I’m a bit late into this thread, but here are my thoughts.
In normal circumstances, I’m a bit uneasy about demonstrations where a small number of people have the power to make a huge protest, essentially holding a country to ransom. For example, that happened in Venezuela, when supermarket owners and other leaders of big businesses decided to strike with the result that their actions had a massive effect on the country, essentially paralyzing it. On the other hand, the 2 million or so protesting the Iraq war in the UK had little leverage on the Blair government. The state, via the police, of course also has a massive power advantage. Indeed the police itself have it – if they decide to join a protest the government will have to act promptly to pacify them!
The current truck driver protest may seem a bit like the first example – with big trucks requiring relatively few people blocking large parts of a city “holding it to ransom”. However, there are two big factors to provide context:
(1) this protest has huge support among a substantial part of the population (~30% I guess and probably much more if the media reported critically on the Covid responses and adverse vax effects).
(2) the severity of the government’s (not just the Canadian of course) attack on the people; in particular in this case on the direct livelihoods of these truckers (and millions of others).
These last two years have seen an incredible power grab by most Western governments with unheard of restrictions to people’s freedoms. Standing around for a few afternoons with placards is not going to get very far in removing eg vaccine mandates. Personally I prefer mass disobedience, but failing that I’m happy to see these protests. The government gets a taste of its own medicine – a lockdown.