BY EVA CHENG
Tens of thousands of protesters took various forms of civil disobedience to express their opposition to the US-sponsored Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, April 20-22.
Covered by the thin veil of equality and democratic rhetoric, the United States and Canadian establishments are trying to institutionalise and legitimise their imperialist rule over 32 other countries to their south stretching all the way to Chile. One of their key plans is to install a "free trade" regime covering the region, called the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the detail "negotiations" framework of which they hope can be agreed on at the Quebec City summit.
Rejecting the SoA agenda, more than 25,000 demonstrators flooded the streets near the summit site on April 21 in the second main day of action, in clear defiance to police's violent attempts the previous day to drive them away. This included a march of 15,000 workers. A warm-up march on the night of April 19 attracted 3000.
The same streets were packed with protesters again on April 22. An estimated 3000-10,000 protesters took part in ther April 20 "Carnival Against Capitalism".
On both days, the protesters confronted countless rounds of police teargas cannisters, rubber bullets and attacks by water cannon.
In the months before the summit, the Canadian authorities had introduced a wide range of repressive measures to intimidate the would-be protesters, including emptying a local prison in preparation for mass arrests of protesters and installing a 4-metre high metal fence around the 4.5 square kilometre conference site. Protesters dubbed this the "Wall of Shame". In the early afternoon on April 20 they succeeded in pulling a section of it down.
"There was a tremendous amount of teargas in the air and there were three lines of cops in riot gear protecting the summit attendees", an activist-journalist of the Independent Media Centre (IMC) reported on April 20. Another IMC report on the day said that "one of the [activist] video team got a teargas canister in the forehead (knocked unconscious; 6 stitches)" .
Green Left Weekly journalist Julian Coppens, who took part in the Quebec City actions, reported that "the police launched CS gas every few minutes, assaulting the protesters throughout the night of April 20, and gas was used even where no attempt was made at breaching the fence".
Protesters used masks, goggles, helmets and scarfs to seek protection from police attacks, despite the fact that wearing these was declared illegal during the summit period. Many protesters still suffered from skin irritations and burning pains. Some fought back — by lobbing teargas canisters back at the cops, returning them with burning rolls of toilet paper, balloons full of paint, even eggs.
Some protesters managed to lay their hands on paving stones. Even the wind came to their help initially, according to April 20 Globe and Mail, blowing the teargas back to the cops.
Coppens continued: "Some activists threw back the canisters even without a gas mask. This is truly courageous. The pain is severe. It causes a burning sensation across the whole face, choking and burning lungs unable to breath and burning pain in the eyes is so intense that it's not possible to see or open your eyes for several minutes ... wiping your eyes only makes the pain worse."
The Wall of Shame was breached at more points on April 21, to the joyful cheers of protesters. However, only a handful crossed over into the restricted zone.
Thousands of protesters tried peaceful sit-ins at various points, only to be violently assaulted by police.
Police escalated their violence on April 21, aggressively beating protesters as well as firing more tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon at them. A handful of protesters then retaliated with Molotov cocktails, paving stones, beer bottles and toilet rolls.
By the end of April 21, 45 protesters had been injured (mainly from toxic gases). One protester lost a finger as he was trying to throw a teargas canister back to the cops. About 150 protesters had been arrested.
The protesters' support went far beyond the numbers at Quebec City. Many local, smaller mobilisations took place before and around the summit period in a large number of cities throughout the Americas. "In Buenos Aires, over 10,000 people protested against the [SoA] trade ministers' meeting two weeks ago. There are border actions ... at the Mexican-American border. In Boise, Idaho ... Kansas City ... I am just picking examples from the heartland of America that people don't associate with protests", said a spokesperson for the April 20 Quebec City protests.
Shocked by police brutality, the support for the protesters was also expressed by residents in Quebec City. Coppens reported: "Some residents have put hoses out of their windows for protesters to fill their water bottles and douse their faces from CS gas." The IMC reported an "extreme sense of comradeship and community on the streets", saying many Quebecois citizens came out to join the protesters.
Numerous teach-ins, speak-outs, rallies, street theatres and other warm-up actions have been held in various US and Canadian cities in recent weeks.
On April 1, for example, a day of rallies, marches and street theatre was held in downtown San Francisco to demand release of the FTAA negotiation text (which the participating governments have refused to make public). The next day hundreds of activists blockaded and occupied the local stock exchange for hours.
Solidarity with the Quebec City protesters also came from the native Canadian Akwesasne people, who pledged help to assist activists entering Canada through their land. "It's about asserting ourselves in a legitimate way... It's about showing our opposition to the FTAA", Akwesesne activist Shawn Brant told the Montreal Gazette in early April.
After witnessing television coverage of the police attacks on the anti-FTAA protesters, Cuban President Fidel Castro sent a message of support to them on April 20. Revolutionary Cuba is the only Western Hemisphere country that has been excluded from the summit.
"The authorities of Canada are repressing the peaceful demonstrations of those who protest in Quebec against the crime attempted to be committed against the political and economic rights of the people of Latin America and the Caribbean", declared Castro. "Governments that deceive the world by calling themselves defenders of human rights treat their own people in such a way. In this manner they pretend to discharge their guilt for the millions of children, women, adults and elderly in the world that, being able to be saved, die every year of disease and hunger. Yet they will not be able to sustain the unfair order they have imposed upon human kind."