We just talked with some Vancouver BC friends who described something similar--cyclists blocking a convoy that was trying to enter the city, and citizens lining the streets to voice their disapproval of the convoy. My friend said she thought the drivers of the trucks were surprised at the depth of rejection--they were treated as potential occupiers, not liberators--and most ended up turning around and driving away
This is exactly the kind of thing we need. It reminds me of what the Anti-Nazi League did in Britain in the late 1970s. Non-violent, with large numbers. Same with the Midwest Network against the Klan in the 1980s. We all know these examples of fascism succeeding, but not enough of us know the times when our side battled it back.
Yes. I wonder, as you note, if such a response by "the normals" would be safe in the US given all the self-righteous gun-toting folks running around here.
Blockade may not be necessary as a nonviolent beginning to confronting big trucks. It sounds like dialog was key and having them stop for dialog might be required. Cars in the street might work. In my neighborhood that's how we stop potential thieves, park across our one way road! Leave the car and they are stuck with no way out but to leave their vehicle!
Ottawa could have been like Oakland* back in the day, or Ojai, Ontario, Omaha, Oswego….
But now, “There are more of us than there are of them there!” Not to mention the donuts there 😛
[*Thank you Gertrude Stein (1874-1956) for “there is no there there.”]
But now there is everywhere, from Charlotte, Columbine, Sandy Hook and Minneapolis to Lytton, Paradise, Superior and countless others where there once was no extraordinary there.
Mostly there is infamy there. Not to mention everywhere there is an oil, gas or bitumen distillate pipeline or a mega-LNG compressor terminal which sprout up gradually, but not quite as in-your-face inconvenient as gridlock big rig convoys and thousand degree fire storms. and storming fusillades of rapid-fire flesh-piercing bullets.
There is a difference between intense over-before-you-know-it disasters and what is happening ever so slowly away up there at the top of the world.
Mother Eaarth is losing her cool, and her temperature is getting higher faster and faster—but so slowly hardly anybody notices or takes her periodic complaints seriously—and there will be a day when the top of her head explodes and there will be nothing we can do about what happens then. (We’ve been forewarned by “Denver is Missing” by D. F. Jones,. 1974, VTG Paperback.)
There will be no marches or convoys to protest the melting Arctic ice cap, Greenland’s melted ice sheets, Antarctica‘s collapsing ice sheets, Himalayan disappearing glaciers, submerged small island nations and swamped coastal megalopolises.
There will be no convoys or protesters there. There will be no there there as there will be melted, deserted and abandoned.
Now is when Mother Eaarth needs our convoys to focus on the crisis unfolding up there in the Arctic and down under in Antarctica.
Unfortunately, there is “out of sight, out of mind.” The convoys have not been formed and it is unlikely that they will ever focus on the collapsing ice … in time.
There will be nobody powerful or effective enough left by the time there is nothing left to do. Mother Eaarth will have done it to us before we know what hit us.
We must immediately focus on who has the power to quickly cool the poles and oceans in order to refreeze and restore the lost ice right away. It will take extraordinary international coordinated action. Temperature and sea level rise will accelerate if we don’t #CoolTheArctic
This us vs, them mentality is why our country, media, and discourse is broken. You scorn a peaceful protest of truckers, denigrate their membership as racist, and encourage more culture war. And while we fight and protest against other citizens like they are the real enemy, corporations laugh and walk away with sacks full of cash and climate destruction in their wake.
If these same trucker tactics were employed by climate activists to make real climate legislation happen, then it would be the conservative media and commenters rallying their readers to prevent socialists and radicals from taking over. (Re: Occupy Wallstreet) And the result? Corporations continue to plunder our planet and poison our discourse with cultural war distraction.
Do you see the pattern here? As long as citizens are fighting amongst themselves and calling each other racist, fascist, communists, radicals or what have you, then corporations and billionaires, the real enemies of progress and change, will remain unscathed.
You are playing right into the corporation's hand and have totally lost sight of what truly matters. I am so disappointed. Please get your head out of your corporate/liberal media bubble you can no longer see the edges of, or just stick to climate commentary.
We just talked with some Vancouver BC friends who described something similar--cyclists blocking a convoy that was trying to enter the city, and citizens lining the streets to voice their disapproval of the convoy. My friend said she thought the drivers of the trucks were surprised at the depth of rejection--they were treated as potential occupiers, not liberators--and most ended up turning around and driving away
This is exactly the kind of thing we need. It reminds me of what the Anti-Nazi League did in Britain in the late 1970s. Non-violent, with large numbers. Same with the Midwest Network against the Klan in the 1980s. We all know these examples of fascism succeeding, but not enough of us know the times when our side battled it back.
Yes. I wonder, as you note, if such a response by "the normals" would be safe in the US given all the self-righteous gun-toting folks running around here.
Blockade may not be necessary as a nonviolent beginning to confronting big trucks. It sounds like dialog was key and having them stop for dialog might be required. Cars in the street might work. In my neighborhood that's how we stop potential thieves, park across our one way road! Leave the car and they are stuck with no way out but to leave their vehicle!
Ottawa could have been like Oakland* back in the day, or Ojai, Ontario, Omaha, Oswego….
But now, “There are more of us than there are of them there!” Not to mention the donuts there 😛
[*Thank you Gertrude Stein (1874-1956) for “there is no there there.”]
But now there is everywhere, from Charlotte, Columbine, Sandy Hook and Minneapolis to Lytton, Paradise, Superior and countless others where there once was no extraordinary there.
Mostly there is infamy there. Not to mention everywhere there is an oil, gas or bitumen distillate pipeline or a mega-LNG compressor terminal which sprout up gradually, but not quite as in-your-face inconvenient as gridlock big rig convoys and thousand degree fire storms. and storming fusillades of rapid-fire flesh-piercing bullets.
There is a difference between intense over-before-you-know-it disasters and what is happening ever so slowly away up there at the top of the world.
Mother Eaarth is losing her cool, and her temperature is getting higher faster and faster—but so slowly hardly anybody notices or takes her periodic complaints seriously—and there will be a day when the top of her head explodes and there will be nothing we can do about what happens then. (We’ve been forewarned by “Denver is Missing” by D. F. Jones,. 1974, VTG Paperback.)
There will be no marches or convoys to protest the melting Arctic ice cap, Greenland’s melted ice sheets, Antarctica‘s collapsing ice sheets, Himalayan disappearing glaciers, submerged small island nations and swamped coastal megalopolises.
There will be no convoys or protesters there. There will be no there there as there will be melted, deserted and abandoned.
Now is when Mother Eaarth needs our convoys to focus on the crisis unfolding up there in the Arctic and down under in Antarctica.
Unfortunately, there is “out of sight, out of mind.” The convoys have not been formed and it is unlikely that they will ever focus on the collapsing ice … in time.
There will be nobody powerful or effective enough left by the time there is nothing left to do. Mother Eaarth will have done it to us before we know what hit us.
We must immediately focus on who has the power to quickly cool the poles and oceans in order to refreeze and restore the lost ice right away. It will take extraordinary international coordinated action. Temperature and sea level rise will accelerate if we don’t #CoolTheArctic
This us vs, them mentality is why our country, media, and discourse is broken. You scorn a peaceful protest of truckers, denigrate their membership as racist, and encourage more culture war. And while we fight and protest against other citizens like they are the real enemy, corporations laugh and walk away with sacks full of cash and climate destruction in their wake.
If these same trucker tactics were employed by climate activists to make real climate legislation happen, then it would be the conservative media and commenters rallying their readers to prevent socialists and radicals from taking over. (Re: Occupy Wallstreet) And the result? Corporations continue to plunder our planet and poison our discourse with cultural war distraction.
Do you see the pattern here? As long as citizens are fighting amongst themselves and calling each other racist, fascist, communists, radicals or what have you, then corporations and billionaires, the real enemies of progress and change, will remain unscathed.
You are playing right into the corporation's hand and have totally lost sight of what truly matters. I am so disappointed. Please get your head out of your corporate/liberal media bubble you can no longer see the edges of, or just stick to climate commentary.
👍👍