Ten minutes later, I turned around and saw hundreds more protesters arriving. Many were dressed in black, carried red flags, and wore gas masks. A young woman tried to divert them: “Let’s talk about the FTAA,” she yelled. But these new folks weren’t interested in talk. They threw water bottles and sticks over the fence at the police. Now a few thousand people were there, several hundred from the so-called Black Block — anarchists or communist revolutionaries. The police behind the gate now numbered about 40, although a contingent of about 25 riot cops in full Darth Vader battle gear, accompanied by German shepherds, suddenly appeared in the park to the side of the protesters.
Abruptly, the rocking built up enough oomph that within seconds a big section of the fence — more than the width of the boulevard — fell to the ground. Mayhem: the police deployed tear gas as the militants streamed through the gate, throwing rocks and golf balls. Several fought hand-to-hand with the cops. A car parked on the inside near the gate was trashed. As I moved across the flattened fence to the “inside,” I saw flames burst out on the pavement near me — a Molotov cocktail. Big rocks flew everywhere. “Bush, go home!” some protesters shouted. They didn’t know it, but Bush was only 900 yards away.
After the quick, surprising destruction of the fence, a big fight ensued in the open gate between dozens of militants and the police, who had reinforced their ranks and released even more tear gas. I thought that if I watched things from behind the police, the gas might not come my way. I put on a bandanna as protection anyway. My eyes and face stung, but it seemed tolerable. Then a canister exploded near me, and the gas hit me hard. My eyes were on fire. I couldn’t breathe. I felt sick, sick. With some other press people, I stumbled blindly though a snow bank to get around a building — anything to get out of the gas. This was not virtual reality.
The incident kicked off a days-long battle whose images were broadcast worldwide: phalanxes of 50 to 100 riot police trying to push back, outmaneuver, and intimidate the protesters; militants silhouetted within clouds of tear gas as they threw fuming canisters back over the fence; police helicopters roaring overhead; water cannons dousing the militants; streets littered with rocks.
But the Black Block missed its one opportunity to storm the convention center. The police had overestimated the strength of the wall, and they had underestimated the force needed at this crucial checkpoint. If hundreds of determined militants had rushed past the thin line of cops in the first few minutes after the fence fell, before the police beefed up their numbers, they would have made it inside. But anarchists and independent affinity groups aren’t as good at getting organized as they are at preventing police infiltration and avoiding hierarchy. Of course, if they had really threatened the convention center, police probably would have taken even more aggressive measures — possibly even shooting.
I tried to get back to the protesters’ side at another gate, but it was shut down. I wanted to see how the press center was handling the battle, so I walked back down the boulevard, passing a wounded cop being put into an ambulance. The press entrance was locked up tight. Gas stung the eyes everywhere in this eerily quiet district. When I tried to enter through another side of the building, a policeman told me that if I went in I wouldn’t be allowed out. The press had been imprisoned.
I went back to the Lévesque gate just before workers started re-erecting the fence — reinforcing it with concrete-based diagonal supports. I quickly scooted over. There stood Brandon, on the front line of the protestors, as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He gave me a film canister of vinegar to soak my bandanna and ease the impact of the tear gas.
Behind the street fighters, the crowd was surreal. Young women with beaded leather jackets and spiked green hair were getting their eyes flushed out; next to them stood middle-class, middle-aged couples joining in the chants. I urged an old man with a cane to move away from the action, afraid he’d get hit with the gas. One guy complained to me he’d never get inside the “périmètre” to pick up his kids for the weekend. Meanwhile, revolutionary types in gas masks kept taunting, charging, and fleeing the police.
Surprisingly, most of the protesters and many of the gawkers seemed sympathetic to the militants. Every time one of them made a particularly good return of a tear-gas canister over the wall, huge cheers went up. As police trooped up the street in a flanking maneuver, patrons in the stylish outdoor cafés on the Rue Cartier peppered them with the utmost sarcasm. I heard “So-so-so-li-dar-i-té” chanted often. The construction of the hated wall had forced many ordinary Quebec City citizens to think more deeply about the politics of the summit.
In the evening, during a lull in the fighting, I finally got back inside the press center. Many in the news media were comfortably watching video of the battle on the big screens. Diane Lindquist of the San Diego Union-Tribune later told me there “wasn’t much of a hue and cry” about the press lock-up when the Quebec City police chief had appeared at a news conference.
Around 11 p.m., I ventured forth to watch a particularly intense shooting of a water cannon and tear gas down a narrow street on a steep hill. I was beginning to lose hope that I would get my car out through the perimeter. After a while I started back to the Media Centre. Suddenly a cloud of tear gas descended on me out of the darkness. My bandanna had no effect. Choking and barely able to see, I made it to the back of the convention center, tried to head up the hill to the media entrance, then turned back and entered the office of the convention-center parking garage.
“You can’t come in here,” the security guard told me in French.
“I’ve just got to get away from the gas,” I struggled to say. “Aidez-moi. Je suis journaliste.”
I lucked out. He was a kindly fellow. He let me rest in a chair and even brought me water to put in my eyes. When I recovered I tried to leave several times, but the tear gas was too intense. When I finally made it as far as the Media Centre door, it was locked. I went back and persuaded the guard to let me take an escalator to a shopping-mall area being used as a command post by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He probably figured I couldn’t do much harm among all those Mounties. Upstairs, they told me that the perimeter had been closed for the night. There was no chance of my getting out.
I resigned myself to sipping beer all night with off-duty police and army personnel. Without a gas mask, it was impossible to go outside. As I watched live TV coverage, I chatted with a friendly bartender and a young soldier. When they grasped my situation, the bartender convinced the young guy to see if the army couldn’t put me up. At about 2 a.m., the soldier drove me a few blocks to the YMCA, which the troops had taken over for barracks. The hotel where Bush was staying was right next door. I fell asleep on a cot in a room with 35 snoring soldiers. George W. could rest peacefully.
Saturday, April 21 — At six o’clock on a beautiful, fresh morning gloriously free of tear gas, I walked along the fortifications of 400-year-old Vieux Québec. Only a few photographers and squads of cops were about. One very forlorn-looking protester sat facing a line of riot police near the Rue Saint-Jean access point. I found my car and drove to our lodgings in the mountains.
“I’m so energized! I’m so enthusiastic!” exclaimed Emily Posner, a Colby College sophomore who had just woken up. She was describing her reaction to yesterday’s events at the René-Lévesque gate. “The amount of militarization in our society — it’s impressive that they can do that.... It’s chemical warfare,” she said of the police’s reaction to the protests.
“I was excited to the extent that the activists were having a disruptive effect,” said Ethan Miller, 23, also of Colby. “Even people who are throwing rocks, if given the opportunity, can articulate a political stance. I’d give them more credit than the press gives them.”
It was striking how widely people accepted the Black Block’s violence. On Canadian radio, I had heard some of the protest organizers deplore it as counterproductive. But on the troop level the revolutionaries and the nonviolent protesters were perhaps closer than these leaders imagined. “Look at the violence of the police and of globalization!” so many people told me when I brought up the subject of the Black Block’s activities.
Back on the Quebec streets that afternoon around two o’clock, the scraggly lines of revolutionaries (sometimes known as “anti-capitalists”) slowly trudged up the Boulevard René-Lévesque in black cargo pants and black hooded sweatshirts, grimy backpacks, and black bandannas as if they were going to work — another day of street fighting. I was struck by how physically unimpressive they were. Most were only in their teens. And why were so many so skinny? I asked Brandon. “They tend to be vegans,” he guessed. The more conventional protesters greeted them with bemused respect — not fear.
The police rained high-trajectory gas cans down on us haphazardly. Snowballs were thrown back in response. I noticed that the police dogs’ handlers could make them bark on cue. A bank’s windows had all been smashed out. A young man who would identify himself only as John, a college student from Ontario, told me breathlessly: “It’s really encouraging if every time the leaders get together there’s a manifestation [demonstration]!”
Meanwhile, an estimated 30,000 people took part in huge, peaceful, chanting marches. Because of the organizers’ alarms over the violence, these peaceful protesters were led away from the wall. As I later learned from one of our Maine group who participated in a march, this was disappointing to a lot of them. A good number, especially from the labor-union march, broke off to head for the more aggressive protests. I saw one of these breakaway groups and estimated it included at least 5000 people.
Late that night in Jackman, on our way home, we stopped for a hearty supper at a way station set up by Maine activists. More than 360 meals had been served to protesters so far, the chief cook said. At the border earlier that day, a sympathy protest and a brief, permitted “blockade” had been successful. About 75 people had participated.
Sunday, April 22 — The walls had gone up in Quebec, literally and figuratively — dividing the government and the corporate elite from the citizens, the police from the people, and, I felt, the official press from the events in the street.
But walls also had come down: between radicals and unionists, college protesters and anarchists, young and old.
No one can guess how this continuing war will end. But the fighting in Quebec felt almost festive. There really was a lot of solidarité among greatly different protesters and sympathizers. The joyous tones of Pink Floyd’s stirring anthem “The Wall” streamed from many an open window.
Lance Tapley can be reached at ltapley@ctel.net.
