The ring of steel has been breached! Six kilometres of chained fence set upon concrete slabs could not keep the anti-capitalists out. Tooled up and determined, it was difficult to tell the riot police from those who came to make their feelings felt!
Canada's old walled city- Quebec- is the scene of an unparalleled security effort between April 19-22. This includes a three-metre-high chain-link fence stretching for some six kilometres around the meeting venues of the Summit of the Americas! This fortification includes a 3.8 kilometre section of concrete wall itself topped by a chain link fence.
These defences have been dubbed "the Wall of Shame by protesters, assembling to protest the negotiations on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Organisers expect between 25,000 and 50,000 to demonstrate in the city over the next three days.
Manning the barricades are 6,300 police officers from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Quebec provincial police and two municipal forces—8,000 in all. The Canadian army will also provide 1,200 troops with 10,000 on standby!.
Since Seattle in late 1999 no gathering of the corporate globalisers has been able to meet except behind this growing array of fortifications, military and robocops. They have been plentifully supplied with plastic bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, and provincial jails have been emptied to make room for arrested protesters.
As usual an immense circus of officials and associated freeloaders is accompanying the 34 heads of state. The conference will be attended by 6,000 delegates and 2,500 strong international press corps.
The last decade has been marked by the explosion of free trade agreements-and mass opposition to them. This has come from organised labour, environmentalists, human rights advocates, NGOs as well as the revolutionary left. The rules being debated for these free trade zones are tied hand and foot to the corporate globalisation agenda.
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The FTAA is based on the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It aims to include 800 million people within its sway> Draft proposals include powers even broader than those the World Trade Organisation was seeking in Seattle in November 1999.
The FTAA would give transnational corporations the power to legally challenge state provision and regulation of every public service, from health care, education and social security to environmental protection and workplace safety.
During the ten years of NAFTA, real wages have been stagnant in Canada and the USA, failing to keep up with GDP and productivity growth. In Mexico real manufacturing wages have actually fallen by 18% since NAFTA came into force, while productivity increased by over 36% over the same period.
The gains of workers, peasants, environmentalists, built up over decades, would at a stroke be regarded as "in restraint of trade". Courts could order the abandonment of state monopolies as unfair competition to private companies.
The governments south of the US border would rapidly find themselves blocked form undertaking any serious social reforms, pressed on them by their citizens. In effect even today's corrupt and limited capitalist democracy would find itself gutted of any capacity to respond to the wishes of the majority of the population.
Anticapitalists around the globe will be wishing the demontrators in Quebec maximum success.
On the night of Thursday April 19 a lively demonstration of more than 2500 people marked the end of the week-long "People's Summit". Though the streets of Quebec were quiet when U.S. President George W. Bush arrived in the city, by mid-afternoon Friday a shouting crowd charged the security barricade, dismantling portions and threatening to break through.
Police reinforcements were rushed in to push back the demonstrators and restore the barricades. A canister of tear gas exploded and appeared to drift more toward the line of police. Protesters then began to throw ice hockey pucks, rocks and bottles at the line of police.
Some protesters- as in Seattle, Washington and Prague- were wearing butterfly wings and carnival costumes that contrasted sharply with the threatening lines of police in visors and bullet-proof vests, wielding shields and truncheons.
The Quebec FFTA Indymedia centre reports-preparations for Friday and Saturday’s marches and the siege of the Wall of Shame—scenes increasingly familiar to activists around the world.
"The spokes council meeting of the CLAC and CASA organisations brought together a variety of groups on the eve of their 'carnival against capitalism'. As a whole, these groups are planning to march on Friday from Laval University to the security fence which surrounds the Summit delegates, at which point different affinity groups will participate in various actions. Delegates stepped forward from a very creative array of affinity groups to announce their actions, and to ask for assistance from others.
The "Bikesheviks Revolutionaires" cycled all the way from Montreal to participate in this action, and intend to continue riding their bikes. A group from Vancouver plans to 'Dance Away the FTAA', and also plan to dress as contraceptives (and distribute them). One group is planning FUNK street theatre (which aside from being funky, are 'Fighting Unequal Not-fair Korporations'). Another group is planning to blockade a corporate radio station, until they broadcast a prepared text.
The International Action Centre is here from the U.S. (90 people from California alone). They are planning a yellow action to spread the word about Mumia Abu-Jamal, a political prisoner from the U.S. who has been on death row for many years. They are organising for an encampment for Mumia, which will happen in Philadelphia on May 11-13. They also oppose the Cuba blockade, and racism and imperialism in general.
Three colours of zones have been set up for these actions. Green zones are reserved for safe, legal actions, where the risk of arrest is very small. 'Soft' Yellow zones are reserved for actions which involve non-violent civil disobedience, in the tradition of Gandhi or Martin Luther King - actions in which some people will risk arrest, but which will be safe, non-violent, and generally predictable (i.e. it will generally be clear who is going to jail). 'Hard' Yellow zones are more confrontational, but in that same spirit. Red actions are those which are neither legal nor within the tradition of non-violent civil disobedience. These actions may involve heated confrontation, property damage, and self-defence from any police action.
One group came equipped with pink tanks, covered with happy faces and flowers. Although they are not using them, they offered them to anyone wanting to wade through police lines in a hard yellow action.
Some groups have a mixture of zones in their actions. The 'pagan cluster' are planning a 'blue action' - a living river, in which people will dress in blue, and flow throughout the city in order to give a declaration of 'free water' to the delegates. This action will be green, but may turn yellow if they 'flow' through the perimeter. On Saturday, they are also planning to march as a group in the organised labour march, and then branch off to do their own march at some point. They are expecting that others will join them.
Aside from the radical anticapitalist forces the Summit of the Americas is also the target of demonstrations by the trade unions and the NGOs.
A "March of the People's of the Americas" is planned for Saturday April 21 at noon under the theme " Resisting - Proposing - Together". This is backed by the Canadian Labour Congress, who expect to bring thousands of demonstrators from across Canada, with supporting delegations from the United States, and members of the "Hemispheric Social Alliance" from Latin America.
They will, according to their own official statement "express their opposition to the process of corporate-led globalisation and the commercial agreements that sustain it." Hopefully thousands of Canadian workers will indeed respond to this call
The CLC proclaims that;
"While the heads of states of the hemisphere meet behind the barricades in order to shape the future of the Americas, all sectors of civil society will be on the streets voicing their concerns: unions, women organisations, environmentalists, students, community organisations, international solidarity organisations, human rights advocates, groups opposed to corporate-led globalisation, ethno-cultural associations, regional coalitions, church groups. It will be a colourful, diverse and pacifist march. The route has been designed in order to avoid provocation and confrontation."
This statement reveals the fact that the unions have been budged from their unthinking support for globalisation by the growth of an anticapitalist movement. It also shows how determined their leaders still are to keep their own members in the straightjacket of harmless "peaceful protest"—above all to keep them well away from the dangerous "anticapitalists". The organisers intend the end point to be- not the Wall of Shame- where the latter will be confronting the robocops— but the Municipal Stadium at Victoria Park
Clearly the Trade union leaders and their NGO allies wish to avoid a fusion of the organised workers with those who want to stop the globalisers summit if at all possible and if not, to besiege it, in full view of the world’s media, thus making clear their militant opposition to everything it stands for.
In short the CLC is acting just as the ETUC did in Nice and the AFL-CIO did in Seattle and Washington. It is to be hoped that the more militant unions like the postal workers, as well as the rank and file from all the unions, and the young activists of the NGOs, will do all they can to prevent the march from ending in a mere talkfest for bureaucrats at the Victoria park.
If a significant numbers of the rank and file join the anticapitalist besiegers then another Seattle is a possibility.
