THE END OF WORKING CLASS PROTEST?
Logic bombs in the Convoy decision.
It is not those who can inflict the most but those who can suffer the most who will win.
Terence MacSwiney
There are days I wish I were smarter, better, healthier and yes, younger so I could do more to stop what is coming. I see so many indy media people, trying their hardest to cleans the information sewer we swim around in day after day while others ratchet up the hype because making us nervous and scared is their business model. This is not good.
After leaving Ottawa last week, having spent some time with Lich/Barber and their families — all salt of the earth Canadians, it’s tough to witness the smug cheering of their fate by some. But it makes me better understand how solid these two are.
The division that will break this country apart is brought into full relief when reviewing our country’s treatment of the Convoy protestors.
I’ve been dissecting my copy of the Lich/Barber judgement and discovered flaws in Justice Perkins-McVey’s logic so huge you could drive, well, a semi-truck through it. I was in the courtroom but being able to take my time and comb through her words makes it even more odd.
Let me tell you a story. About a year ago, in a bout of psychic doldrums, I splurged on tickets for the ballet in Toronto. Big bucks, but at least less than the Raptors. I am a person who is pathologically prompt — something that drives my kids nuts as we are often the first people at congregant events. I just think it is the polite thing to do and I have anxiety when I’m running late. I actually feel sick.
It was a Sunday afternoon and my husband and I calculated one hour to get from our home in Midtown down to the Four Seasons Centre — which should have been plenty of time — a near straight shot south.
On the way, we hit Bloor Street, a main artery which bisects the city from East to West. North/south traffic was halted, backed up for blocks on Avenue Road and dozens of other streets, as a police-protected protest marched past on Bloor — effectively stranding drivers who needed to cross it. There were no routes open as the protest seemed to be at least half-a-mile long.
We idled there, trapped for roughly 30 minutes — my anxiety rising. There was nothing we could do but wait. I started sweating having never been late for a high-end performance and understanding full well that we would very likely not be let in until intermission. Not the end of the world and I get it that being late for the ballet is not an earth-shaking problem to have. But this is a thought experiment that I believe exposes the flawed thinking that underpins the Lich/Barber mischief conviction.
Based on Perkins-McVey’s ruling, the Toronto/Bloor Street protest march could qualify as mass mischief as it prevented non-protesting citizens from utilizing public streets, causing temporary anxiety. This was a smaller disruption but a microcosm of her legal argument. At what point does scale make it mischief?
In the end, we were late but thankfully, so were dozens of others who’d also been trapped by the demonstrators. The theatre broke the rules and let us in before intermission. Late for the ballet is not as serious as not being able to travel to work but the principle is the same. Why was this protest allowed to disrupt our afternoon without penalty? Why didn’t the police stop it at times to let the traffic go through?
To be clear, I’m not suggesting they should have charged those protestors but rather that the penalty should be fair across the board if they are going to inflict it.
According to her judgement, rules are rules, a point Perkins-McVey kept making every time she felt the need to address the historic words of Lich who was recorded multiple times beseeching the crowds to be peaceful — which they were. Lich’s videos are a rebuke of the trial itself.
Rules are rules. Depending on which side of the class divide you reside on.
The civilian witness/victim impact statements will be brought in during the sentencing in a week and it will happen on Zoom so Lich and Barber aren’t travelling yet again. Of course there will be no victim impact statements from the people Lich and Barber had come to the rescue of. The sad, depressed, lonely, suicidal and vaccine injured and others whose lives were trashed, some permanently by the mandates the Convoy was protesting.
Those who took part in or just supported the Convoy are suffering too. There is diagnosable PTSD among the persecuted drivers. As a podcaster and journalist who focussed on COVID-19 early on, I saw and heard stories of grief and loss as upsetting as any that were relayed to me for my book by troops returning home from Iraq. A similar loss of faith in fellow citizens and country has descended across this story.
None of that will be put before Judge Perkins prior to sentencing. It should be. But the injuries to the Convoy’s supporters, the side that saw the truth, the side that suffered through mountains of lies, the side who welcomed the Convoy as if it were the cavalry coming over the mountain — that pain, that grief, that loss doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the gentility of Ottawa’s elites was set upon by scary-looking, working class men making noise. The pols who perpetrated the COVID-19 horror will skate away and the Liberals under Mark Carney who loathed the Convoy may well rule over us again.
As a long-time journalist I can attest to the fact that protest itself is under attack in this globalist new normal. Even IRA bomber Bobby Sands who died on a prison hunger strike was treated more fairly by the media. Sands won a seat in UK Parliament while incarcerated in the infamous “H” Block at Maze prison. I was working at CBC’s groundbreaking The Journal show in 1981 when Sands succumbed after 66 days and I still remember the American network bulletins, solemnly and respectfully breaking the news. Many people cried. Ignore the first few seconds…
I’m not comparing the Convoy to the IRA which used violence to make its points. But I am illustrating how media elites who used to champion the underdogs, like the IRA and even Mandela’s ANC — now work to undermine ideas that threaten their fake little world — especially if the ideas come from the working class.
We are into the rough cut edit on our film about the Freedom Convoy and would be grateful for your support. It has been a crowd-funded effort that has allowed us travel out West, to Ottawa multiple times and to deeply research this game-changing film. Please click into our updated campaign. Much gratitude.
Stay critical.
#truthovertribe
The Rule of Law sits on a foundation of Trust. For the Law to have legitimacy it must be seen to be impartial.
What we are seeing is class based Law, where those who are a part of the Media, Acedemic, Managerial classes impose thier will on those who they see as lesser than themselves. They identify, not with thier working classes, but rather with the people in other countries who they see as the same as themselves. They move from Calgary to London, England for work, then spend six months in New York City.
A society whose elites do not identify with the common people cannot last for long, and this is a recipe for social upheaval.
Reading your article today and nodding yes, as I usually do, it made me think of the protest that happened this past summer on the Allen Expressway. It impacted so many people and our government did not stop it or charge anyone. We went to Ottawa to see for ourselves, because we did not believe the media coverage. As you know, it was a very peaceful protest.
I am so disgusted with what's happening our country. Keep reporting the truth, thank you.