OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) – The leaders of the trucker revolt aren’t interested in speaking to mainstream media who peddle fake news.
The organizers of the Freedom Convoy held their first press conference on Sunday. Liberal media was banned from the event, and the spokespeople made it clear that they have no intention of leaving Ottawa any time soon.
The Counter Signal founder Keean Bexte asked the organizers how long they intended to stay in Ottawa. Co-organizer Benjamin Dichter replied, “We’re in this for the long-haul; we don’t have any time limit.” He also joked about the “days getting longer” and it being “summer soon,” signifying that the truckers will stay for as long as they must.
Dichter said they have enough money from the GoFundMe to provide resources to last well into 2023
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Convoy organizers hold first live press conference from an undisclosed location in Ottawa. #FreedomConvoy2022 https://t.co/0h0nYpzZ5a— Keean Bexte (@TheRealKeean) January 30, 2022
Dichter also said that they had “omitted” and “banned” left wing establishment media from the media event because they had not been reporting honestly on the convoy. They’re also bullies, he suggested.
“We know if we had invited the Toronto Star, CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation], all these mainstream news organizations, they’d do what they always do: they’ll come in with five people, and they’ll have these giant cameras and take up half the floor space and bully everybody else,” he said.
“That’s not what this is about. This is about us coming together.”
Many establishment media outlets have attempted to label the movement as violent and hateful. True North journalist Andrew Lawton asked the organizers to respond to claims that the protest is violent in the face of confirmations by the Ottawa Police Chief that the movement has been peaceful.
They laughed, and Dichter quipped, “Fake news media.”
Co-organizer Tamara Lich – who set up the GoFundMe which has raised almost $10 million (approximately $7.9 million U.S.) – said: “We’ve been working with local law authorities all across the way, and they’ve all been fantastic. We got an escort [from police] through Ontario.”
Co-organizer Chris Barber said the group has had “full communication, full support” from law enforcement.
One reporter asked them to comment on fallacious claims from establishment reporters about the size of the convoy. Benjamin Dichter said about the media, “I think it’s a race to the bottom to see whose reputation is going to be destroyed first.”
They stressed that the movement is not partisan, calling out both liberal and conservative leaders.
“They’re all horrible, all of them; they should be ashamed of themselves,” Dichter said.
Lich added, “We took a vote as an organization [to determine that] we are not partisan.”
Thus, the group decided to not officially link themselves to a political party or candidate.
A reporter asked what the group hoped would happen. Even if the Canadian government dropped the vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers, the U.S. still has its own mandate, he pointed out. Dichter said that his sources told him that the “Biden administration had zero interest in the program.”
“It was the Trudeau government that lobbied and reached out to the Biden administration and encouraged them to adopt this platform, just like in Canada,” Dichter stated.
Asked if he thought Trudeau would have a change of heart and drop the mandate, Dichter replied: “If he wants to eat, yeah, because this is the supply chain saying, ‘We’re not doing it.’”
The movement is not against COVID vaccinations per se but COVID vaccination mandates. The organizers believe the latter are wrong because taking a particular medication should be a personal choice.
Dichter, who is fully vaccinated, said that he has “friends who had the first vaccine, and they had this major adverse reaction, and they started getting bruises all over them… Their doctor said, ‘You know what? Just don’t take the next one.’”
Meanwhile, the organizers stressed that they are not just fighting vaccine mandates, but all COVID policies.
The press conference ended with Dichter saying: “The enemy… is the political class who are pushing us into serfdom, and if you don’t speak up now and you don’t get engaged, this is not going to end, and this is your opportunity…”
“If you want to maintain your basic freedoms, this is the movement that is there for you.”