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The "People's Convoy" trucker protest continued on Friday, with a member saying Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., is going to get "tarred and feathered and then we're gonna tar and feather all our delegates."
A video circulating on social media shows an unidentified speaker making the statement. According to other photos on social media, the convoy drove through the plaza earlier in the day.
The idea for the convoy originated with Canada's "Freedom Convoy" of truckers protesting COVID-19 vaccination mandates. The protest blocked roads in Canada and the United States for weeks. Now, the convoy tactic has spread to cities across the U.S., with the People's Convoy traveling to the nation's capital from California.
The convoy has caused some traffic delays and authorities are keeping a close eye on the protest to make sure it does not escalate, but the road closures have ended.
Black Lives Matter Plaza was established in October 2020 following a series of protests triggered by the police killing that year of George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis. At the plaza, the phrase "Black Lives Matter" is written across a stretch of street spanning two blocks.
In the unidentified man's speech, he said the convoy is going to take back Black Lives Matter Plaza, adding that "all that paint's coming off that street." His words were met with cheers from the crowd. So far, there have been no reports of the convoy making any attempts to take the words off the street.
According to a Twitter post from Jordan Pascale, a reporter for Washington public radio station WAMU, the convoy also drove near the White House while honking, but Secret Service and other police vehicles were trailing behind.
The convoy originally began to protest the national emergency declaration for the pandemic, which President Joe Biden extended past March 1. The protesters argue that COVID-19 measures "deprive the people of fundamental rights," according to the movement's website.
The truckers have since made multiple trips around the capital over the past few days, according to Newsweek's live blog updates from earlier this week.
The protest has caused some clogged traffic, frustrating many residents in Washington. Video shared on social media showed some people in a Capitol Hill neighborhood yelling expletives and telling the truckers to "go home" as they drove past. Another video showed a trucker saying people were constantly giving him the middle finger.
The U.S. is not the only country to have offshoot protests inspired by the Canadian trucker convoy. Other protests have occurred in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and New Zealand.
Update 03/18/22, 4:50 p.m. ET: This story was updated to add more information and background.
