An online movement among American groups to replicate the “Freedom Convoy” that gripped Ottawa, Ontario is eyeing Washington DC and routes into the nation’s capital to protest pandemic restrictions.
The “trucker convoy” protests in Canada, elevated from a relatively small right-wing trucker groups protesting perceived liberal overreach, spread through organising and sharing news in Facebook groups and Telegram channels, which circulated across more mainstream social media platforms and has been amplified and expanded by right-wing broadcasters.
Momentum spread across American conspiracy communities and other groups hoping to leverage the movement for similar protests in the US.
Several groups are reportedly planning different protests on different routes to Washington DC this week and into March, with several convoy maps and itineraries shared on social media.
Law enforcement agencies in Maryland, Virginia and the nation’s capital are monitoring potential demonstrations, and security around the US Capitol is ramping up around Joe Biden’s State of the Union address planned for 1 March. A number of protests are aiming to possibly disrupt the event.
The People’s Convoy – described as “a peaceful and unified transcontinental movement” – plans to depart from southern California on 23 February before travelling through Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio and Maryland before arriving near Washington on 5 March.
According to a statement, the group says “it’s time for elected officials to work with the blue collar and white-collar workers of America and restore accountability and liberty – by lifting all mandates and ending the state of emergency – as Covid is well-in-hand now”.
Bob Bolus, a longtime Trump supporter who owns a towing company in Scranton, Pennsylvania, said he plans to assemble a convoy to shut down all highway lanes but one on 23 February to protest fuel costs, critical race theory, jail time for Capitol riot defendants and vaccine mandates.
“I’ll give you an analogy of that of a giant boa constrictor that basically squeezes you, chokes you and it swallows you, and that’s what we’re going to do the DC,” he told Fox 5.
The American Truckers Freedom Fund lists several routes that travel across the US into Washington DC beginning on March 1.
Members of the group, a project of the political action committee Great American Patriot Project, also support expanding domestic oil and gas production, policing the US-Mexico border, and fighting against “Big Tech/Government Censorship”, among other issues tied to Covid-19 restrictions.
The sources of funding for the demonstrations and their organisational structure have also come under closer scrutiny.
Groups affiliated with the recent anti-vaccine mandate protest in Washington DC also have rebranded as trucker convoy groups, while many Facebook groups promoting “trucker convoys” are run by fake accounts tied to content mills abroad, the platform told NBC News.
Joan Donovan, director of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, told NBC News that the fundraising and organising efforts resemble “normal political activity.”
“In other ways, we have to look at how some of the engagement online is fake but can be a way to mobilize more people,” she said. “When we see really effective disinformation campaigns, it’s when the financial and political motives align.”
It also is unclear what the convoys will do once they have arrived at their destinations, and there is some debate among protesters about whether to enter the capital.
“The big difference here with January 6 is that there was a fixed event and well-organized rally that was happening on that day, whereas this just kind of has a start date and who knows whether or not they’re actually going to abide by that start date, and kind of a fuzzier end point,” according to Sara Aniano, a Monmouth University graduate student who monitors far-right social media activity.
The Department of Homeland Security suggested in a law enforcement advisory earlier this month that trucker convoys could use the Super Bowl in California as a jumping off point for a nationwide protest that would “potentially block roads in major metropolitan cities in the United States in protest of, among other things, vaccine mandates for truck drivers.”
Maryland State Police officials said in a statement that the agency is “aware” of potential protests, and Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department Chief Robert Contee is beefing up the agency’s civil disturbance units with 500 officers per day this week.
Mayor Muriel Bowser said Washington DC was not urging residents to stay home and is “not at a point to give specific instructions to residents as yet, but we will,” she said last week.
A similar caravan in 2013 aimed to bring 3,000 truckers into Washington to “shut down America” during then-president Barack Obama’s administration. The “Truckers Ride for the Constitution” protests brought roughly 30 tractor trailers to the Beltway, slowing traffic on Friday morning’s rush hour before dissipating that afternoon.
