Report: Trucker Beltway protest back on

A plan by truckers to protest the Obama administration is reportedly back on, according to a report Thursday by The Washington Post.

The on-again, off-again plan to back up the Capital Beltway highway that encircles Washington, D.C., is back on schedule for the Columbus Day holiday weekend, a trucker who is involved in the planning of the event told the paper.

“Yes, it is happening,” Truckers for the Constitution organizer Zeeda Andrews told the paper. 

{mosads}Andrews said that she expects “a few thousand truckers” to drive their vehicles to Washington over the weekend.

The Post had previously reported that the announcement of the Beltway protest, which had been dubbed a “Ride for the Constitution,” was a stunt designed to generate media attention about conservative truckers’ unhappiness with regulations from the Obama administration.

Georgia-based driver Earl Conlon told the paper on Tuesday that the group was just trying to “stir the feather of the mainstream media.

“Nothing gets the attention like the mainstream media, like some sort of disastrous threat,” Conlon told the paper. “I knew it was going to ruffle some feathers.”

The announcement of the Beltway protest indeed ruffled feathers because the Truckers for the Constitution group used rhetoric that echoed the early appeals of the Tea Party in advertisements.

The flyer the truck drivers were distributing for their planned protest named President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) as “domestic enemies.”

“Share this document,” the flyer said. “Copy it, re-post it, encourage everyone else to do the same.

“We are Americans who run the United States of America — it’s not run by a bunch of Global Banking Cartels,” the flyer continued. “This is our house; our country; our government, and each of us needs to take ownership of how we succeed in this event.  If we want to save our country, we will do so. If we don’t, it will be because you as an individual wanted someone else to save it for you — this is why we are in this mess — because we trusted our government and the politicians who’ve promised they would serve the people.”  

The lobbying group that represents truck drivers in Washington, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, distanced itself from the potential protest this week, saying the truck drivers who were behind the protest weren’t affiliated with its group.

“The individuals leading this particular effort have no direct affiliation with trucking and appear to be using truckers in order to gain media attention and air other political grievances,” it said in a statement. “We do not support assembling in an unlawful, unpermitted manner, committing crimes, making threats on our lawmakers, or behaving in such a way to cast safe, professional truck drivers in a negative light.”