ricardo dominguez on Tue, 1 May 2001 04:06:54 +0200 (CEST)


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<nettime> COMMENTS ON THE QUEBEC CITY RIOTS


COMMENTS ON THE QUEBEC CITY RIOTS
Keeping An Eye on Genoa. Talking to the Americans so that the Europeans
Understand, and probably the other way around.

by Beppe Caccia and Wu Ming Yi
(Delegation of Ya Basta!-Italy in Quebec)


1. The three days of Quebec City proved that the global movement is not
suffering any 'demographical crisis', which people were afraid of after Nice
and Davos. There is no risk of a crisis when the movement successfully  appeals
to local, peculiar characteristics. In plain words, the activists  made the
most of Quebec's anti-imperial and anti-centralist feelings, making the reasons
of the protest intelligible by the French-speaking population of Canada.

>From saturday early afternoon to the dawn of monday, 10,000 rioters besieged
the forbidden citadel then attacked and tore down the Wall of Shame. They could
do it by swimming in the sea of the 50,000 demonstrators  gathered by the
unions and the Summit of the Peoples of the Americas. In their turn, all these
people swam in the ocean of general solidarity, in a  sympathetic town and
region which didn't lock out, indeed, rejected corporate psychological
terrorism and reacted to the state of emergency in  manifold ways. A few dozen
yards from the riots, bars were open and their windows showed such stickers as
"Fuck Le Sommet". The inhabitants of the St.Jean Baptiste borough delivered
water, baking soda and slices of lemon to attenuate the effects of tear gas.
Cab drivers advised demonstrators on the safest routes to take.

By relying on a process of reterritorialization, the praxis can supercede all
media stereotypes, as well as the risk of becoming a "professional army", kind
of "protest globetrotters", barbarians invading alien  cities.

2. There was neither any distinction nor mutual interference between street
action and the work of more institutional "interfaces", i.e. the unionists, NGO
delegates, "alternative" "experts" that organized the "counter-summit". While
in Seattle some people were still deluded about "dialogue" ( sending
"observers" to the WTO meetings, setting up allegedly "joint" committees,
writing "amendments" to treaties which couldn't be amended etc.), in Quebec
City such dreams evaporated even before tear gas filled the streets.

The  multifarious galaxy of NGOs, environmentalists, trade unions and
intellectuals refused mediations and described the FTAA as "neo-liberal,
environment-destroying, racist and sexist project."

3. While differences are far from being wiped out, if there's no division
upstream, then there's no division *downstream* either. While Europe is still
entrapped in the useless, lazy, annoying controversy on violence vs.
non-violence, in Quebec City the Wall of Shame was recognized as the common
target, and minds were open about the ways to hit it. Quebec City was a giant
step beyond Prague: during the three days of action, nobody blamed anybody else
or tried to teach other people what was *the* way.  It's the  end of
pre-established roles (the Blue/Black Bloc throws molotov cocktails  and
smashes windows, the Yellow Bloc practises civil disobedience "the Italian way"
and everyone else marches as far away as possible), the old "identitarian"
logic appearead as inadequate when thousands of people left the big union demo
and gathered in ready-made affinity groups. They were not the "usual extremists
infiltrating a peaceful march", indeed, many of them were labor activists that
had helped organizing the march. Many others were ordinary citizens, high
school students etc. Everybody had their way: some groups would hook long ropes
to the bars of the Wall and tugged till it went down. Other groups would cover
for them, throw rocks, hurl the gas bombs back to the cops. In the meanwhile, a
large multitude surrounded, encouraged and helped the rioters. This interaction
made possible the demolition of the Wall and the siege of the FTAA summit.

People didn't play parts from  a script authored by the enemy. The best example
of this is the notorious Black Block. Since Seattle this informal network had
got harsh criticisms for their careless window-smashing attitude. The BB is
constantly criminalized in the media, and yet they managed to question their
own tactics. In Quebec City, they adopted/adapted elements from the European
White Overalls, such as paddings, plastic  shields and helmets. They evidently
gave up the usual bite-and-run logic,  held their position, counterattacked and
conquered ground inch by inch.

They were no longer "splinter crazies", rather, they were synapses in a
collective brain. In fact, on the Esplanades des Ameriques Françaises, the
Black Bloc was applauded, not criticized. Quite appropriately, the first row in
one of the friday afternoon demos had white jumpsuits and black outfits
shoulder by shoulder.[1]

4. Everybody witnessed the consequence of these cross-fertilizations: the Wall
went down and several breaches were to be defended by the cops until the end of
the summit. Unlike the Italian cops in Naples last March, the Canadian police
and the government couldn't get away with mass shambles and everlasting
comb-outs, thus they chose remote-controlled "low intensity" conflict, shooting
thousands of gas bombs almost 24 hours a day for the whole week-end. While most
besiegers -helped by the wind, the gas masks and some good Samaritans - could
protect themselves in some way, the besieged suffered some side effects: there
was so much gas that their food was contaminated and the kitchen of their hotel
had to be shut down.

5. The US-Canada border (the longest land border of the Western hemisphere)
turned into a heavily guarded Iron Curtain. Hundreds of US activists were
turned back (or even detained) by any pretext. Sometimes the possession of a
political leaflet was enough to be labelled as a dangerous person.  For
example, a caravan of 500 activists organized by the Direct Action Network and
the NYC-based Ya Basta! collective tried to cross the border at Cornwall, with
the assistance of natives from the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation (which is cut
in half by the borderline). They were turned back. Only a few of them managed
to cross at another location, several others ended up in administrational
detention for the whole weekend.

Unlike the European movement, the North-American had no factual experience of
border problems. US West Coast activists didn't even try to cross and
organized huge demonstrations on the border between Washington and British
Columbia, as well as between Mexico and Southern California. There is a  clear,
direct relationship between the policies on illegal migrants and the
"emergency" restriction of the freedom of circulation and rally. Perhaps one of
the main deficiencies in the whole Quebec City thing was the border  problem
was entirely burdened on foreigners, an error not to repeat.

6. Let's wash the white overall in the St. Lawrence river. Streetwise,
effective forms of action are possible only if they are results of
ever-widening consent and participation, and political maturation.[2] None of
the Quebec City events exclusively belonged to the "military" aspect.  This
also concerns so-called "Italian Style of Civil Disobedience".  The latter is
not a mere strategy of position-holding, rather, it is a political proposal, a
flexible methodology to produce radical conflict and make it "natural" to big
communities by relying on local specificities *and* conquering new ground. If
it were a fixed scheme, it would easily be decodified and neutralized by the
enemy. The target must be chosen and aimed at open-mindedly by all and sundry,
not only by some "current" of the movement. In Quebec City, a multitude
acknowledge as legitimate any practice aimed at besiege the FTAA summit, tear
down the Wall, defend the rioters. The birds of ill omen wishing to fill the
Genoa sky till it clouds over would've had a tough time flying over Quebec
City.

Upper East Side, Manhattan, April 23d,  2001, h.1.00 am

---------------------

Footnotes by Wu Ming Yi alone:

1. Anarchists don't have any sense of *limits* though. It appears they don't
understand when it's time to withdraw, for you've made the fucking point and
got no further use for putting yourself on the line.  This is precisely the
statement of the White Overalls: "Ya Basta!" means "It's enough!", you've got
to be aware when it's enough, and back off. In Quebec City people kept rioting
well into sunday, a few of them even till monday. Quite obviously, they
couldn't escape the round-ups.

2. Reminiscences from Friday night at the Quebec City campus. I'd never seen a
North-American "spokescouncil" and, although people told me meetings aren't
always that boring, I felt disappointed. I don't mean to offend anyone, but
those few dozen activists looked like crippled hamsters high on smack running
in their wheels. Tons of slow, lazy talk. All efficiency sacrificed on the
altar of political correctness which requires translation from/into French for
each and every word, while the actual collective praxis is out-of-the-way
multilingual with no translation required and, what's more, it is warping away,
beyond the bounds of procedures and democratic fetishism. The Black Bloc is
still rioting uptown, it's on the News *now*, and you've got all these people
trying to decide with a majority of 70% what to do *tomorrow*, where and when
they're going to splinter off and attack the Wall and so on. Tomorrow
everything will seem natural, all the while bearing very little resemblance to
the scenario depicted here.Some North-American activists who witnessed meetings
in Italy told me how  baffled they were that activists keep chatting and making
decisions out of the formal, official context, i.e. when the meeting is over.
Moreover, there is no voting at Italian spokescouncils! Isn't there a risk of a
holigarchic leadership imposing their point of view? Of course there is.

However, the danger'd be there even if people voted and stopped talking after
the vote. What happens is Italian spokescouncils last nearly 24 hrs. a day, in
numberless informal contexts such as bars, squats, streets, on the phone, the
Net and all. As long as trust is perceived as more important than procedures,
this "informality" constructs a *diffuse* decision process, shared also by
people who don't feel like speaking in formal contexts but have an opinion all
the same. It happens that all decisions and actions spring out as a creative
synthesis of all points of view.

Who produces the synthesis? Not necessarily people who are considered
"leaders". If no synthesis is possible, and trust is not enough, then we may as
well go back to voting and procedures. But I've never seen such a boring
meeting when the movement has just reached new heights and made a powerful
point.

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