Frankly, you cannot be serious! If you supported the actual events of Saturday, January 29, I’m talking to you…you cannot be serious. Despite the intent, the trucker convoy was not a peaceful protest of people looking to assert their rights. Instead, this was a temper tantrum of mass proportions led by people who were neither oppressed nor marginalized. But of course, justice looks like oppression when you are privileged.

I have plenty to say, but I want to start by shutting down anyone who thinks that the convoy was in defence of the right to choose.

Present on Parliament Hill on Saturday were swastikas and confederate flags. The people who came together under the guise of vaccine hesitancy represent a far-right movement, a movement that is upset about MANY recent shifts in Canadian policy. If you were present on Parliament Hill on Saturday and you are Black, that is inconsequential. 

That gathering was not meant for you! 

Oh, and that video circulating of a Cree drum group singing in solidarity with the protests—doctored. Yeah, it was stolen from a 2018 video of a round dance.

This has always been the problem with one-issue movements. They lump together the well-intentioned, harmless, peaceful protesters—those who want to make “my body, my choice” decisions—with people who are looking for a movement where, frankly, they can light shit up.

This is the whitelash, or shall I say, the Caribana for white supremacists. 

And despite believing in people’s right to choose—I can’t support it, fam.

I cannot support how rioters bullied soup kitchens for food and access to services (read about how the Trucker Convoy harassed staff at Shepherd’s of Good Hope in the Ottawa Citizen).

I am not going to support the anti-Blackness, anti-Semitism, xenophobia and misogyny embodied in Saturday’s movement (read about the #FluTruxKlan in BlogTO).

I will not support the harassment of people flying Pride flags in the windows of their homes.

And I certainly could never support a movement that raised nearly $10 million—more than any Indigenous blockade, ever. And who is that money going to, exactly? (Read about it on yahoo news).

Black Lives Matter protests, which were majority women and non-binary folks, were met with armed police officers atop horses—trying to intimidate them, not smiles on the faces of friendly community safety officers on bicycles. Likewise, Indigenous blockades, literally fighting for access to clean water and for THEIR stolen land to be returned, are routinely met with the aggressively armed military. 

I still have plenty to say, especially to those who think this is anything like the Black Lives Matter protests.

Not even close. It’s insulting that I even have to compare fighting against police brutality to fighting against a vaccine mandate. It’s not the same. Not even close. 

Black Lives Matter advocates vocalized the need to remove monuments of colonialism and slavery from our public spaces in alliance with our Indigenous brothers and sisters. And yes, those monuments, symbols of racism and murder, were painted over, and in some cases, toppled, as they should! Yet, members of the trucker convoy urinated and defecated on some of these same monuments. Why? Because they're mad about vaccine mandates? Again, not the same! The so-called freedom they’re fighting for and the freedom Black and Indigenous folks are fighting for are, say it with me now...not the same!

Go home Trucker Karen Convoy.

Party’s over!