Fences and Windows (15 page)

We can also look at the proportion of our GDP that relies on trade (43 percent), at the standard of living for average Canadians (stagnant). Then we can ask ourselves, Is this the best economic system we can imagine? Are we satisfied with more of the same? Do we really want NAFTA x 34? Such debate in itself would be evidence of a healthy democracy, but we could go even further. Canada’s entry in the FTAA could become a core issue in the next federal election and— here’s a crazy idea—we could vote on it.

It won’t happen, of course. Democracy in Canada will be relegated to a petty haggling over tax cuts. The critics of our
economic path will become more disenfranchised and more militant. And the job of the police will be to protect our politicians from real politics, even if it means turning Quebec City into a fortress.

Setting the stage for this use of force, the CSIS report concludes that “given the virulent anti-globalization rhetoric & the threat of summit-associated violence in Quebec City cannot be ruled out.” Perhaps it can’t. But given the virulent anti-activist rhetoric, and the collusion of our politicians, the threat of police violence in Quebec City is virtually guaranteed.

March 2001

“I am worried that free trade is leading to the privatization of education,” an elementary school teacher in Ottawa tells me. “I want to go to the protests in Quebec City, but is it going to be safe?”

“I think NAFTA has increased the divide between rich and poor,” a young mother in Toronto says. “But if I go to Quebec, will my son get pepper-sprayed?”

“I want to go to Quebec City,” a Harvard undergraduate active in the anti-sweatshop movement tells me, “but I heard no one is getting across the border.”

“We’re not even bothering to go to Quebec City,” a student in Mexico City says. “We can’t afford to get arrested in a foreign country.”

If you think that the next big crackdown on political protest is going to take place when six thousand police officers clash with activists outside the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City next month, you are mistaken. The real crackdown is already taking place. It is happening silently, with no fanfare, every time another would-be demonstrator decides not to publicly express his or her views about the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas.

It turns out that the most effective form of crowd control isn’t pepper spray, water cannons, tear gas or any of the other weapons being readied by Quebec police in anticipation of the arrival of thirty-four heads of state. The most cutting-edge form of crowd control is controlling the crowds before they converge: this is state-of-the-art protest deterrence—the silencing you do yourself.

It happens every time we read another story about how Quebec will be surrounded by a three-metre-high fence. Or about how there’s nowhere to sleep in the city except the prisons, which have been helpfully cleared out. A month before the summit, postcard-perfect Quebec City has been successfully transformed into a menacing place, inhospitable to regular people with serious concerns about corporate-driven trade and economic deregulation. Expressing dissent, rather than being a healthy part of democracy, is becoming an extreme and dangerous sport, suitable only for hard-core activists, with bizarre accessories and doctoral degrees in scaling buildings.

More dissent deterrence takes place when we accept the stories in the newspapers, filled with anonymous sources and unattributed statements, about how some of these activists are actually “agitators” who are “planning to use violence,” packing bricks and explosives. The only proof provided for such inflammatory allegations is that “anarchists” are organizing into “small groups” and these groups are “autonomous,” meaning they don’t tell each other what to do.

The truth is this: not a single one of the official groups organizing protests in Quebec City is planning violent action.
A couple of the more radical organizations, including the Anti-Capitalist Convergence, have said they respect “a diversity of tactics & ranging from popular education to direct action.” They have said they will not, on principle, condemn other activists for their tactics. Some say they will defend themselves if attacked by the police.

This admittedly complicated position has been distorted in newspapers as tantamount to planning violent attacks on the summit, which it most certainly is not. It’s also a source of frustration for many other activists who argue that it would be easier if everyone just signed on to a statement saying the protests will be non-violent.

The problem is that one of the fundamental arguments against the FTAA’s Darwinian economic model is that it increases violence: violence within poor communities and police violence against the poor. In a speech delivered last year, International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew helped explain why. In modern economies, he said, “the victims are not only exploited, they’re excluded. & You may be in a situation where you are not needed to create that wealth. This phenomenon of exclusion is far more radical than the phenomenon of exploitation.”

Indeed it is. Which is why a society that blithely accepts this included/excluded ledger is an unsafe society, filled with people who have little faith in the system, who feel they have nothing to gain from the promises of prosperity coming out of gatherings such as the Summit of the Americas, who see the police only as a force of repression, who have nothing to lose.

If this isn’t the kind of society we want—one of included and excluded, and ever-higher fences dividing the two— then the answer is not for “good” activists to pre-emptively condemn “bad” activists. The answer is to reject the politics of division wholesale. And the best place to do it is in Quebec City, where the usually invisible wall of exclusion has been made starkly visible, with a new chain-link fence and crowd-control methods that aim to keep us out before we even get there.

April 2001

Naomi Klein, actor Sarah Polley, and lawyer Clayton Ruby initiated this petition to Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in anticipation of police violence during the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. The letter sought to galvanize public opinion, particularly in the arts community. Over six thousand Canadians signed: artists, academics, journalists, judges, lawyers and intellectuals. Among them were some of Canada’s most prominent cultural figures, including Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Atom Egoyan, Michael Ignatieff, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and the Barenaked Ladies
.

As Canadians who value freedom of expression as an essential democratic right and depend on that right to make our living, we will watch with vigilance the actions of police officers and immigration agents next week when the Summit of the Americas convenes in Quebec City.

The right to freedom of expression, so fundamental to our democracy, includes the right not just to speak and communicate but to be heard. The constitutional right to peaceful assembly encompasses the right to gather in public spaces in all Canadian cities. The right to freedom
of movement across borders extends not just to trade and tourism but also to political rallies, conferences and protests.

Designed to keep lawful protesters out of sight and earshot, the security barrier constructed around Quebec City tramples on such fundamental freedoms. Following the spirit of our constitution, we condemn this action. We believe that the planned presence of approximately six thousand police officers around the summit site is not an incentive to peaceful protest. We also condemn the practice of arbitrarily refusing entry to concerned citizens of other countries, thereby preventing them from expressing their views to the world media about a free trade agreement that extends across thirty-four national borders.

Democracy does not only take place in parliaments, voting booths and official summits. It takes place in meeting halls, public parks and in the streets. It also includes, at times, peaceful acts of civil disobedience. When the streets are blocked off and hundreds of meeting halls in Quebec City are out of reach to citizens because they are inside a sprawling “security zone,” it is democracy itself that is marginalized. And when large corporations are given the opportunity to buy access to political leaders through partial sponsorship of the Summit of the Americas, as has transpired here, it creates the impression that political accountability is for sale.

We are also concerned about leaked Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents that portray protesters coming to Quebec City as “violent,” yet fail to support that claim with any corroborating evidence; and that such
unsupported characterizations, repeated in press reports, could set the stage for excessive use of force by police officers. Many of the activists headed for Quebec City are young people expressing their political views and engaged in principled and peaceful expression and civil disobedience, and we are gravely concerned about all the protesters’ physical safety.

In the past four years, we have watched the use of pepper spray become distressingly commonplace at political demonstrations timed with meetings of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the World Economic Forum, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, as well as U.S. political conventions. We have also witnessed, from the streets of Washington, D.C., to Davos, Switzerland, the escalating use of tear gas, mass arrests, water cannons and rubber bullets by police during some of these demonstrations, as well as such increasingly common security techniques as pre-emptive arrests of protest organizers, random beatings of activists, raids on activist “convergence centres” and the seizure of harmless protest materials such as placards and puppets.

Throughout this country’s history, Canadians such as George Étienne Cartier and Robert Baldwin have fought for both civic tolerance and the democratic right of freedom of expression. It is not too late for the Summit of the Americas to be an event during which our political leaders do more than talk about democracy. They can also embody democratic principles of freedom of expression and movement by refusing to shield themselves from open criticism and
debate on matters of crucial importance to citizens of the Americas. With the world watching closely, this is an opportunity to make Canada a model for democratic principles.

In this spirit, we call on the security forces at our borders and in Quebec City to vigorously defend not only the safety of visiting heads of state but the rights of political activists within Canada.

April 2001

“Where are you?” I screamed from my cellphone into his.

There was a pause and then, “A Green Zone—St. Jean and St. Claire.”

Green Zone is protest speak for an area free of tear gas or police clashes. There are no fences to storm, only sanctioned marches. Green Zones are safe; you’re supposed to be able to bring your kids to them. “Okay,” I said. “See you in fifteen minutes.”

I had barely put on my coat when I got another call: “Jaggi’s been arrested. Well, not exactly arrested. More like kidnapped.” My first thought was that it was my fault: I had asked Jaggi Singh to tell me his whereabouts over a cellphone: our call must have been monitored—that’s how they found him. If that sounds paranoid, welcome to Summit City.

Less than an hour later, at the Comité Populaire St-Jean Baptiste community centre, a group of six swollen-eyed witnesses read me their handwritten accounts of how the most visible organizer of yesterday’s direct-action protest against the Free Trade Area of the Americas was snatched from under their noses. All say that Singh was standing around talking to friends, urging them to move farther
away from the breached security fence. They all say he was trying to de-escalate the police standoff.

“He said it was getting too tense,” said Mike Staudenmaier, a U.S. activist who was talking to Singh when he was grabbed from behind, then surrounded by three large men.

“They were dressed like activists,” said Helen Nazon, a twenty-three-year-old from Quebec City, “with hooded sweatshirts, bandanas on their faces, flannel shirts, a little grubby. They pushed Jaggi on the ground and kicked him. It was really violent.”

“Then they dragged him off,” said Michèle Luellen. All the witnesses told me that when Singh’s friends closed in to try to rescue him, the men dressed as activists pulled out long batons, beat back the crowd and identified themselves: “Police!” they shouted. Then they threw him into a beige van and drove off. Several of the young activists have open cuts where they were hit.

Three hours after Singh’s arrest, there was still no word of where he was being held.

Nabbing activists off the streets and throwing them into unmarked cars is not supposed to happen in Canada. But in Jaggi Singh’s short career as a globalization activist, it has happened to him before—during the 1997 protests against the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. The day before the protests took place, he was grabbed by two plainclothes police officers while walking alone on the University of British Columbia campus, thrown to the ground, then stuffed into an unmarked car.

The charge, he later found out, was assault. He had
apparently talked so loudly into a megaphone some weeks before that it had hurt the eardrum of a nearby police officer. The charge, of course, was later dropped, but the point was clearly to have him behind bars during the protest, just as he will no doubt be in custody for today’s march. He faced a similar arrest in October at the Group of 20 summit for finance ministers in Montreal. In all these bizarre cases, Jaggi Singh has never been convicted of vandalism, of planning or plotting violent activity. Anyone who has seen him in action knows that his greatest crime is giving good speeches.

That’s why I was on the phone with him minutes before his arrest—trying to persuade him to come to the Peoples’ Summit teach-in that I was co-hosting to tell the crowd of fifteen hundred what was going on in the streets. He had agreed but then determined it was too difficult to cross the city.