When Tractors Rolled Into Washington, DC, and How It Relates to Canada's "Freedom Convoy"
This month's "Freedom Convoy" protest in Canada's capital city brings back memories of the 1979 Washington "Tractorcade." There are interesting parallels
No one knows exactly how many protesting “freedom convoy” truckers are currently encamped in Canada’s national capital city of Ottawa after an estimated 1,700 big rigs arrived on January 29th. Thousands more protestors have joined them on the grounds of Parliament and nearby in support. And the protests appear to be growing.
More than $10 million (CAD) has been raised via GoFundMe.com to support the freedom convoy. That’s about three times more money than the governing Liberal Party raised in the last quarter of 2021. From the freedom convoy fundraising site, which has been “paused” pending a “review,” including grammatical errors and typos:
To our Fellow Canadians, the time for political over reach is over. Our current government is implementing rules and mandates that are destroying the foundation of our businesses, industries and livelihoods. Canadians have been integral to the fabric of humanity in many ways that have shaped the planet.
We are a peaceful country that has helped protect nations across the globe from tyrannical governments who oppressed their people, and now it seems it is happening here. We are taking our fight to the doorsteps of our Federal Government and demanding that they cease all mandates against its people. Small businesses are being destroyed, homes are being destroyed, and people are being mistreated and denied fundamental necessities to survive. It's our duty as Canadians to put an end to this mandates. It is imperative that this happens because if we don't our country will no longer be the country we have come to love. We are doing this for our future Generations and to regain our lives back.
We are asking for Donations to help with the costs of fuel first, and hopefully food and lodgings to help ease the pressures of this arduous task.
These protests were prompted by a pair of decisions first launched from the Biden Administration to impose vaccine mandates on truckers crossing the border. Canada followed suit. From ctvnews.ca: “there are 120,000 Canadians, and 40,000 licensed drivers in the U.S. who operate cross-border, the Canadian Trucking Alliance says, while about 70 percent of the $648 billion in trade between the two countries moves by truck.” Unvaccinated Canadian truckers returning from the U.S. must quarantine for 14 days; unvaxxed American drivers are turned away. An estimated 10-20 percent of these truckers are unvaccinated amidst a shortage of drivers and supply chain challenges.
Who knew that Joe Biden could actually ignite a movement? Probably not what he had in mind if anything.
Trudeau, after publicly trashing the protestors for actions some attribute to suspected infiltrators, fled town and has now tested positive for Covid. Other greedy Ottawa politicians want in on the GoFundMe campaign for the convoy, and Ottawa’s police chief blames Americans for much of its financial success. He also seems to be calling for military action.
Erin O’Toole, Canada’s Conservative now-former opposition leader, who never seems to take a position he doesn’t change, met his denouement this week. “While O’Toole met with demonstrators, he otherwise distanced himself from the protest and ultimately denounced it. Meanwhile, more right-leaning M.P.s such as Pierre Poilievre, Leslyn Lewis, and Mike Lake were handing out coffee and defending anti-mandate protesters in the House of Commons,” reported the National Post. Conservatives in Parliament are now shopping for a new leader. Il est temps.
Pay attention to Leslyn Lewis, the Winsome Sears of Canada.
Attempts to characterize the protestors as white supremacists or January 6-style insurrectionists are not selling and may be backfiring. “Critics lambasted the prime minister for accusing the protesters of being violent and hateful. The protests have been described as peaceful, with most disturbances coming in the form of people dancing, chanting and honking horns,” Fox News reported.
And not to be left out, a farmer convoy of tractors are deploying to Ottawa on Saturday. Talk about supply chain issues. And this is your reminder that Ottawa is the world’s seventh coldest national capital. These protests are occurring smack in the middle of winter. I hope truckers brought ice skates to enjoy the Rideau Canal.
I’m reminded of a similar event that occurred almost exactly 43 years ago in Washington, DC.; the “Tractorcade” protest over U.S. farm policies. The American Agriculture Movement led it and is still around. I was a young Capitol Hill staffer who had just arrived from Oklahoma a few weeks prior and remember the traffic snarls that ensued. The plethora of tractors reminded me of home, having spent a good amount of time driving behind slow-moving farm equipment but on much-less busy rural roads mostly in McClain and Grady Counties.
That was an era of low farm prices driven mainly by federal policies promulgated during the Nixon Administration by Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz. The former Purdue University agriculture economist and Ralston-Purina board member pushed to end farm subsidies, promoted corporate farming, and advocated for exports to raise farm income while lowering input costs for food makers. He called on farmers to plant “fencerow to fencerow.” And they did.
The policies worked for a short while. Butz sold massive quantities of grain to the Soviet Union following their agriculture disaster in 1969. When Soviet agriculture recovered, the purchases stopped, but U.S. production didn’t. Low prices without farm subsidies sent many farmers into economic despair, including farm foreclosures, for nearly a decade. A popular 1984 movie, “Country,” starring Sam Shephard and Jessica Lange, dramatized their plight. So later did the 1989 “Field of Dreams,” starring Kevin Costner, which was more about baseball.
When some 900 tractors rolled into Washington on February 5, 1979 - the second time in two years - after traveling about 100 miles per day from as far away as Texas and Colorado, the reactions of most public officials in Washington were one of disgust. President Jimmy Carter’s Agriculture Secretary, Bob Bergland, was sharply critical: “(some) are seeking publicity and others are driven by just old-fashioned greed.” A Scripps-Howard news service reporter quoted one anonymous U.S. Senator: “While a few members of Congress may exploit the situation, many are turned off by it. I see a lot of hostility developing because of their tactics.”
Carter meanwhile fled to Camp David.
Tractorcade organizers were troubled by suspected infiltrators who “broke through public barriers, threw a thresher over the White House fence and accidentally totaled some police motorcycles beneath their vehicles,” reported Modern Farmer in 2014.
The tractors were parked on D.C.’s Mall for weeks. And while the protest resulted in about $1 million in damage to The Mall, it wasn’t just “mostly peaceful.” It proved helpful to the city, at least for a short while. As reported by The Smithsonian in 2012:
Tides turned on President's Day weekend when a blizzard hit, covering the city in two feet of snow. The farmers, in possession of some of the only vehicles able to move, rose to the occasion and helped dig out DC. They plowed out hundreds of cars and aided stranded citizens. They transported doctors and nurses to hospitals, where the wives of AAM farmers helped cook and clean because regular staff was unable to get to work. Twenty-two inches and a whole lot of goodwill turned these agitators into heroes.
During their weeks on the National Mall, the farmers frequented the Smithsonian museums, taking refuge from the cold winter days and eating lunches in the cafeterias. In 1986, the American Agriculture Movement donated one of the tractors from the 1979 tractorcade to the National Museum of American History.
That tractor is no longer on display at the National Museum of American History.
President Carter temporarily halted farm disclosures. When the farmers finally left, the farm disclosures resumed. But farmers got the last word. Carter was soundly defeated for reelection some 20 months later by Ronald Reagan, who easily carried most farm country. Since, much of the AAM’s agenda has been implemented, from country-of-origin-labeling requirements to an ethanol program.
Sure, the Freedom Convoy has its dismissive detractors, starting with the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post. Guest columnist David Moscrop (author of a book entitled “Too Dumb for Democracy?”):
The convoy is, by and large, a fringe group — an unfortunate minority in which a further minority of insidious extremists lurk. They are bolstered by support from Conservative politicians and certain blustery media voices. They are driven by a generalized rage, misplaced anger about supply chain challenges and antigovernment sentiment. The lot of them, even as a national fringe, pose an outsize problem. They’re too big to ignore and too unreasonable to placate insofar as they represent a broader challenge. Either way, we shouldn’t ignore or placate them. Rather, the convoy and its supporters must be met with a counter-movement that refuses to give them an inch but, instead, focuses national, sub-national and local efforts on true threats to liberty, which do exist.
Where have I heard similar demeaning rhetoric before, dripping with condescension and elitism? At least he didn’t refer to the protestors as “a basket of deplorables.” In so many words. Moscrop thinks his smarmy prose is persuasive. In fact, it hints at violence. It may be persuasive to fellow travelers and government bureaucrats everywhere, which describes the Post’s primary readership.
Maybe Canada’s truckers (and farmers) will get their “heroes” moment and the last word(s) as well, including at the next national election. And it’s true: A lot of Americans are pulling for them.
There is indeed a major political realignment underway, and it’s being led by working-class people yearning to breathe free. It’s global. And it’s glorious. Not quite what Karl Marx imagined.