Today’s Protests In Wellington — Convoy2022
Have you been keeping up what’s been going on in Canada as of late? Their Prime Minister wore blackface and got re-elected, they have found thousands of graves of indigenous children under state run schools (which is a topic for another time) and there has been a massive truckers protest which has paralysed the city of Ottawa. That third event, which is still occurring as we speak, has been widely covered across the world’s media, and has spawned many protests attempting to capture the same kind of attention, such as the Convy2022 movement which arrived in Wellington this morning and set up outside of the Beehive. The media coverage of the Canadian protests, which I cannot really speak to the validity of, has become more and more critical as time has gone on, and the New Zealand media has not, in my eyes, properly covered the similar movement (which to the best of my knowledge is unaffiliated) in our country. So in the interest of fairness, I decided to wander down and see what all the fuss was about.
But first, a bit of background. The Convy2022 movement was created after the coverage of the Canadian protest started to go viral, and the initial organizing facebook group was founded on the 29th of January, 2022. The group grew in popularity quite fast, attracting 10,000 members in the first few days, and at the time of writing the group has around 60,000 members, with a couple of telegram groups of around 10,000 members each. It is safe to assume that most of the members of the telegram groups are also members of the facebook group however, as both advertise within each other and share the same information. Organization happened fast, with two convoys planned to leave on Sunday the 6th of February, one from Bluff and the other from Cape Reinga. The online sentiment was overwhelmingly positive within these groups (echo chambers of course, but even within general movements there is often dissent) but the organizers themselves did not seem very technology savvy, which made it hard to gauge how popular the convoy really would be.
After setting off at each end with only a few trucks and cars, the movement gained popularity as it moved towards Wellington and by the end of the first day reports from group members, which should be taken with a grain of salt, said the North Island convoy took an hour to completely pass them. Images also showed people lining the motorway and standing on overpasses waving New Zealand flags and honking their horns in support, and those who could not join for the entire trip joined the convoy for as long as they could. There was, and still is, a large sense of community among supporters and participants. From the livestream you could see people handing food and notes of encouragement to the drivers, and at each overnight stop many people provided what they could. Farms were provided for drivers to park up and stay in, food was brought for them to eat and whenever a member of the convoy got in trouble or broke down a call was sent out and someone responded with help, normally within minutes. The first night ended in Hamilton and Christchurch, and while the intention was for the North Island convoy to reach Wellington on Monday the 7th a call was made, for safety reasons, for a night to be spent in Palmerston North and for arrival to Wellington to be postponed to Tuesday the 8th.
This is a decision that I find very interesting. From the start the idea of the convoy had been to travel to Wellington and occupy the grounds of parliament for as long as it took for the goals of the moment to be realized (goals which I will get into later, hold your horses), but would this really occur? Would the members not have other commitments which they had to attend to? Moving the arrival in Wellington out by a day and there still being the amount of support there was, I believe, shows that the protestors meant what they said, and dont really care about how long it takes to achieve their goals.
Those goals, or really the one goal, was the removal of the government’s vaccine mandate and vaccine pass system. While I wont go into too much detail about these policies, the basics are this:
- Workers in certain sectors, such as health, education and police are required to be vaccinated to continue at their job
- Workers at food and drink services, events and close proximity services (where 1 meter distancing is not possible) must be vaccinated to continue to work
- Vaccine passes must be shown at all close contact business and public services, and at indoor venues which are not essential services, along with other business covered under the COVID-19 framework
- If a business chooses not to require a vaccine pass to be shown, their capacity will be limited or they will be required to operate takeaway only depending on the current traffic light level
The protestors want this system to be eliminated, vaccines to be optional and as many of them said to me, for ‘Life to go back to normal’. About half of the people I talked to had already been vaccinated, believing that the vaccine was safe, if not ineffective, but no one had had their booster yet. It appeared from the signs that were present that a reasonably sized portion did not believe the vaccine was dangerous, they just did not like it being forced on them by a leader they did not see as having their best interests at heart. However, there were many who believed that the vaccine did not work, or was dangerous to their health.
Arriving at the Beehive in the early afternoon on Tuesday the 8th, the first thing that struck me was the amount of New Zealand flags being waved. Many protesters were carrying one on their shoulders, had it on their clothes and most vehicles which had traveled with the convoy had at least one attached. It seemed trendy to turn the flag upside down, a concept which comes from the United States flag code and indicates ‘extreme distress or danger’, and is used as a symbol in many protests across the world. There were also many instances of the United Tribes Flag, shown below, which was the first official flag of New Zealand selected in 1834, the national Māori flag and many other flags representing New Zealand.
There was also one group flying large “Donald Trump 2024” flags, but they seemed to be considered by other protestors to be inappropriate. One protester asked the flag holder why he was flying an American political flag at the New Zealand parliament and he responded “The only reason you can fly that (New Zealand) flag is because I fly this one”. Bit of American arrogance for you there, but I want to stress that even though many protestors I talked to liked Donald Trump, not one thought that they should have been there.
Moving on from flags, there were many signs and most, if not all, of the vehicles that had participated in the convoy had writing on them espousing political messages. My favorite was someone who had a sign which simply read “COVID-1984”. Sadly I did not manage to ask him if he had actually read the book. Other messages were more to the point. “No mandates”, “Freedom to Choose”, “Dont jab my kid” and the most common: “Freedom Convoy 2022”. Some were funny, some were direct and some were misspelled, and they even managed to co-opt Harold the Giraffe.
Signs and flags are nice symbols but who were the people holding them and what did they believe in. After getting some courage, and a delicious feed of McDonalds, I went and asked some people why they were protesting, where they were from and how long they intended to stay. I was a little nervous as fringe, right leaning groups tend not to like the media very much, but after informing them I was not employed by the industry, most were happy to talk.
The first person I talked to was a woman pitching a tent on the lawn of the Victoria University law campus, right across from the Beehive. She had joined the convoy from Waiheke Island, up near Auckland, and had come right down through the North Island with them. I asked how many vehicles she thought had been in the convoy and she said “When we first stopped at Drury, to get on the overbridge and support the convoy coming through, there must have been a thousand cars at that stage”. She estimated at that stage, just south of auckland, around 30 to 40% of the convoy were trucks and other big vehicles. Something she didn’t expect, however, was the support from the public. As she said, “Something I didn’t expect was the support of the public, I would say 95% of the public who did wave out, and there were a lot, were positive”. When asked how long she intended to stay in the tent she had pitched, she said “As long as it takes… to ensure our country comes back under control of the people, by the kiwis”. To her this looked like “a place where we know that the people who are making decisions are truthful and competent. So at the moment I think we have either got corruption or incompetence, and neither of those is suitable to govern our country”.
This distrust in the government was a common theme. Another man I talked to said that he “didn’t believe the mandate was in the best interest of the people” and “trusting… and giving money to the UN and the WHO was stupid. They dont do anything, and might have made this whole thing worse”. While I was having this conversation, another woman came up and said “I’m from South Africa, we have measles and rabies, which is certain death in four days. You dont see the government freaking out about them all the time and forcing people to get jabbed. I also think it’s closer to 99.8%”. This last comment was in reference to the first man’s sign, which said “Covid survival rate is 99.4%”. I will not be fact checking these peoples signs in this article, but it leads into an interesting observation I made. It seems from many of the comments the protestors were making that they only cared about the New Zealand statistics, and not the overall global trends. They did not seem to consider that our government’s COVID policy may have been the reason that the disease seems mild and not as dangerous as health experts claim. There were many comments, both from individuals and speakers, comparing COVID to the flu, and questions were asked as to why such a response was justified for the former, but not the latter. The man mentioned above also said “Suicide is a big problem here in New Zealand too, but the government isn’t doing anything about that. I think they have even changed the name, something like self harm, so they dont have to include it in the statistics”. Take from that what you will.
Another man I talked to said he was from Tauranga, and intended to stay in the capital until thursday, “at least”. He was realistic, if not pessimistic, about the chances of the movement succeeding. “We are all here for the removal of mandates” he said, “But I doubt the government will change the laws”. This was another common theme, the lack of belief in the movement’s success. Jacinda Ardern said early on the 8th that she had no intention of meeting with the protestors, “No, it’s not our intention. We have a full day in Parliament today as well with the caucus, public backing session so a busy day ahead of us and that’s what we’ll be focused on today” as reported by the New Zealand Herald. Even one of the main convoy organizers, who was speaking while I was on parliament grounds, said “This is just the beginning. We need to persuade all those who came out in support on the way down but were too [scared] to join us to get behind the movement. When you go back home to your towns, organize them…”.
It appears the protestors are right in thinking this. The government has shown no desire to engage them in dialogue, and it seems their strategy is to just ignore the protests and hope they die down of their own accord. There was no visible police presence at all in the blocks surrounding the Beehive, which I believe was an intentional decision so as not to antagonize the protestors, but rest assured our dear politicians were protected by parliament security at every entrance. While this strategy will most likely work in the short term, I am not so sure that it will serve the government well to alienate this minority, and it may be a better strategy in the long term to engage in dialogue even though they do not want to appear to be supporting such ideas. The protestors already have a strong distrust of the government, and the current strategy only serves to further erode their trust in the institutions of our democracy.
While everyone at the protest I talked to supported the movement (shockingly), I talked to some others around Wellington as to what they thought. One anonymous parliament worker described it as “Loud”. When asked if they thought it was bigger than other protests outside their workplace they said “No, but it was definitely the loudest”. I also talked to someone who works near the protests, and she had some ideas on the dangers of the government not listening, and the effects of large crowds. “It [being in a protest] can make the people who have reasonable feelings on things become more extreme with mob mentality, feeling united and a part of a group can make you want to side with that group more” she said, “Government not acknowledging protests turns you against government, i’m anti the things I am fighting against and when the government does not acknowledge what you are trying to say you feel small, and it does make you feel anti government”. She was very clear on being pro vaccine, but thought that the lines between anti vax and pro vax had been blurred somewhat throughout the pandemic, and thought there may be a lot of reasonable anti mandate protestors who were at risk of being radicalized further by the alienation from general society.
This potential or present alienation did not seem to bother those who were in attendance, as the crowd was of a reasonable size. Demographics wise it seemed to be a representative sample of the New Zealand population, and the age trend was that of middle aged people with children. These assertions should not be taken as fact however, as I am no expert in estimating crowd size and makeup. They made a lot of noise with some of the trucks and cars blocking the roads around parliament and honking their horns, but the organizers said that “You should move them by 5 O’clock, so that ordinary people can get home”, which is almost the opposite of the intentions of the Canadian protests which inspired this one. This, however, does not seem to have occurred as reports say there are still cars blocking the roads (at 8pm on the 8th of February). There were speakers from many different loosely aligned groups, including destiny’s church, but online there was a lot of pushback against the church, which seemed to have hijacked the protest in some people’s eyes. For most attendees and speakers this was purely about the government’s mandates policy, and not the myriad of other issues and fringe views which are often bundled into these kinds of movements. That being said, many in attendance did hold these views, but that was not why they were there. One man mentioned above believed that food was the cause of COVID, and blamed the ‘industrialisation of the food industry in the 1960s”.
There was a strong sense of community, with people handing out food and water as had happened at other convoy stops, and it appeared they were generally looking out for each other. Some people, however, had different ideas. There were some who were smoking weed on the parliament lawns, and a group of lads smashing Cody’s around the back of the Parliament house. Protesting takes all shapes and forms in the 21st century it seems.
Overall, I very much doubt that this protest will change anything, but I believe in the long run that the protestors will get their way. Vaccine passes and mandates will eventually be phased out purely because of the cost to the government and to private businesses, and this will be done on the government’s terms, not on that of this vocal minority. The handling of this group by our government leaves something to be desired, but they are not the dangerous extremists that they are often portrayed to be, just ordinary people with a fringe opinion they are willing to fight for. That being said, the vaccine is safe, effective and will protect you against severe disease, as shown by many studies across the globe. New Zealand has, for now, dodged the COVID bullet but when considering issues such as death rates and vaccine effectiveness we should look globally, as we are the exception and not the rule. Oh, and the government should also try and engage with all such groups, even if just in a token way, so that belief in our democratic systems is upheld, and we dont get an American January 6th type of event.
Bye for now.
Michael Freeman
