> Framing working class status around money is missing key elements. Someone willing to work with their hands will be looked down by an university employee even if the trades person makes much more.

It's not about money primarily. It's about social relations. Do you have to answer to a boss? Are you self sufficient? Do you have employees?

That decides what your interests are, who you align yourself to politically and socially, and so on. In everything that matters practically and politically, a tradesperson running their own business is much closer to, say, a freelance programmer or even a lawyer in class interests than any actually working class person.

> Was there a class issue in Ottawa? It appears so. Residents were afraid because these Canadians were different. They hide inside and looked for stories of violence. One lawyer on television went as far as to say he hide inside because he felt appeared different in a suit and a mask. Ottawa downtown residents are more likely to be top national lawyer with connections to the elite than to a drywaller.

That's a question of culture and appearances, not of class, economics, interests or politics. Sure, a resident in the parts they were annoying is more likely to be an elite lawyer than a drywaller, but they're much more likely to be a service worker than either, and you just can't make the argument that someone stocking shelves or doing data-entry isn't working class while a small business owner is.

Because small business owners aren't working class. They don't have a boss trying to make money out of them. They don't have to worry about being fired. They have more than just their brains and brawns to make money for them - they have capital too. They have zero interest in labour rights, in fact, their interest is against them. Their actual interests are orthogonal to the working class.

Beyond that, it's inarguable that the protest organizers wanted to project the aesthetics of violence. You can't say they were trying to conjure up stories of violence when Pat King was out there making threats and talking about actual violence.

> The trucking union leaders also donate to Justin Trudeau's party and are friends. Saying that these leaders views represent the truckers views is not correct.

How do you know that they're friends? Do you have any example of a union that doesn't donate to powerful political parties? Because that's what unions do, they look out for their members. That means playing politics, donating money to sympathetic parties in power, and networking. They sure as hell are closer to the views of truckers in my experience, and they're actually going after the real interests of the average trucker.

In reality, the only thing here are aesthetics. It's all the aesthetics of a working class uprising, with none of the actual substance. None of the things they're fighting for apply to the concern of a typical labourer. Their tactics are completely different - instead of withholding their power and exerting it over their workplaces, they're trying to take the public hostage. There's no mass movement there - they want to go directly against the will and the interests of the majority. Their icons aren't even working class. There's no worker solidarity either, it's all about taking the many hostage and inconveniencing them, instead of showing the masses they have the power to bend society to their will.

It's a middle-class to petit-bourgeois concern trying to pass off as working class aesthetically, but the actual substance contradicts this. That's why the public even supported, for example, teacher's strikes even when they inconvenienced them, but they were never even remotely on board with the convoys.