A-Infos (en) Solidarité: A Quebec Diary

[Chuck0 <chuck@tao.ca>]

 ________________________________________________
      A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
            http://www.ainfos.ca/
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> From: "Shawn Ewald" <shawn@wilshire.net>
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 seel 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 nreturn 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 an others' 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 allot 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

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