“You don’t have to be a trucker,” she said. On TikTok this week, Denise Aguilar, founder of Freedom Angels Foundation and the far-right women’s group Mamalitia, urged her followers to support a March 1 convoy in Washington, DC. Telegram threads from Southern California planning groups obtained by Mother Jones show that these groups, like their Canadian counterparts, have attracted extremists, including prominent white nationalists. Parents are heavily involved, too, offering the use of family vehicles and enlisting their children for moral support. On Telegram, leaders of the California anti-vaccine group Freedom Angels Foundation are urging followers to create national and local convoys, and calling on those who can’t participate to donate supplies. Heartened by the size and disruption of the Canada protest, activists in the United States are now planning their own domestic convoys. Ron DeSantis and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, both Republicans. Donald Trump, who praised the mob that ransacked the US Capitol based on his lie that the election was stolen, has also voiced support for the Ottawa convoy. “Freedom Convoy Triumphs as Canadian Mandates Fall,” a Breitbart headline crowed. “The regime media knows exactly what’s happening in Canada, and it scares the heck out of them,” Laura Ingraham declared on Fox News. The unrest has been celebrated by right-wing US news outlets. “It has spiraled and spiraled and spiraled into an attempt to overthrow the government,” Bateson says.
One group allegedly tried to start a fire in the lobby of an apartment building.
Amid their barbecues and bouncy castles, some have displayed flags decorated with swastikas. Protesters in the city center have settled in, using mobile saunas to keep warm. Trucks have completely halted traffic and disrupted US-Canada border crossings crucial for commerce. Over the next few weeks, Bateson watched the protests snowball into a full-scale occupation of Ottawa’s downtown core. This was the start of an ongoing seizure of Canada’s capital by truckers and others in protest of vaccine and mask mandates. But as she approached the trailhead, she came upon an odd sight: dozens of big-rig trucks lining the road, their idling motors piercing the stillness. She was looking forward to some solitude-she rarely encountered others at this time of day.
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