also had time since yesterday to look at the people who started the original protest that headed to Ottawa. White nationalists and anti-vaxxers playing on peoples emotions helped start it all. Capturing frustration and exhaustion leading to a GoFundMe that has hit six million dollars. The power of tapping into fears with ideas that sound just reasonable enough to tired and frustrated people to build a movement. Our Fundamental Freedoms guarantee our right to peaceful assembly and expression. And people are frustrated…and scared. I am just worried about what is at the core.
Our country is deeply divided. Families are on opposite sides and fighting. The rhetoric is thick and hard to move through. Untying the people protesting the mandates, from the people being overtly racist and talking about toppling the government in this protest is challenging. The ideas are interwoven and growing in size.
There are fears of violence in Ottawa as mob mentality takes over. I don’t know what today will bring or how we can even start a dialogue—but we must. Talking over each other does nothing. The size of the group in Ottawa and the parallel protests all across the country has exposed molten rock. The question becomes, will our country be incinerated, or will it harden to glassy obsidian and allow us to reflect something beautiful?
As a teacher, I talk about current events. I am sure you do as well. So, will you be talking about the convoy in Ottawa this week? The convoy, which now includes people flying the confederate flag and swastikas… The convoy that raised six million dollars through a GoFundMe the same week 90 more graves were announced at a former residential school in BC. Six million…imagine what that could do to support IRSS or MMIW or food banks…or mental health causes.
I am not here to argue the merits of this protest, I want to look at it through the lens of our Fundamental Freedoms as guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Today, while sitting in the passenger seat while driving to North Vancouver, I accidentally got caught in the protest convoy moving from Chilliwack to Vancouver and back again. I want to talk about why I felt unsafe, even though I was in my vehicle and my husband was driving.
The Fundamental Freedoms
What are our four Fundamental Freedoms? In case you haven’t looked at our charter in awhile, here is a review:
Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.
I am going to focus on B and C in my discussion today.
Freedom of expression includes any attempts to convey meaning. We often think of this as freedom of speech. Expression can include words, images, videos etc. This convoy as a whole was trying to express frustration and then each individual vehicle as well as the people on the overpasses were sharing their own messages. This freedom does not include acts of violence or threats of violence.
Freedom of peaceful assembly guarantees the rights for Canadians to gather to express ideas. It is very closely linked to freedom of expression. The ‘peaceful’ part means that breaches of peace such as riots are not protected under the fundamental freedom. Driving through the protest today and reading the arguments on social media, it feels like this could easily move from peaceful assembly, to something more. Given that we just hit the two year anniversary of the first case of Covid-19 in BC and that emotions are running high on all sides, it feels very uncertain in our country.
Freedom of Expression: What had me worried?
Being stuck in the convoy was a bit nerve-wracking. The constant honking, changing lanes at erratic times, and visual distractions such as large flags put me on edge. I appreciated that all vehicles in the convoy had their hazards on and that at several points police vehicles were on the side of the road, trying to keep everyone safe.
Sure some of the signs weren’t eloquent—F*ck Trudeau—but I realize that a certain phrase seems to have become a battle cry for this protest. And, some signs didn’t make sense—Trust science not masks—but that is not offensive, just hard to understand. I did however observe dangerous behaviour and witness threats of violence in messages. These are the pieces I want to share with you.
Unsafe Behaviour
Hanging out of Vehicles: Several of the vehicles had the back windows down with people sitting on the windowsill. These people were reaching out yelling and waving flags. During a slow parade, this might be safe, but the drivers were going 30-70 kilometres per hour. Vehicles were swerving around to try to stay away from the people. I hope no one fell out of their vehicles.
2. Waving Flags from Divers Side: Many of the vehicles had Canadian flags attached. Some had F*uck Trudeau flags, a few had American, and even one Mexican flag. I have no problem with flags during a peaceful protest. Here is what worried me, several of the people had LARGE flags on LARGE flag poles that they were waving while driving. Some looked very out of control and vehicles were swerving to not hit the flags. It was hard enough for my husband to focus through the honking, the strange lane changes, and vehicles moving at different speeds—I cannot imagine also trying to focus on keeping a flag waving while experiencing the euphoria of being part of a protest. It felt unsafe. I hope no one was impaled or if the people lost the flag, they did not try to stop their vehicles to pick it up.
3. Drivers on Phones: So many drivers I passed were filming. Some were like the person in the photo above filming the convoy and yelling out the window. Others had the phones facing inward and were actively narrating their participation in the convoy. What was even more infuriating is that most of the people filming had people in the PASSENGER side. That means, the passengers could have been filming, instead of the driver. Not only were these people filming being dangerous, they were also breaking the distracted driving laws in BC.
Threats of Violence/Horrific Messaging
Vaccine =Rape: This was painted in large letters on the back of a vehicle. Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out on a person. It involves violence, threat, and force. Vaccine mandates are stopping people from entering certain businesses and travelling. As someone who knows rape victims and has been raped herself, let me tell you, those are very different. Very. People may not like the vaccine mandate and have the right to protest that, but the comparison to rape is not equivalent and can be incredibly harmful for people still living in the trauma of being raped.
An effigy of Tredeau being hung: I kid you not. This breaks our freedom of expression because it is a threat of violence towards someone, specifically the Prime Minister of Canada. I was so in shock, I didn’t take a photo. I passed a pickup truck with a full body effigy that had Trudeau’s face on it hanging from a noose on gallows surrounded by vile scrawling. I talked with my husband and we decided to phone the non-emergency line to report that. We were able to let the RCMP know where on the convoy it could be found. Peaceful protest = okay. Threats to life through an effigy of the Prime Minister being hung = not okay.
Demographics: Sample size of 100
So sometimes I get car sick. I also have anxiety. I also am curious. My curiosity allowed me to collect data on the demographics of the convoy. I hit a sample size of 100 vehicles before my anxiety and nausea won out over my curiosity. So what was the demographic make-up of my sample?
98/100 Caucasian
90/100 male divers and/or cars filled with males
60/100 males drivers over ~50
This super unofficial survey means nothing without some context. The table below is pulled from the Canadian government official website from he 2016 census for the GVRD. The left-hand column is total number followed by male/female. We won’t even get into the fact that only two genders are included in this response and simply focus on the numbers. Of the respondents, just over half identified English as their mother tongue. This means that in my sample size, if this protest represented the people living in the GVRD, at least half would have been non-caucasian. I know looking at languages is not a perfect approximation of diversity, but it is at least a starting point.
We can also talk about how protests are self-selected with bias for the people who feel the most impacted by what they are fighting against. For this reason, it shouldn’t matter the diversity within the protest because the people who felt impacted and like they need to stand up for themselves might be disproportionately represented in the demonstration. This is true of many protests.
When the group that is disproportionately represented is a group that already has many levels of privilege (caucasian, male, older), it makes me reflect on the reasons behind the protest and what we can do to help people come together as a nation.
My sample size was not huge (100), but it was decent. I didn’t count the people standing on the overpasses, because, well we were driving and it was fast. I know my sample population might not be perfect, but even I was surprised by my results.
This issue of vaccines, pandemic mandates, and fear has been building for two years. People are having a harder time talking to each other and really listening. I don’t have a solution, but I am thinking about how I can talk respectfully to people I don’t agree with.
Final Thoughts
The Fundamental Freedoms in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms are important. We need to have freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. My problem with the protest today was not with the majority, it was will the people stepping over the line of freedom of expression and safety.
I didn’t feel safe until I was well past the vehicles in the protest. The feeling of uncontrolled euphoria was unmistakeable. I felt it when marching after the Iraq war was declared, but I also saw it during the Stanley Cup Riots. There is a fine line between violence and peace.
The trucker convoy, the supporting protests within cities, the millions of dollars raised, and the messages being shared speaks to a deep divide. It speaks to people tired and holding out for something because they want to get back to the life they are missing. It speaks to a deep distrust of the people in charge. Even if we don’t agree with the messaging, every single Canadian is feeling the exhaustion.
So how do we start to heal? How do we learn how to speak to each other and work together to get passed this pandemic, so we can focus on other crisis in our country? MMIW, unmarked graves at residential schools, the opioid crisis, and child poverty are just a few that I can think of that are pertinent to BC.
I suppose we start from a place of compassion. A place where we can listen to each other—not attack—listen to try to understand the frustrations so we can address them. This is something teachers do every single day. Maybe we need a few more educators to help navigate hard discussions respectfully while trying to come up with equitable solutions.