discursus Protest Analytics Newsletter #1 — February 22nd, 2022

Feb 22, 2022

discursus Protest Analytics Newsletter #1 — February 22nd, 2022

Welcome to the first edition of the discursus Protest Analytics newsletter. We’re really excited about this new chapter of our open source project and hope you’ll find some valuable insights on protests as they unfold worldwide.

This is obviously our first edition and we aim to improve each time :) Have some ideas on how we can achieve that? Please don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

And oh, please share this edition with others who might be interested in the monitoring of protest movements.

Olivier
olivier@discursus.io

Weekly Dashboard

Here’s an overview of the protests that happened in the past 7 days. Visit the interactive version of that dashboard on Tableau Public.

Feature Protest — Trucker Convoy’s in Canada.

The Canadian trucker’s convoy happened in my home region, so of course I’ve followed it even more closely than I would have, had this happened elsewhere. Not only has it been a bit overwhelming to see how much media coverage there’s been of events that are happening in my backyard, but it also was quite magnified how coverage is oftentimes biased, and only skimming the surface of what was at issue here.

So let’s recap a little bit. That convoy formed after the Canadian federal government made it mandatory for truckers to be vaccinated to cross the US border. It should be noted that:

The US also made it mandatory, so it goes both ways.
Vaccination rates amongst truckers is in the same ballpark as that of the general public, so around 90%.
Most trucker associations did not support the convoy right from the start.

With those premises understood, a convoy did form in the country’s West and headed towards Ottawa. As that convoy approached, interest picked up, a broad array of groups appended themselves to the convoy and what started out as a convoy against regulations to cross the border, soon became a convoy against anti-covid sanitary measures.

So when the convoy reached Ottawa, all forces that were against sanitary measures felt compelled to support the protest movement. And let me tell you that even though there are debates on the number of protesters converging to Ottawa, I can tell you first hand that the crowd was large and continuously being replaced by newcomers wanting to denounce some or all of the measures that have been put in place throughout Canada.

I went there on the second weekend to see for myself who exactly were attending and what was being demanded. First off, this was a very festive mood. It felt as if I was attending a rock festival. A very diversified group of people was attending, cheering, screaming FREEDOM at the top of their lungs — nothing scary at all about this.

But, as I got closer to parliament hill, the mood got more intense. Truckers blaring their horns, the protest signs getting a bit more hostile, speeches that were clearly anti-vaccination, etc. I’m not saying that this was representative of the whole group, but for sure there was a core of protesters who were just denying the existence of the Covid, the validity of vaccination and demanding nothing less then bringing down the Trudeau government.

A picture I took of the crowd in front of parliament hill

We’ll do a deeper dive of that protest movement in the future, and we’ll probably go into questions of financing, organisers, the other similar events that happened elsewhere in Canada (and elsewhere in the world), etc. But really the most interesting point to us is what was bringing all those people together. It’s not an easy question to answer as there were so many different narratives surrounding that convoy, but in the end, that Freedom rallying cry meant something to a lot of people.

And that goes to the mission of what discursus here. It’s about listening and understanding. The only things required for a dialogue that unites us.

As a citizen of Canada and a Ottawa/Gatineau community member, I have seen how that protest divided us (within our community, families and amongst friends). I think it’s because we overly focused on what divides us, while not taking the time to understand the other’s point of views.

Elsewhere around the world

🏗 Nepal has been the theatre of a “new cold war” between the US and China over infrastructure fundings. Protests erupted against the US funding of a “300-kilometer (187-mile) electricity transmission line and a road improvement project”. But the US suspects China is behind those protests, as they would want to keep their influence through their own Belt and Road Initiative fund.
🧕 Protests erupted after the Indian state of Karnataka banned female students from the wearing the hijab. It’s “the latest issue of contention involving India’s Muslim minority, who make up about 13% of the Hindu-majority country’s 1.35 billion people”.
🚜 Vice News follows up on on India’s farmers protests. We had covered those protests in one of our first blog post. Since then, the government dropped their farm reforms.
🎬 Louis Theroux is back again with an investigative story around the internet-born right-wing movement close to AFPC and their close association to the Charlotteville’s demonstrations back in 2019.

Updates from the discursus project

Finally, just a few words to update you on the latest from the discursus project. We recently covered the Fuel Protests that are happening in many countries.

This story is about individuals living in the economy’s periphery and joining the ranks of political marginals. It’s how the cost of living pushes them to the brink of survival. How they see themselves alienated from that social contract.

Fuel prices and the economic marginals — Protest dynamics

discursus Protest Analytics Newsletter #1 — February 22nd, 2022 was originally published in discursus.io on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.