BY JULIAN COPPENS
QUEBEC CITY — For three days, from April 20-22, this city was filled with the spirit of revolution and CS gas. The Summit of the Americas had come to town — and so too had tens of thousands determined to stop its plans for even greater business domination of the two continents.
The protests began even before the summit did. The alternate Summit of the Peoples of the Americas, organised by a collection of non-government organisations and coalition groups, began on April 17 and concluded by resolving against any form of Free Trade Area of the Americas, even one including "social clauses" which might somewhat lessen the impact of "free trade" policies on the region's poor.
But the alternate summit was just the beginning: over the following week there was an enormous diversity of events. Women's groups held protests against the worldwide feminisation of poverty, church groups held silent vigils, coalitions organised teach-ins and public forums, radical groups organised preliminary marches to the enormous wall erected around the summit venue, activists swarmed into the Welcome and Convergence Centers for long hours of discussions through day and night and protest organisers held spokescouncil meetings.
Anti-capitalist
The most exciting aspect of the opposition forces was the thousands of young, consciously anti-capitalist activists, most of them mobilised by the most radical of the coalitions, CLAC-CASA. This coalition, anarchist-leaning in political orientation and direct actionist in tactics, comprises the Montreal-based Convergence of Anti-Capitalist Struggles (CLAC) and the Quebec City-based Summit of the Americas Welcoming Committee (CASA).
CLAC-CASA had declared the Summit of the Americas' first day, April 20, a day of direct action, a "Carnival Against Capitalism".
Its rally, of between 15,000 and 20,000 young anti-capitalists, started at the university at 1pm. This was not a disparate coalition of single-issue groups; this was the revolutionary youth. The crowd, drumming, chanting, singing, carrying red flags, black flags, the flag of the Sandinistas, Cuban flags, images of Che, the Hammer and Sickle, as well as all kinds of anti-capitalist placards and banners, marched from the university towards the heavily-guarded perimeter fence.
Along the way residents chanted in solidarity or played Bob Marley and Billy Bragg from their apartments. At specific points in the march protesters were given the choice of heading towards a "green zone" away from the perimeter or heading to the "yellow zone" at the perimeter. The majority headed towards the fence.
At the fence a "black block" of masked anarchists began to climb the fence and push it over. The first breach in the perimeter, of about 50 metres, was created and around 30 balaclava-clad activists entered the security zone inside.
Despite the huge numbers of demonstrators only one row of the 6000 riot police inside the venue awaited them and no attempt at arrest was made. Those who breached the perimeter shouted to the crowd to follow them inside but while the breach was greeted with a great cheer, the rest of the demonstration did not enter, nor were there any marshals of any kind to encourage them to do so.
And then the CS gas started. The police used mortars to launch canisters deep into the demonstration, as well as point blank firings into those at the front. The use of tear gas began at 3pm on April 20 and didn't end until the summit did two days later.
The police launched gas every few minutes but gas-masked activists would throw the canisters straight back behind police lines. Some activists threw the canisters back even without a gas mask, a truly courageous action as the pain of the gas is severe.
The police continued to assault the protesters throughout the night, using gas, water cannons and rubber bullets. Gas was used on demonstrators who were even many blocks from the perimeter or who were not attempting to breach the fence.
Most of the time activists fled from the gas and regrouped, refusing to be forced from the vicinity of the summit. Some responded with rocks, bottles, whatever they could find.
Throughout the nights of April 20 and 21, giant plumes of CS gas could be seen drifting up from the steep streets of old Quebec City.
Quite different
The March of the Peoples of the Americas, on April 21, was quite a different event. From the outset the organisers, a group of non-government organisations in a coalition called the Hemispheric Social Alliance, planned the route to keep well clear of the perimeter. The march was strictly policed by red vested "security".
Many trade unions bussed in large numbers of their members, mostly from around Quebec but some from as far away as Toronto. The biggest contingents were from CSN, the Quebec trade union umbrella group, the FTQ, a Quebec public service union, the Canadian Auto Workers Union and Alternatives, a radical NGO based in Montreal.
There were also large numbers of church groups, human rights advocacy organisations such as Amnesty International and environmentalist bodies like Friends of the Earth International, which had participated in the five-day Peoples Summit of the Americas.
Most trade unions had professionally produced placards, often simply stating the name of the organisation, whilst the church, human rights and environmentalist groups carried banners with political slogans and demands. CLAC-CASA organised an anti-capitalist contingent to inject some revolutionary politics into the march and about 600 marched behind its banner.
The march followed a long route from the site of the Peoples Summit in the old port to a car park in a northern neighbourhood of the city. At the only intersection on the march where there was an opportunity to head up to the anti-capitalist youth being gassed at the perimeter, "security" had formed a solid line preventing any group breaking off from the main march.
Here a squad of "radical cheerleaders", dressed in black and red with black and red pom-poms, urged the crowd to head up to the perimeter. One cheerleader commented that whilst they respected the decision of the organisers to hold a strictly "legal" demonstration without any form of civil disobedience, the heavy security presence prevented demonstrators from making their own choice. There was no police present throughout the entire march.
The march finished far away from the perimeter, with music and busses to take everyone home. But many rank and file unionists were infuriated at the march route, having thought that they would at some point march to the perimeter and having wanted to make a much stronger statement in opposition to the FTAA.
Coordination
But disaffection with the events' organisers was not confined to that against the organisers of the March of the Peoples of the Americas. Many also felt that the radical anti-capitalists too lacked sufficient coordination.
Chris, a student who came from Toronto with 600 other students, expected to be involved in non-violent civil disobedience, such as blockading the summit area and attempting to disrupt the meeting. He had attended the spokescouncil meetings, expecting to be informed of actions and of an overall plan to disrupt the summit.
"Instead the meetings appeared disorganised, no one seemed to really know what was going on", he told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly.
While yellow zones of civil disobedience had been decided on, what exactly that would entail was left unclear. Once the perimeter had been breached by a small minority, the majority could only watch, run from the tear gas and provide moral support for those with gas masks.
No infrastructure for democratic decision-making was established, no arrangements for communication amongst activists were made and no exact tactical plan was offered by the organising committees as to how best to disrupt the meeting and facilitate mass involvement in direct action.
One of the great victories of Quebec was the display of radical anti-capitalist politics by the young. The atmosphere in the streets during those three days was one of inspirational possibilities.
For three days, Quebec City was a city of boarded-up shops covered in political graffiti and murals, residents putting hoses out of their windows for protesters to douse their faces from CS gas, helicopters hovering constantly overhead and, even above the dance music, the sound of CS gas mortar fire echoing through the city.
It felt like a social order heading for crisis, a faint hint of Paris in 1968, a tiny glimpse of a potential new world or at least the feeling of an old one on the way out. And there was one word on the lips of thousands of people who were thinking and acting: revolution.