A new group is calling on Vancouverites to rally against "far-right led" truck convoys that it says will be converging on downtown Vancouver this Saturday (March 5).

“These convoy participants come from outside our communities and do not represent us,” a March 3 release from Community Solidarity Vancouver said. “That is why we are calling on residents of Vancouver and the whole Lower Mainland to join us at 10:30 a.m. Saturday morning in the plaza at the southeast corner of Homer and West Georgia."

Rally organizer Bob Ages told the Straight by phone on March 3 that community members monitoring social-media accounts saw notices of the upcoming convoys. A group called Stand United BC has previously advertised a March 5 CBC protest. (Another counterprotest organizer named in the release, Michelle Fortin, did not respond when contacted by the Straight.)

Ages said the vehicle columns are supposed to originate outside the city Saturday morning and come together near the CBC broadcast centre at 700 Hamilton Street around noon. 

The Community Solidarity Vancouver release said, "We will counter their effort to harass and intimidate journalists and other workers at the CBC building a block to the east.” Asked about what organizers have planned for Saturday morning, Ages said potential counterdemonstraters need not worry about personal security.

"Be aware that in our organizing discussions, one of our prime criteria was safety," Ages told the Straight.

"What's not safe is letting these far-rights run wild in our cities," he added, noting that inspiration for his group's action came from hearing about the Vancouver counterprotesters who temporarily blocked—on bicycles and on foot—similar vehicle convoys that linked up in Vancouver on February 5. "It comes out of that," he explained.

That February 5 convoy protest ended up in front of the downtown offices of CTV News Vancouver and had as its slogan "The media is the virus." A statement from Mayor Kennedy Stewart, released the day before that rally, stated, in part: "As the mayor of a city with an over 95 per cent vaccination rate, my message to the convoy is this: Vancouver doesn’t want you here. Make your point and then go home." 

Another demonstration with the theme of blaming media coverage for "indoctrinating" people to accept government COVID-19 precautions and vaccine mandates attracted about 250 people to the Global News B.C. offices in Burnaby a month before, on January 8.

Yet another protest scheduled by a group called Action4Canada for February 19 at the same Global News offices in Burnaby was cancelled in favour of a demonstration that same day at the U.S.-Canada border.

The upcoming March 5 CBC convoy protest, planned to take place from noon to 3 p.m., has been advertised on social media by Stand United BC for several weeks. Ads for the rally use the same "The media is the virus" slogan.

Ages said the new group took its name from an organization called Community Solidarity Ottawa that came together to oppose the recent anti-vaccine mandate truck convoy that occupied the nation's capital for three weeks in February.

That residents' group organized blockades and marches and took part in disruptive counterprotest tactics, such as banging pots and pans near convoy participants.

"It's not a registered society or anything like that," Ages said of the Vancouver counterpart. "The organizing group is small but it has a large constituency."

Ages noted that Vancouverites have come together in the past for such causes. "In 2017, 4,000 people came to City Hall to oppose the far right," he said, referencing a demonstration planned to counter an announced anti-immigration rally that was scheduled just days after a deadly white-supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia.