It Could Happen Here - Canadian ‘Freedom Convoy’ Part 1: Origins of the Occupation

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

How can a truck convoy turn into a full scale city occupation? In part one we dive into the initial organizing efforts and how what happened during the first weekend of protest laid the groundwork for the ongoing occupation. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hundreds of truckers continue to roll east, and with more joining the movement with each passing city, feelings towards vaccine mandates have heightened. I advocate civil war.

If people don't want to stand up, we've got guns. We'll stand up and we'll bring them out. Let's get pumped for this. Let's go to Ottawa. I want to see one of those truckers. I wouldn't be surprised. Not none of our guys, obviously. But I would like to see our own January 6th event. See some of those truckers plow right through that 16-foot wall. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, or in this case, It Did Happen Here, slash Is Still Happening Here, and the here in this case being Canada in recent weeks. The idea of only a few thousand people totally choking a major city, holding it hostage to bargain for political demands,

while overwhelming and getting a foot up on law enforcement, taking over and shutting down a sizable portion of a popular metropolitan area, and simultaneously blocking off supply lines, trade routes, and multiple international off supply lines, trade routes, and multiple international border crossings is exactly the kind of thing this podcast has been talking about for years as a potential anti-government resistance tactic that could become more common as political tensions rise in North America specifically. A few weeks ago, when the so-called trucker convoy was still in its planning stages, I wasn't super eager to cover it on the pod, actually.

I assumed it would be a flop and just another dumb anti-COVID protest in a long line of anti-COVID protests happening in Canada. Flash forward to me at the end of January, and it became apparent that I was sorely mistaken, and this thing was shaping up to be a significant factor in Canada's political ecosystem going forward. In my haste to catch up to the moment, I recorded two episodes with the wonderful journalist Dan Cullen, explaining the situation as it was at the prospective times of recording.

But as the tensions in Ottawa and all across Canada arose, and the situation gained more and more complexity, I decided that the convoy and subsequent blockades required a more researched and scripted deep dive. The more I dug into the situation, the more it seemed to embody the exact thing I was warning about in my two previous scripted episodes about Canada and the far right, titled Canadian Fascism, eh? Apologies for the title, but you can find those if you scroll through the It Could Happen Here feed. I think they came out around, like, November-ish of 2021. What I wanted to get across in those episodes is that Canada is often seen as an escape

from the more divisive, violent, and fascist elements of US politics and culture. But just like climate change, capitalism, or any other enveloping force, cough-cough hyper-objects, cough-cough, fascism and the slide towards it can never be truly escaped, right? There is no other, there is no away, and it's especially hard to see it when it's growing on the back of your own head. Primarily through Islamophobia, far-right ethno-nationalist tendencies have been bubbling under the surface of Canada for a long while. And since Trudeau has taken office in 2015, there has been a perfect politically-allowed boogeyman to blame every problem onto.

blame every problem onto. That can include everything from Trudeau is taking away our oil and gas jobs, or Trudeau is bringing in Muslim terrorists to Canada, or Trudeau is starving your children through health mandates. Canadian right-wing protest has been steadily growing the past five years. There's been multiple flare-ups of far-right rhetoric with the Canadian Yellow Vests, the Western Separatist Wegxit or Western Exit Movement, and the pseudo-fascist People's Party of Canada. The incorporation of pandemic conspiracies and anti-vaccine sentiments into the already disaffected rural Canadian right-wingers, starting in 2020 and continuing to the present, has accelerated not only the conspiratorial far-right rhetoric among conservative voters, but also what is seen as valid political action in those people's

eyes. But before we get into how the convoy started, with anger concerning COVID-19 health mandates and misinformation concerning empty store shelves, we have to first go back in time to even before the COVID-19 virus was a blip on anyone's radar. In February 2019, the Canadian Yellow Vests organized something called the United We Roll Convoy. The result was around 170 trucks driving cross-country through the more liberal east to Ottawa. The result was around 170 trucks driving from the West, cross-country, to the more Liberal East, and eventually to Ottawa. The goal was to represent the concerns of disenfranchised oil and gas workers in the Western provinces, and their opposition to proposed environmental and new energy policies.

Yellow Vests Canada was largely founded by individuals already associated with Canada's far right, which at the time was primarily united through anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia. Inspired by the French Yellow Vest movement, they copied their aesthetics and adopted new grievances and reactionary rhetoric that would get them a much larger audience. By the time United We Roll arrived in Ottawa, the media started to catch on to the more problematic elements about their organization. Neo-Nazi Faith Goldie spoke on a stage. Many members of hate groups responded in attendance, and with numbers so low, it made their more extreme participants stick out. Instead of focusing the message on oil and gas, as they claimed to

represent Western alienation from a distant liberal Ottawa, some of its participants seemed more interested in protesting Ottawa's immigration policies than arguing for specific fixes for Alberta's oil patch. Plus, if you peeked inside any Canadian Yellow Vest Facebook group, you would be flooded with hundreds of examples of explicit anti-Muslim racism and calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's arrest and execution, a theme that remains common among COVID conspiracy demonstrations today. But at the end of it, United We Roll was widely considered a bust,

with only a few hundred participants in Ottawa, and despite raising almost $150,000, the organizers failed to disclose how much of that money was actually spent on convoy expenses like gas and food. Afterwards, the Yellow Vests Canada movement started to kinda die out, though some holdouts kept smaller demonstrations going for months, particularly in the conservative oil province of Alberta. But to us now, United We Rule can be seen as a small test run for the current situation in 2022. In fact, it shares many of the same organizers and even the same promotional materials.

Except this time, they have the added weight of many more people radicalized into conspiracism throughout the pandemic and much more funding. So with that in mind, let's dive into the components of the initial organizing effort. On January 14th, 2022, a GoFundMe account was set up for a so-called trucker convoy, ahead of the January 15th adoption of the mandate requiring all cross-border transportation drivers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Vaccine mandates in Canada have been in effect since October 30th for ship crews, railways, and airline workers. But effective January 15th, the federal government expanded the requirement to truck drivers returning from the States, and those who remain unvaccinated will not be able to enter Canada without quarantine. One week later, a reciprocal policy

went into effect in the United States for Canadian truckers crossing into their border, which means going forward, you cannot really cross the border at all while remaining unvaccinated. At this point in mid-January, a majority of Canadians still broadly supported health mandates aimed at limiting the spread of COVID. But a big part of the early propaganda push for the convoy was photos alleged to have been from current Canadian grocery stores, which they were not, with barren, empty shelves. The idea was that COVID restrictions were already severely impacting the supply line, and any additional mandates would begin to starve the population and effectively shut down international trade. Put a note in this idea, by the way. It will come up later. Ideas for another truck convoy like United We Roll have been tossed around for

a while online, and with this new mandate on truckers and vaccines, a time presented itself to give the convoy idea another go. In the early truck convoy organizing, there were primarily four familiar far-right faces working together to set things up, None of whom are truck drivers, by the way. The originally listed organizers on the GoFundMe page were Tamara Litch and BJ Ditcher. Both have notable experience with far right organizing. Tamara Litch was born in my home province of Saskatchewan, but now hails from the town of Medicine Hat, Alberta, where she served as an organizer for Yellow Vests Canada, a regional coordinator for the separatist Western Exit, or Wexit, movement in Alberta,

and now the secretary for the Maverick Party, another far-right extremist separatist movement and fringe political party. Litch started attending and boosting Yellow Vest events starting in 2018, and her social media posts from around the time show in one moment calling out some hateful rhetoric from within the movement, while also posting Islamophobic articles of her own and conspiracies about the Muslim Brotherhood operating in Canada. A few days after the GoFundMe was created, Benjamin B.J. Ditcher, one-time Conservative Party of Canada candidate, People's Party of Canada booster, and co-founder of a Canadian far-right podcast network, appeared as a cool organizer on the

GoFundMe page. In 2019, he claimed that Islamist entryism is rotting away our society like syphilis. Benjamin Ditcher was also one of the first people to give a speech at the first proto-fascist People's Party of Canada conference in Quebec, saying that the Conservative Party of Canada is suffering from the stench of cultural relativism and political Islam, and a whole bunch of stuff, you know, in that general vein. James Botter was another one of the four key organizers of the trucker convoy to Ottawa. Botter is an admitted conspiracy theorist who has endorsed QAnon and called COVID the biggest political scam in history. He's also a former activist with

the Yellow Vests Canada and United We Roll. Botter's main project, however, is running the Canada Unity website, which is one of the original nexus points for organizing and spreading word about this convoy. The group contends that vaccine mandates and passports are illegal under Canada's constitution, the Nuremberg Code, and a host of other international conventions. Botter has long been a fringe figure, but his movements started picking up steam and support as announcements and continuations of restrictions aimed at curbing COVID-19 spread have continued. The supposed plight of the truckers proved to be a sympathetic cause on Facebook and attracted an array of fellow travelers.

The last big major player is Patrick King, another former Yellow Vestor, one-time major figure in the Wexit movement, as well as United We Roll. On January 18th, 2022, Pat King hosted a live stream for James Botter to promote the Canada Unity website and to announce it as the official page for the Freedom Trucker Convoy, or as they called it, Operation Bear Hug. King is a conspiracy theorist and popular streamer that attracts the audience farther right than Canada's usual conservatives. King's made headlines for drumming up fear and then following through with his supporters with violence at rallies put on by BLM and Antifa. King's also known for spreading what are basically neo-Nazi talking points,

and I'm just going to quote from an article by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network here, because they did a great job tracking his past extremism. Quote, In the past, King has gone on record about his feelings on the Anglo-Saxon replacement that plans to, quote, flood Canada with refugees and subvert the education system, which is a thin rebranding of the great replacement theory touted by ethno-nationalists. of the Great Replacement Theory touted by ethno-nationalists. At other points, King has expressed overtly racist and anti-Semitic statements. In a 2019 stream about the then-upcoming federal election,

King complained that he had to leave the movement due to their lack of success, saying, quote, the election won't matter unless you want to change your national language to Chinese or Mandarin or Hebrew. He then went on to compare Chinese names to the sound of change falling downstairs. He has publicly distorted facts about the Holocaust, a form of Holocaust denial, saying, I do know that the Holocaust was reduced to 1.5 million and not the 6 million that it was said to be. He then invoked the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people are secretly in control of world governance, media, and finances,

saying, quote, the questions that have been asked several times to the ADL and to the Jewish government and communities. We have Jewish world bankers who are dictating our government policies and controlling our politicians, unquote. So yeah, considering King's history of saying blatantly fascist things, some organizers and convoy supporters tried to distance King from the Freedom Convoy movement to not damage the initial fundraising effort. The controversy around King resulted in a statement being released onto the fundraising page saying, King is not and has never been affiliated with our movement, nor has he been a part of our great team of volunteers. The update was afterwards deleted, and then King claimed in a video that the statement

was a public relations move because he was being attacked online. For a while, King was still listed as the Northern Alberta contact for the western portion of the convoy. So those are the four people that laid the organizing groundwork that spawned this entire thing and put it into motion.

But what made this convoy different from United We Roll 1.0 is the almost two years of COVID isolation, which has given ample time for groups like the Yellow Vests and extreme far-right groups to completely fold into the rapidly growing anti-vax and COVID conspiracy movement in Canada. And along with that, using people's seething hatred of Justin Trudeau to radicalize thousands and thousands of people online to getting them more comfortable with the idea of participating in political protest.

It's really important to mention that the protests are not organized by Canadian trucking unions or really Canadian truckers. The largest trucking unions have come out against the protests are not organized by Canadian trucking unions or really Canadian truckers. The largest trucking unions have come out against the protests, and they do not appear to reflect the values of most Canadians or most Canadian truckers. More than 80% of the Canadian public is vaccinated, including almost 90% of truckers, according to Canada's Minister of Transport. The Canadian Trucking Alliance issued a statement saying it does not support and strongly disapproves of any protests on public roads, highways, or bridges. The Canadian Trucking Alliance president said in the joint statement with the ministers of labor and transport that the government of Canada and the Canadian Trucking Alliance both agree that vaccination, used in combination with preventative health measures,

is the most effective tool to reduce the risk of COVID-19 for Canadians and to protect public health. According to the Canadian Trucking Alliance, the mandate could impact around 12,000 to 16,000 Canadian commercial drivers, which is just about 10 to 15 percent of the industry's cross-border drivers. During the pandemic, repeated polls have shown that a majority of Canadians support public health measures to contain the pandemic. But the number of Canadians who would like to see restrictions end has risen in recent weeks. With Omicron cases on the decline, some provinces are starting to remove restrictions and requirements. The public sentiment appears to be moving in the direction of opening up communities.

in the direction of opening up communities. Throughout the last two weeks of January, the number of Canadians saying that they would like to see restrictions end has risen by 15 percentage points, to a majority of 54%. Demonstrations have found a way to tap into pandemic fatigue among Conservatives across the country after months of lockdown. More than two-thirds of Canadians have said they have very little in common with how the Ottawa protesters see things, but 32% say that they have a lot in common, according to a recent survey conducted by a Canadian research firm. Welcome, I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Though the idea of vaccine mandates for Canadian truckers kind of prompted what turned into this convoy, very quickly it became a general battle cry against pandemic restrictions as a whole and the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Unlike 2019's United We Roll, the Freedom Convoy Against Health Mandates was able to successfully capitalize on Western feelings of neglect and isolation from the ruling liberal elite in the East and in the capital of Ottawa. The right ingredients at the right time flung the Trucker Freedom Convoy into the conservative zeitgeist. The original GoFundMe page set up on January 14th to financially support convoy participants was able to raise $10 million in just under three weeks. As the truck convoy idea picked up steam, the first expected wave of attendees were planned to arrive in Ottawa on

Saturday, January 29th. Vehicles started rolling in a few days prior, throughout Thursday and the Friday night before the big day on the 29th. And as Saturday the 29th came, the numbers of trucks and protest participants greatly exceeded the initial the numbers of trucks and protest participants greatly exceeded the initial expected numbers that I and many other people had figured, while obviously falling short of the heavily mocked 50,000 truckers prediction made by some convoy supporters. While writing these episodes, I talked with Paul, a citizen of Ottawa who's been living inside the occupied zone since the 29th of January. And this is what he had to say about expectations leading up to the convoy's arrival. There was at least a week

of lead up where it was about all we heard about. So from when they sort of declared their intention to come down to when they started rallying in BC and in the West and coming across, there was an anticipation that something was going to happen and you know people around here because like where i'm sitting right now is less than a kilometer from parliament hill and directly in between two of the streets that they've blocked off sort of on the way into town you know we were nervous but we kind of were just sort of assuming it was going to be a one day affair. It was going to be small at first, but then you heard, I mean, nobody believed the, the 50,000

trucks and the, like, that was it. I mean, to put it in perspective, the numbers that they were claiming were on their way here, um, are larger than the entire population of the city by like a couple hundred thousand people. So that, that didn likely but you know when we were hearing that 30 to 40 000 when we heard about multiple convoys with you know 100 to 200 trucks like that was when it was like okay this isn't going to be great so people start arriving on what, Friday, Saturday? The first group started rolling to town on Thursday night. They were small in numbers. They didn't really start blocking anything off because there just weren't enough of them. But you could hear the horns starting on Thursday night.

And I think some of them were going into hotels. They were smaller groups too, mostly from sort of local groups. Um, they were smaller groups too, uh, mostly from sort of local groups. Um, and then around 10 or 11 in the morning on Friday, um, we started hearing reports at a Kingston, which is about an hour ish away, an hour and a half, um, that there was a group moving out of there. So around one o'clock in the afternoon, Friday, the first group started to arrive and started to congregate downtown. And one of the things about Ottawa is, um, it's a lot like a lot of big downtowns. It's a lot of

one-way streets. So the moment you get the trucks starting to get into intersections or near intersections, you're blocking off all passage in certain directions. So they started blocking off the northbound really quickly just because that's how they were coming in. And there's only like three gas stations downtown as well, which kind of plays a big factor in the routes that they took. So they all passed by, especially the passenger cars that were running low, passed by and through that way. And yeah, by about two or three o'clock in the afternoon,

everything south of Somerset, which is about a kilometer and a half from Parliament, was pretty much jammed at that point. As Saturday night came, much of the group, supporters and truckers alike, spent that time partying late into the night as heavily backed up traffic continued to effectively shut down roads and large areas of the city around Parliament. Throughout the weekend, businesses in the surrounding areas that did not close ahead of the protest were swarmed by customers, many refusing to wear masks. A local homeless shelter and soup kitchen was harassed by convoy participants who were turned away from restaurants

after refusing to wear a mask. A large number of the convoy attendees surrounded the shelter, demanding to be fed by the facility staff. According to the shelter's president, convoy participants assaulted a client of the shelter and hurled racial slurs at a security guard who attempted to intervene. Workers and volunteers at the shelter noted that parked vehicles blocked the shelter, making it difficult for ambulances to reach the facility and for staff to assist community members in need. A home in the downtown area was pelted with rocks and snow,

as well as vandalized with human feces, all for showing a pride flag in their window. The operations commander for the Ottawa Paramedic Service said that an ambulance was pelted with rocks and paramedics checking the damage were called racial slurs by convoy participants. Ottawa paramedics have since requested police escorts, citing safety concerns. More public backlash was prompted after reports surfaced of a monument dedicated to commemorating Terry Fox being covered in protest signs and being staged to hold an upside-down Canadian flag. No arrests remained Saturday night related to the convoy, but as the convoy stuck around even past the weekend, there was this growing feeling of

downtown residents that they had been abandoned by the city and law enforcement, with the whole situation and response to the situation making them afraid to leave their homes. I asked Paul what his experience on the first weekend of the occupation was and the general feeling in the area of downtown Ottawa. And you're living like right in the middle of this. How much has this affected like your day-to-day life and all like your neighbors and stuff like what what what are you able to do and not do at this point well it's the weekend was was especially bad and we're all kind of bracing for what this weekend's going to be because that's when you had just you know there were between somewhere between 10 and 15 to 18 000 people is the estimates i've heard heard all crowding downtown in the streets. So at that point, I mean, that was when the police were telling people not to wear a mask out

because, you know, you're kind of putting yourself at risk. Because you'll be targeted for violence. Yeah. So, I mean, I was like basically any time I've left the house. So we have a mask mandate still in effect in Ottawa. So you have to wear them indoors pretty much everywhere. So I have to wear it in my building. I have to wear it at the convenience store. If I'm going to go by, say, you know, a pack of cigarettes, I'm not going to take it off. It's a 30-second walk.

And so the harassment around that started on Friday. And then it just became anyone who was out and about that didn't look like they were part of it. Started getting hassled. Other people I know who live in the area, especially women, have been targeted a great deal. Anyone who's part of the LGBTQ community has been... It's just not safe to be out on the streets, and it's not really safe to show that you don't support what they're doing at points. Since the convoy started arriving in Ottawa, the extreme elements of the protests have been pretty visible. Among the thousands of attendees were recognizable members of white nationalist hate groups, neo-Nazi and confederate flags were seen flying, QAnon logos were emblazoned on trucks, and signs and stickers were pasted on telephone

poles around the occupied area, bearing Trudeau's face reading, The official line from original convoy organizers, minus Pat King of course, however, has tried to remain focused. In a Facebook live broadcast, James Botter of Canada Unity instructed his supporters to stop talking about the vaccine and instead stick to messages of freedom. The goal of adopting a more restricted and relatable protest cause is to hopefully drum up more widespread support and validity. And it initially worked in some ways and not in others. Numerous members of the Conservative Party have come out to meet protesters, especially throughout the first few days. Now- Now former Conservative Party leader Aaron O'Toole met with convoy participants, albeit away from the main protest site. Both People's Party

of Canada leader Maxine Bernier and Ontario member of Provincial Parliament and leader of the de facto Ontario arm of the PPC, Randy Healer, who has made many recent anti-Semitic comments, both gave speeches on Saturday the 29th in front of the Parliament building. People like Elon Musk and Donald Trump have both endorsed the convoy, and Fox News has been endlessly broadcasting glowing updates of the convoy since its arrival in Ottawa. According to the convoy participants and organizers, they are vowing to camp out in front of the Parliament until their demands of dropping all COVID-19 health measures are met. While stated grievances can be broader and more vast on the ground,

the current Memorandum of Understanding, posted on the Canada Unity website, which collected over 30,000 signatures, served as a sort of bargaining pitch between the convoy and the Canadian government. The Memorandum of Understanding, or the MOU, calls on Canada's appointed senators and Canada's governor general, the representative of Queen Elizabeth II in Canada's constitutional monarchy, to abolish all COVID-19-related restrictions and to allow all unvaccinated workers whose employment was terminated because of vaccine mandates to get their jobs back. James Botter, the guy who runs Canada Unity, insisted to his followers that the MOU would force the government's hand and possibly even trigger fresh elections, if enough people signed. Another Canada Unity

organizer went further, saying it would require the Senate to go after the Prime Minister for corruption and fascism. Which, of course, there's no legal basis for any of these claims around the MOU, but, you know, that doesn't really matter in the end, because people still believe it, so it's going to have an impact on what they do. The more controversial Pat King laid out an alternative, however, a more direct plan of action to the occupiers. In a January Facebook livestream, King said that, What we want to focus on is our politicians, their houses, their locations. If political pressure doesn't work, blocking major supply chains will be later on.

So, more on that idea later. After the first weekend of protests turned occupations, GoFundMe released a reported $1 million of the total $10 million raised for the convoy. As the end of the weekend approached, many convoy participants who rolled into the nation's capital began heading home, and the highways on Sunday night saw no shortage of vehicles heading away from Ottawa, with their protest signs and flags still in tow. But plenty of people stuck around to continue the fight. Thousands and thousands of people and hundreds of vehicles, including a fleet of semi-trucks, commercial vehicles,

RV campers, and regular cars, were more than enough to keep the roads in a large portion of Ottawa around Parliament effectively shut down. I can't help but draw comparisons to the fear-mongering narrative of BUSFULS OF ANTIFA! You know, protesters coming from out of town into places they don't live, terrorizing locals, shutting down cities. You know, the other comparison is to, like, the CHOP or the CHAZ in Seattle was taking over a large portion of the city and how that was

so vilified. Except, you know, this is so much bigger and impactful than anything so-called Antifa or the Black Lives Matter protests have ever done, especially in Canada. In terms of actually impacting the functionality of a city and restricting the local, national, and international capitalist trade, the Freedom Convoy has done everything and more its proponents warned that Antifa was going to do to Canada. Antifa was going to do to Canada. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Obviously, part of the reason the convoy protest was able to get to this point is not just because of its large size, but also the initial hands-off approach by police that allowed the convoy participants the opportunity to get a strong foothold within the city. The difference in initial law enforcement reaction to the protest convoy, made up of largely, you know, conservative, middle-class white Canadians, compared to other

protests like, you know, the Black Lives Matter protests, or say, the RCMP's typical response to First Nations protests and blockades defending their land. The comparisons cannot be overanalyzed. You know, the latter two forms of protest I mentioned actually do challenge societal power structures that prop up white Canada, while as this convoy protest does not, and instead plays into those very power structures. That dynamic played a major role in how the police handled, or didn't handle, the first few days of the protest, in which, during those early days, the convoy attendees were free to build infrastructure that resulted in the protest escalating into a full-scale occupation. declared a state of emergency. But at that point, Ottawa police thought it was already too late for the protest to be ended by sheer force, without vastly increasing the likelihood of severe damage and life-threatening outcomes to the convoy participants, police officers, and regular

citizens of Ottawa. On February 2nd, Ottawa Police Chief Peter Soli explicitly said that there may not be a police solution to ending the convoy and occupation. There are similar demonstrations taking place in many other parts of this country, indeed many other parts around this continent and the world. What happens here affects there. What happens there affects here. We have seen in the last 24 hours attempts by other police in other jurisdictions to do just what you have suggested.

They were not effective and they created additional safety issues, potential life-threatening safety issues. I have great compassion for those that have been significantly affected, if not traumatized, and we know, criminally victimized. We will do everything we can to hold those who've done that to account. We'll continue arresting and charging people as we have been. But any action taken without understanding the totality of the context, the totality of the risk, would be irresponsible. We're trying to be responsible, lawful, ethical, and measured. My last comment when I wrapped up, I'll share again now. The longer this goes on, the more I'm convinced there may not be a police solution to this demonstration.

demonstration. There are police chiefs, commissioners across this country that are dealing with demonstrations that are starting, underway, and significantly advanced. This is a national issue, not an Ottawa issue. From the start, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been playing down the notion of a military response to the ongoing Ottawa protest. During the first week, he said that sending in troops is not in the cards right now. During the first week, he said that sending in troops is not in the cards right now. On February 2nd, the Ottawa police chief said that all options are on the table, including eventually calling in the military, but one must be very, very cautious about deploying troops in Canadian soil in such cases. Trudeau said at a news conference in early February that it's not something that anyone should enter into lightly. With police basically leaving the Ottawa residents who live near and within the convoy occupation

to fend for themselves, I was curious what sorts of things the local community might be doing to live around this massive conspiracy-filled group of reactionary out-of-town campers. What sort of things has the community been doing to kind of help survive this this like uh has there been like mutual aid projects in the neighborhood to help support other neighbors you know that sort of thing there have um it's actually been kind of wonderful the way the community has been coming together um especially after two years of pandemic where we've all been kind of like ottawa and ontario have been one of the more restricted jurisdictions in North America. I mean, and I say this as a restaurant manager, like in my opinion, rightly so, like it's

about keeping people safe. We've done a fairly good job of that by and large. But the thing is that, you know, our community hasn't felt a lot like a community in a while. And this week, I mean, one of the few positives has been both individuals and organizations. So, I mean, Rose and some of the other organizations that were mentioned on Friday have done a great job. There's also been some really, really great organic organizing coming out of some activists as well as just people in the community. So there's a few Discord servers set up right now. So there's been a huge issue with people with disabilities and the elderly getting groceries because deliveries aren't possible downtown.

So it started on Twitter, but there's been an organization set up to help people get those groceries, whether it's a cost issue or just a physical delivery issue. People are ensuring that that's happening. As of today, there's going to be a Safe Walks program. Well, there's two. There's one on Discord where it's people offering to, you know, make sure you can get through the space safe. Today though, in a positive and more passive sense, we kind of started taking the streets back. So we had about four or five groups of people ranging from 10 to 50, just walking the streets

and not confronting anybody, not getting into any direct engagement, just going out to show that we can still walk on our streets and letting our you know our our neighbors know that we can actually be together and you know stand up just to be together which is a something that i think a lot of people have lost over the last week i mean like the fact that that's even a big step is showing how tired the situation is. The fact that just getting to that point where walking around in a group where you feel safe is like a big thing. That, yeah, that's like a really interesting and horrible indicator of what the mood has been like there for people like living in this area. That is, yeah, that is a big part of it.

And it's something that was actually talked about a lot today, which was how refreshing it was to be able to do it, but also that it shouldn't feel radical to take a safe walk in your community, but it somehow did. Yeah. And it speaks a lot to the feelings, the lack of safety or the loss of safety in this community and has been pretty immense. I should mention that another community-led effort to deal with the occupation is the Ram Ranch Resistance, a loosely organized counter-movement to the trucker convoy that started with people joining the convoy's online communications channels

and blasting the homoerotic country song Ram Ranch. lasting the homoerotic country song Ram Ranch. The song is by a Canadian artist and features some flawless lyrics like The result is not only making the convoy folks uncomfortable because gay, but also it is hijacking and making their online communications channels kind of useless for any non-cowboy, cock-sucking, political organizing efforts. Disruptive resistance to the convoy's online communications is not just limited to the Ram Ranch song, however. Other vulgar songs have also been introduced into the chats as well. I'm going to just kind of give you a brief look at what it's like inside these chats.

Right? I'm gonna roleplay it. The Ram Ranch guys are finally gone. It's about freaking time. I've had to shut that stuff off, one person has heard saying in a clip from a chat. Immediately followed by a robotic voice saying, Welcome to the cum zone. Only cum inside anime girls. Quivering clit, double-jointed pussy, fresh balls. Since then, the movement has taken on something of a life of its own. The Ram Ranch Resistance hashtag has been used as a way for people to share information regarding the convoy,

and Welcome to the Ram Ranch signs have been popping up at convoy counter-protests around the country. Another Ram Rancher created the website ramranch.ca, linking to downtown organizations that have been impacted by the trucker convoy, as well as charities aiding indigenous peoples. As the convoy settled in, it appeared that the demonstrators and the government had reached a sort of stalemate. Currently there are more than 400 trucks parked downtown, and Ottawa police say that they can't move them because the tow operators with city contracts are refusing to help. Making matters only more difficult, police say that families with children are sleeping in

approximately a quarter of those trucks. To get an idea of what some Ottawa residents who live within the occupied zone see in terms of a potential end in sight, I posed Paul this question. How do you even see the situation resolving at this point? Do you think the truckers and the people who are in the city are going to back down and leave eventually, or do you think they're going to have to be forced out? Do you see an end to this at this point? Well, at this point, probably one of the hardest things to admit is that i don't um the hardest core that are here are committed and they have a significant amount of funding behind them and the thing is that you know with an occupation protest they if you don't nip it in

the bud it snowballs and gathers momentum for a while. And I mean, eventually they either peter out or they have to be removed. And this one is still snowballing. We've seen some more extreme elements come into the city this week. Yesterday, Romana DiGiulo, the QAnon Queen of Canada, arrived and burnt the Canadian flag on Parliament Hill. Which which whatever you think about the Canadian flag and its symbol as a symbol of oppression, you know, that's not a great look for them. But the other side of it is, is that this is a woman with 70,000 followers who, you know, has called for the mass execution of her enemies and, you know, is currently parked in her Winnebago two and a half blocks from my house right now. So and with a bunch of her followers down with her. And so they're committed.

They know they don't know that. I did occupy a lot of years ago. And the question that people asked us and sometimes it was police, was what gets you out of the park? And in a weird way, there's a parallel here, which is that the hardest answer with Occupy was always kind of like everything is kind of fucked. So how do we fix everything? That's the discussion we should be having. So in this case, to these people, in their worldview, everything is kind of fucked. And there's no answer that you can give those kind of people in negotiations the police right now are not looking at removal as a serious option

i don't think or if they are they haven't figured out how to get to that place yet and one of the weird things about ottawa is is that technically in various spaces because the way it's designated there's a whole mishmash of jurisdictions between the various police agencies so like again with occupy that we picked the park like the park that was occupied was partially picked because it was on like this weird jurisdictional black hole where it was hard to figure out who the cops were who should police it were um so and they've ended up in the same park where they now have like 55 cylinders of propane sitting about 500 yards from the department of national defense so it's uh it's tricky to figure out how you how you get get out

of that because all it's going to take is one of them with something in their cab and it's done yep yep well do you have any hope for anything do you have any like indicators for how it can turn out well i mean in terms of the occupation i mean we'll see how it goes um maybe there can become some kind of modus vivendi between them and the rest of the city i don't know how that happens but maybe there can be but i don't know it's the only silver lining i see right now is you know the walk that i was on earlier today and the chats that i was having with other people in the community and the discord server and everywhere else like this is a really strong community that cares a great deal about itself and sometimes needed to be needs to be reminded

of that and uh i think this is an opportunity for that to happen. And I think that that's the positive that can come out is that we will take care of ourselves and we'll take care of each other. And that's, you know, what more can you ask for, I guess, out of this. Reports of assaults perpetrated by members of the convoy protest have been steadily rolling in the past few weeks. Not to mention the seemingly constant presence of honking in the downtown area that's been affecting residents every day and even into the night. I will offer you this short sample to help complete the picture of what it's like both indoors and outdoors in downtown Ottawa. So, apologies about that. Yeah, that was pretty bad.

And as annoying and frustrating as it may be, before I close out part one, I'm going to play some audio from one of the truckers, or, you know, just convoy participants, as he addresses fellow convoyers on why it's good and in fact revolutionary to honk horns late into the night. I think it gives you some valuable insight into how these people frame their actions in their own heads, and, you know, it'll give you an opportunity to hear some of these convoy people directly. So, here we go. Yo, what's going on? It was quiet when I got here, but now they're starting to beat, convoy people directly. So, here get it. We've done everything. Every piece of garbage has been picked up.

Statistically, there is no crime. And when I mean statistically, if you have some drunk guy acting, you know, silly on one street, quickly gets, you know, talked to and then the Patriots take him back to his car, maybe there was some incident of mischief. I've heard reports of Antifa throwing rocks at trucks, tagging stuff. They're the ones committing the crime. But other than that, this has been the most well-behaved revolution on Earth. And now the big complaint is, can you get them to only blow their horns between 9 and 5?

I'm sorry, what has compliance got you guys so far? What is just little by little, oh, just do this. Yeah, just don't beep your horns between 9 and 5. That's all we're going to ask. Then wear two masks. Then just go right back to square one. How about you put your blame right where it belongs, right in the eye of Sauron,

and that's who we handle this with. And every mandate. We're not allowed to exist in society. I'm not allowed to go to a movie. I'm not allowed to go to a restaurant. I'm not allowed to leave the country. You can't even leave. You can't travel on planes. You can't do anything that Trudeau can get his fingers on to discriminate against us in society. Meanwhile,

he'll blame us for side effects of his guinea pigs. It's an insane world and you've complied long enough, guys. End the madness and the horn stop. But I am in no place to go tell these guys, oh, excuse me, can you turn your horn off? Can you get used to complying again? We want freedom. We're not asking for anything unreasonable. And we're doing it on your behalf. The least you can do is turn off your televisions

and stop letting their horrible objections to this revolution and their horrible false flags and whatever else they bring. I'm sorry about the noise complaints. Now, are you sorry about banishing me from society and treating me like I'm some sort of leper because I want to keep my immune system intact? Sorry, guys. The horns are staying. Stuff it up your ass, anyone that has a problem with loud noises. We have a problem being banished from society. Apologies for that, but now I hope you have a better understanding of the type of

conspiratorial thinking among the people in this convoy and the importance this whole thing means to them. So with this, that wraps up my part one of my deep dive into the Canadian Freedom Convoy. In the next episode, we'll get into the border blockades both in Alberta and the Ambassador Bridge, which is preventing some international trade. We'll get into some of the smaller protests and attempted occupations in other cities across Canada and how the situation is evolving in Ottawa and what types of long-term political ramifications this protest and any attempt to suppress it will have. So with that, see you on the other side. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com,

or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow Broth. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America.

Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.