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FREE RADICAL: chronicle of the new unrest

by L.A. KAUFFMAN

http://www.free-radical.org

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TURNING POINT. . . . . . . . . . . #16 (May 2001)

Radicalism is rising in North America. The large

and varied late April protests throughout the

continent against the Free Trade Area of the

Americas (FTAA)confirmed, if there was any doubt,

that this anti-capitalist, pro-democracy movement

of many movements continues to grow. There's creative

ferment everywhere, and the greatest sense of radical

possibility in a generation.

For parts of the American global justice movement,

the exposure and connection that the FTAA protests

brought to Canada's more freewheeling direct-

action tradition are greatly accelerating the

move toward more militant tactics, which began when

the anarchist Black Bloc went window-smashing

during the late 1999 World Trade Organization

meetings in Seattle. These two dynamics - a broad

sense of momentum and growth, and an increasingly

combative culture of street protest - give this moment a

feeling of promise, unpredictability, and peril. It's a

time of great excitement, daring acts, much serious

organizing, and some very stupid posturing.

I spent late April in Quebec City, where the leaders of 34

Western Hemisphere nations were meeting, in a charming

walled city made sinister by the addition of another man-

made wall, guarded by phalanxes of faceless police in riot

gear. There an estimated 50,000 demonstrators were barraged

with nearly 5000 canisters of tear gas, in two days of

stunning street confrontations that greatly eclipsed

Seattle in intensity.

Simultaneously, thousands of protesters in dozens of

places - from the Tijuana-San Diego border to El Paso to

Kansas City - were answering the call to "localize the

movement for global justice" by holding rallies, marches,

and direct actions that made connections between pressing

issues in their communities and the sweeping trade pact

being negotiated in Quebec City. These were also a

response to widespread critiques of "summit-hopping," the

post-Seattle activist trend of jumping from one mega-

mobilization to the next.

In both its lead-up and its realization,

Quebec City felt like a turning point.

Two of the main groups calling for the

protest, the Anti-Capitalist Convergence

and the sardonically named Welcoming

Committee for the Summit of the Americas -

familiarly knownby their French acronyms,

CLAC and CASA - announced from the start

that they would organize on the basis

of "respect for a diversity of tactics."

Specifically, they committed not to renounce

"violence" (always a slippery term) or to denounce

any demonstrators' methods of dissent.

For Canada, this stance wasn't out of

line with past radical direct actions,

although CLAC and CASA's position did

stir up a lot of controversy in the weeks

and months before the Summit. For Americans,

though, this kind of tactical carte blanche

has been virtually unheard of at large-scale

protests since the street-fighting days of

the late 1960s. Beginning with the anti-nuclear

movement of the mid-1970s, it's been standard

procedure at most mass actions in the United

States to have nonviolence codes, explicit

agreements about the limits of acceptable

behavior that all participants are asked to

respect. They have varied in intensity and scope.

Some guidelines have been incredibly sweeping,

prohibiting even angry speech, while others have

been more limited, mainly proscribing physical

violence against people (including police).

One of the hallmarks of the direct-action

anti-globalization movement in the United States

has been its growing unease with these

traditional rules. It's not that there's been a

mass embrace of street combat or property

destruction among American radicals, although

interest in those tactics is clearly growing

among a small but highly visible group. Instead,

there seems to be a broadening consensus against

denouncing people who do those things, a

reluctance to draw lines between "good" and "bad"

protesters, and a recognition that the

overwhelming majority of the violence to date has

come from the police.

In Quebec City, outrage at the hated wall and the

vicious tear gassing quickly overwhelmed much

lingering ambivalence about the "diversity of

tactics" approach. When armed thugs are barraging

you with chemical weapons simply because you've

gathered to oppose the secret negotiations of a

tiny elite, it's hard to get real worked up about

whether folks should be throwing rocks at them or

not. Don't get me wrong: I strongly disagree

with some things that Black Blocers did in Quebec,

particularly the use of Molotov cocktails. But

out there in the streets, under attack, the

atmosphere was one of almost total unity.

From moment to moment, you felt you were in the

midst of a fireworks display, a sporting event,

or a war zone. A low thwomping sound announced the

discharge of each gas canister, and you looked up

at the sky to trace its arcing path and gauge how

close to you it would land. There's a delay then

before the noxious chemicals are actually

released, and in those crucial seconds, the crowd

would wait to see if someone - usually a

Black Blocer wearing thick gloves - would pick

up the superheated thing and hurl it back at

the cops. Often, someone would, and a huge

cheer would go up as you saw the trail of gas

head toward the police line. Or, if not, a

thick toxic cloud would begin to spread;

some folks would panic, but others always

urged the crowd to stay calm. There would

be cries for medics to wash out the

burning eyes of the unprotected - the movement

medics were flat-out amazing, selfless and

superbly prepared - and before long, you'd hear

the French chant that became the watchword for

Interesting commentary. Full of lots of suggestions for the direction forward. But not word about the Cincinnati rebellion, or the color divide in the movement. Why not?