by Xinhua writers Deng Xianlai, Sun Ding
WASHINGTON, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Right at the entrance to a campsite in Hagerstown, Maryland, where at least hundreds of truckers gathered Sunday morning and were about to hit the road to protest COVID-related restrictions, participants gave conflicting answers about whether to mask up.
"Hey, this is a mask-free zone," claimed a man sitting inside his car, while just across the street another one was telling reporters holding cameras that masks were required inside the campsite, where apparently no one -- no matter whether they were participants or onlookers -- was wearing one.
Having reached some 70 miles (113 km) northwest of Washington, D.C., from states as far as California and South Dakota, the truckers were joined by those driving ordinary sedans, forming what they called the "People's Convoy" comprising huge container vehicles, compact pickup trucks as well as autos of varying sizes in between.
After an aborted attempt to disrupt traffic in downtown D.C. on March 1 -- for which President Joe Biden's first State of the Union address was scheduled -- the convoy, with a smaller-than-expected crowd, planned to circle the Capital Beltway -- an interstate highway that surrounds the nation's capital -- twice on Sunday, making a 128-mile (206 km) trip before returning to Hagerstown, according to the organizers.
When approached by Xinhua in the morning, one of the organizers said he was in such a hurry directing the convoy to set out for the campaign that he could hardly spare a few more minutes for an interview.
Almost all the vehicles were decorated with American flags, painted words slamming the current administration's handling of the pandemic, or other banners bearing slogans of generalized broadsides against the government.
"This has split my family," Steve Girard said of the mask and vaccine mandates. The self-employed Pennsylvanian senior said while his son shared the same view with him that the restrictions -- many of which have now been loosened, if not outright lifted, across the country -- were "an entire farce," his daughter strictly abided by the rules, injecting herself and his grand babies with the vaccines.
He said that mandates ordered during the pandemic were nothing but the government's "power grab," and that issuing sweeping requirements that deprived people of their right to make health-related choices "absolutely" further divided the United States.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had updated its guidance in late February to free some 70 percent of Americans from wearing masks. However, it appears that the task of assuaging the anti-vaxxers still remains an insurmountable task for top officials.
"My message is that the politicians need to listen to the people," said a retired cement finisher from Illinois who had also joined the convoy. "They got us under their thumb with these mandates, forcing us to put something in our body that I don't personally want, and a lot of these people don't (as well)," said the retiree, who gave his name as Al Kiper.
"I would just want the overreach of the government to end," he said as the trucks fumed thick black smoke and honked in the background. "Every day Congress meets, we lose some of our freedom and it needs to end."
The retiree said he's been doing "OK" as far as his livelihood is concerned, with his sons taking over the small company he used to own. "But it's the inconveniences that everybody faced ... (Our children) need to be free. We all need to be free from this pandemic."
Traveling on the Capital Beltway, also known as I-495, the trucks occupied the right lane and drove at a low speed, and were greeted by hand-waving and cheering onlookers either standing along the emergency lane to escort the convoy or overlooking it from overpasses above the highway. The drivers honked their horns in response.
Ironically, though, the restrictions that those joining the convoy are protesting against have been significantly eased in the very part of the country where they are venting their fury.
D.C. has ended its proof of vaccine mandate and mask mandate previously required in some indoor venues. Marylanders no longer have to wear masks inside state buildings and Virginia parents can now make their own decisions as to whether their children should wear masks in class.
"They're an embarrassment," read one comment beneath a Sunday report by The Washington Post about the convoy. "Do they have any concept of what actual tyranny is? The 'restrictions' they're complaining about have all but expired in most states."
Republicans have minimized the Biden administration's early achievement in immunizing the American population as a natural result of the groundwork laid by the proceeding government's Operation Warp Speed program seeking fast approval and production of COVID-19 vaccines, while Democrats once termed the worsening virus situation as "the pandemic among the unvaccinated" when their push for far-reaching vaccine mandates encountered overwhelming resistance.
Sunday's truckers, galvanized by their Canadian counterparts across the northern border who had staged similar but much more troublesome protests earlier this year that saw Ottawa struggle to cope, vowed to continue holding up the traffic on the outskirts of the capital on Monday. They said they wouldn't stop unless and until their appeals were heeded by 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Capitol Hill.
"It's not science. It's political science," read a slogan on a paperboard placed on a pickup truck that was parked at the convoy's makeshift headquarters in Hagerstown.
"We're rolling, bro. Record all of this," Girard, the senior from Pennsylvania, said before embarking on his journey. His truck was full of fuel that he had just manually loaded. ■