#AbolishCanada: Breaking Down the 2022 Freedom Convoy

Abstract

The 2022 Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, Canada, raises questions about the meaning and tactics of decolonial abolition. To call for the police of a colonial state to crack down on unruly settlers on stolen Indigenous land is both hypocritical and ineffective. And yet, it isn't clear how to organize effective grassroots resistance against a well-funded group of possibly armed right-wing protesters in trucks. This essay situates the Freedom Convoy in the longer durée of capitalist extraction and colonial state violence in so-called Canada, arguing that the convoy was not an anomaly but the expression of a global logic of carceral racial capitalism. It then engages with teachings shared by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson about the beaver's practice of building dams that sustain life and, in some cases, threaten it. If we understand Canada as both a liberal democracy and a “criminal empire” willing to destroy the earth and the Indigenous nations that care for it, then Robyn Maynard is right: abolition means Land Back. The question for decolonial abolitionists then becomes not just how to shut down prisons or dislodge right-wing occupations, but rather how to staunch the flows of colonial racial capitalism, deepening pools that support diverse forms of life.