I keep thinking about the protest and how simple and yet genius the whole thing is. Excuse me while I try to articulate what I mean:
1. You don't need a lot of trucks to block important roadways and bridges.
2. You can't prevent truckers from actually meeting up and blocking stuff. What are you going to do, block the truckers? Stop every truck and make sure they aren't carrying anything to indicate it's a protest? That wouldn't work, and it would just slow down the supply line, which is a good thing for the truckers.
3. You can't easily or quickly remove them once they're stuck. Moving an 18 wheeler and farming equipment is not the same as moving a regular vehicle. And getting a tow truck isn't going to help much. There isn't enough tow trucks to move 18 wheelers, and even if there was, it still takes forever.
4. You can't easily force the truckers to move via legal or financial reasons. That just makes them feel like they have even less to lose and gives them more of a reason to stay put. Besides, they are well aware that you cannot replace them easily, so they have even more leverage.
5. You can't shame them into moving via calling them Right Wing Extremists or claim they're being funded by outside sources. These aren't SJWs, they don't give a fuck. These are hard and honest workers, not lazy reddit mods. At best, the smears are just going to piss them off and motivate them to stay put.
6. Having feds infiltrate the protests isn't really effective in this protest compared to other protests/movements. Yeah, feds will cause trouble and give the media something to point and scream about, but that won't really do anything because of point #5. And having feds infiltrate to give the police the justification to beheavy handed won't work either because you can't force protestors to move via violence; It would look absolutely terrible from a PR standpoint.
7. Even in the absolute worst case scenario, where the government forces the truckers to move either due to violence or just simply mass arresting them... then what? Now you have a bunch of trucks that can't be easily moved. And now you have a bunch of truckers in jail that can't drive the trucks to keep the supply lines moving. And it's not like they can just mass hire new people to fill the roles, hell they don't have enough truckers right now, much less after you arrest a bunch of them.
There is no other way to make the blockades go away easily... other than giving into demands and having the truckers move themselves WILLINGLY.
That's the beauty of all this, it's so goddamn simple and yet highly effective. At the end of the day, if truckers and farmers etc decide that they aren't moving, then everyone else is at their mercy. You cannot even try to just wait it out either, since truckers and farmers play such a vital role in our lives, it won't take long for people to realize they aren't going to have their food, fuel, or precious Amazon packages until shit starts moving again.
And just think: What if other specialized and vital occupations have their own epiphanies about this and start their own protests? Other movements such as fast food worker strikes or warehouse strikes always fizzle because you can just easily replace them with new workers. But this is not true for specialized occupations. What if train conductors decided to halt their trains? What if pilots decided they aren't going to fly anymore? Cargo ships decide they aren't accepting or delivering anymore cargo? Etc...
Damn it Canada, look what you've started! No wonder political leaders are freaking out.
