[ahthat]

Media coverage of these protests is vastly negative. I remember only a few years ago (2020) when protests were undoubtedly violent across the United States. Video evidence of this violence as well as mass crowd driven theft was widely documented and distributed. I have yet to see video evidence of any violence from freedom convoys, and the ground based video evidence I have seen appears vastly peaceful. This does not mean there isn’t violence. Indeed, blockading roads could be construed as violence based on an argument for different definitions of the word. Yet, from my personal observations, it seems that the protests are essentially peaceful, citizens living in these cities are in support in large numbers, and this is running counter to the narrative being espoused in mainstream media sources, with the possible exception of Fox News. More or less it seems as though media sources are mischaracterizing these protests overall. Furthermore, it can be effectively argued that forcing workers to get vaccinated or lose their jobs is inherently discriminatory and perhaps even anti-freedom. But these are only my personal observations and conclusions, be what they are, a single individuals insight into the times occurring around him, debate as you will.

[toss1]

Yeah, they intend fully peaceful protests and bring long guns, body armor, large cache of ammunition...[0] and call for the overthrow of the democratic government.

This doesn't even resemble a spontaneous protest, it's organized and funded as part of the global push to fascism. The anti-vax component is a thin pretext.

[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/coutts-protest-blocka...

[lenkite]

Far better than CHAZ which established a "no-police zone", did not even recognise the US government and where gangs regularly carried assault rifles. And of-course the shootings and the deaths were just glossed over and the whole movement glorified by the media.

The global push to communism is far, far stronger than any step to fascism.

https://www.the-sun.com/news/980814/heavily-armed-leftist-gu...

What deeply amueses me is Trudeau's quote:

"When a government starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid dissent is when it’s rapidly losing its moral authority to govern"

https://twitter.com/justintrudeau/status/205322201187106816

Protest is terrific only when it doesn't happen in my backyard.

[mplewis]

There's a lot to unpack here, but Ottawa residents are largely against the truckers occupying the roads of their city.

[gengelbro]

How about citizens of Seattle when the CHAZ was operating? Were they majority for that?

[seanmcdirmid]

Considering that the CHAZ was in Capitol Hill, I assume the people in that neighborhood were supportive. As for the rest of us in Seattle, most of us never even visited or saw the place (how often does someone who doesn't live in Capitol Hill visit Capitol Hill?), so it was just something we would see on CNN if we were bothering to watch the news at all (it was cool to see FoxNews have some of our buildings burning down even if it wasn't true, their media narrative was pretty messed up).

[nostrademons]

I've got a friend who lives on Capitol Hill in Seattle. She hated it - it had all the negative effects of the convoy in Ottawa, about not being able to get where you want to go safely.

I suspect that's how it goes for most instances of protest or civil unrest - the apolitical people in the area hate it, because they're the ones you're inconveniencing to make a point, while distant folks' feelings are determined by whether the protesters are on their side.

[lenkite]

> Considering that the CHAZ was in Capitol Hill, I assume the people in that neighborhood were supportive...

Frustrated residents near Seattle's 'CHOP' zone want their neighborhood back:

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/frustrated-resident...

Capitol Hill residents and businesses sue city of Seattle for failing to disband CHOP:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/capitol-hill-resid...

Two teenagers shot in Seattle's Chop autonomous zone:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53224445

Another Fatal Shooting in Seattle’s ‘CHOP’ Protest Zone:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/us/seattle-protests-CHOP-...

> It was cool to see FoxNews have some of our buildings burning down even if it wasn't true, their media narrative was pretty messed up

What do you mean "it wasn't true" ? It was certainly true. People were formally charged for carrying out the act.

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/spd-rioters-tried-trap-offi...

"According to the criminal complaint, DAVID-PITTS had arrived in Seattle from Alaska just three days before Monday’s protest. After marching with the group in downtown Seattle, DAVID-PITTS is seen on surveillance video piling up trash against the sally-port door at the Seattle Police East Precinct. Over an eleven minute period the surveillance video captures DAVID-PITTS not only piling up the trash, but repeatedly lighting it on fire and feeding the flames with more trash. While DAVID-PITTS was lighting the fire, other people who appeared on the surveillance were attempting to use crowbars and cement-like materials to try to disable the door next to the sally-port to prevent officers from exiting the building" https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/alaska-man-charged-fede...

[gopher_space]

It didn’t really affect anyone who wasn’t on tv. I’d only think about it when a friend from out of state would ask what it’s like.

The BLM marches closed freeways once in a while but it’s hard to make I5 noticeably worse. I’ve sat in longer backups more frequently in Seattle due to drunk drivers in Tacoma, for example.

It really wasn’t a big enough deal for there to be a majority opinion either way, I’d imagine. I’d completely forgotten about it until I read your post.

[ahthat]

I’m a Seattlelite, my perception from amongst friends was that the Capitol Hill experiment was very supportive, at least initially

[simfree]

There certainly was quite a bit of community support for the protests on Capitol Hill and the liberation of Cal Anderson Park and the surrounding area from being flooded with tear gas for weeks on end.

Most of the people who were in my scout troop participated at one point or another, the Capitol Hill Business Alliance was broadly supportive, albiet they were focused on business centric issues. Many of the businesses in the area operated like normal as well.

Eventually though the park was looking like a Nicklesville (old Seattlites know the etymology of this), and the crowd that had driven back the cops, painted the street with a mural, and acted in solidarity with their neighbors had dwindled, leaving just those that saw free food, free camping and few people left encouraging sociable behavior.

[giantg2]

Support in large numbers and largest against are not necessarily contradictions. There can be a majority against something and still have a large minority for something. For example, if 1 in 4 support something, that 250k Ottawa residents.

[ahthat]

https://youtube.com/c/Ottawalks Hours of footage here

[II2II]

> Furthermore, it can be effectively argued that forcing workers to get vaccinated or lose their jobs is inherently discriminatory and perhaps even anti-freedom.

From my understanding, this is only the case for truckers crossing the border. Most of the vaccination mandates I have heard of have been at the provincial or municipal levels and only affect employees of the government or publicly controlled institutions (health, education, police). Even then, it is typically on unpaid leave. Relatively few mandates have come from Ottawa, simply because it isn't their jurisdiction. They aren't leaving much room for human rights complaints, particularly since I believe employers were already within their rights to demand certain vaccinations. I very much doubt that it would even qualify as discriminatory, since it does not affect protected classes.

[glennvtx]

It is not the employers that are demanding these people be vaccinated, They just want their products delivered. The government wont allow drivers to cross an imaginary line without submitting to vaccination: an even more egregious trespass of an individuals liberty than their usual practice of extortion and/or delay.

[sudosysgen]

If by imaginary line you mean an international border and by government you mean the US government, at least the first part is factual.

As for the second part, the US has been asking for a whole host of vaccinations in order to get a visa for multiple decades, same for the Canadian one, so I don't see how it's "an even more egregious trespass of an individuals liberty than their usual practice".

[Teever]

Do you actually think that referring to borders as 'imaginary lines' is productive? Like do you think that it ads to the conversation, or persuades people to agree with you?

Why do you do it?

[alspacka]

11 people were arrested on weapons charges at the Alberta blockade (handguns and body armor) and one person was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder for trying to run over police with his tractor

[giantg2]

That says a lot if that's what a violent protest looks like in Canada when the "peaceful" ones in the US involve millions of dollars in property damage and numerous injuries or deaths.

[danudey]

Well yeah, it's not like we lost a hockey game or anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Vancouver_Stanley_Cup_rio...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Vancouver_Stanley_Cup_rio...

[OJFord]

Strangest to me there is actually the realisation that 'loo' being a mainly British word (I knew that), over there they're not called 'portaloos'. ('Porta-potties'!)

(Further, both trademarks. Or at least were.)

[flyingcircus3]

While we're on the subject of the fallacy of relative privation, you'll surely acknowledge that the closure of the Ambassador Bridge for a week is a couple orders of magnitude worse than the 2020 protests. After all, the appropriate measure of a protest is dollars lost, and hundreds of millions of dollars of goods cross the bridge every day.

[justinhj]

According to Wikipedia there was up to $2b in insured damages and 25 deaths during the 2020 riots. Now regarding the bridge closure; there will be costs for delays and those will be substantial, but it's not like they just throw $400m of goods in the river because the border is closed.

[s5300]

Where do you see $2 billion? Wikipedia seems to clearly state $500 million

[justinhj]

    $550 million in Minneapolis–Saint Paul (May 26–June 6, 2020)[5]
    $1–2 billion in insured damages in the United States (May 26–June 8, 2020)[6]

https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a4... https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-foundation-raising-2...

[giantg2]

Not really that fallacy - no claim was made that it wasn't a problem. If anything, it's a musing on how media bias may affect how things are portrayed. Specifically with calling something violent. If violence is the adjective we are examining, the loss (or delay) of revenue from the protest would not fit in this model.

I am curious though, are goods not being rerouted?

[flyingcircus3]

Absolutely that fallacy. You're holding the 2020 BLM protests up as being far worse. In fact, you've quantified just how bad they were, as a means of demonstrating that these protests are not as bad. The fallacy is not the claim that this isn't a problem, but that its not nearly as bad as this other problem, and therefore not worthy of the reaction.

Many of the large auto manufacturers shutdown production lines in response to the bridge closure. Delayed revenue is lost revenue.

[giantg2]

"Fallacy of relative privation (also known as "appeal to worse problems" or "not as bad as") – dismissing an argument or complaint due to what are perceived to be more important problems."

I have not dismissed the issue. Do you have a source to back up your claim? Also, can you quote where I say this protest is not an issue or not worthy of being addressed?

Again, this was mostly about bias in reporting.

"Delayed revenue is lost revenue."

Here's a fallacy - false equivalent. Delaying revenue does not mean that revenue is lost. Demand and orders do not cease to exist simply because production temporarily halts.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

[flyingcircus3]

@giantg2

The fallacy is claiming that one is not as bad because the other exists. You seem to be defending your comments from absolute privation. I refer to the first comment I replied to,

>That says a lot if that's what a violent protest looks like in Canada when the "peaceful" ones in the US involve millions of dollars in property damage and numerous injuries or deaths.

Isn't pedantry fun?

[jterrys]

That's still a considerably small number of people considering the protesters number in the tens of thousands

[pyuser583]

Near where I live, one of the BLM protestors tried to burn down the local 911 center. He’s currently in prison for arson.

Haven’t seen anything like that in this protest, but honestly I haven’t been looking too close.

[flyingcircus3]

Why are the extreme examples of other events the baseline threshold for problems at subsequent events?

[pyuser583]

Because we evaluate the extremity of events relative to each other.

[flyingcircus3]

But we don't allow the extremes of barely related events to calibrate what should or shouldn't be alarming about other events.

[pyuser583]

Comparing civil disturbances with other civil disturbances is fair.

Martin Luther Kings March on Selma can be compared (very favorably) to the Night of Broken Glass.

The BLM protests involved a much larger number of people, and last much longer (so far).

It makes it easier to cherry lick bad examples.

It’s fair to say what we’re seeing in Canada is like the worst of the BLM condensed into a few weeks.

But I stayed away from the BLM protests, so I only saw them when they came to me.

Like so:

https://youtu.be/vSgI0vCoLMY

Edit: to be clear I was present when this happened

[flyingcircus3]

You're disregarding my premise, and arguing against something else. The severity of the BLM protests in no way sets precedence for other protests, nor informs the minimum level of violence/destruction/disruption that must occur before other protests are criticized and acknowledged as traumatic for the people whose lives have been disrupted. These events stand on their own, and aren't somehow offset by another protest, or absolved by another protest. It's not an overton window.

[stjohnswarts]

Was he really a BLM protestor or just an arsonist looking for an opening to burn something down?

[pyuser583]

He had been involved in the protests for a while. He was part of a crowd of very angry protestors when he threw the incendiary.

He had no previous convictions of arson.

[stjohnswarts]

You are trying to associate all BLM protestors with arson and it's simply a logical leap that I don't see how anyone can make.

[mwarkentin]

Obviously a lot of details unknown at this point, but: https://globalnews.ca/news/8600592/trucker-convoy-police-inv...

[danudey]

> it seems that the protests are essentially peaceful, citizens living in these cities are in support in large numbers

This is not true in any of the relevant cities; it is an extremely vocal, and very small, minority of people who are in support, and I can guarantee you that most of the few people who do support it would change their minds if it was their neighbourhood people were honking in all night.

Note that over 90% of Canadian truckers are already vaccinated, and similar percentages of the large urban centres being harassed are vaccinated as well. Most people are entirely against these "protests", and will be happier when they're over.

> Furthermore, it can be effectively argued that forcing workers to get vaccinated or lose their jobs is inherently discriminatory

It cannot be effectively argued, because it is not discriminatory; "people who refuse to believe in medical science" is not a protected class. If you need to get a background check to get a job, that is not discriminatory. If you need to have a license to do a job, that is not discriminatory. If you need to be vaccinated to do your job (not just COVID, but otherwise), that is not discriminatory.

> and perhaps even anti-freedom.

Freedom has limits. You don't have the freedom to endanger others.

Freedom does not mean "I get to eat my cake and have it too"; it means you're able to make a choice. Do you want to get vaccinated and do your job, or do you want to refuse to get vaccinated and leave that job so that you aren't endangering others?

What these people are protesting is that they made their choice and have to deal with the consequences of that choice. If you don't want to get a driver's license, you can't protest that you should still be allowed to drive a car; if you don't want to get a passport, you can't protest that you should still be allowed to travel internationally. The rules and restrictions are clear and up-front.

Also: I have friends in Ottawa, and am hearing multiple reports of people being harassed or threatened by these "protesters" (many of whom are acting more like terrorists, trying to intimidate everyone around them) for something as simple as wearing a mask.

[908B64B197]

> Media coverage of these protests is vastly negative.

Keep in mind that in Canada a lot of the media is state owned and operated. So the media coverage might reflect more on what the ruling party wants the people to think of the protests.

On the livestreams they had music blasting and children playing in the snow near the trucks. Doesn’t look like an “insurrection”, as the state media described it, by any stretch (unless they fear snowballs!).

[SketchySeaBeast]

> Keep in mind that in Canada a lot of the media is state owned and operated. So the media coverage might reflect more on what the ruling party wants the people to think of the protests.

Sure, there's the CBC but the rest of our media is not state owned, so that's a weird claim to make.

[lowkey]

Except in this case the major private Canadian media all participated in taking something like $600 million Canadian dollars in subsidies from the government. Justin Trudeau even had the audacity to joke about having bribed the media. [0]

I think it is reasonable to consider the possibility that these handouts may have biased the media to the point where they may be reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them.

[0] https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/justin-trudeau-60...

[SketchySeaBeast]

I'm not arguing there's not some possible influence, I don't know if you can say that with any media in any country, I was just taking exception to the blatantly false "state owned and operated".

[ghettoCoder]

You’re partially correct. Don’t forget the goodie bag the media gets to “support journalism” which basically is a huge pot of money. Or Telford bragging she could get articles written published to smear to smear someone. It not too hard to make the connection between money and favours now is it?

[kukx]

Well they live in large part on state money according to VivaFrei.

[dragonwriter]

> On the livestreams they had music blasting and children playing in the snow near the trucks. Doesn’t look like an “insurrection”,

Except for the existence of snow, it sounds like things I’ve seen around fighters in the Palestinian intifada. I think you have an unrealistic view of what an insurrection looks like.

[colinmhayes]

> citizens living in these cities are in support in large numbers

Source? The US polls I've seen show 60% support for vaccine mandates, which is probably why the government feels so confident in shutting down the protests. The media I've seen isn't portraying the protestors as violent but as a nuisance.

[giantg2]

Do the polls have how many support the protest? If 20% do, then that would be 200k residents in the city. I consider 200k, or 20% of the population to be a large number. Still a minority, but a large minority.

[danudey]

It does irritate me that the media are referring to it by their own name, "The Freedom Convoy", when it should be something more neutral and objective, like "the Harassment Convoy".

[stjohnswarts]

What do US polls have to do with Canadian protests? I mean aren't those just arm chair supporters in the USA?

[colinmhayes]

I'd be interested to see canadian polls if you've got them.

[ahthat]

Hours of footage https://youtube.com/c/Ottawalks

[skeeter2020]

>> citizens living in these cities are in support in large numbers,

what are you possibly basing this on?

>> But these are only my personal observations and conclusions

Oh, opinion. So you complain that the media coverage is "vastly negative" because... you feel it is.

[dang]

Please don't cross into the flamewar style here. Your comment is a noticeable step in that direction, which is against both the letter and the spirit of the site guidelines. You can make your substantive points without that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[giantg2]

Well they did say they were watching videos of it and it seemed peaceful. Basically that the videos they are seeing don't support the message they are hearing. I would be interest to see evidence either way.

[ahthat]

https://youtube.com/c/Ottawalks Hours of footage