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Up in arms
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by CRAIG SEGAL
The year began strong for activists, when tens of thousands united for
the gaseous Quebec City summit in April. The protest penetrated mainstream
mindfulness and spurred a far-left splinter faction in the NDP. But
after September 11, the pendulum swung sharply back to the right, and
the West stood behind George Bush II and his War on Terror. Caught up
in the fervour, the Canadian government began passing anti-war measures
limiting civil liberties. Undaunted by the change in focus, local activists
rallied against American bombing, Bill C-36 and anti-Arab racism.
Hands off my
city!
Led by Westmount Mayor Peter Trent, suburbanites battled hard against
the creation of the megacity and Bill 170, which merged Montreal’s
28 municipalities into a megacity of 1.8 million people and 27 boroughs.
The anti-merger sentiment culminated in rallies and a legal suit against
the provincial government, which was ultimately tossed out. The pro-merger
side argued suburbanites benefit from living near Montreal, and should
pay taxes like Montrealers do. They saw anti-mergers as rich Anglos
who didn’t want to share their wealth with Montrealers. The anti-mergers
saw the fusions as anti-democratic since they were never consulted,
and were scared to lose their communities and local services. Pierre
Bourque criticized many of the louder anti-merger opponents for joining
ranks with Gérald Tremblay. Bourque created the megacity, but
it came back and bit him in the ass with Tremblay winning the vote in
November.
Cliche clincher
In a move to keep Quebec politics riveting, lefty provincial parties,
including the Parti de la Démocracie Socialiste (PDS), the Rassemblement
Pour l’Alternative Progressiste (RAP), the Socialist Party, the
Communist Party and the Marxist-Leninist Party agreed not to run candidates
in an April 9 Montreal by-election. Instead, they united behind independent
candidate Paul Cliche, hoping to create a bridge between leftist activists
and politics. Cliche, an ex-PQ member and former parliamentary correspondent
for Le Devoir, grabbed 24 per cent of the vote. Pundits say he stole
most of his votes from dissatisfied separatists who believe their party
lost its leftist ideals. Feisty Liberal Nathalie Rochefort won, followed
by the PQ, with Cliche coming in third. If the old lefty had won, he
would have sprung a referendum asking his constituents if they want
to live in an independent socialist Quebec. The last Liberal to win
in the riding was Robert Bourassa, who lost to PQ poet Gerald Godin
in 1976.
The Germinal
Five
Two days before the Quebec City free trade conference, police announced
their big catch: seven young men on their way to Quebec armed with smoke
bombs, noise grenades, gas masks and baseball bats. Some say the police
did it to gain sympathy for the coming heavy-handed police tactics at
the summit. “Two cops infiltrated our organization,” said
Germinaler Pierre-David Habel, 21, who was freed from Orsainville Prison
after five days. “We drank beer with them. They were our comrades.
We were manipulated by the police and the state. The arrest reassured
people that all the police security measures were absolutely essential
to the Summit. It was clear from the beginning that we never wanted
to hurt anyone.” Five of the seven spent close to a month behind
bars.
What a gas!
Between 30,000-60,000 people protested the Free Trade Area of the Americas
meeting in Quebec City. Thirty-four heads of state met behind a fence
and three federal and provincial police forces to discuss “common
hemispheric issues and challenges,” including “improved access
to education, poverty alleviation, strengthening human rights and democracy,”
and, of course, “economic integration.”
Police tactics—which included copious quantities of tear gas, various
types of rubber bullets and many arrests—were seen by many as extreme.
Voices from
the Summit
“I haven’t seen this since 1976. It’s the return of the
left,” said Victor, an International Communism supporter.
“Even when we were getting tear-gassed, it didn’t feel real,”
said Fernando from Toronto.
“This is extraordinary. People want to come despite all the fear
and the gas bombs they saw on TV,” said Louis-Serge Houle, a CSN
Union rep from Montreal.
“People don’t really grasp the fact that our rights are strong.
We have a right to protest in the streets. The government is saying
we’re doing something wrong, but they’re the ones doing something
wrong. They have taken our rights away,” said Connie Fogal of the
Defense of Canadian Liberty Committee.
Activist down!
Police arrested activist Jaggi Singh at the Summit, though unlike the
Germinal Five, Singh’s weapon was allegedly a “teddy-bear-hurling
catapult.” Police dressed as protesters tackled Singh and threw
him into an unmarked van while he was walking with friends in a designated
“nonviolent zone.” At Singh’s trial, the catapult’s
builder from the Deconstructionist Institute for Surreal Topology (DIST)—who
was not arrested—said Singh had nothing to do with his invention.
Reporters laughed in the Quebec City courtroom when police tried to
claim Singh instigated violent protest because they saw him through
a thick cloud of gas from 20 feet away, “moving his arm in a forward
motion.” Singh was released on $3,000 bail after spending 17 days
in Orsainville Prison. So many allegations of police wrongdoing were
stirred up that Singh later became the subject of a CBC documentary
that criticizes the police.
Asked what he thought about police tactics against activists, Singh
said, “What I do know as a result of the APEC documents is that
it was clear they were doing surveillance. I was followed around for
five days. They readily admitted that my photo was all over the police
stations and stuff. We know that the SQ and the Montreal police have
both admitted they have infiltrators in groups. Part of the reason for
that surveillance isn’t always to get information. It’s just
to intimidate people. Period. I saw that in Windsor, where a certain
amount of paranoia crept into the organizing, and in many ways it disempowered
people.”
Students banned!
Concordia University expelled and banned two students—Tom Keefer
and Laith Marouf, both members of the student union executive—after
a scuffle with university security. The scuffle began after security
allegedly caught Marouf spraypainting pro-Palestinian graffiti on a
now-destroyed Concordia building. The incident got international attention;
supporters of the banned students asked the university to not take only
security’s version of events and to conduct an independent investigation.
The university stuck to its guns.
You get squat
Four hundred anti-poverty activists met at Carré St-Louis at
5 p.m. Friday, July 27 for a rally organized by Le comité des
sans emploi. They walked west along Sherbrooke and then broke into a
run and occupied a boarded-up building on Overdale and Lucien-L’Allier.
It is the last remaining structure of a 1987 battle between residents
and developers who tore the other buildings down for luxury condos that
never came. Bourque took his time with the squatters, and a week after
the squat, following negotiations, he got the squatters to move into
another building on Rachel E.
But the “softer, gentler Bourque” didn’t last long. At
the end of the summer, the press hounded Bourque for giving the squatters
a home. After flip-flopping, he finally kicked them out on October 3,
leaving them to their own devices.
Give peace a
chance
On September 23, 1,000 Montrealers opposed to the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan
marched from Concordia University to the U.S. consulate and then to
the federal Complexe Guy-Favreau on René-Lévesque. Activists
feared attacks would only harm a population already devastated by two
decades of war and famine.
“Fear and anger felt by people all over the world has forced us
to take a collective breath and say ‘STOP!’ The time has passed
when people are naïvely led to war as sheep,” said Abraham
Weizfeld, a member of the Coalition Against War Hysteria & Racism.
“I’ve been incredibly angry with the U.S. government and the
propaganda in the media. These demonstrations have to start early on.
Our generation’s going to be badly affected by this. I don’t
want to be this angry, but I don’t think there’s any other
way I can be,” said Antoinette Karuna, a 19-year-old Concordia
Communications student. The demos continued weekly.
Nix Bill C-36
The anti-war movement adapted itself to the various war tactics. Besides
protesting the invasion of Afghanistan, activists also protested war
measures at home. Activists targeted Bill C-36, which gives greater
power to police for arrests without trial, easier deportations and increased
surveillance. The Canadian Federation of Students held a conference
on the topic with constitutional lawyer Julius Grey. “I’m
convinced that the government is in entirely good faith here,”
said Grey. “But if a law remains on the books for a very long time,
it ends up being used incorrectly. All powers are subject to abuse in
every society and every legal system. It’s always a risk when we
pass laws to deal with current emergencies which have as an effect the
restriction of freedom.” <<
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