A Quebec Diary

                                                             by Shawn Ewald(*)
          
The following is my account of the Anti-FTAA demonstrations in Quebec
City; let me begin by saying that it was one of the most amazing and
inspiring events I've ever witnessed or participated in and it was a
clear victory for everyone who participated.

As for those who were not there and who have criticisms about the
violence, I only have this to say: We were there to do a job, and that
job was to stop or disrupt the summit by any means necessary.This was a
meeting where the lives and futures of everyone in north and south
america are being sold down the river wholesale -- what was done in
Quebec City was an act of collective self defense. There is no room for
discussion and there is no room for debate on that, in my opinion. I
certainly haven't the slightest interest in debating it. If you *were*
there and you saw the viciousness and brutality of the police and you
think the response was anything but appropriate, I have nothing to say
to you.

Forgive me if some of this is incoherent, I've spent all night writing
it after returning home monday night A23

A19 Akwesasne

We all got ready to leave for the border crossing at Akwesasne at 9AM.
There were 7 of us: my partner Lyn and myself, both of us are radio
producers and activists; Gretchen and Ben, another media activist couple
involved with Indymedia and microradio.net; Duff and Richard, activist
friends from West Virginia and New York City respectively; and Claudia,
an Italian videographer who was there to film Gretchen as part of a
PBS/Frontline documentary on independent media and the new media
activism. We all made a plan to present ourselves as "journalists" at
the border (which most, but not all, of us actually were), and we hoped
to take advantage of Claudia's credentials as a means of getting
through. Claudia was actually more than willing to help us with our
plan.

We had spent the night before making phony press credentials for those
of us that didn't have any, and discussing our plan for the crossing at
Akwesasne. Akwesasne is a Mohawk reservation located about 17 miles east
of Massena, NY and straddles the US/Canadian border. It is an oppressed
First Nations community with a significant radical contingent within
that community. Several weeks before, this radical contingent, in
cooperation with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, made a call for
a "day of rage" in solidarity with the planned protests against the so
called "Summit of the Americas". To many of us, particularly those of us
in the anarchist community, we immediately grasped the incredible
significance
of this announcement and immediately wanted to take part in it.

Unfortunately, the authorities and the more corrupt members of Akwesasne
society also understood the significance of this action and made every
effort to thwart it and exploit the genuine fear and uncertainty rearing
it's head within the general community at Akwesasne.

Initially, they passed out scurrilous attacks against the "day of rage"
organizers, which attributed all kinds of nefarious but unverifiable
deeds to them, amongst the mostly white activists who were organizing
the caravans that would meet at Akwesasne. This proved to be not very
effective. But where their attempts at creating a racist image of the
dangerous and criminal Indian in the minds of the mostly white caravan
participants failed, appeals to their white guilt succeeded in many
cases. Thus the gathering at Akwesasne was much smaller than expected.
Many people initially thought that at least a couple thousand people
would show up, but the actual number turned out to be closer to 700.

The event was supposed to start at noon, but our group had a hard time
finding the location and ended up being over an hour late. However, even
thought we were late, we still ended up getting there before the caravan
from Vermont. When we arrived there was a large contingent of local and
national press and the Mohawk organizers making fry bread and cooking
pickerel (a freshwater fish) and venison for the caravan -- our group
brought homemade cornbread and vegan salad to add to the feast, and many

other visitors also donated food.

Although everyone was concerned about the whereabouts of the caravan, it
did give us an opportunity to have a great interview with John Boots,
one of the main Mohawk organizers of the "day of rage". He told us how
the Akwesasne tribal authorities held public meetings where they showed
film clips of the more "violent" incidents in Seattle, DC, Philly, etc.
and made every attempt to reenforce the already existing fears about the
event within the community. He told us about the corruption of the
tribal government and villainy of New York State, and the province of
Ontario against Akwesasne. He told us how local industries like GM, were
basically allowed to use Akwesasne land as a dumping ground and why
this, among many other reasons, was why they wanted to express their
solidarity with the demonstrators headed for Quebec and hoped that
permanent connections were made between the the Mohawks and the
anti-globalization movement within the region.

Finally, the Vermont caravan arrived, it was never clarified for me why
they were so late, but they were there at last and everyone concerned
was happy and relieved. They all dug into the food and listened to
speeches, by Stacy Boots (John's son), a Lakota representative of
autonomous AIM, and whoever else wanted to come up and give props to the
Mohawks or make an announcement -- it was very warm and very militant.

Soon, the time came to begin the crossing. The plan was to have to
everyone go across on foot while the vehicles trailed behind. Most of
our group went across on foot, but Lyn and I drove across, behind the
marchers, and Claudia took her car ahead of the march so that she could
get better shots of the crossing. She was supposed to wait for us on the
American side, but customs would not let her wait and forced her to go
through, which seriously threw a monkeywrench into our original plan.

The march was peaceful (despite hundreds of RCMP waiting on the other
side of the bridge) and great to watch. We were listening to caravan
communication on our handheld radio and it seems that the largest
contingent within the Vermont caravan (New York Ya Basta!) had made a
decision that if even one of their members were refused entry into
Canada, everyone would turn back. As we scratched our heads over the
point of doing such a thing, we heard that they had assembled a group of
people with the most extensive criminal records to go through customs
and immigration first to see if they would be refused. Long story short,
they were refused and Ya Basta! turned back. It was an hours long wait
for us to get through customs and immigration -- even the people who
were withdrawing their request to enter Canada waited hours to be sent
back --  in fact we later learned that some were held by immigration
until monday. At the end of the day, according to independent
eyewitnesses and immigrations officials, only about 50 to 100 people got
through out of approximately 700 -- it was demoralizing news to us and
to those in Cornwall who waited for hours to greet us.

I don't mean to dis Ya Basta!'s decision, but everyone in Quebec City
that I talked to about this incident was really puzzled by their
decision to turn back. The general response was essentially: "I can
appreciate the display of solidarity, in a sense, but we have a job to
do here and everybody and *every* *body* counts".

As for our group's fate at the border, we didn't have much trouble --
thanks to the fact that we all stuck to our stories, our pal Gretchen is
quite the charmer, and immigration seemed to not be too interested in
the press.

We got back on the road around 9PM, and we didn't make it to QC until
12AM or so. With the exception of Claudia, who had a paid hotel room to
look forward to, we were all expecting to sleep on the floor in a single
room at a friend of Gretchen and Ben's, but fortunately we got lost in
the city and then separated.

It was late and we were all tired, especially Claudia and myself, who
were the drivers. We took a wrong turn onto a freeway and then when we
attempted to get back on track, I took one exit and Claudia accidentally
took another. Fortunately, we each had radios and were able to meet up
again at a motel we both spotted from the freeway. After that ordeal we
decided to find a gas sation to get some coffee and gas up for tomorrow.
This is where our luck really changed. This is where we first met
Pierre, a long time QC activist since the 60's who just happened to have
a great empty house along the St. Laurence which he was renovating. He
had planned on putting up a group of friends from Montreal there, but
they hadn't shown up and he was now offering it to us. It's times like
these when you feel certain that you're doing the right thing and the
way is being cleared for you to do it.

We came home with Pierre, a wonderfully gregarious man, who was
delighted that we Americans had come. We also met Melanie, the one
Montreal friend who had shown up, she was funny and boisterous, and
despite the language barrier (Pierre was a fluent english speaker, but
Melanie knew only a little english, and we knew a little french) we all
became great friends over the weekend.

A20 Quebec City

The days march was organized by CLAC and CASA as were all of the
effective events of the weekend. CLAC and CASA are two
anarchist/anti-authoritarian groups from Montreal and Quebec City,
respectively. Other groups involved in the demonstrations were SalAMI
(liberal anti-globalization group), Alternatives (huge Canadian NGO) and
Occupe (I'm still unclear what they did); these groups, while having one
hundred times the resources of CLAC and CASA, did not do one tenth of
the organizing that CLAC and CASA did. It seemed that (SalAMI in
particular) spent more energy trying to marginalize CLAC and CASA and
put a whole lot of energy into organizing a futile "legal" march which
led thousands of union members away from the perimeter and into a
stadium for an absurd rally that doing any real organizing work on the
ground.

One CAW member said about the "legal" march: "Why was the 'legal
protest' conducted miles away from the security perimeter? Had I known I
was marching towards a parking lot, I would have stayed home and done
that at the fucking mall."

This engagement in counterproductive activity by the larger
organizations left the field almost exclusively to CLAC, CASA, and
affiliated groups. Some of the work they did included: traveling across,
Ontario, Quebec and the northeastern US to do countless teach-ins on the
demonstrations, engaging and educating the community about the
demonstrations and countering the media disinformation through the
CASA-affiliated anti- poverty group Commite Populaire du St. Jean
Baptiste, distributing 10,000 copies of a 4 page tabloid in the
neighborhood where most of the action was to occur (the neighborhoods of
St. Jean Baptiste and Limoliou), establish an "adopt-an-activist"
program which encouraged local families to put up visiting demonstrators
(hundreds of demonstrators were housed this way), and coordinate the
more confrontational (and also more effective) actions that would occur
over the weekend.

In short, the most important work (organizing the effort to either stop
or disrupt the summit, and build community support) was done by CLAC and
CASA. In previous demonstrations, like Seattle and DC, decentralized
"anarchistic" tactics have been used to great effect, by groups like DAN
and the Mobilization for Global Justice, these groups also have a great
many anarchists and anti-authoritarians involved in them, but this time
the major organizing was fairly overtly done by anarchists and other
radical anti-authoritarians.

Friday began as a traditional march from Laval University, down
Boulevard Rene Levesque, to "The Wall", which seemed a rather
inauspicious start to what would become an astonishing afternoon and
evening. But there were practical reasons for this -- most of the
housing provided for the demonstration was on the Laval University
campus. The over a mile long march  was not without incident: an
altercation between a campus security guard (who by all accounts
provoked the incident) and a protester, in which the campus security
guard briefly drew his gun, was witnessed by me, but overall it was a
uneventful march. During the march is also where I first heard the chant
of the Quebecois radicals and black bloc members. A simple and to the
point chant that embodies what the entire weekend
was about: Sol! Sol! Sol! Sol-i-dar-i-té!

One other thing was definitely worthy of note: from the beginning of the
demo at Laval until we reached the perimeter, I did not see a single cop
anywhere. This is interesting because, for months now the media has been
conducting a fear campaign on the citizens of Quebec, in an effort to
get them to fear and oppose the protester. What the absence of cops all
along the parade route told me, and should also tell the citizens of
Quebec, is that the authorities do not give a shit about them. There
were thousands
of people in the streets that day, we could have burned and looted the
city, no problem, and not a single cop would've been around to stop us.
What's even more interesting is that the QC police department had
nothing to do with defending the summit, the summit defense was all done
by Quebec Provincial police and the RCMP and CSIS (the Canadian
equivalent of both the FBI and CIA).

About a block or so before we approached the perimeter, which was at the
intersection of Rene Levesque and Rue de l'Amerique-Francaise, people
were asked if they wanted to go left to the "green"
non-violent/non-dangerous action or forward to the "yellow" and "red"
action, which was a combination of militant non-violent CD and direct
action against the wall and the police. I don't know how many went left,
some did, all I know is that Lyn, Duff, Ben, Richard, David (one of the
few members of NYC Ya Basta! who got across the border), and myself went
forward to the "red" zone. Gretchen was in the crowd, but not with us at
this point, she also went forward.

It only took a few minutes for the black bloc to take down the fence on
l'Amerique-Francaise and not long after that for the first volley of
tear gas to be fired which, in turn, was responded to with volleys of
rocks and bottles from the protesters. And so it went for over two
hours.

I was in the black bloc in DC for the April 16th 2000 WB/IMF
demonstrations and there the cop's weapon of choice was the boot and the
club. They didn't bother with tear gas too much. In DC, they were
itching to beat the crap out of protesters, run them over with
motorcycles, and trample them with horses and they did so every chance
they could get. In Seattle it was a bunch of incoherent violence by an
incompetent police force, but in Quebec City we were facing a seasoned
and disciplined police force (with a great deal of experience in crowd
control) who use extreme violence and terror tactics with skill.  In
retrospect, everything they did had a degree of logic and strategy which
most people were unprepared for.

It was here on A20 where Lyn and I got our first dose of tear gas, it
would not be our last. We had bought Israeli gas masks in DC that we
never really ended up using for the reasons described above, and we
didn't bring them with us to Quebec because we assumed that they would
be confiscated at the border. So we were completely unprotected on A20.
We were right behind the black bloc, about 20 feet away from the front
line when the first round of tear gas was fired. Fortunately, the wind
was on
our side for most of the day and blew the tear gas right back at the
cops, while the cannisters themselves were picked up and thrown back by
the black bloc and other protesters.

We didn't actually get hit until the second or third volley -- it hurt
like hell, of course, but when we walked away from the gas and faced the
wind, it didn't take long for us to recover. "That's not so bad", we
thought, but after each new dose it became harder and to recover from
it.

After about the first hour -- at this point Lyn and I had been totally
fucked up by the tear gas and took refuge behind an apartment building
for several minutes. When we emerged, the police brought in two water
cannon trucks BEHIND the protesters, attempting to trap them between
l'Amerique-Francaise and Turnbull, and to lure the black bloc away from
the wall. The last part of the plan worked, but not at all in the way
they expected. The black bloc and many many other protesters who were
now fighting mad after being tear gassed for over an hour, ferociously
attacked the water cannon trucks -- smashing the windows and attempting
to open the doors to drag the drivers from the trucks. The response from

the crowd must've been pretty shocking to the police because the trucks
made a hasty retreat and were never seen on the street again -- from
that point on, they kept the water cannons safely ensconced at various
points behind the perimeter fence.

The police gradually managed to occupy one side of the block, they
chased people across the street and beat many of them. They were forced
back and then the whole thing was repeated.

We stayed for another hour, mostly avoiding the gas as much as possible
now. Literally hundreds of people heard about what was going down on
radio and TV came down and started participating and observing at this
point. Among the observers, there were looks of horror and outrage, not
at the protesters, but at the brutality of the police.

After three hours or more with no protection from the gas, we had to get
away for awhile so we went down the next street over to a neighborhood
restaurant, who's name I can no longer remember. Richard came with us,
while Ben and Duff stayed in the fray. The people in the restaurant were
very friendly and sympathetic. The place was packed with protesters
taking refuge or gathering their strength to return to street fight.

Funnily enough, after all that tear gas all Lyn and I could think about
was having a cigarette, but we were in a closet-like non-smoking section
of the restaurant, but our waiter just got us an ashtray when he saw us
light up. It made me think about the time Jaggi Singh, an organizer with
the CLAC, who came to Ithaca to do a teach-in about the demonstrations.
We knew of each other for years via e-mail, but never really interacted
and we finally had the pleasure of meeting him. He joked with us that
Quebec is the "smoking section of North America" and in restauraunts
there is the smoking section and the heavy smoking section.

It was during the first two hours of the battle of Rene Levesque (I'm
not sure exactly when), we would later learn, that the police (most
likely CSIS) literally kidnapped Jaggi, one of the most visible and
effective spokepeople for the actions. The police who kidnapped him were
dressed as protesters. They swarmed around him, beat the crap out of
him, and threw him into an unmarked car which quickly sped away. At the
time, Jaggi was near the "green" zone, which was being mercilessly
gassed as well, attempting to calm the crowd and prevent a panicked
stampede. No one knew where Jaggi was being held all that night, as of
this writing he still has not been released.

When we came out of the restaurant, we were not entirely surprised to
find most of the demonstrators in the street out front. The cops had
pushed them off of Rene Levesque and into Turnbull and down the hill. We
had been recording the action all day and we immediately whipped out the
minidisc and ran up the hill. We ran into a man and a woman with a
bullhorn, who were asking if anyone had a copy of the Canadian
constitution. As luck would have it, Lyn and I were both handed a copy
by a legal observer when we were applying for our press credentials with
CMAQ this morning...Lyn handed them her copy.

The man attempted a reading first, it was OK. But the woman then took
the bullhorn and walked right up to the police line and read it with
searing rage in her voice as I stood next to her and recorded. She was
not halfway through when a riot cop began to point his tear gas gun
directly at her. People in the crowd began to scream "don't shoot!". The
cop slowly began to lower his gun just as the cop next to him began to
lob one tear gas grenade after another into the crowd. I and others
began to scream "Walk!... Marche!..." to prevent people from trampling
each other in a panic as we all tried to move out of the thick blinding
cloud of tear gas as quickly as possible. When I got to the bottom of
the hill I
looked back and saw an impenetrable cloud of CS gas completely consumed
the narrow residential street we had just occupied. This was the first
of countless gassings of exclusively residential streets I would see
over the next two days.

There was so much gas that people were driven blocks away seeking
breathable air. This was enough for us. We regrouped with our friends
and headed back to Pierre's place to recuperated. I would later find out
that the street battle would continue until dawn with angry locals
picking up where the exhausted protesters had left off.

A21 Quebec City

The next day's assembly point was on Charest at noon. This was the big
day. Yesterday we had 15000 to 20000 in the streets, today we had 60000
union marchers alone according to the organizers and 10000 to 15000
protesters and angry locals over the course of the day. This would be a
day of amazing courage and (for most of the union marchers who get led
away from the action) disappointment and frustration.

Lyn and I were prepared today. We had bought goggles, cloth to cover our
faces, and vinegar to cut the tear gas. Today, we were running with the
black bloc. We found a portion of the black bloc a few blocks down from
the park between L'Eglise and Couronne were we would ascend to Cote
d'Abraham and into the most ferocious and brave street battle I have
ever seen, much less participated in.

There was a rented delivery truck that had huge speakers out the back
pumping reggae, funk, and hip-hop. It would end up at the park as part
of the "Temporary Autonomous Zone" (more on that later). There were a
couple bank windows that got broken, no big deal, overall. Meanwhile, a
group
of protesters, sometime before noon, had occupied the freeway onramp and
offramp off of Cote d'Abraham  and began a massive drum session on the
freeway guardrails that could be heard for blocks away. Apparently,
those ramps were close to the meeting site and they were attempting to
disrupt
or inconvenience the summit by drumming all day and all night, which
they did. As far as I can tell, the drumming started before noon and did
not end until it was viciously dispersed around 4AM. The whole time,
these people were under direct attack with teargas, water cannons and
plastic bullets. The black block came to defend them and draw fire away
from them.

What followed was astonishing. The people who took part in that defense
(men, women, black, white, asian, First Nations, Quebecquois, Anglaise)
showed incredible guts, ferocity and tenacity. Barrages of teargas,
plastic bullets, and water cannon blasts were met with storms of bricks
and stones, flaming debris, and teargas cannisters flung back in  the
cops faces. The "bangers", as we were calling them, on the freeway and
the defenders took shifts -- it was an informal system. someone got
tired or hurt and there would just be someone around to take their place
-- at least for the whole time I was there. This battle went on for
literally HOURS.

The people I was with either got tired, got hurt or got too much gas (I
made the dumb mistake of trying to kick a tear gas cannister after it
had been going a few seconds. Vinegar on a piece of cloth will protect
you from CS gas pretty well, but not if you're foolish enough to walk
into a cloud of it) and we decided to move on down to St. Jean, we were
hearing that the fighting was also getting fierce. As we made our way
over we say some equally amazing things. Specifically, the decency and
generosity of
the citizens of Quebec City.

The following are just a few incidents that are not necessarily in
chronological order: a lovely middle-aged woman hanging a water hose out
her second storey window and smiling on the crowd below as they rinsed
their eyes and filled water bottles. A shopkeeper out in the street
around the corner doing the same thing. A grandfather with his children
and grandchildren sitting out on his stoop; as we pass by he says "Mais
oui! Mais oui! C'est Admirable!". Seeking shelter in a neighborhood bar
and having the the bartender remind us that there's ice cold water from
the bathroom faucet; friendly banter with the local patrons in broken
french and english. The black bloc marching down a street to the cheers
of protesters and locals alike.

We spent the day making our way to Rene Levesque and back, a few of my
experiences:

St. Jean:
Helping to unsuccessfully to pull down a portion of the fence on St.
Jean (oh well, a portion did get successfully pulled down at least).
Seeing a little neighborhood boy get gassed by cops behind the fence and
not being able to do much about it. Hearing a report that the meetings
have been delayed due to the protests and everyone cheering, protester
and local alike.

Rene Levesque:
People playing frisbee and tossing teargas cannisters back at the cops.

When we made it back to Cote d'Abraham it was dark or getting there, we
came round the bottom of Cote d'Abraham, we had no idea that the cops
were pushing their way down the winding hill above. We decided to stop
at the back end of CMAQ (the Indymedia-affiliated media center), which
was on Saint-Vallire and take a break and have a smoke or two. To
understand what happens next, you have to realize that Cote d'Abraham is
a winding road that wraps around a steep hillside. The front of CMAQ
building is two storeys high and the back of CMAQ is five storeys high,
approximately. On the side of the CMAQ building, their is a long, steep
staircase that leads from Cote d'Abraham down to Saint-Vallier, where we
sat on the curb an relaxed and chatted, many locals were gathering and
mingling with the activists. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, people
come running and screaming down the stairs with a cloud of teargas
trailing behind them. The cops have managed to push the line  about two
blocks down the hill, yet the "bangers" are still occupying the freeway
entrance and going strong.

For some reason, the building in which CMAQ is housed has no functioning
ventilation system, they have to close all the doors and stop up the
cracks to prevent gas from getting in. Meanwhile outside, the locals and
the activists start screaming at the cops and, the locals in particular,
start throwing bottles and rocks up at the cops and get another round of
teargas for their troubles. It take what seems like an hour for the cops
to back off, but by this time the proverbial camel's back has been
broken. It's saturday night, and the bars and streets are filled with
the angry working-class whites, blacks and south asians that populate
the neighborhoods of St. Jean-Baptiste and Limoilou that have been
perpetually gassed for the whole day. We go grab a bite to eat way down
the street on Charest since nothing is happening, it seems.

Meanwhile, further down the hill from Cote d'Abraham, at the park on the
corner of Coronne and Charest, a bonfire has been going for a while now,
there's more locals than activists down there and a big ol' party is
going on. The fire gets bigger and bigger, people drinking hard, smoking
dope, the sound system is pumping out hip-hop and people are having a
good time. People are getting more shit from the cops on Cote d'Abraham,
and the locals go down to get their friends at the party, activists get
their people together several blocks down and start a spontaneous march
down Charest which meets up with the locals and other activists at the
park. We come back down Charest just in time to follow the activists
coming out from under a freeway underpass chanting "Sol! Sol! Sol!
Sol-i-dar-i-té!".

By the time we get to the park, we've been listening to the radio
communication going on. I find the CMAQ channel and tell them what's
going on, which results in me doing comms for CMAQ from 11PM to 4AM as
the locals get their revenge on the cops the whole night. By the time we
reach the park, the whole intersection of Charest and Couronne belongs
to the locals and the activists, and the bonfire grows over the night to
be easily 20 feet wide and ten foot high flames practically in the
middle
of the street.

Another amazing street battle occurs on Cote d'Abraham, this time with
the benefit of the full resourcefulness of the locals. At one point,
they pull a sturdy steel fence seemingly out of thin air and march up
Cote d'Abraham to charge the cop line near the top of the hill. The
battle rages back and forth from about 11:30pm to 4am when the cops
finally get the advantage and drive everyone down into the park.
Meanwhile, we hear that there are still battles going on at St. Jean and
Rene Levesque, but
it's over for us. The cops are viciously dispersing people now that they
have complete advantage, there's not going to be another comeback on
this side of the hill.

We go home and sit up with Melanie and share war stories and plan to
attend the final CLAC/CASA meeting tomorrow at Laval University.
Pierre's other friends have shown up after all and they tell us how
proud they are of the militant Quebecois activists who protested and
fought. We've all heard a rumor that the Canadian army might be brought
in (this is a rumor that had been floating around for awhile), but
they're doubtful. They say if the army is brought in, there will be a
revolution. Quebecois hate
the army. They still remember what the army did in the 70's during the
Quebecois civil rights struggles.

A22 Quebec City: Aftermath

On sunday morning, we learn that something like 455 people have been
arrested and only approximately 300 are accounted for, we also learn
from other sources that at least 4 people have "disappeared" without a
trace -- they don't know if they've been jailed or are voluntarily
laying low.

There is a meeting where it is resolved to do a solidarity march for the
jailed protesters to the Ministry of Justice. It is small but
interesting. Laval is located in the upscale suburb of Saint-Foy -- a
largely nondescript sea of shopping malls and expensive cars -- a stark
contrast to the beauty of Quebec City. Nonetheless, the commuters and
passers by are supportive, and they are visibly disturbed by the line of

riot cops that follow our little march of 300 people along the way. A
press conference is held in front of the ministry and a statement is
made in French and English. We return to Laval and hug and kiss Melanie
goodbye, and resolve to see her again the the summer.

We ran into Nicholas, a CASA organizer, earlier today at the meeting and
agreed to meet him for an interview in the evening.

Nicholas is very much involved with Comite Populaire du St.
Jean-Baptiste, an anti-poverty group that serves the St. Jean-Baptiste
neighborhood of Quebec City. He and his fellow local activists were
largely responsible for the outreach done in the community and with the
local merchants prior to the demonstrations. He tells us that
ordinarily, he doesn't give a shit about these big demonstrations, but
this one was in his town, so he did the work to make it a success.

He thinks that his fellow anarchists should be doing more work in their
own communities. That's where were going to make a real difference. He
thinks all this globalization shit is a "fad", it's the capitalists
displaying their arrogance. They think they've won, so they're rubbing
our noses in it, once they get enough resistance, they'll go back
underground again (in a sense) but nothing will really change.

After seeing the incredible effectiveness of his and other local
organizing work around the demonstrations, I can't help but agree with
him. But I'd agree with him anyway, simply because he's right. The
anti-capitalist movement (distinct in many ways from the
anti-globalization movement) has alot of work cut out for it.

Quebec was the biggest first-world success for the fight against
gloablization to date, and there's not likely to be a bigger success for
a long while. But you can't let that energy you've brought home
dissipate, you've got to take it and put it into your community were the
real fight must begin.
 

(*) Shawn Ewald <shawn@wilshire.net>, Radio4All
<http://www.radio4all.org> The A-Infos Radio Project.

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