Until the beginning of this month, Americans seemed to have nothing to say about their ongoing economic ruin except, "Hit me! Please, hit me again!" You can take my house, but let me mow the lawn for you one more time before you repossess. Take my job and I'll just slink off somewhere out of sight. Oh, and take my health insurance too; I can always fall back on Advil.
Then, on April 1, in a wave of defiance, truck drivers began taking the strongest form of action they can take - inaction. Faced with $4/gallon diesel fuel, they slowed down, shut down and started honking. On the New Jersey Turnpike, a convoy of trucks stretching "as far as the eye can see," according to a turnpike spokesman, drove at a glacial 20 mph. Outside of Chicago, they slowed and drove three abreast, blocking traffic and taking arrests. They jammed into Harrisburg PA; they slowed down the Port of Tampa where 50 rigs sat idle in protest. Near Buffalo, one driver told the press he was taking the week off "to pray for the economy."
The truckers who organized the protests -- by CB radio and internet -- have a specific goal: reducing the price of diesel fuel. They are owner-operators, meaning they are also businesspeople, and they can't break even with current fuel costs. They want the government to release its fuel reserves. They want an investigation into oil company profits and government subsidies of the oil companies. Of the drivers I talked to, all were acutely aware that the government had found, in the course of a weekend, $30 billion to bail out Bear Stearns, while their own businesses are in a tailspin.
But the truckers' protests have ramifications far beyond the owner-operators' plight --first, because trucking is hardly a marginal business. You may imagine, here in the blogosphere, that everything important travels at the speed of pixels bouncing off of satellites, but 70 percent of the nation's goods - from Cheerios to Chapstick --travel by truck. We were able to survive a writers' strike, but a trucking strike would affect a lot more than your viewing options. As Donald Hayden, a Maine trucker put it to me: "If all the truckers decide to shut this country down, there's going to be nothing they can do about it."
More importantly, the activist truckers understand their protest to be part of a larger effort to "take back America," as one put it to me. "We continue to maintain this is not just about us," "JB"-- which is his CB handle and stands for the "Jake Brake" on large rigs-- told me from a rest stop in Virginia on his way to Florida. "It's about everybody - the homeowners, the construction workers, the elderly people who can't afford their heating bills... This is not the action of the truck drivers, but of the people." Hayden mentions his parents, ages and 81 and 76, who've fought the Maine winter on a fixed income. Missouri-based driver Dan Little sees stores shutting down in his little town of Carrollton. "We're Americans," he tells me, "We built this country, and I'll be damned if I'm going to lie down and take this."
At least one of the truckers' tactics may be translatable to the foreclosure crisis. On March 29, Hayden surrendered three rigs to be repossessed by Daimler-Chrysler - only he did it publicly, with flair, right in front of the statehouse in Augusta. "Repossession is something people don't usually see," he says, and he wanted the state legislature to take notice. As he took the keys, the representative of Daimler-Chrysler said, according to Hayden, "I don't see why you couldn't make the payments." To which Hayden responded, "See, I have to pay for fuel and food, and I've eaten too many meals in my life to give that up."
Suppose homeowners were to start making their foreclosures into public events-- inviting the neighbors and the press, at least getting someone to camcord the children sitting disconsolately on the steps and the furniture spread out on the lawn. Maybe, for a nice dramatic touch, have the neighbors shower the bankers, when they arrive, with dollar bills and loose change, since those bankers never can seem to get enough.
But the larger message of the truckers' protest is about pride or, more humbly put, self-respect, which these men channel from their roots. Dan Little tells me, "My granddad said, and he was the smartest man I ever knew, 'If you don't stand up for yourself ain't nobody gonna stand up for you.'" Go to theamericandriver.com, run by JB and his brother in Texas, where you're greeted by a giant American flag, and you'll find - among the driving tips, weather info, and drivers' favorite photos -the entire Constitution and Declaration of Independence. "The last time we faced something as impacting on us," JB tells me, "There was a revolution."
The actions of the first week in April were just the beginning. There's talk of a protest in Indiana on the 18th, another in New York City, and a giant convergence of trucks on DC on the 28th. Who knows what it will all add up to? Already, according to JB, some of the big trucking companies are threatening to fire any of their employees who join the owner-operators' protests.
But at least we have one shining example of defiance of the face of economic assault. There comes a point, sooner or later, when you stop scrambling around on all fours and, like JB and his fellow drivers all over the country, you finally stand up.
If you would like to help support the truckers in any way, go to here .
The days of cheap petroleum are over forever, and no we aren't going to run all those trucks on corn squeezings unless you want your Big Mac to cost $10.00.
To save energy this country needs to move back to large scale hauling dominated by trains not trucks.
What truck hauling remains will be only affordable to large firms as only they have the economy of scale.
Sorry kids but thems the breaks. The protests will accomplish NOTHING.
We must not allow our compassion for our fellow man to be locked our of our being.., like the bush/cheny example; less we become as our enemy, and.., they win..!
All the compassion in the world isn't going to bring back the days of $0.89/gal gasoline. Sorry but it's just time to move on to something actually workable in the long run. The trucker culture is as dependent on supercheap oil as the culture of suburbia and those days are OVER.
I have started blogging on the matter. Hubpages.com. start with Mortgage Horror Story.
Barbara, please investigate the reality of "help for borrowers". No one does it better than you.
Go for it Truckers, lock down this nation until you receive a decent wage for work performed. Do you think our upper crust sweat for their money? The pay scale in America is pathetic and out of whack. Time to strike, time to enact change, time for Neal Cavuto and his ilk to stop looking like pigs and enact a diet. Without food delivered truckers will force a diet upon them.
Where you refer to throwing loose change at the bankers coming to foreclose, I worry that could lead to throwing rolled pennies at them, which could be painful/injurous.
Never mind, good idea!
I applaud the truckers and I am aware of the impact of energy upon food prices and other consumable goods. Revolution is not for the feint of heart or the constitutionally weak. I hope the shot the trucker's fired is heard and duplicated around the nation. To arms, to arms, we are under attack by a rich, unscrupulous, and unidentified minority interest. Let us get beyond manufactured divisions to concentrate on those who would keep us divided in their efforts to control us and to send our sons and daughters off to wars they start for profit. The German, the Italian, the Irish, the Japanese, the Korean, the Hungarian, the Mexican, the Cuban, the Hindu, the Sikh, the Puerto Rican, and all other nationalities are my brothers and my sisters in this fight we must engage in. Let us transform ourselves into what the opposition fears --A United States of America. Together there is nothing we cannot solve. Apart there is much misery and death awaiting the lot of us. We can have individual wealth and eliminate poverty at the same time. Those who say we cannot are the traitors to our cause.
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere...
GOOOO Truckers!
Energy policy is not only economic policy -- it's also national security policy.
So, if your family vehicle gets less than 15 mpg, sorry, but you're no patriot.
I just wish I could have bought a minivan that would accomidate a baby seat. Captain's chairs don't.
Learned something new today: Minivans aren't compatible with babyseats. Rulllly?
With safety in mind, I am a bit jaded about SUV's and the illusion of safety, but that's another story. Great site: http://www.iihs.org/
P.S. Inflate your tires to 35, check your air filter annually, and use a Techron-based fuel system cleaner additive quarterly. ;-)
P.P.S. GM's new uber-SUV's with hybrid engines are like putting lipstick on a pig.
is always a bad idea. The city continues to be screwed by the logjam that is the state legislature.
"Dork Number One. Dork Number Two. Or, Dork Number Three ... which one'll it be? Gotta pick one of these three. You have no choice." (Oh?)
The darkest, coldest hour is right before the dawn. Only when the Prodigal Son found himself fighting the pigs for their food and maybe just got his foot stomped by an angry sow ... TONLY THEN, came the moment when the the Son (and the Country) started walking into town for espresso and a hot shower. To go home.
We've been shamelessly looted by the leaders to whom we entrusted power, and like King Midas we see their greed has no ends: it's just disgusting.
But we are also a not-so-long-ago mighty industrial nation of 300 million people. In our own childhood we remember much better days. We pass shuttered factories every single day, and a web of railroad tracks.
"Impeach" means (at least) "You're Fired, Forever." Not so bad an idea, that...
Nor is, "quit feeling sorry for yourself, get a broom... we've got ten thousand factories to sweep out and put back into service. There's real money to be made here."
It's always been an uber-conservative town, due to the Democrats being blamed for "closing down" (read: cutting back) logging in the Tongass. There is still timber, but not like it was in the go-for-gusto days. The town underwent some hard times starting in 1995 or so, and lots of people still blame environmentalists for gutting the town's economy. Now we get a yearly influx of tourist money, an industry that could also be affected by rising fuel prices.
Liberals have NOT been welcome here for years, so I've had to be careful about expressing my opinions. It's only lately that I've been able to say that Bush is a jerk. Now, everyone I meet agrees with that, or worse, and many will take one of my "Impeach" bracelets.
We haven't seen a boat convoy blocking the straights yet, but it may just be a matter of time.
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Shoot your television. Shoot it with a big gun.
And right on about the TV! If you could get that movement started, I'd sign on.
Catchy.
There is nothing "liberal" about believing in facts.
And there is nothing noble, let alone conservative, about ignoring same to drive the nation into a ditch, let alone off a cliff.
Don't shoot the television -- tune it to C-Span. And shoot the dogma.
Many truckers are stuck in a system where they can not change the terms of the contracts under which they pick up loads. Bringing attention to themselves in this way may hasten the changing of the contracts under which they work, so that they get a larger portion of the economic pie. Corporations can simply pass their costs on to consumers, but private truckers have to get the terms under which they haul loads changed.
"a rising tide lifts all boats" IS true.
It's just that they don't care that you don't have a boat to rise in.
By the way, stop splashing around in the water, you're creating a wake and it's gonna cause my martini to spill.