How Can I Be the Most Peaceful?

'If you could have told me how to resist less, I would've done it.'

Part 1: Nothing Made Sense

Clayton engaging in peaceful civil disobedience Ottawa, 18 February 2022. Photographer unknown.

It didn’t take long for the trucker protest in Ottawa to evolve into a "mental battle," says Clayton, a 28-year-old participant. By the second week it had become obvious the Prime Minister "was not going to come out and address us. So it turned into: Who can hold out longer?" Truckers, he points out, "are used to living in their vehicles. So we weren't going anywhere. I knew the government wasn't going to be able to out wait us."

This meant, he reasoned, that sooner or later steps would be taken to disperse the protest. As the days wore on, he wondered how he himself should respond:

I envisioned what I was going to do. Which is what I did in the end - which ultimately led to me getting arrested.

I was going to lay on the ground in front of the police. Because I wanted to set a bar. I didn't necessarily want to be a leader, but I wanted to set an example. We're not here to cause problems, we're here to be peaceful.

What's the most peaceful way I can show that? Give myself up - and kind of make them look like dicks.  

On Friday morning, February 18th, Clayton got word that a police line had formed near the Westin Hotel, southeast of the National War Memorial. "As soon as I heard about it, I ran all the way," he says. "And I laid down there for about 20 minutes."

He remembers a random guy "walking around me, shoveling," surreally explaining "I just want to make sure nobody slips and falls." Multiple photos taken by multiple people show Clayton on his back in the snow, his arms passively at his sides. With a few languid movements, he might have made a snow angel.

Later that night, he posted a photo on Facebook, accompanied by ten brief words: "Here is me and what I did to get arrested." In that shot, we can see the shovel.

Eventually, the police line stepped over him and kept advancing. But some officers stayed behind:

five of 'em jumped on me. They rolled me over. I didn't fight back at all. If you could have told me how to resist less, I would've done it. Because my whole vision was: How can I be the most peaceful, the least resisting?

I just laid limp. They said 'Are we going to have a problem putting cuffs on you?' I said, 'No.' They couldn't fit the wristbands because of my big gloves. So they took my gloves off, put steel cuffs on me. My hands got pretty damn cold.

He remembers a female officer speaking into his ear. "She says, 'We're going to lift you up. Are you going to help?' I said, 'Nope.' I didn't fight, but I didn't help. So they picked me up, and that was it.' He believes he was arrested around 11 am.

Afterward, he says he was "passed off from cop to cop, and then I sat in a line" - a process that lasted maybe 60 to 90 minutes. Then the handcuffs were loosened, switched to in front of him, and he was shoved into a two-foot by two-foot cubicle, the smallest size in the paddy wagon:

They left me in there for, I'm going to say somewhere between six to eight hours. They drove us out somewhere, I had no idea. Yeah, six to eight hours in there, no food. I ended up getting a little bit mouthy. I had to kick the doors to beg for water.

Finally, the paddy wagon drove out to a remote location. One at a time, its occupants were taken into a trailer that was serving as an office:

You’d walk in, they’d take your fingerprints, and they'd give you all your stuff back. They'd make you sign a paper that you wouldn't go back to Ottawa and into the Red Zone.

I was given four charges. Three, four months later the disobeying-a-court-order charge was dropped, but they added on a second mischief. So now I'm facing the two mischiefs, disturbing the peace, and resisting arrest.

next installment: Frozen Bank Accounts