Is this an Ethics Train Wreck, defined as a situation where everyone involved in in the wrong? If it isn’t, to paraphrase Tommy Lee Jones’s burned-out sheriff in “No Country for Old Men,” it will do until a real one shows up.
We begin with the impetus for the protest. Truckers, alone in their cabs, pose no danger to anyone whether they are vaccinated or not, masked or not. Social distancing is enough when you’re alone inside a moving truck. The pandemic restrictions are increasingly obnoxious and irrational—unethical in short, “following the science” of experts who have been wrong (or lying) so often it would be funny if it hasn’t been so disastrous. Ethics Alarms is on record as holding that most protests are pointless and unethical, but not all. There is ample justification for truckers to protest what is, for them, oppressive government edicts.
BUT…this protest is violating the law, as well as inconveniencing and harming citizens who are not at fault for the policies the truckers are protesting. The truckers have paralyzed traffic, disrupted business and unsettled residential neighborhoods, as truckers parked their vehicles in intersections and across busy thoroughfares. “Someone is going to get killed or seriously injured because of the irresponsible behavior of some of these people,” Jim Watson, Ottawa’s mayor, said as he declared the situation a state of emergency. I don’t see how anyone can dispute that conclusion, and sympathy with the truckers’ position shouldn’t translate into acceptance of their mode of protest,GoFundMe removed a fundraiser for the convoy that had raised more than $8 million because, the crowdfunding platform said, it violated its terms of service. You can’t seek contributions to break the law. I agree. The company said it had released an initial $1 million in donations to Freedom Convoy organizers last week once they provided a clear distribution plan and confirmed that they would only be used for those participating in a legal protest. The rest of the money, it said, it would distribute to other charities–WRONG, unethical, and stupid. Of course this would be misappropriating contributions by GoFundMe. After many criticized that decision—no Democrats though!—the platform backed down and said it would refund the money. The initial decision, however, is enough to justify not trusting GoFundMe.
A new fundraiser hosted by GiveSendGo, which describes itself as the “#1 free Christian crowdfunding site,” reported Sunday that the “Freedom Convoy” campaign had raised several million dollars after GoFundMe kicked it off their site and froze the $8 million in donations. GiveSendGo, in its terms of use, says that those using it to attract funds must not “use your GiveSendGo account for any illegal purposes.” That’s strange: what the convoy is doing in Ottawa is, in fact, illegal.
Back to GoFundMe: suspending the truckers’ appeal would be completely defensible if it did not represent such a flagrant double standard. The platform allowed Black Lives Matter and various George Floyd protest groups to raise funds when their activities were often illegal and violent. If GoFundMe wants to have a “you can use us if we like you or agree with you, and can’t if we don’t,” fine. However, if they are going to have terms of service, that’s a contract, and they must be enforced the same for all.
In the hypocrisy sweepstakes, conservatives who are cheering on the trucker occupation are a close second to GoFundMe, and maybe tied. As with the George Floyd riots and occupations in Portland and elsewhere, this is as much of an attempt at intimidation and extortion as a demonstration. They should oppose it exactly as they opposed those 2020 “mostly peaceful” protests.
Ethics Alarms 
I didn’t realize that they were blocking intersections and clogging roads. I don’t see any value in that. It just makes the locals mad and messes up their message.
Hopefully they clean that up and just take over public parking lots. But that’s probably not legal either as many places say no trucks.
I don’t think they’d have a hard time finding parking lots. There are a LOT of locals supporting this. There was a story circling that there wasn’t a tow truck company in the entire city that would actually take a job to move a trucker. I don’t know if that’s necessarily completely true, but it also wouldn’t surprise me.
One of the biggest complaints is that the truckers are all blowing their horns at the top of the hour for 5 minutes. I believe they don’t do it in the middle of the night, but do so from early in the morning until the evening.
As for cleaning up – not a problem. The cleanest part of the city is in the middle of the protests. That’s a frequent feature of right wing protests.
Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary defines civil disobedience as “refusal to obey governmental demands or commands especially as a nonviolent and usually collective means of forcing concessions from the government.” It seems to me that this precisely describes the Canadian truckers’ protest, which I strongly support.
In 2020 I did not support the burning of a police station (Minneapolis); the takover of a police station (Seattle); the weeks-long occupation of a residential neighborhood, complete with rapes and fatal shootings (also Seattle); the months-long orgy of destruction in a downtown commercial district (Portland); the repeated siege and bombing of a federal building, with law enforcement officer inside (also Portland); the torching, and the destruction by other means, of small businesses, often run by minority business owners (Minneapolis, Waukesha); and, in other cities across the country (San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, . . . ) the violence that took as its impetus George Floyd’s death in police custody. None of that was civil disobedience.
Chaz was straight up insurrection. Taking a chunk of Seattle and appropriating it for their own country. Yet Gofundme was OK with that.
“BUT… …as well as inconveniencing and harming citizens who are not at fault for the policies the truckers are protesting”
Would it be ethical for all truckers to execute a sit in, at home, and refuse to transport goods until the mandates are lifted? People would still be harmed.
What is the power of civil disobedience if there is not a clear and present danger of harm upon society as a result of the disobedience? Civil disobedience has to be more that Candian politeness, eh?
I agree that bona fide civil disobedience will have consequences for the participants, society at large, and the govt. Civil disobedience from history, such as the Underground railroad or 1960’s desegregation efforts were illegal in their time, and very unfortunately, people got hurt or died for participating in them. I think the Canadian truckers are on to something, maybe even gaining nationwide momentum in Canada. Now the govt either has to follow through on backing law and order, arrest people, throw the book at them, etc. Heck, if the govt has the belief in their own rectitude, they ought to go full Bull Connor on the truckers. It would be unethical not to. As I understand, Trudeau views the truckers as domestic terrorists, and there is no negotiating with terrorists, right? It really is pussyfooting and weakness on the govt side.
Would it be ethical for all truckers to execute a sit in, at home, and refuse to transport goods until the mandates are lifted?
If that were the truckers’ approach, the government and the media (but I repeat myself) would simply claim that the truckers were not at work because they all had COVID as a consequence of being unvaccinated.
Interesting take. I think there’s two ethical questions here. First, when Black Lives Matter protested in Ottawa they were fully supported by Ottawa City Council and Prime Minister Trudeau even appeared with them and “took a knee” in solidarity. Furthermore, when churches in Canada were burned to protest the “mass graves” supposedly uncovered (now we have learned that they may not exist) Trudeau referred to these actions as “understandable” and was once again willing to meet with First Nations groups, provide apologies and make it clear that the government was behind them.
The truckers, on the other hand, were smeared as ‘racists’, ‘fascists’ and ‘white supremacists’ before they even reached Ottawa, and all levels of government have refused to meet with them to discuss their concerns. I think it is ethical to meet with those who disagree with you to try and work out differences and possibly find a compromise. I believe this refusal is an unethical choice and has worsened the situation. But it does raise the question, at what point is a political discussion with those who disagree with you unethical? I think only when violence is threatened, but I’m open to other interpretations. Which leads me to the second ethical question.
At what point does civil disobedience become the ethical response? And how far can that disobedience go when a government refuses to hear concerns, or reacts with violence or dismissal towards protesters? So far the protesters have not been violent. Blocking and impeding traffic, yes. Blowing air horns and honking their horns, yes. This is extremely annoying to anyone around, but the point of protest is to demonstrate to people that the protesters have legitimate concerns and that regular people should pressure their representatives to address them. I have seen many protests in which traffic is blocked or loud noise is part of it, it’s just this protest has gone on a lot longer and is much bigger than most. The reaction to it, however, has been very much a desire on the part of Ottawa city council to shut down the protest by any means necessary. Using the military has been threatened, though thankfully it would appear that the military has shown no interest in becoming involved. Why is this protest treated differently than others?
We don’t question the ethics of the Civil Rights movement, even though they used many of these tactics such as peacefully blocking streets, or boycotting buses, blocking bus entrances and encouraging others to not ride the bus. We do not question other protest movements that have used these same tactics such as blocking streets, it’s considered to be part of the protest playbook. Why this one? Because it has gone on so long? The Truckers are angry that they have been given a requirement to take a vaccine if they cross the US border, and that has been extended to crossing inter-provincial borders. The government has refused to hear their concerns and essentially said, “shut up and do as you’re told”. Does this make civil disobedience ethical then? I personally think it does. At this point, passive lawbreaking becomes an ethical response to a government that refuses to address legitimate concerns. And I think a lot of this could have been avoided if political leaders had shown a willingness to meet with the truckers, but they have continually refused.
If there is no redress from the government, would a violent response be ethical? I think likely not, only in extreme cases such as the deliberate murder of protesters by government agents (such as police or military). In that situation, self defense is, in my opinion, still a right. The truckers have been extremely peaceful, but annoying.
Another issue is that the protest movement is spreading. The border crossing at Coutts, Alberta has been blocked and trucking protests have been organized in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, Sarnia, London (Ontario), Quebec City and Halifax. The response to all of them by governments both provincial and municipal has been uniformly negative. Threats against the protesters have been growing. Ottawa City council wants to organize a class action lawsuit against them. Several protesters in Winnipeg were deliberately hit by a speeding SUV that targeted them. The media in Canada has been calling them every bad name imaginable, but polling is showing 54% of Canadians want the mandates ended and that’s up from 40% in early January. Public opinion may be turning. Elite opinion is clearly not.
Q: Why is this protest treated differently than others?
A: Because the truckers are Deplorables.
It’s a drag to have your neighborhood invaded. But I have seen reports that the truckers are careful to allow for passage of emergency vehicles. If those reports are accurate, it appears that the truckers are not blocking intersections, at least not deliberately, and not for long.
And it’s extremely annoying to hear truck horns all day long. According to some reports, though, the truckers have agreed not to sound their horns after 7 PM.
In any case, if the Canadian truckers have managed to annoy a few of their self-righteous, dishonest, entitled, bigoted class enemies, I am delighted.
Let’s try to approach this with your “Questions for Protests” framework. Although I suspect there are a few of them we still don’t have the answers for:
1. Is this protest just and necessary?
I’ll be generous and grant them a “yes”. Ideally the mandates would be revoked with an appropriate and minimal application of logic, but it is clear that will not happen.
2. Is the primary motive for the protest unclear, personal, selfish, too broad, or narrow?
Yes. At least so far. Unlikely to be the case as this continues over a period of time and grows in size.
3. Is the means of protest appropriate to the objective?
Now we have an interesting question. Is blocking streets appropriate? The default answer is no, but if they just congregated in a parking lot would the protest even make the news? The regular channels (legislative, legal, etc.) have not been usable to fix the problem. Let’s say the chosen alternative has a higher chance of succeeding.
4. Is there a significant chance that it will achieve an ethical objective or contribute to doing so?
I think the chances that mandates will be revoked because of the protest are very low. On the other hand, everything that has been previously tried (like logic) has had nil effect. So let’s grant this and allow the escalation to be ethical.
5. What will this protest cost, and who will have to pay the bill?
This is the point where it starts to get me. Yes, it will inconvenience the people in charge; but as Trudeau has demonstrated, he can just take a plane to an undisclosed location and avoid most of the protest effects. So will most of the other politicians that can be blamed for the debacle. Even if we assume voters are to be held accountable, at best 60% of them are, and the rest of the affected people are not culpable. That a number of those may support the truckers and willing to sacrifice does not deny that a number of other victims are being affected and did not choose to be collateral damage in this conflict.
6. Will the individuals or organizations that are the targets of the protest also be the ones who will most powerfully feel its effects?
If we take political fallout into account, I’ll grant that they will be affected. Even if they can avoid the first order effects (traffic, scarcity, etc.)
7. Will innocent people be adversely affected by this action? (If so, how many?)
Yes, way too many.
8. Is there a significant possibility that anyone will be hurt or harmed? (if so, how seriously? How many people?)
Yes. In particular the cases of blocking emergency vehicle access. Unless this is being proactively addressed (and it hasn’t as far as I can tell), this make the protest unethical.
9. Are the protesters prepared to take full responsibility for the consequences of the protest?
Haven’t seen this one go either way, so let’s say yes.
10. Would an objective person feel that the protest is fair, reasonable, and proportional to its goal?
This one is up for debate. I think it is reasonable, but I understand why someone might disagree.
11. What is the likelihood that the protest will be remembered as important, coherent, useful, effective and influential?
Hmmm, this one looks like consequentialism. I guess the chance of it being memorable depends on whether it succeeds on its stated goals.
12. Could the same resources, energy and time be more productively used toward achieving the same goals, or better ones?
I think the alternatives were tried and found wanting. So I’ll give this one to the truckers.
While better than most protests, the obvious failures on questions 5, 7, and 8 make it an unethical protest. Now a question for the audience (and our host). Would it be possible to adjust the protest means to make this still an (arguably) ethical protest while keeping its impact? How would it have to be different?
1. Is this protest just and necessary?
Just, yes. Necessary, I think so. I don’t think that Canada’s governments were going to properly balance concerns without hearing this. Part of the problem with Covid lockdowns was that the people who were afraid were loud and shrill, and the people who were annoyed were quiet and grumbly. *A* protest needed to happen.
2. Is the primary motive for the protest unclear, personal, selfish, too broad, or narrow?
I think it’s clear and relatively well tailored. Selfish is hard to quantify, the truckers are obviously interested parties, but they’re sticking up for my rights too, even if I might not like the format their protest takes.
3. Is the means of protest appropriate to the objective?
Most “appropriate to the objective”? Yes. Most appropriate? No.
4. Is there a significant chance that it will achieve an ethical objective or contribute to doing so?
Already has, to some extent.
5. What will this protest cost, and who will have to pay the bill?
Depends how you look at it. Compares to a whole lot of other protests I can think of, the property damage angle is basically non-existant. If you want to look at things like lost wages or the cost of time, generally, then that’s a complicated calculation, but I don’t think it’s as one sided as you m ight thing. Those truckers aren’t being paid either, so while there’s an agency problem, I don’t think “who has to pay the bill” is completely cut and dry.
6. Will the individuals or organizations that are the targets of the protest also be the ones who will most powerfully feel its effects?
Individually, yes. Collectively, no.
7. Will innocent people be adversely affected by this action? (If so, how many?)
Oh yes. Ottawa has a population of a little less than a million people. Even assuming a fraction of that wants to move through downtown, you’re still looking at hundreds of thousands of people.
8. Is there a significant possibility that anyone will be hurt or harmed? (if so, how seriously? How many people?)
Only in the most tenuous of terms, Alex mentioned that it might be hard for emergency response vehicles to get around… That’s true, but I don’t think that’s what the question was asking. This protest, even if illegal, is still orders of magnitude less violent than our average hockey riot.
9. Are the protesters prepared to take full responsibility for the consequences of the protest?
I think they have to be. Like I said… They aren’t getting paid. They own those trucks. They’re racking up those tickets. It’s their face on the cameras. And if someone actually dies because EMS can’t make it, you know that the entirety of mainstream media will report nothing else for a month.
10. Would an objective person feel that the protest is fair, reasonable, and proportional to its goal?
I don’t know. I don’t think I’m objective. I don’t know how you’d measure it. I think it’s close.
11. What is the likelihood that the protest will be remembered as important, coherent, useful, effective and influential?
Depends if it works. Alex was right, this question is just consequentialism.
12. Could the same resources, energy and time be more productively used toward achieving the same goals, or better ones?
I… don’t think so. Maybe if they split the convoy up and parked in front of the provincial legislatures instead? But I don’t think that would have been as effective. I’m having a hard time picturing what that would look like.
>This protest, even if illegal, is still orders of magnitude less violent than our average hockey riot.
So you live and/or have friends in Vancouver too? 😀
#22!
Is it good or bad that I didn’t need to look that up?
Ooh. Canadian Content!
It’s tough, because I think that *A* protest was overdue.
In aggravation:
You’re absolutely right, the Convoy was a good idea and a legitimate protest right until it got into Ottawa and started bogging everything down, you can’t just park your truck in the middle of a busy intersection, this is exactly the kind of thing that I’d complain about when aboriginal protests blocked a highway, and those usually last hours, not days. It’s not a riot, but it’s not legal, and it’s not good.
More, and slightly embarrassingly, the mandates and restrictions that they’re protesting are mostly provincial matters. The one Federal issue that they have a point on is the cross border mandates, but those are mirrored by the states, so while it might be nice for Canada not to have those mandates on the books, unless America also does away with the mandate, it’s a change without substance.
In mitigation:
If the truckers were confused and thought that protests like this were legal, they’d have ample examples of similar situations where the police did nothing. Canadan police had a storied history of turning a blind eye while progressive stack protestors blocked roadways for days on end. I don’t know what metric they could have used to say “we’ll enforce the laws here” while having ignored them for decades. In fact, I almost wonder if having neglected to enforce those laws for what seems like my entire lifetime, if the laws still even apply. I think common sense suggests that they do, but it’s not the most ridiculous legal theory I’ve heard even this month.
And as a non ethical consideration:
The thing is… Despite protesting in front of the wrong building…. The convoy seems to have been effective. I suppose that it might be coincidental that provincial legislatures have started to relax restrictions even though the case numbers are still up from the levels where the restrictions were put in place.
It’s interesting. In Australia, they’ve put up with levels of government control that seem absolutely mindbogglingly bizarre to me. I’ve often wondered what the average local view on the subject is, because the protests you see in video never seem particularly large, so maybe, culturally, that is in fact what Aussies want. I imagine a similar view of Canadians from Americans. And up to now, I’m sorry to say that while we never quite got to Australia levels, we as Canadians were generally more permissive than our American counterparts. But that’s changing, polling is starting to sway so that the majority are against mandates and lockdowns in national polling.
I think that we’re actually over the peak on restrictions, here’s hoping anyway.
Civil disobedience is almost required when the government ignores other forms of protest or disagreement. Viva Fei is a blogger that went down to the events and talked to both sides. He is a Canadian lawyer/barrister/whatever the term is…
Viva Frei, bah misspelled the most important word.
from article on Canadian truckers fighting vax mandate:
What I am really trying to do is sound a cultural alarm bell about the exaltation of order, discipline, and control. These are authoritarian impulses. In a nation where rapid change is … a moral necessity . . . we must not only retain the capacity for mass mobilization, but also the ability to properly recognize and resist actual authoritarian forces, irrespective of whether they fly under progressive or conservative banners. ~Stuart Parker Quillette 2/02/2022 “Smearing an Entire Protest as Facistic Will Come Back to Haunt [us]”
The lack of quotation marks, insertion of ellipses and word-substitution in the article title are mine. Only the first is an error.
Whoa. There is a serious misunderstanding of “civil disobedience” here.
When Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary defines civil disobedience as “refusal to obey governmental demands or commands especially as a nonviolent and usually collective means of forcing concessions from the government,” it is not saying that it is civil disobedience to break any law in order to protest another one!
The protest is about vaccine mandates. Civil disobedience would thus be openly violating those mandates, and accepting the consequences while drawing attention to the rule or law in dispute. Students who engaged in civil disobedience against the draft burned their draft cards or refused to register. A sit-in at a segregated lunch counter is proper civil disobedience against legal segregation.
But the truckers are not protesting against traffic and trespassing rules and laws, or the laws against impeding public thoroughfares. You can’t break laws B,C, D, and E while protesting law A and say, “It’s just civil disobedience.” The George Floyd riots were not civil disobedience, and neither is the truckers breaking laws unrelated to the pandemic.
I meant to clarify this earlier. It is a major error.
OK. Technical point taken. Thank you.
I should revise both my description of the Canadian truckers’ convoy and my contrasting of the truckers’ actions with the BLM/Antifa actions of 2020.
The truckers, in my opinion, are conducting a focused, authentically antifascist protest. By contrast, the behavior of the faux antifascists and other “woke” actors of 2020 was objectively fascist, in part because it was astroturfed by Democratic Party operatives and, as such, enjoyed support from such Democratic Party leaders as vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris as well as from the media, large corporations, and Silicon Valley (especially GoFund Me).
Hi Jack
Thanks for your clarification, but I still think you are wrong regarding the truckers. Civil disobedience goes further than just “breaking an unjust law”. To reference “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” any law that is used unjustly is one that can be violated by a protest movement. So, using trespassing laws on some protests but not others (the examples are beyond count) tells me that the government reaction to these protesters is unethical. By your definition, the civil rights protesters on the lawn of the Mayor of Atlanta in 1964 who protested others who were put in jail for trespassing (the irony is not lost on me) were behaving in an unethical manner. But they were drawing attention to a movement that was being ignored at the time.
This, in my opinion, is the crux of the issue. Protesters often meet with leaders to discuss their concerns. However, the trucker protests have been met with a refusal to meet, negotiate or even hear their complaints by EVERY LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT. Federal, Provincial and Municipal they are treated with complete disrespect and contempt and accused (without evidence) of holding the most vile opinions imaginable. At that point, I think trespassing and blocking traffic become ethical responses, because what else are they going to do? Go home? They are ignored and they have legitimate concerns about how government policy is implemented.
I will grant, had they come to Ottawa and met the Prime Minister, or a few of his Ministers, or met the Ontario Premier, or even a Minister or two or even met the Mayor or some Councilors it would be unethical to trespass or block traffic. At that point, at a minimum they would have had their concerns at least heard. But they have not. Every level of Government has ignored them and tried to silence and smear them. This is an unethical response. Furthermore, it is a dangerous response. To quote John F. Kennedy (or at least attributed to him) “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violence inevitable”. I fear greatly that the consistent refusal to address concerns by citizens will lead to violence of some kind. It is already directed at the protesters. What happens if they decide to fight back?
That’s just not the definition of what civil disobedience is, because its an impractical, squishy one open to abuse. Why not commit murder, then, as “civil disobedience”? That definition justifies cop killing by BLM, or abortion doctor killings by anti-abortion activists. You break the law you’re protesting. Breaking other laws is just breaking laws. It may also have some protest effect, but it can’t be called “civil disobedience.”
There’s also the term “direct action” which I first saw among the Catholic anarchists that for a time got some spotlight in the 1980s. Basically its another term for vandalism, sabotage, and destruction of property. However, the underlying belief is that certain things are by nature bad or offensive, so if you take direct action against them, you are morally right. In that day it was mostly about going into military bases (where security was not as tight in those days as it became after 9/11) and destroying, damaging, or vandalizing stuff with poured blood, hammers, etc. I remember that science labs that used animal subjects were also targeted by animal rights activists taking a leaf from these actions. Now of course it’s spread to statues, monuments, and, in at least two cases so far, police stations. It’s not entirely without precedent, let’s not forget that Kent State partly started because the “mostly peaceful” protesters of that day targeted an ROTC building (that was already boarded up and scheduled for demolition) for destruction to draw attention to their stupid cause. It was precisely because trials would have drawn more attention to these causes that the Feds usually let “direct actors” off with just a slap on the wrist, maybe a fine that they would never pay, etc.
A lot of that changed after 9/11, when it dawned on the Feds and the military that if activists could penetrate security, so could terrorists, with decidedly worse consequences. That’s why Ardeth Platte and other Dominican sisters who engaged in sabotage of a Minuteman missile in Colorado in 2002 ended up spending years, not days, in jail. Of course, that all went out the window in 2020, and the rest is history. The thing is, now the precedent that the government WON’T interfere with protesters who claim to be peaceful, they look like hypocrites and tyrants if they come down with a mailed fist on these truckers. It’s just another way of sending the message to ordinary people that the government doesn’t have your back, and that some protesters are favored while others are disfavored. There’s really no difference between truckes sounding their horns or BLM protesters beating drums late at night. There’s really no sifference between truckers covering a statue with a national flag and BLM folks tearing one down. There’s no difference between truckers scaring the hell out of coffee-drinking ordinary folks and a BLM protestor walking up to you in the café, grabbing your water glass off your table, and taking a swallow. Everone knows it, everyone sees it.
Here’s the thing, though, the liberal governments looked the other way on one set of protests, but now want to treat the other as domestic terrorism. Everyone sees that, too. I for one am not comfortable knowing that the government will throw me to the wolves if they come from BLM, but arrest those who stand up for the other side. This ends in only one place ,
There’s really no [d]ifference between truckers covering a statue with a national flag and BLM folks tearing one down.
Is the statue still standing when the flag is removed?
Or maybe there’s another reason why the “civil disobedience” paradigm does not apply. Maybe this is war. If so, it was not the truckers who fired the first shot.