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Storming the wall
In the streets of Quebec, activists braved tear gas, threw rocks, and fought police to protest globalization at the Summit of the Americas

BY LANCE TAPLEY


JACKMAN, MAINE — THIS past Friday, I drove to the Border Riders Snowmobile Clubhouse near the Canadian border to hang out with Carolyn Chute, founder of the Second Maine Militia, also known as the Wicked Good Militia. Chute is probably best known as the author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine, but her last book, Snowman, concerns a man who joins a militia. Its seeming advocacy of violence created a stir in literary circles.

The brouhaha did little to deter Chute from pursuing her burgeoning interest in activism. She’s run the gamut from lobbying at the State House to holding teach-ins about corporate power for people in backwoods Maine. Shortly before the summit of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, she sent out an advisory to her militia associates inviting folks up to Jackman to rally.

There was snow, but no snowmobiles. The Maine Global Action Network (MEGAN) had moved in and set up a hospitality center for border crossers on the trail to Quebec City, where an elite gang of pan-American free traders had holed up in " old town. " That day’s edition of the Morning Sentinel reported that protesters were still being turned away at the Jackman crossing. (As earlier reports documented, people with decades-old minor offenses — such as, say, having been arrested at a protest — were being refused entry to Canada.) But Keith Pearson of Maine’s newly founded Independent Media Center (www.maine.corporateoverlord.com) said that protesters were no longer being turned back.

At the snowmobile club, grassroots activists collected in the muddy parking lot and relaxed with a few beers in the late-afternoon sun. The whole thing was taking on the feel of a party. It was Friday, after all, and MEGAN’s hospitality center had been going since Monday with teach-ins and rallies against corporate globalization. Earlier in the day, at the border-crossing weigh station a few miles from MEGAN’s clubhouse, there’d been a modest rally consisting of two massive wooden drums, smaller instruments, and amps on a flatbed, along with signs, painted banners, Hula-Hoops, and a crowd of 50: young punks and anarchists, older activists, Greens, college students, white Rastas, and a child flying a kite not far from the massive loads of lumber hurtling to and from the border. The Border Patrol drove by and waved. Some truckers blew their horns. Lumbermen had demonstrated the day before. Now back at base camp, the biggest attraction, aside from socializing in the sun, was a video detailing a story of resistance to clear-cutting on the West Coast.

If militia members had joined the rally at the weigh station, I didn’t see them. I later learned from Chute that many members didn’t want to wear their patches, badges, or stars to " actions " because they feared " being picked off by the cops as leaders. " Chute, on the other hand, had no qualms about being recognized. She was the only person in camouflage, and this was how I spotted her. She doesn’t command anyone or give orders, but she does have the five stars of a head general — sticky gold stars like those given to kids. They’re on a name card pinned to her shirt. Chute also sported big boots, a brown corduroy skirt, a purple bandana, red sunglasses, and a handmade button saying welcome to maine. Most striking were the bandoleer belts, fully loaded with shells, crossed over her chest and shoulders. However, each shell contained nothing more than a short, sharpened pencil.

The pencils made a witty substitute for bullets, but considering the way combs, wallets, and phones are mistaken for guns these days, I hope she doesn’t wear the belts in a dark alley. Of course, where she lives, there are no alleys, but the noise involved in making the belts had already led police to investigate. (The guy making them had to fire the bullets to get the empty shell casings needed to house the pencils. When the skeptical cop didn’t believe the bullets had been fired into the ground, the artisan dug them up.)

Chute had no problem mixing with the MEGAN scene. People constantly introduced themselves. One young teen turned out to be the daughter of a member of her militia. Chute wasn’t interested in crossing the border into Canada — she’d rather cross the boundaries that separate citizens from one another. Angry lefties don’t like her camouflage shirt; staunch conservatives could do without her critique of corporate greed. That’s why her militia is " all-wing, " with the " no-wingers, freethinkers " at its core. No-wing, of course, is a pun on the knowing she wants to spread: " What I call a citizen is someone who does more than vote, and citizens need to have information, and I feel that if we don’t have enough citizens, the system’s going to get more and more inhumane to more people. " Carolyn Chute, a walking, talking crossroads, supports free trade of information.

Ian MacKinnon, a writer and performer, co-founded the Art & Performance Party in Cambridge.

AS A JOURNALIST and political activist, I’ve been to a lot of protests — antiwar protests in the ’60s and ’70s in New Hampshire, San Francisco, Berkeley, and France; anti-nuclear-power protests in Seabrook, New Hampshire, and Maine in the ’70s and ’80s. But until Quebec City this past weekend, I’d never been tear-gassed. I’d never seen angry activists attack police with rocks, golf balls, and Molotov cocktails. I’d never seen police outfitted in riot gear beat back marchers with water cannons and gas. This alone taught me something important about these anti-globalization protests: there is great feeling out there — on both sides. The protesters perceive the future of life to be at stake. For the politicians and the corporations, there’s a lot of money at risk. Anyone who thinks this issue is going away anytime soon is mistaken.

Thursday, April 19 — The anti-corporate, anti-globalization movement had Canada in its sights. The movement began with protests against the meetings of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in late 1999 and continued through demonstrations against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC, last spring. Now, I was traveling with Phoenix photographer Brandon Constant and the Dirigo Affinity Group, a gang of graying Maine activists who cut their teeth on ’60s protests, to the join the actions against the Summit of the Americas in Quebec. The Quebec protesters aimed to shut down the meetings among diplomats working to sign a hemispheric free-trade agreement called the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

Activists point to a laundry list of grievances against free trade, but the most succinct critique of such treaties is that they strengthen corporate power at the expense of national sovereignty. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this: NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, allows corporations claiming to have been harmed by individual countries’ environmental and labor rules to sue for damages. These suits are settled in NAFTA tribunals — outside the laws of nations. So now we have UPS suing the Canadian postal system for unfair competition. And another American corporation, Metalclad, recently brought a successful multimillion-dollar suit against a Mexican state’s environmental laws.

We planned to meet in Quebec with another generation of activists, students in their 20s from the University of Maine and Bates and Colby Colleges. The Canadian border authorities were ready for our little caravan. Their beefed-up forces included, among others, a public-relations officer. After a thorough search of our cars, brief individual questioning, and computer background checks (I fessed up to a 1977 Seabrook arrest), all but one of us were let in. The one turned back? A white-haired, bespectacled electrician who had a drunken-driving conviction from 1969. Which is ironic, considering President George W. Bush’s 1976 conviction in Maine for the same offense.

We arrived in Quebec City in the early afternoon. Brandon and I headed up the hill to take a closer look at the much-discussed wall erected by Canadian authorities around the summit area. Decorated on the outside with signs such as bienvenue à berlin, 1989 (“Welcome to Berlin, 1989”), it protected an area of hotels, office buildings, and cafés where for the next three days the dignitaries and diplomats would do their thing. Down the streets and sidewalks of this forbidden zone it looked as if a neutron bomb had gone off, leaving little life but all property intact. The area’s residents needed passes to go to their own homes.

A Women’s March was scheduled to take place that evening. To keep police guessing, however, organizers hadn’t said where the march would end. But lots of news media had gathered at the Boulevard René-Lévesque access point, tipped off by the march leaders that this was the place to be. Several members of the Canadian Parliament, representing the quasi-socialist New Democratic Party (NDP), were there to protest the Quebec wall as well as the FTAA. “If you are a big corporation,” observed Vancouver MP Libby Davies, “you can buy yourself into the summit.” She was right. As I later learned from Denys Tessier, a spokesman for the summit, you could place your company in the Diamond category for a donation of more than $500,000, or in Platinum for more than $250,000. The different categories determined what kind of access you’d get to the receptions and dinners with President Bush, Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien, and the rest of the hemisphere’s leaders. Corporations taking advantage of this program included Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, and Verizon.

Just at dusk, a colorful, chanting group of about 350 women came down the boulevard to the gate, which was open for the occasional car or pedestrian. Only seven police officers, standing in a line, guarded the gate. A huge earth-mother puppet hovered over the marchers. Two of the march leaders spoke to the sole female officer. They very politely said they intended to put banners on the wall’s fence. The policewoman said she had no problem with that. Wave after wave of colorfully dressed women proceeded to affix banners (another world is possible) and beautiful “webs” made of fabrics, ribbons, and collages to the fence. The webs symbolized an alternative concept of globalization, linking people to people instead of corporation to corporation. I doubted this soft protest would affect the hard-nosed summit politicians and wondered if this was what the weekend would be like.

Friday, April 20 — After waking up in a ski dormitory on the still-snowy sides of Mont Sainte-Anne, about 20 miles out of town, I met the few dozen college students sharing the Auberge du Fondeur with the older group. Brandon had left for the city very early with a protester. Hoping to catch up later with the students, I drove back along the shining Saint Lawrence River to the official media center, where I received my press pass and a nifty black shoulder bag paid for by Canadian Pacific Railway. Although I was in Quebec to cover the protests, I wanted to contrast them with the official events. I drove without difficulty through a police checkpoint into the zone where my car would be protected by the 6500 police and 1200 army troops reportedly in the neighborhood.

A vast, black room housed the summit’s Media Centre. About 3000 journalists with credentials were covering the meetings. Summit officials controlled access to the news, however, and limited the journalists to working from official handouts or interviewing press attachés. Nearly all the summit events were closed to the press, except for a few covered by pools of reporters. A lot of people seemed to be working by watching the big-screen televisions above a giant Cisco Systems booth. As I looked at it, it was broadcasting Bush’s arrival in Quebec. I couldn’t help thinking that the Media Centre was a well-controlled virtual reality.

Wanting to see something a little more real, I exited and walked in the sunshine to the René-Lévesque gate, where the previous night’s Women’s March had taken place. Now I was on the other side. About 300 protesters with signs milled about. Just a few police officers — in riot gear — stood well back from the gate. It was closed, so I had to walk a few blocks to a quieter gate, where the police let me through, and I walked back to René-Lévesque. Now I was outside the gate. An anarchist-group member held up a sign with what became my favorite slogan of the weekend: je pense, donc je nuis (“I think, therefore I harm”). “Let me into the meeting!” one person yelled over the fence. A group of “witches” arrived to put a hex on the summit.

By 2:50 p.m., about 500 people had collected. A small group of young protesters began rocking the gate’s two layers of fence. There were still only about 20 police staying 40 feet back on the inside. People chanted loudly. One young man climbed to the top and positioned himself between the two fences. As his comrades whipped the gate back and forth, he tried to kick the inner fence in. I thought he’d break his legs. The cops put on their gas masks.

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