BY EVA CHENG
The state machines of the First World are prepared to go to enormous lengths to crush political dissent — if Canadian police's cold-blooded and calculated attacks on peaceful protesters in Quebec City are anything to go by. But to no avail.
As more and more activists' accounts emerge about what exactly happened between April 20-22, it has become clear that this was an impressive and massive people's battle, which marks a new high point in the fledgling global movement against capitalism.
The protesters were there to voice their opposition to the Summit of the Americas, at which the US, with Canada's help, sought to extend its political and economic domination of the Americas.
The key plank of the US scheme is the Free Trade Area of the Americas, the FTAA, which will consolidate, and legitimise, big business's ability to dictate terms on trade and investment matters throughout the region.
The summit did manage to reach an agreement, as scheduled, to launch the FTAA in 2005. But protesters' efforts were not in vain. Through their heroic resistance to police brutality, the movement, and public awareness, has taken a decisive step forward.
There were numerous reports of the warm greeting extended from local residents, offering water, bathrooms, food and shelter, and, as one veteran activist described it, "zero hostility" to the demonstrators. Even local students were involved in providing support to protesters, prompting one activist to remark: "You had the feeling of being an army with a population behind you".
What happened in Quebec City will go down as legend. The turnout, to start with, was impressive. The establishment media estimated that between 2000 and 7000 people showed up at the demonstration on April 20 and up to 25,000 the next day. Activists estimate between 15,000-20,000 and 70,000-100,000 respectively.
Alex Grant, editor of L'Humanite magazine, commented, "I fail to see how a march [April 21] that takes two and a half hours to move past a single point on a wide boulevard can be that small [20,000-30,000]. By my (and many others') estimation, the crowd is at least 75,000 strong, including 7000 autoworkers ... St Jean is packed with protesters ... I estimate there to be about 25,000 people ... combine that with the labour march and you have 100,000 protesters, twice the size of Seattle and four times the predicted turnout."
Grant added "If you take into account that Quebec City is not very easy to get to then you have a good idea of the depth of discontent that was expressed here".
Michael Lessard of OQP 2001, a coalition of 34 organisations in Quebec which helped organise the April 21 march, said, "After more than three hours, people kept pouring [into] the huge area". This was truly a mass movement.
Organised dissent
That turnout didn't just fall from the sky. It was a product of the months of intense efforts throughout North America, by a large range of groups, to educate communities about the dangers of the FTAA and to mobilise for participation. Teach-ins, speakouts, training sessions and local actions beyond number were organised.
The organisers' task was complicated by a police drive to deprive activists of commercial accommodation. In response, alternative shelter was organised at universities, schools and community halls, as well as with hundreds of local families through a mass door-knocking campaign.
Food for all, free, was also made available throughout the demonstrations, as well as legal and medical aid structures, a media centre and rest areas for recuperation and other support.
While differing in tactics over whether or not to engage in physical confrontation, organising groups resolved to let participants make their own choice.
Protest zones were colour-coded green, yellow and red, depending on their distance from the "Wall of Shame" — the hated fence which the cops built to keep protesters away from the summit site — and the expected levels of militant actions and risks. "Red" was the frontline and "green" the safe zone, with maps marking them widely available.
This plan was well-executed on April 20. Two contingents (one red-yellow and the other yellow-green) left Laval University, the starting point, at the same time, marching by different routes and to different destinations, with the red-yellow team heading for the fence.
At around 3pm, when a green march ended up in a yellow zone, a student leader instructed the march to stop and offered marchers a chance to leave if they wanted to. This zoning strategy only fell apart when the cops bombarded the green zones not long after.
Establishment sources have claimed that it was protesters' attempts to breach the fence which provoked the violent police response. But given the fence is a clear breach of protesters' right to free expression, protesters aren't far-fetched to consider attacking the fence an act of collective self-defence.
Naomi Klein, writing in the April 24 Globe and Mail, said, "Once [the cops] got their 'provocation', they filled entire neighbourhoods with toxic fumes". There were numerous reports of indiscriminate and heavy shelling of noxious gas on peaceful protesters in sit-ins or resting or dancing well inside the green areas.
Refusing to be intimidated, many young protesters, often with such minimal protection as swimming goggles and handerchiefs, put up an exceptional battle against the cops, throwing canisters back at them, for hours on end.
Brutality
Medic Sara Ahronheim gave a horrifying account of what she and other medics encountered. "Throughout the event medics were targeted by the police: wherever my partner and I would be treating people, tear gas canisters would land right beside us. Some medics got hit with rubber bullets".
She described how one medic, Sean, while treating a patient, had a canister explode right under his face, was hit by another one from behind and then by yet another one, which rolled by his face and exploded.
On the night of April 20, when street battles carried on until well past midnight, the cops even attacked the medical centre, firing rounds and rounds of tear gas. They attacked again the next night.
Apart from showering the place with tear gas and rubber bullets, police forced everyone out of the medical centre at gunpoint, Ahronheim recounted, including patients in serious conditions, out into the gas, forceably removed all protective gear from them and confiscated all medical supplies and equipment.
The injuries that the cops deliberately inflicted on protesters were chilling. Medics "treated a guy who was severely beaten by police", Ahronheim remembered, "[who] had a skull fracture, [was] in serious shock and [had] a leg fracture that made it almost severed ... There were many victims of beatings at the hands of police, serious injuries from police batons ... There were so many more, I just can't remember them all."
Ahronheim found a corporate media claim of only 300 injuries sickening. "I must have treated that many MYSELF! And there were probably 50 medics treating that many injuries each!"
Notoriously brutal as they were, according to another medic Doc Rosen, the Seattle cops have been outdone by their Quebec colleagues.
By April 24, activists were able to confirm that there had been 250 arrests of protesters but suspected the real number was close to 450. Though the arrests were officially reduced to 30 by April 25, widespread mishandling was reported while protesters were in detention.
This included being held for long hours in buses, with heavy gassing going on outside, no access to restrooms and little or no access to food and water, and male detainees being stripped naked and sprayed with cold water. A number of pre-emptive arrests of well-known activists were also reported.
In solidarity with the arrested protesters, 10,000 students from three colleges in Montreal staged a general strike on April 25. Since April 23, students and other supporters have been demonstrating daily outside a main local police station.
Meanwhile, the region's governments were unable to reach full consensus within the Summit of the Americas itself.
According to the April 23 Washington Post, a number of Latin American countries, particularly Brazil, expressed skepticism about how much real benefit they will get from the FTAA. Venezuela even abstained from the vote on the 2005 launch date and is contemplating putting the matter to a public referendum.
Many groups across the Americas are campaigning for a continental referendum, as well as a referendum in every country on the FTAA.
[To assist with the defence of the detained protesters, please contribute to the Quebec Legal Defense, 1615 Bernard, Outremont, Quebec H2V 1X2 or see for alternatives].