Seeing some folks asking why the Ottawa police aren’t doing more to stop the truckers. If you’re wondering, here’s a quick explanation:

Even though we say “Law and Order”, the “law” part is the secondary role of the police: dissuading folks from committing crimes, taking reports, driving around etc. The MAIN job of the cops is maintaining the social order

What’s our social order? It’s straight white able-bodied cis men at the top, and everyone else, women, queer folks, Asians, Black people, disabled folks, and First Nations below

That’s why when the Suffragettes marched, the cops moved in, to keep them in their place

That’s why, when gay people marched for equal rights, the cops started hitting

And that’s why the cops attack every Civil Rights movement from Alabama to BLM

In every case, it’s people asking for fairness and equality, But in our society the job we’ve given police is to tell those people “No”.
So what’s different in Ottawa? Truckers aren’t trying to CHANGE the social order, they’re trying to preserve it

For the last 100 years, the monopoly that straight white men have held on power — social, political, and economic — has been slowly eroding as everyone else has fought for equal footing. And a lot of men hate this. What we’re seeing now is the backlash from those angry men

When Trump said “make America great again” he meant ‘give straight white men undisputed power again’. That’s the same message being spread by folks like Rogan and Peterson today: “things were better for us when we were in charge”

This is why the trucker movement, ostensibly about vaccines and restrictions, is targeting women, minorities, and queer folk. Straight white men are using the tools that groups in power have always used when that power is threatened: fear, intimidation, and violence.

It’s not fundamentally different, except (so far) in degree, from the violence that Russia visits on gays, or India’s upper castes upon Dalits. It’s not people losing power, it’s people being asked to share their power, and saying “NO”

This is partly why so many of the truckers hold such visceral hate for Trudeau — with his carefully stage-managed image as a feminist, many of these men see him as a traitor to their efforts of regaining their social status.

And this is why the Ottawa police respond so differently to the truckers, laughing and joking with them, bringing them coffee and take selfies. They know these angry men aren’t a threat to the social order, they’re fighting to restore it.

We’re asking the cops to do their job but the horrible truth is that they ARE doing it. We’re just not ready to be honest with ourselves about what that job actually is.

Grateful thanks to the brilliant @tannerama for helping me understand all of this :)