LEBANON — Old Glory and the Maple Leaf were flying in the morning breeze on Wednesday at a gathering behind The Fort @ Exit 18 truck stop.
The flags adorned pickup trucks, a fuel truck, a logging truck and several sedans parked for a couple of hours behind the restaurant while about 50 people collected donated items such as toilet paper, peanut butter and popcorn, as well as money.
Those gathered also shared honks, waves and cheers in support of the nationwide People’s Convoy, a movement of truckers and others focused on rolling back the nation’s few remaining COVID-19-related mandates.
Organizers began a transcontinental journey, starting in southern California last week and aiming to arrive outside Washington on Saturday, according to thepeoplesconvoy.org.
Hartland resident John Butson said he planned to drive his fuel truck, which was parked behind The Fort, as far as Massachusetts in support of the cause on Wednesday.
“Then I’ve got to get to work,” he said.
Similar to the national organizers, those gathered in Lebanon offered various reasons for their protest, but most touched on COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates and expressed a wish to go back to pre-pandemic norms. Some were inspired by the recent COVID-19 restrictions protest by Canadian truckers that brought gridlock to that nation’s capital and shut down U.S. border crossings.
From Lebanon, the Upper Valley caravan was slated to take Interstate 89 to Interstate 91 and then head south toward the nation’s capital. Participants around the country had a goal of converging on Washington this weekend.
Butson, puffing a cigarette as he spoke, said the mandates motivated his participation. He said he doesn’t want his children to have to continue to wear masks at school and that the vaccine mandates have hurt his family’s income. He said that someone in his household quit a job due to a mandate.
“Two years of this stuff,” he said. “It’s enough.”
Enfield resident Sword Cambron, a Dartmouth-Hitchcock radiologist, stood watching the trucks with his almost 3-year-old son Quill, who likes trucks.
Cambron said the two had just had breakfast at The Fort and came across the gathering by chance. It was a “pleasant surprise,” he said.
“I think that it’s good for people to protest,” he said. “Some of the restrictions have been too strong, and they’ve gone on for too long.”
Nelson, N.H., resident Bronwyn Sims said she was one of the organizers for the convoy’s Northeast corridor. Sims, an artist who used to live in Townshend, Vt., said she reached out to people she knew in southeastern Vermont to encourage them to cheer on the convoy from overpasses along I-91.
Sims, who said she doesn’t align with either major political party, was a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., prior to the pandemic, but she now feels that the government is “overstepping boundaries.”
“It’s a confusing, frustrating time,” she said. “Working-class people are fed up … tired.”
Sims, who declined to say whether she’s been vaccinated, said she has lost friends and family members because they have different views on COVID-19 precautions.
“I don’t know where people’s critical thinking has gone,” she said. “Everyone has a choice. I don’t know where the world is going. I’m concerned we’re not going to get out of this.”
Putney, Vt., resident Rosemary Lewando, 64, said she moved to Vermont years ago in search of organic food and home birth options.
“I always was skeptical about vaccines anyway,” she said.
Instead of pushing vaccines, Lewando, who like Sims described herself as a former Sanders supporter, said she would have preferred to see the government make medicines such as ivermectin readily available for COVID-19 treatment from the start of the pandemic.
Lewando said she purchased some ivermectin from India and she credits it with helping her husband “turn the corner” during his bout with COVID-19.
(The Food and Drug Administration has not approved ivermectin for COVID-19 treatment. It is approved, in certain formulations, for the treatment of head lice and parasitic worms.)
Lewando, who held a sign that read, “Stop the Divide,” said she was forced to miss a daughter’s dance performance due to a vaccine requirement. She said she feels that mandates are discriminatory.
Lyndonville, Vt., resident Jay Iselin, 68, said he came to Lebanon in support of the truckers. Like Sims, he said he feels the nation is in “dire trouble.”
Iselin said he opposes both the vaccines themselves and mandates requiring them. He said he views the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as largely “peaceful.”
“I believe that there were instigators there who provoked the undesirable events that took place at the Capitol,” he said. “I’m hoping that (participants in the convoy) don’t get into any similar problems.”
(The Jan. 6 attack disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress in the process of affirming the presidential election results. It contributed to the deaths of seven people, according to a bipartisan Senate report released in June. It also caused some $1.5 million worth of damage to the building, according to a May estimate by the Architect of the Capitol.)
Middlebury, Vt., resident Jason Ethier, 39, said he came to Lebanon on Wednesday to support fellow truckers.
“I feel for these owner/operators,” he said.
Ethier had brought water, snacks, antifreeze and money to support the convoy.
“They’re gone for at least a month,” he said of the truckers.
At about 11:15 a.m., three trucks — the fuel truck, a logging truck and a flatbed — and a dozen or so pickups and passenger cars decorated with flags and signs lined up and left The Fort to begin the trek south.
Ethier, who said he is not vaccinated, also wants life to return to normal.
“With this convoy going along, people are out there to make a difference,” he said.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
