by Rémy Dambron
| Traffic has ground to a halt at the busiest border crossing in North America, as Canadian truckers and others angry with vaccine mandates spread their protest beyond Ottawa. Trucks started blocking the Ambassador Bridge linking the cities of Detroit and Windsor late on Monday, closing down traffic in both directions. On Tuesday, entry to Canada remained blocked while US-bound traffic slowed to a crawl. Each day, 8,000 trucks normally cross the bridge, which handles about 27% of trade between Canada and the US. Protesters also targeted another major border crossing in Coutts, Alberta. Canada’s capital city remained blockaded by hundreds of vehicles from the “freedom convoy” while protest organizers called for a meeting with all federal political leaders – except the prime minister, Justin Trudeau – to find a “peaceful resolution” to the crisis. —The Guardian, February 9, 2022. 5G and QAnon: how conspiracy theorists steered Canada’s anti-vaccine trucker protest. Ottawa’s occupation was a result of unrivaled coordination between anti-vax and anti-government organizations: Thousands of demonstrators have successfully occupied Canada’s frigid capital for days, and say they plan on staying as long as it takes to thwart the country’s vaccine requirements. The brazen occupation of Ottawa came as a result of unprecedented coordination between various anti-vaccine and anti-government organizations and activists, and has been seized on by similar groups around the world. It may herald the revenge of the anti-vaxxers. —The Guardian, February 8, 2022 |
the clan of anti-vaxxers grows deep
its organizers harvesting the internet in search of troops to spawn
crowd sourcing sites swarming
bloated with donations
luring proponents from the fringe
to strengthen their tribe
in protest of medicine
masks
safety
measures
rules
…science?
in bad faith
foreign influencers
direct funds to float false claims
their target audience erecting camps
to stake their domain
demanding more than to be heard
demanding more
or less
stockpiling fuel for warmth
as they willfully inhabit
the bitter cold streets in the name of
freedom
the same streets they insisted
could never be
home for the homeless
last week they harassed
soup kitchens
ordering volunteers to fuel them
with meals intended to feed
the reluctantly unsheltered
and vulnerable
this week they taunt police
issuing threats they once denounced
instigating confrontations they once decried
intimidating countrymen they once sought to protect
relieving themselves on local lawns defacing public squares
promoting disdain
division
and next week what then?
confederate flags will continue
soaring high above their lorries
fiercely flaunting symbols of hatred
not symbolic of true democracies
not emblematic of our liberties
not representative of we the people
but exhibitive of the perilous tears
shredding our social fabric
Author’s Note: We must never lose our ability to distinguish between peaceful protest and civil disturbance. Where the former is an indispensable component of a successful government, the latter is all too often one of its greatest threats.
Rémy Dambron is a former English teacher now Portland-based poet whose writing focuses on denouncing political corruption and advocating for social/environmental justice. With the help of his chief editor and loving wife, his works have appeared in What Rough Beast, Poets Reading the News, Writers Resist, Society of Classical Poets, Robot Butt, and The New Verse News.
