As promised, hundreds of vehicles in the People’s Convoy did two laps of the beltway outside Washington, D.C., Sunday morning.
People’s Convoy Snarls Traffic At a Glance
- Hundreds of truckers in the so-called People’s Convoy did two laps around Washington D.C. on Sunday.
- The drivers are protesting the country’s Covid restrictions. They returned to Maryland after the Sunday laps.
- Protests in Canada inspired the American group.
Traffic slowed to a crawl. And the leaders of the caravan promised they’d be back Monday to complicate traffic outside the nation’s capital. The caravan was organized to protest Covid-19 mandates and restrictions.
‘We are not going to sit idly by,’ People’s Convoy organizer Brian Brase told the caravan participants Sunday morning: ‘We are going to continue to press forward with our mission. But we are also going to do so with some diplomacy to show that we are not unreasonable and willing to talk, but also flex our muscle if you do not hear us.”
Select Drivers from People’s Convoy May Head to Spot Near Capital
Brase then asked all the truckers to return to Hagerstown Speedway in Maryland for another rally. The truckers rallied there Friday and Saturday.
‘I beg of you to stay with the convoy,” Brase said. “I beg of you to stay with the convoy and then come back down here, meet again and talk about our next plan,’
Zachary Petrizzo, a reporter for the Daily Beast, said Brase wants the People’s Convoy to increase the number of beltway laps each day until the group’s “unspecified demands are met.”
Reuters reported that Sunday’s People’s Convoy was about two miles long. The beltway is a 64-mile loop on the outskirts of D.C. Th truckers didn’t drive into the city.
Some local, non-convoy drivers remarked that it was all a normal day for the congested beltway. Videos posted to social media showed that beltway drivers pulled around the truckers and other vehicles who were driving at minimum speeds.
One Twitter user replied to a video of the truckers driving the beltway:
“A crawl on the DC beltway is called normal. Wait until one of the idiots in the People’s Convoy see 10 miles of brake lights and have to stop hard to avoid a lunatic reenacting the Dukes of Hazzard in the Mixing Bowl.”
The People’s Convoy is a spinoff of the group of truckers who protested earlier this year in Canada. That group gathered in Ottawa to protest their country’s Covid restrictions. Canada recently ordered that unvaccinated, long-haul truckers must quarantine if they drive routes to/from the United States. Participants in the caravan also shut down a major bridge linking the United States to Canada. About 25 percent of the goods exchanged between the two countries use that bridge as an entry point.
The People’s Convoy organized last month in California. Convoy organizer Dan Fitzgerald said on social media Friday that select truckers would go into Washington, D.C.
‘I don’t want people thinking we are invading D.C,” Fitzgerald said. “This is not the convoy going into D.C. commons. This is a few select drivers.”
