Summit Opponents Undeterred by Police Force
Tear Gas Blankets Neighborhood As Massive Rallies Surround Quebec 
BY BILL LASCHER

As thousands of activists from across North America gathered at Quebec City’s Laval University in anticipation of an afternoon march against the Free Trade Area of the Americas last Saturday, some stopped to watch a swim class practicing in a pool below their convergence center. Separated by large round windows, the calm, carefree atmosphere of the aquatics center contrasted with the electricity raging through the gathering brigades of students, workers, intellectuals, socialists, anarchists, Quebecois nationalists and activists of just about every stripe.
The swimmers appeared oblivious to the mobilization taking place around them, as well as the approximately 35,000 strong labor march forming on the other side of the city.

(photo by Ariella Cohen)

By that night, however, none would be able to ignore the battle being waged in the heart of their city as nearly 50,000 opponents of the nascent FTAA swarmed to the four- kilometer-long, concrete-reinforced security fence ringing the center of town. 
The barrier had been constructed to keep protesters from approaching the third annual Summit of the Americas, last weekend’s meeting of the heads of state of 34 nations in the Western Hemisphere — with the exception of Cuba — at which the framework was being laid for the creation of a hemispheric trading bloc that would eliminate tariffs, open up markets, and, at least according to promoters, spur development and democracy by increasing competition and profit within the zone.
Organizers and attendees of the Summit outlined some of these claims in its Declaration of Quebec City, published at the meeting’s end. “As agreed at the [1994] Miami Summit, free trade, without subsidies or unfair practices, along with an increasing stream of productive investments and greater economic integration, will promote regional prosperity, thus enabling the raising of the standard of living, the improvement of working conditions of people in the Americas and better protection of the environment,” the document said.
It would be difficult to fully describe who was protesting in Quebec or what their motivations were for being there. In fact, it appeared that the tens of thousands of people converging upon the security fence from all directions were there for tens of thousands of reasons. Some claimed to be challenging what they perceived to be a corporate attack on democracy, while others were residents of the city outraged by the security fence (those who lived within its boundaries had to show special permits every time they crossed its boundaries).
“I went to Quebec to stop the attack on democracy by big capital,” sophomore Jason Johnston said. He cited Chapter 11 of the negotiating agreement being discussed at the meeting, which was not released to the public until days before the summit, after months of pressure from members of non-governmental organizations, legislators and the media demanding it be made public. “Personally, I think Chapter 11 is the achilles heel of the whole agreement,” Johnston said.
“This lets corporations sue nations in a closed-door WTO tribunal for ‘infringing on the market,’ or keeping them from making maximum profits with no-good environmental protections or publicly subsidized water, broadcasting, postal system, education, healthcare or anything else. It really fleshes out the logic of these agreements, which is not country versus country, but corporations versus democracy.” 
By the beginning of the summit, and the beginning of the protests, the fence had become the focal point of demonstrations, symbolizing for many a divide between the interests of those participating in the summit and the people outside. Among the graffiti that covered the downtown area by Saturday night, one of the most common phrases upon the concrete base of the fence was le rideau de fer, which translates from French as “The Iron Curtain.” Ironically, after an exhaustive day of protests, a handful of the Oberlin students in the city ate dinner at a pizza stand (one of the very few businesses remaining open during the protests) that was blasting Pink Floyd’s The Wall just half a mile down the road from the fence. 
Behind the fence, the drafting of the Declaration of Quebec continued. “In conformity with the principles of international humanitarian law, we strongly condemn attacks on civilian populations,” the delegates wrote.
Nevertheless, as the document was being discussed behind the summit’s closed doors, the crowds converging on the fence, including approximately 30 Oberlin students who had driven up for the weekend, were being barraged with numerous rounds of tear gas, hosed down with water cannons, burned with pepper spray and even, in some instances, shot with rubber bullets.
Indeed, some of the children learning to swim earlier in the day were quite possibly those who could be seen behind apartment windows wearing gas masks for protection from the stinging clouds that by nightfall were blanketing the neighborhoods surrounding the conference center, failing to discriminate between protesters and residents. Ironically, many of the marchers had donned swim goggles in order to shield their eyes from the gas. 
Although she hadn’t brought her goggles to swim, Junior Felicia Lin was drenched twice by water cannons shot by the police as she took photographs of the fence and the confrontation in front of it. Later Saturday night, she returned to the Cote D’Abraham, the square at which many of the days actions had occurred. Apprehensive as a result of reports that there were fires all over the city (indeed, one large bonfire covered an entire intersection) and police arresting people left and right, she nevertheless returned to the area.
“When I first went out I thought it was going to be really horrific,” she said. “But it wasn’t that bad.” However, after reaching the top of the hill she was caught in a confrontation during which the police launched pepper spray to disperse the crowd.
“It was like tear gas, but 10 times worse,” Lin said. “It felt like my skin was being torn off.”
Blinded by a combination of the pepper spray, the tear gas that lingered in the air and the spotlight of a helicopter flying above, Lin scrambled into the entrance of an apartment building crowded with about a dozen other protesters, all gasping with pain and passing water bottles about to douse their eyes.

Earlier in the day in another part of the city first-year Jesse Carr was not given the same warning, and was arrested after being pepper-sprayed and gassed. Carr said that she and fellow first-years Myrl Beam and Rebecca Tinkelman were looking for a site without tear gas or people throwing things at the police, when she came upon a group of peaceful demonstrators sitting in the street in front of a squad of riot cops. The gathering remained peaceful, she said, until the police began to fire tear gas and eventually pepper spray at them. As they were charged by the police, Carr was separated from her companions and overcome by the gas in the air, at which point she was grabbed by the police.

Carr was taken to the maximum security Prison D’Orsainville just on the outskirts of Quebec. Prior to the summit, the prison had been emptied of inmates to make room for the anticipated arrests from the protest. Nevertheless, Carr was stuffed into a solitary confinement cell along with three other people, and was not able to see a judge until Monday afternoon, despite a Canadian law stating that prisoners must see a judge to be charged no more than 24 hours after the time of the arrest.

Unable to use the phone until Monday after her initial phone call to a legal aid network in Quebec, Carr was unable to communicate her whereabouts to other Oberlin students who took part in a vigil outside the jail, some of whom remained until her release. Although she was treated decently outside of her crowded cell (which she was transferred out of later in the weekend), she was aware that people taking part in prison solidarity and refusing to provide their names to police were being beaten up. She also said that there were two medical emergencies in her cell block during which the guards just watched.

“If anything, I’m more glad that I went [to Quebec],” Carr said. “To see them use that much force to suppress people is depressing. Thirty-four heads of state being protected from 50,000 people is telling.”
Asked whether or not the protests made a difference despite the fact that the summit was able to go forth as planned, she said that it did because people were able to get a message across. “More and more are being alerted and starting to fight against it,” she said.
The outrage was evident throughout the weekend. “The police have taken the place of politics,” one speaker shouted through a loudspeaker at the end of a prepared statement before a line of police officers, repeating the claim in both French and English to cheers. Meanwhile, inhabitants of a nearby apartment building looked on as passersby had their pictures taken in front of the police line minutes before reinforcements would arrive and begin to move in on the crowd.

“There were roughly 30,000 people there, almost all of whom had no intention to participate in anything resembling violence, but authorities did a bang-up job at herding, gassing and arresting nonviolent protestors as if they were nothing but cattle,” senior Roger Hucek said. “I think the protest accomplished one thing: it made just about everyone present in Quebec City those few days painfully aware of how they're viewed by the powers-that-be every single day.”

In addition to those who took part in the actions in Quebec, a number of students took part in some of the border actions and solidarity rallies in Buffalo, Cleveland and other cities.