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The Battle of St. Jean
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Summit of the Americas
The Battle of St. Jean
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by Stuart Laidlaw
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QUEBEC - For a few minutes, it looked like a tense standoff in Quebec city's St. Jean Baptiste neighbourhood would end quietly.
The scene was the narrow Côte Ste.-Geneviève on Saturday afternoon. The street dead-ended at a section of the perimeter surrounding the Summit of the Americas.
Around mid-afternoon, a crowd of about 100 Black Bloc anarchists rolled two dumpsters up Ste. Geneviève to the perimeter, set them on fire and tore down the fence. It was one of many breaches of the fence that day, the second time the much hated three-metre-high fence had been brought down.
Inside that fence, leaders of all the countries of the Americas and the Caribbean, except Cuba, were discussing the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. Those outside opposed the deal, fearing it would hurt the environment, widen the gap between rich and poor and restrict the ability of governments to provide health, education or other social services.
The fence around the summit, dubbed the Wall of Shame by locals, became a symbol of all those concerns, with protesters pointing to it as proof that the voice of opposition had been kept out of the talks.
So any time a piece of the fence came down, the crowd cheered - even those who preferred only non-violent protest.
That's what happened at Ste.-Geneviève around mid-afternoon.
Once the fence was down, the fires were put out and a front-end loader was parked where the fence used to be. Half a dozen or so police officers milled about near the hole to make sure no one tried to get in.
Then, about an hour later, a small group of protesters - about 12 at first, and none of them Black Bloc - started to inch back toward the hole in the fence. Within another hour, they had moved ahead about 12 metres, and their numbers had swelled to about 200. They were still about six metres from the hole in the fence, shouting to the police that they wanted "to make that space peaceful again."
That's when the police - about 12 at first, all of them in black - came through the hole in the fence. The crowd sat down. The standoff lasted about 25 minutes, until about half the protesters decided they had made their point and left, shouting "merci" to the police as they left.
It looked as if the protest would end with a whimper. A few reporters and photographers also left.
The police, however, sent in more officers. A call went out for reinforcements among the protesters and the crowd soon swelled back to 200.
Suddenly, what had looked like it might be the end of the protest started to look like the beginning of some thing new.
The tension began to build.
At 5:55 p.m., the police gave two short warnings for the crowd to move one block away. The crowd shouted back, asking, "Why?"
The police moved in five minutes later, shoving protesters with their shields, and shouting "move," as loud as they could with each step. The slower the protester, the harder the hit. Several fell over and were kicked by police and hit with the shields and batons until they got up. The police stood 12 abreast, the most the narrow street could accommodate, and five or six deep.
About half-way down the street, and despite the willingness of most protesters to leave, the police suddenly began firing tear gas into the crowd, where few at the time had proper gas masks.
The important thing to remember about tear gas is that it not only hurts your eyes and throat, it disorients you. The protesters, in a gas cloud made thicker by the narrow street, began stumbling about, crouched over, hands over their eyes and trying to spit out the gas.
The police kept advancing, thumping their shields against the disoriented crowd, and banging their batons on their shields.
If they wanted to clear the streets, it would have been faster without the gas.
The police stopped at the end of the block, built their forces up to about 200, and again advanced, this time using stun guns on those not moving fast enough and firing both tear gas and concussion grenades in the crowd. Another block later, the police again stopped, and the third standoff in an hour began.
With each advance, a few protesters refused to move, choosing instead to lie limp on the road as they had been taught at the many protest training sessions in the months before. They were arrested.
The day was shaping up to be very much like Seattle in one disheartening way. The police, unwilling or unable to take action against the Black Bloc, instead took it out on the most peaceful protesters. Whenever the Black Bloc took such direct action as tearing down a fence or throwing stones, the police preferred to stay far back and lob tear gas into the crowd to disperse it.
But with the peaceful protesters, the preference - in both Seattle and Quebec - was for the police to take their own direct action, going in with batons and stun guns, arresting any who would not leave.
The police were acting just as the protesters have said globalization acts, preying on those least likely to fight back.
Then, just as I was writing the above line in my notebook, something amazing happened.
A police officer, in full riot gear, offered a bottle of water to a protester so she could wash the gas out of her eyes.
It was a quick gesture of humanity as the officer lowered his shield and he and the young protester leaned across the two-metre divide between them to exchange the bottle.
And then, it was over. The shield went up and the bottle went into the protester's backpack.
For two days, throughout the city, protesters had been shouting "join us" to the police.
And for one brief moment, one of them had.
Stuart Laidlaw is a member of The Star's editorial board.
Copyright 1996-2001. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited
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