Earlier this year, Canada’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ movement stormed the nation’s capital at Ottawa and occupied the grounds of the Parliamentary building for weeks to demand an end to vaccine mandates and other protective measures against COVID-19. The movement quickly spread to other Canadian and nearby US cities, despite vocal condemnations from Canadian labor organizations, including the Teamsters. Although the ‘Freedom Convoy’ seemed to come out of nowhere for most observers, its origins lay in an earlier 2019 convoy movement of truckers and small farmers opposed to carbon taxes. Since the Ottawa blockade, the convoy movement has taken an increasingly Christian nationalist turn, with some elements advocating a divine mission to overthrow the Canadian government. Emily Leedham joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss the history of the ‘Freedom Convoy,’ and what its merger with the religious right could mean for Canada’s future.

Emily Leedham is PressProgress’ prairies reporter. Her reporting has a special focus on workers and communities, big money and corporate influence, and systemic racism.

Post-Production: Stephen Frank

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Host, The Marc Steiner Show
Marc Steiner is the host of "The Marc Steiner Show" on TRNN. He is a Peabody Award-winning journalist who has spent his life working on social justice issues. He walked his first picket line at age 13, and at age 16 became the youngest person in Maryland arrested at a civil rights protest during the Freedom Rides through Cambridge. As part of the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968, Marc helped organize poor white communities with the Young Patriots, the white Appalachian counterpart to the Black Panthers. Early in his career he counseled at-risk youth in therapeutic settings and founded a theater program in the Maryland State prison system. He also taught theater for 10 years at the Baltimore School for the Arts. From 1993-2018 Marc's signature “Marc Steiner Show” aired on Baltimore’s public radio airwaves, both WYPR—which Marc co-founded—and Morgan State University’s WEAA.
 
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