FINNISH CONVOY - read this for real information of it.
It felt like a success and a disappointment at the same time. Biggest disappointment being that the truckers didn't show up, just a small amount, so it couldn't go as planned. But people still made it happen in a big way. People were promised to have a lot of trucks there, and also a big convoy of tractors, both of them turned their back on this. I think there were only some dozens of trucks on the move, some few got blocked outside Helsinki and maybe 20 found their way there. Not a single tractor showed up. Neither did the 1000+ trucks from Sweden, or trucks from Estonia which both turned out to be fake stories spread by an internet troll. Those trolls were everywhere when things were planned, trying to ruin everything they could. Truckers of Finland didn't join this as a group, only a few ones. Truckers saw it as a risk of losing their jobs and because there is no vaccine mandate for truckers in Finland yet, they didn't see reason to do it.
So the truth is that it was done by mostly normal cars, people, a few buses and maybe a dozen trucks. About 200 cars along with. There was also a sauna in the middle of the street. One guy showed his dedication to the protest by running something like 120 miles in the wind and snowfall to Helsinki from western Finland. We got the main street of Helsinki closed with probably 200 vehicles and had a great Friday night with many thousands of Finns, maybe 15 000 people, until the riot police came late at night, they had watched us enjoy the night the whole time, and this lead to clashes. Finnish media wrote about 200, 700, and 2000 people which are ridiculous lies. Saturday was also good, even though there was some clashing with the riot police again. Friday 55 people got taken to police custody. On saturday the number was 15 or higher. All the cars that were left to the street got towed away in the first night. Police used some unneccessary force sometimes, based on the videos I've seen. It looks like the clashing with police on Friday could have been started by an unknown agitator, who pushed a guy to a riot police, and the guy got batoned. This is on video. This lead to another guy defending him, which started the police to get agressive. In my opinion there were never a need of the riot police, they provoked things by just showing up, holding their rubber pellet guns and batons, and driving their horses in the middle of a loud mass of people. Luckily no horses went mad, or hurt, or anything.
The weather was horrible the whole first weekend. Snowing, cold, street was full of wet snow that made it hard to walk. Wind was like 20 mph. Still people stayed there for the whole night.
Saturday and sunday were active protesting. At saturday the main street was closed again by people and a big convoy of cars.
Then it has been quieter, consisting a couple bigger protests in Helsinki but most of the time the Convoy has been modest now, but still kept alive (and bigger things coming). There are some people leading the Convoy social media pages, who can't work together, and this started problems, and made people hesitate. Now there is one group doing another thing, and another main group doing another thing. I still think we can do this. And next month will be important for it.
Media has also started a war against this with fake news and calling the protesters violent, drunks and hooligans. Government has made zero comments about the Convoy and are quiet otherwise now, too.
As I mentioned next month, there will be another protest against restrictions and vaccine passes called Worldwide Demonstration happening on 19. of March, and we expect many thousands to show up in Helsinki that day too, and there will be car convoys too on that day. The last one was held a week before the Convoy happened, and then there were approximately 5000 people. So we expect A LOT more now.
And by the way, we are proud that we were among the first, or if not the first country after Canada who started doing this. Also we are proud of all the brave ones who made it happen, and the small amount of truckers who took a risk and came there. But as you see, it left some disappointments, and it will need more work and time to grow as big as its potential.