Fortress Quebec: A Return to Tear Gas and Violence

By Mark Engler, TomPaine.com. Posted April 23, 2001.

When political leaders from throughout the hemisphere met in Quebec City this weekend to negotiate a Free Trade of the Americas Area, they were surrounded on all sides by a towering, twelve-foot high security fence. What that fence represented -- the denial of democratic participation in global economic debates -- was a prime concern of the tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the streets. That, along with a pragmatic question: what is the best to bring the barrier down?

Even arriving on outside of the chain-link enclosure -- making it to the sections of city that police would later fog with tear gas -- was something of a privilege. In order to lessen the flow of dissenters, the border patrol denied entry to immigrants with arrest records, regardless of proven guilt or innocence. Their interrogations were administered based on one's apparent views about corporate globalization: Rest assured, the likes of George W. Bush never had to explain to the border patrol their "not perfect," drunk-driving pasts.

These affronts to civil liberties only served to heighten criticisms of the closed-off trade meetings. The People's Summit had been taking place through the week: a series of teach-ins presented arguments about why the FTAA, if passed, would solidify the power of multinational corporations at the expense of labor standards, consumer rights, and environmental protections. But protesters had scheduled Friday as the first main day of action arrived, and only then did the great fence become the target of physical resistance.

Although it composed only one moment within several days of protests, the first assault on the gate served as a key moment within the actions. This occurred as a march of three thousand young activists butted against the Summit compound. Some activists scaling the barrier leaned back their weight to pull the fence several feet closer to the crowd below. When the people released, they sent gate's huge concrete support rocking back and forth. The crowd grabbed the fence again and rocked it even more dramatically. One more swing and it toppled. While about a hundred people poured through and ran up against a police line, others dismantled additional sections.

The offensive security fence had begged a direct action response. With many Canadian dubbing the gate a "wall of shame," it was quickly becoming a national symbol of government disrespect for free speech. "I believe the provocation started with that damn wall," said prominent Canadian progressive Maude Barlow about the clashes in Quebec's streets. And (although his article went on mock the sentiment) a Toronto Globe and Mail columnist noted the poetic dismay of Brazilian Senator Telma de Souza:

"The wall, the wall/I can't believe the wall."

So when the fence, in part, came down, the domestic press recognized this as a crucial development. In contrast to the New York Times, which missed the fence's symbolic significance and profiled the White House's trade objectives, the Toronto newspaper's banner headline cried out, "FORTRESS QUEBEC IS BREACHED."

If piecing apart the hated wall made for good-sense activism, other tactics launched protesters into a debate about how to best build a global justice movement. Having once broken the fence, the direct action's purposefulness faded into a clash with police. Some activists creatively managed the confrontation: One affinity group rolled forward a wooden catapult and launched a pink stuffed animal at their adversaries. But these playful theatrics were accompanied with the throwing of sticks, rocks, and even Molotov cocktails.

If Seattle was the "Tear Gas Round" of trade talks, as the Wall Street Journal dubbed it, this was "Tear Gas, Round 2." In many of the globalization protests of the past year, police have avoided unleashing the toxic white smoke because of its bad public-relations appearance, preferring instead mass arrests. Canadian authorities returned whole-heartedly to the chemical violence in Quebec City.

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