Leftist at large

>>Calgary
misinformation

by RENÉ BIBERSTEIN

In Calgary for this month’s G8 Summit and protest, the former editor of Concordia’s student paper the Link takes a look at the state of the country. The fifth in a series of dispatches ...

Kyle is on a mission to stop birth. He just can’t stand the thought of it. It’s like passing kidney stones, the University of Calgary nursing student says, only more painful and more expensive. He thinks there’s a conspiracy to convince women that having kids is fun and rewarding. In reality, Kyle says, birth is worse than torture—not to mention the years of annoying and costly child-rearing that follow it.
He gives a rolling belt of laughter when we tell him we’re going to the G8 protest in Calgary. “What are you doing that for?” he asks. “Do you think those world leaders are actually going to listen to you?” It’s not so much about convincing the leaders, I say to him, as it is about exposing people in general to the issues. We chat for a while about deforestation, unions, big box stores and global politics. Kyle is pretty well informed.

“I think Canada’s like that kid who gets all excited when the cool guy sits down beside him at lunch,” he jokes about Canada’s willingness to sell off its resources to the U.S. for practically nothing. “And then he says, ‘Please, please take my lunch! Just be my friend.’”

Kyle drops fellow Montrealer Soo Koelbli and me off in Edmonton. We had decided to hitchhike up there from Calgary for the weekend to attend the Festival of Resistance. It turns out to be less of a festival and more of a series of lectures and workshops. We go to talks on medical and legal advice, direct action and journalism. It’s a relief, after spending a while in Calgary, to be in a place with actual storefronts, older buildings and people on the streets.

Heading back to Calgary again, we wait for nearly an hour by the side of the road before getting picked up by a man in a rental car littered with a bunch of cell phones. “Let’s just say I work legally and then I do a little extra on the side,” says the Colorado native who wants to retire early and head south to Panama. “At least that’s one thing we’ve got in common,” he says to us when I tell him we’re not exactly fans of the police.

Back in Calgary the next day, we scramble across town on the rickety C-train to the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology where logistics for the protest are being planned.

Things are starting to come together. The housing team has matched up nearly all of the visiting activists already in town with lodgings. A recent announcement by Calgary’s Catholic bishop is helping them; the outspoken and often controversially left-leaning Fred Henry is asking Calgary churches to open their doors to protesters in town for the summit.

Street medics are getting medical supplies together, Food Not Bombs is preparing to serve vegan food to visitors and more details about the protest itself are coming out. The Bike Brigade will be dressing up as frogs and converging to clog the streets, the Revolutionary Knitting Circle will be making “tree-cozies” to protect Kananaskis from invading politicians and soldiers, and several large-scale actions aimed at shutting down the city are also in the works.

But despite all this, there seems to be a deliberate misinformation campaign on the part of the mayor and the (CanWest-Global-owned) Calgary Herald. Both insist on referring to all activists as “anarchists” and tarring them as violent and disorganized. Several articles have appeared in the Herald, suspiciously quoting the same couple of “anarchists” from the Western U.S. who have decided to skip Calgary in favour of travelling all the way to the Ottawa protest.

It seems like police and conservatives are doing all they can to keep people as far away from Calgary as possible. :

Contact: biberstein@wildmail.com