Re: “Trucker Convoy is taking freedom not giving it,” Progress Letters, Feb. 11, 2022.
In his letter on Feb. 11, David Townsend says about the people in the Freedom Convoy: “Mindless people with an agenda beyond simply voicing an opinion.”
The Freedom Convoy is not made up of mindless people. Mindless people believe everything that they are told. Mindless people wouldn’t even have a different opinion they felt needed to be told. Research and forming opinions based on said research is not mindless. In fact, it is quite the opposite.
He further says, “When I voice my opinion, I do it respectfully, often vocally, but never in a manner that puts others at risk, or brings shame to the concept of free speech, or infringes on the rights of others to also express their opinions.”
These people are indeed being respectful, without putting others at risk. They aren’t injuring anyone, and they are doing their best to keep this protest peaceful. They are certainly not bringing shame to the concept of free speech. Standing up and voicing your opinion is what freedom of speech is. How is the Freedom Convoy then bringing shame to free speech? How are they infringing on others’ rights to express their opinions? Express your opinion if you want to. No one will stop you, as long as you are being peaceful, like the protesters that are currently in Ottawa.
About the swastikas and confederate flags he speaks of, while there were swastikas and confederate flags on only one day, they represented a very few (you could call them a fringe minority). There were an extremely small number of people being disrespectful like that, especially considering how many thousands and thousands of people are out there protesting. Judging all of the people in a group based off of a few people is discrimination. Just because one or two people were flying confederate flags or swastikas does not mean that the whole group is racist or white supremacist. That is not what they are fighting for. They are fighting for freedom.
I am only 14 years old, and this isn’t the world I want to grow up in, this isn’t the world I want my siblings to grow up in, this isn’t the world that anyone wants to grow up in. I am thankful for these courageous people trying to bring our country back to the true normal, fighting to get our freedoms back. They are ensuring that we have freedom of speech, of religion, of peaceful assembly, and so on. The Freedom Convoy is working to give us our freedoms back; it is the government who has taken our freedoms away.
Carolin Gelderman
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