今月初めまで、アメリカ人は進行中の経済的破滅について「殴ってください！お願いです、もう一度殴ってください！」以外に何も言うことがないようだった。私の家を奪ってもいいですが、取り戻す前にもう一度芝刈りをさせてください。仕事を辞めたら、人目につかない場所へこっそり逃げます。ああ、健康保険にも加入してください。私はいつでもアドヴィルに頼ることができます。

 

そして1月4日、反抗の波の中で、トラック運転手たちは取り得る最も強力な行動、すなわち不作為をとり始めた。 20ガロンあたりXNUMXドルのディーゼル燃料に直面して、車は速度を落とし、車を止め、クラクションを鳴らし始めた。ターンパイクの広報担当者によると、ニュージャージー州のターンパイクでは、「見渡す限り」のトラックの隊列が氷河の中を時速XNUMXマイルで走行した。

 

Outside of Chicago, they slowed and drove three abreast, blocking traffic and taking arrests. They jammed into Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; they slowed down the Port of Tampa, where fifty rigs sat idle in protest. Near Buffalo, one driver told the press he was taking the week off "to pray for the economy."

 

CB ラジオとインターネットを通じて抗議活動を組織したトラック運転手たちは、ディーゼル燃料の価格を下げるという特定の目標を持っています。彼らはオーナー経営者、つまりビジネスマンでもあり、現在の燃料費では採算が取れません。彼らは政府が燃料備蓄を解放することを望んでいる。彼らは石油会社の利益と石油会社に対する政府補助金についての調査を求めている。私が話を聞いたドライバーたちは全員、自分たちの事業が窮地に陥っているにもかかわらず、政府がベアー・スターンズ救済に30億ドルの資金を週末のうちに見つけたことを痛感していた。

 

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."

 

住宅所有者が差し押さえを公のイベントとして取り上げ始めたと仮定しよう。近所の人や報道陣を招待し、少なくとも階段に落ち込んで座っている子供たちや芝生の上に家具を広げている様子を誰かにビデオ撮影してもらうことになるだろう。おそらく、素敵なドラマチックなタッチとして、銀行家が到着したら、隣人にドル紙幣と小銭をシャワーを浴びせてください。銀行家たちは決して十分ではないようなので。

 

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’ 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 April 18, another in New York City, and a giant convergence of trucks on DC on April 28. 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.

 

しかし、少なくとも私たちには、経済的攻撃の顔に反抗した輝かしい例が1つあります。遅かれ早かれ、四つん這いで走り回るのをやめて、JB や全国の仲間のドライバーのように、ついに立ち上がる時が来ます。

 

何らかの形でトラック運転手への支援をご希望の場合は、Truckers and Citizens United.com にアクセスしてください。

 

 

『Nickel and Dimed (Owl)』の著者である Barbara Ehrenreich は、2004 年のパフィン/ネイション賞の受賞者です。

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