According to the Associated Press, Canadian air traffic controllers have bought hundreds of pizzas for their American counterparts as a symbol of support during the partial government shutdown. It’s a sweet gesture of solidarity that rubs in just how idiotic it is that our country is run by a giant baby who won’t pay essential federal employees.
Peter Duffey, the head of the Canadian Air Traffic Control Association, told the AP that the initiative began last week. Employees in Edmonton took up a collection to buy pizza for their American air traffic controllers in Anchorage, AK. From there, the idea went viral.
As many as 10,000 air traffic controllers have worked without pay since the shutdown began on December 21st.
“The next thing we knew, our members were buying pizzas left, right and center for the colleagues in the U.S,” Duffey told the AP. “As it stands right now, I believe we’re up to 36 facilities that have received pizza from Canada, and that number is growing by the hour.”
Duffey says that so far, controllers have purchased Americans about 300 pizzas, who have been posting about it on social media.
“Air traffic control is a very stressful job,” Duffey told AP . “They say you have to be 100 per cent right, 100 per cent of the time. People just don’t need to be reporting to work with the added stress of worrying about how to pay their mortgages and grocery bills on top of it.”
It’s almost like the shutdown is a bad idea!
This heartwarming story doesn’t do much to dispel the stereotype that Canadians are extremely nice. But it’s depressing that it has come to this. America is now the kid who forgot their lunch money at home, reliant on the kindness of others for our basic needs, all thanks to a delusional quest for a border wall that won’t even work.
On the other hand, maybe these stirrings of international solidarity and mutual aid will leave a lasting mark on these controllers, proving to them that the border is an imaginary, arbitrary divide, and that all of us deserve dignity and respect regardless of the country of our birth. Then, along with fed-up TSA officers, they’ll resign en masse and demand that the U.S. open its borders and join one world government, heralding the birth of an international socialist revolution.
Yeah, probably not.