Protesting the FTAA in Quebec City

A report from Dallas activists protesting the FTAA in
Quebec City.



Protesting the FTAA in Quebec City
By Kendall Clark


   From 19 to 22 April, in French-speaking Quebec City, Canada, the
   [1]Summit of the Americas, a production of the [2]Organization of
   American States, will meet to discuss the proposed Free Trade Area
   of the Americas (FTAA) agreement, a multilateral composite of NAFTA
   and WTO, extended to cover all of North and South America.
   
   Corporate media editorials about the Summit in Quebec City will
   cluster around two principal themes: (1) How the FTAA will make the
   world a better, more democratic, more prosperous place; and (2) How
   -- pick any three -- confused, ignorant, obscurantist, racist,
   Luddite, mean, evil, nasty, leftist, fascist, violent, naive, or
   manipulated the protesters are.
   
   The Summit of the Americas is being met by a vigorous, diverse
   coalition of citizen's groups which oppose the FTAA and neoliberal,
   corporation-centric globalization generally. If you're just getting
   up to speed, the basic reality grounding the antiglobalization
   protest movement is understood easily enough.
   
  1. Antiglobalization protest movement in one paragraph
  
     Citizens of democratic states possess democratic rights. Whenever
     those rights are trampled, some of these citizens, putting aside
     jobs and families and projects, protest the institutions they
     hold responsible for the trampeling. And those institutions, as
     fierce defenders of the unjust, inequitable status quo, use the
     practically limitless state resources at their disposal to ensure
     that the redress of grievances not only fails but is seen clearly
     to fail. Thus radically incommensurable notions of democracy play
     out in a social field of radically asymmetrical relations of
     power, privilege, and access.
     
  2. But the real world is complicated...
  
   As Whitehead said, seek simplicity, then mistrust it; things are a
   bit more complex than can be put in one paragraph. At least two
   complicating factors are relevant here: NGOs and the institutions of
   globalization themselves.
   
   First, NGO participation in institutions like the WTO and OAS
   complicate things. Many NGOs are otherwise perfectly good civil
   organizations devoted to securing and sustaining democratic rights;
   but most of them are reformist in their outlook, which means they
   want to work within the framework of the status quo to improve
   conditions. Most citizens and organizations in the protest movement
   are not reformists but radicals who work to fundamentally alter the
   the status quo and the framework. Both forces for change, reformist
   and radical, are likely helpful, since they're likely to be
   effective at different times: reformers in the short run, radicals
   in the long. Both are helpful, that is, as long as both remain
   forces for change, not just self-reproducing entities.
   
   Second, the sometimes decent and good -- or, at the least, the mixed
   -- intentions of individuals that constitute the OAS, WTO, World
   Bank, and IMF are ideological complications. If everything they did
   and said were horrible, organizing a mass movement to oppose
   globalization would be much simpler. But the World Bank and IMF talk
   regularly now about poverty reduction, democracy, goodness, and
   light -- the point isn't whether they intend well, however, but how
   such talk muddies the waters and makes the creation of a mass
   antiglobalization movement more difficult. The OAS regularly passes
   fine resolutions about important, unobjectionable things like
   "Integrating a Gender perspective in the Summits of the Americas"
   and the like. Well, who could be against that? Certainly not the
   protest movement, which is highly gender integrated.
   
   The pessmistic view is that NGOs are being co-opted, giving
   credibility to fundamentally corrupt institutions. Maybe so, maybe
   not. My view is that these fundamentally misguided institutions
   already have credibility to spare and that good faith NGO engagement
   must be predicated on the likelihood of short and medium term
   reformist gains. The point about credibility only matters when the
   result of NGO withdrawal from, say, the WTO or OAS would be the loss
   of all credibility; in the present situation, I don't see how that's
   the case.
   
   So, one might say, the institutions of globalization are separated
   from the antiglobalization protest movement by radically
   incommensurable notions of democracy; by which I mean that one
   should take the OAS and WTO and all the rest of the neoliberal
   globalization advocates at their word: they are not all evil
   overlords.
   
   What they are is dead wrong about what constitutes democracy and its
   flourishing; improperly oriented to Western, transnational
   corporation-centric models of international development; erroneously
   committed to capitalism as the only possible arrangement of social
   and economic forces; fiercely defensive of an ordering of values,
   reinforced by the status quoe, and out of which status quo proceeds,
   an ordering in which corporate profits for some people are more
   valuable than food, water, shelter, and meaningful work for everyone
   else, and the like. They are, in short, substantively wrong, both on
   the issues and on the framework of assumptions within which the
   issues find expression and meaning.
   
  3. What's at stake in Quebec City?
  
   What reception plans are being made for citizens enacting democratic
   rights? An area of Quebec City has been made over into an armed
   encampment. The OAS and the state security forces it appears to
   command are obsessed with borders and border lines, inners and
   outers, drawing lines around pockets within which democratic rights
   have no force; but also drawing borders around borders and around
   the walls and lines that mark the inner border from the outer. It's
   all quite dizzying, of course, but we will already have met the
   strange, oddening permiabilities of some borders when we've met the
   radical critique of neoliberal globalization. Capital flows across
   borders; or, rather, capital flows now irrespective of borders, it
   flows in channels of pure electronic gibberish over which borders
   have no ply. But people, who have the right -- according to Article
   13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- to cross borders
   are being denied that right in order to protect the free flow of
   capital and those global elites who benefit from it.
   
  4. Protesting the FTAA in Quebec City
  
   The following account comes from Cliff Pearson, a Dallas activist
   and Green Party leader.
   
     After several hours in the air, an already long trip was made
     much longer by our seemingly endless interrogation by Canadian
     Customs and Immigration officials.
     It was 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 19, 2001 and my traveling
     companion and friend, Mike Moren, and I were ready to hit the
     road in our rental car and head to Quebec City. We had made the
     journey to Quebec from Dallas to protest the FTAA along with many
     others: progressive groups, trade unions, environmentalists, etc.
     But the Canadian government had other plans.
     Mike and I were separated and taken to an office and quizzed
     thoroughly for over an hour. We were asked several times if we
     were planning to go to a protest or "make a manifestation" in
     Quebec City. The official wanted to know our exact travel plans,
     whether we had jobs, details of our personal lives, if we had
     ever been to court as defendants; basically if we were going to
     be trouble.
     After finally convincing the Canadian Immigration official that
     we were just two nice, respectable young Americans coming to
     visit the fair city of Montreal, we were on our way to the
     Customs baggage claim area. Here we would have it easier, or so
     we thought.
     The Customs agent made Mike and me open our luggage, and he
     proceeded to hand search it all very carefully. I couldn't
     possibly understand why the individual items in my suitcase were
     so interesting to him, but somewhere in Quebec there is a Customs
     agent who knows what kind of underwear I wear.
     During this debacle, I kept thinking, "where are my civil rights?
     Isn't Canada supposed to be a democratic country? Aren't they
     supposed to be more enlightened than the U.S.? What are they
     afraid of?" Other young people had it even worse than we did. It
     seemed that every person who looked under 30, who was on our
     flight, was being treated to the same repressive routine.
     One man was denied entry to Canada because buried deep in his
     luggage were printouts from an anti-FTAA Web site. Another man
     was harassed with repetitive questions about whether he was going
     to Quebec City. His persistent denials were just as persistently
     ignored.
     It's now Friday, April 20, the following day. I'm covering a
     media position at the CMAQ -- [3]Quebec Independent Media Center.
     In sharp contrast to the harassment we faced with Customs, many
     things about the atmosphere here are very different, so far, from
     the last few large protests I've been at, particularly Washington
     and Philadelphia.
     The police are nowhere to be seen. At the protest of the
     Republican National Convention in Philadelphia last August, and
     at the protest of the IMF and World Bank in Washington, D.C. last
     year, the police presence was overwhelming. There were
     soldier-cops in riot gear at every street corner. The police had
     set up many road blocks. But here, except for a few plainclothes
     guys taking an occasional picture, we've seen virtually no
     police.
     The Canadian activists tell us that all the cops are at the
     security perimeter where the protest is going to take place. At
     last count, there were 9,000 cops at this two-mile-long,
     10-foot-tall steel and concrete wall. The officers are armed with
     $5,000 riot gear suits and $2,000 Arwen rifles that fire plastic
     or rubber bullets, tear gas, or metal "bean bags".
     It seems that the Canadian authorities are walking a tight rope
     between two extremes. On the one hand, they want to prevent
     disruptions of the protest, and do so with effective police
     tactics -- even if that means being severely repressive. But on
     the other hand they want to show that they are "better" than
     Americans who brutalize and abuse their prisoners, violate civil
     rights at the drop of a hat, execute their convicts, and
     (incomprehensibly) don't provide universal health care.
     Mike and I, under Canadian law, have more civil rights in Canada
     then we do in America, which has led to defection jokes. For
     example, in Canada going limp upon arrest is not considered
     resisting arrest. It could be so construed under American law. In
     Canada we have to be taken before a judge within 24 hours of
     arrest according to the Canadian Charter of Government, but this
     is not so in the U.S. Also, under Canadian law, a person can be
     held for disturbing the peace "for less than 24 hours," but they
     can't be charged with a crime because it isn't a crime. Detention
     for disturbing the peace in Canada is merely to restore the
     peace. Detention is done just to quiet people down.
     Additionally, the people of Canada and Quebec City in particular
     don't want to be remembered by history as the place where the
     largest police preventive measure in North American history ever
     took place. Public opinion in Quebec City seems to be very
     pro-protesters. Those who defy the security perimeter, according
     to the police, will be taken to Quebec City's Orsainville
     penitentiary, which has been emptied of its entire prison
     population to make room for protesters. This has many local
     citizens upset as well. It is, to them, decidedly undemocratic.
     These sentiments are reflected by some of the legal authorities
     as well. The Quebec provincial prosecutors have said that they
     will not allow the holding of protesters on trumped-up charges,
     and that they won't allow any violations of the civil rights of
     the protesters, whether they are Canadians or not. This is good
     news. Can you imagine an American district attorney saying she or
     he won't seek the death penalty or jail protesters despite local
     political pressure? The Quebec provincial prosecutors are being
     pressured to be harsh with the protesters, but they have so far
     refused, citing their commitment to civil rights and to the
     Charter of Government.
     As a final note, let me say that the CMAQ is, by far, the best
     organized and most professional Independent Media Center I've
     seen. The staff are completely bilingual, and as we use the
     computer workstations they've provided us, they make frequent
     news bulletins to us via loudspeakers. In addition to the
     computers and Internet area, they have provided a video editing
     area, and are operating a low power FM radio station that
     broadcasts hourly news updates in French and English for all
     protesters.
     The CMAQ has just announced that a large crowd has gathered near
     the security perimeter. We are off to investigate and to
     participate. More information as it comes in.
     
  5. Further Information
  
   Longtime Monkeyfister, Dru Jay, is also in Quebec City; stay tuned
   for his reports and photos from Quebec City.
   
   For further information, consult the following sites.
     * [4]http://www.a22buffalo.org/
     * [5]http://www.a20.org/
     * [6]http://www.stopftaa.org/
     * [7]http://www.tradewatch.org/FTAA/factsheet.htm
     * [8]http://www.tao.ca/~stopftaa
     * [9]http://www.soaw-ne.org/FTAAGuide.html
     * [10]http://www.quebec2001.net/
     * [11]http://www.tao.ca/~cobp/guess-what.html
     * [12]http://www.quebec.indymedia.org/
     * [13]http://www.summit-americas.org/

References

   1. http://www.summit-americas.org/eng/quebecsummit.htm
   2. http://www.oas.org/
   3. http://www.quebec.indymedia.org/
   4. http://www.a22buffalo.org/
   5. http://www.a20.org/
   6. http://www.stopftaa.org/
   7. http://www.tradewatch.org/FTAA/factsheet.htm
   8. http://www.tao.ca/~stopftaa
   9. http://www.soaw-ne.org/FTAAGuide.html
  10. http://www.quebec2001.net/
  11. http://www.tao.ca/~cobp/guess-what.html
  12. http://www.quebec.indymedia.org/
  13. http://www.summit-americas.org/


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Posted on Monkeyfist at http://monkeyfist.com/articles/751