The anti-corporate, anti-globalization war, begun with the Battle of Seattle in 1999, shifted over the past weekend to our neighbor to the north, once-peaceful Canada. Here is a diary of a reporter who accompanied a group of Maine protesters to the Summit of the Americas.

Wednesday, April 18

As photographer Brandon Constant and I drove, in the late evening, into the quiet border village of Jackman, Maine, the massive timber clear-cuts on the sides of the mountains silently shouted something to me about the power of multinational paper companies.

I had giant corporations on my mind. We were en route to the Quebec City Summit of the Americas and the expected protests against the free-trade agreement to be signed there by the leaders of all Western Hemisphere nations except Cuba. A major provision would place international corporate investment rights over national standards protecting the environment, labor unions, and human rights — in the name of bringing down the barriers to the free flow of capital and accelerating economic development.

The thousands of anti-globalization protesters gathering in Quebec, however, saw the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) as the distancing of masses of exploited working people from a rich, unelected, ever-larger, corporate-global de facto government. As if to perfectly symbolize this separation, the Canadian government had built a wall of concrete and fence around much of Old Quebec — which, ironically, had been originally constructed as a fortress. The wall was to keep protesters away from the presidents and prime ministers — and the business elites who would be allowed inside to look over their shoulders.

A group of Maine activists had opened a “hospitality center” as a protester way station in a rented Jackman snowmobile club. Here we shared a meal of hot chili and salad with about a dozen people calling themselves the Dirigo Affinity

Group, with whom we would be tagging along.

“Jackman is loaded with cops,” said Jim Freeman. “They’re nervous as hell.” Jim, 52, intense, a carpenter from Verona Island, was the chief organizer of the hospitality. He wasn’t going to Quebec because his 30-year-old protest arrest record was too long and had items too recent. Many of the protesters worried about whether they’d be let across the border.

Beneath a big Che Guevara poster (looking a bit out of place next to the snowmobilers’ logo), Steve Burke, 59, a husky graphic designer from Warren, commented on the ages of the Mainers planning to stay in a rented cross-country ski chalet outside the city. “The older crew is always there,” he said, looking around at fellow veterans of sixties’ activism. “But what’s delightful is that young people will be there too. I had given up — then Seattle happened. It just appeared out of a void.”

Ever since the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization, very disparate groups of people have been uniting against a common enemy of an international corporate system whose appetite, they feel, is insatiable. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are now corporations; only 49 are countries, says the Institute for Policy Studies. Privatization of public services and deregulation continue worldwide. For example, under the already-in-force North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the shipping corporation UPS has been allowed to sue the Canadian postal system for unfair competition, and an American corporation has collected damages from a Mexican state ($16.7 million) because its tough environmental regulations were deemed to hinder free trade.

Thursday, April 19

The next morning, cool and sunny, the Canadian border authorities were ready for our little caravan with their forces beefed up by, among others, a public relations officer. After a thorough search of our cars, brief individual questioning, and computer background checks, to our relief we were all let in except for a white-haired, bespectacled electrician who had a drunk-driving conviction in 1969. “I’m sure they’ll let George Bush in,” one member of the group muttered.

Arriving in Quebec City in the early afternoon, Brandon and I headed up the hill to take a close look at the wall. Decorated on the outside with signs such as “Bienvenue à Berlin, 1989”, it protected a section of hotels, office buildings, and cafés where, for the next three days, the dignitaries and accredited media would do their thing. Down the streets and sidewalks in this forbidden zone it looked like a neutron bomb had gone off, leaving little life but all property intact. The area’s residents had been required to get passes to go to their own homes.

To keep the police guessing, the organizers of the Women’s March scheduled for this evening had not planned where it would end. But at the Boulevard René Lévesque access point there were beaucoup news media, called by the march leaders and told this was the place to be. Several members of the Canadian Parliament representing the quasi-socialist New Democratic Party (NDP) were here protesting the Quebec wall as well as the FTAA. These two items could be linked because the free-trade agreement’s provisions had been negotiated behind closed doors. But “if you are a big corporation you can buy yourself into the summit” by “sponsoring” part of it, said Libby Davies, a member of parliament from Vancouver.

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. The gate was guarded by only seven police officers standing in a line. A huge earth-mother puppet hovered over the marchers. Many of the Maine women and men of the Dirigo group were in the march. “It’s like climbing Cadillac Mountain,” said Peter Robbins, 53, a builder from Sedgwick, of the city’s hills.

Two of the march leaders spoke to the sole female police officer. They very politely said they intended to put banners on the wall’s fence. The policewoman said she had no problem with that. Then followed wave after wave of often-colorfully-dressed women affixing banners (“Another World Is Possible”) and beautiful “webs” made of various fabrics, ribbons, and collages. The webs symbolized an alternative concept of globalization, linking people to people instead of corporation to corporation. I was skeptical of the effect of this very soft protest on the hard-nosed, male summit politicians. I wondered if this is what the weekend would be like.

José Bové, the famous French anti-globalization activist who with friends had bulldozed a McDonald’s in his home region, was speaking at a nearby arts center. His topic: the best kind of tactics for effective political action. In the small hall, about 70 people sat in a large circle. Bové, disarming with a relaxed manner, felt that political action could include the destruction of property, but it should be done, referring to the activism he had participated in, only by people who are directly affected by what they are protesting and willing to go to prison. And such action has to be very public. The destruction of the McDonald’s, he said, was like the Boston Tea Party — which was “an economic struggle against a tea company. Just to break a window doesn’t have a lot of meaning.”

Friday, April 20

After rising in a ski dormitory on the still-snowy sides of Mont Sainte-Anne about 20 miles out of town, I connected with the couple of dozen students from the University of Maine and Bates and Colby Colleges who were sharing the Auberge du Fondeur with the older group. Brandon had left for the city 45 minutes earlier with a protester. Hoping to catch up later with the students, I drove back along the shining Saint Lawrence to the official media center, where I received my pass and a nifty black shoulder bag paid for by Canadian Pacific. I was in Quebec to cover the protests, but 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 6,500 police and 1,200 army troops said to be in the neighborhood.

The summit’s Media Centre was in a vast, black room. Supposedly, 3,000 accredited journalists were covering these meetings. Denys Tessier, the summit’s chief p.r. man, explained to me the corporate sponsorship program. A donation of more than $500,00 placed your company in the Diamond category, more than $250,000 in Platinum, and so on. These donations allowed executives to be admitted to the highest-level receptions and dinners to hob-nob with President Bush, Canada’s Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, and the rest of the hemisphere’s leaders. Among corporations taking advantage of this program were Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, and Verizon. As I questioned him, Tessier pointedly made several references to the freebie hung on my shoulder. Not feeling too guilty, I strolled over to a side room and helped myself to the excellent, free buffet.

The accredited, “official” journalists here were largely focused on what the officials were saying. This, to them, defined the news. To further tighten their focus, they were largely relegated to transcribing handouts and speaking with press attachés. All summit events were closed to the press or open only to a very small pool of reporters. A lot of people seemed to be doing their work by watching the big-screen TVs above the giant Cisco Systems booth that now were showing Bush’s arrival in Quebec. The Media Centre was a well-controlled virtual reality.

Wanting to see a more real reality, I exited and walked in the sunshine to the René Lévesque gate, where I had been the night previous. Now I was on the other side of it. 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 on the “outside.” A person in an anarchist group from the city’s Laval University was holding up a sign with what became my favorite slogan of the weekend, a takeoff on Descartes’ formulation of human identity: “Je Pense, Donc Je Nuis” (I Think, Therefore I Harm). “Let me into the meeting!” one person yelled loudly 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 began louder chants. The mood changed. 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.

About 3 p.m., 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. These new folks weren’t interested in talk. They started throwing water bottles over the fence at the police, then sticks they had brought. Now a couple of thousand people were here. Several hundred were from a group called the 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 with german shepherd dogs suddenly appeared in the park to the side of the protesters.

After the quick, surprising destruction of the fence, a big fight ensued in the open gate between dozens of militants and the police, who became a lot more numerous and began laying down a lot more tear gas. I thought that if I watched things from behind the police maybe the gas wouldn’t come my way. I put on a bandanna as protection. My eyes and face were stinging, but it seemed tolerable. Then a canister exploded near me. I got hit hard. My eyes were on fire. I couldn’t breath. I felt very sick. With some other press people — they were not all at the Media Centre — I stumbled blindly though a snow bank to get around a building — anything to get out of the gas.

On the other side of the street was an English-Canadian TV cameraman I had talked with the night before. “Now you know why I don’t want to live in Quebec,” he said when I went over to him. His car had been smashed, the windows and doors broken in. He had a bloody nose and a cut hand from fighting with the militant who had been laying it to the car. He had somehow driven the car a block out of further harm’s way. This was not virtual reality.

Now a lengthy pitched battle began — to last for days — the images of which would go worldwide: phalanxes of 50 to 100 riot police trying to push back, outmaneuver, and intimidate the protesters; militants silhouetted within clouds of gaz lacrymogène as they bravely threw fuming canisters back over the fence; police helicopters roaring overhead, water cannons dousing the militants; streets littered with rocks.

But the opportunity had passed forever for the Black Block 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 flattening of the fence, they wouldn’t have been stopped. Independent affinity groups and anarchy are great to prevent the infiltration of dreaded hierarchy, but from a purely military standpoint some planning would have been useful. Of course, if they had really threatened the convention center, the militants probably would have been shot.

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 official 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 and walked through the police where the gas was lightest. There, on the front line of the protesters, equally surprised to see me, was Brandon. He gave me a film canister of vinegar to soak my bandanna to lessen the impact of the tear gas.

In back of the street fighters, the crowd was surreal. Next to green-spiked young women in beaded leather jackets getting their eyes flushed out were middle-class, middle-aged couples joining in the chants. I saw one old woman pushing a walker to get a better look at the nearest squad of police. I urged an old man with a cane to move away from the action, since I could guarantee him, given the constant ebb and flow of the gas, it was going to come his way. One guy complained to me he’d never get inside the périmètre to pick up his kids for the weekend. Meanwhile, the revolutionary types in gas masks were constantly taunting and charging and running away from the police.

Diane Germain, 48, a Québécoise with a Ph.D. who worked in an environmental consulting firm, saw my press badge and came up to tell me about how FTAA would destroy local economies. “Two weeks ago I knew a little about the subject. Now I am much stronger about it,” she said proudly. The protest organizers’ lessons about approaching the press had been very effective.

Unlike in some other protests I had seen, everyone, including the many gawkers, seemed to be at least somewhat sympathetic with the bold militants. When one of them would make a particularly good return of a tear gas canister over the wall, huge cheers would go up. From patrons in the nearby stylish Rue Cartier outdoor cafés, the police received the utmost sarcasm as they trooped up the street in a flanking maneuver. There was a lot of “so-so-so-li-dar-i-té,” as I heard 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. This wall going up had brought some walls down.

About 9 p.m., 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.

About 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. I had lost hope that I would see any of the Maine protesters. After a while, I started back to the Media Centre. Suddenly, out of the darkness a cloud of tear gas descended on me. 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 went in the door of 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 once I finally made it as far as the Media Centre door, it was locked. I went back and persuaded the guard to let me go up an escalator to a shopping mall area that had been taken over by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as their command post. He probably figured I couldn’t do much harm among all those Mounties. Upstairs, the RCMP 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 in a bar in the bowels of the building. It was open for the use of off-duty police and army personnel. Without a gas mask, it was impossible to go outside. As I watched live TV coverage of the continuing Battle of Quebec, I chatted with a friendly bartender and young soldier. When my situation fully sunk into them, the bartender convinced the young guy to try to see if the army couldn’t put me up. A little while later, at about 2 a.m., the soldier drove me in a van a few blocks to the YMCA — located next to the hotel Bush was staying in — which the troops had taken over for barracks. I fell asleep on a cot in a sleeping bag in a room with 35 snoring soldiers. George W. could rest peacefully: The Canadian Army and I were close at hand.

Saturday, April 21

On a beautiful, fresh dawn 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.

“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 that the press gives them.”

Missy Smith, 21, a Bates junior, described how she saw the police fire tear gas right into a fellow student as they were putting up a banner on the fence.

The rather widespread acceptance of “violence” was striking. As I had heard on Canadian radio on the way back to the ski lodge, some of the Quebec protest organizers were deploring 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, the scraggly lines of revolutionaries (sometimes known as “anti-capitalists”) slowly trudged up Boulevard René Levesque 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 these ragged, improbable combatants were. Most were in their teens and seemed small in stature. And why were so many so skinny, I asked Brandon? “They tend to be vegans,” he thought. They were greeted with a bemused respect by the more conventional protesters — not with fear.

High-trajectory gas cans rained down on us haphazardly. Snowballs were thrown back in response. I noticed the police dogs’ handlers could make them bark on cue. A bank’s windows had all been smashed out. A young man who would only identify himself 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!”

Meanwhile, a set of huge, peaceful, chanting marches — the press consensus was 30,000 people participated — also took place. Because of the organizers’ alarms over the violence, they 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 the walkers. A good number, especially from the labor union march, broke off to head for the more aggressive protests. I saw one of these break-away groups and estimated it to have at least 5,000 people.

Late that night in Jackman, on our way home, we stopped for a hearty supper at the hospitality house. Over 360 meals had been served to protesters so far, the chief cook said. At the border, a protest in sympathy with Quebec and a brief, permitted “blockade” earlier that day had been successful. About 75 people had participated.

A busload of Maine unionists was also scarfing up the food. Several told me that, although they hadn’t wanted to experience the tear gas themselves, they felt solidarity with the young radicals. A unionist who had been in Seattle, Burt Wartell, editor of the Maine Labor News, said the walls had been broken down between the environmentalists and unions because, simply, both groups had finally realized that the corporations exploiting both labor and the environment were a common enemy.

Sunday, April 22

When the Summit of the Americas issued its final communiqué, it recognized the protesters — and, implicitly, the militants who had attracted so much attention — by promising the need for a nation to be democratic in order to be a member in good standing of the forthcoming FTAA. But as President Bush flew home, the New York Times reported he was already beginning to hedge on the communiqué. The eventual final FTAA agreement should include “no codicils to destroy the spirit of free trade,” he was quoted as saying.

The walls had gone up in Quebec, literally and figuratively, between the government and the corporate elite and the citizens, between their police and the people, and, I felt, between the sequestered official press and the events in the street.

But walls also had come down: between radicals and unionists, between radicals and regular folks, and between young and old.

The outcome of this continuing war is extremely uncertain. But the fighting was almost festive in Quebec. There really was a lot of solidarité among greatly different protesters and sympathizers. The joyous tones of Pink Floyd’s stirring anthem “The Wall” were heard from many an open window.

Lance Tapley can be reached at ltapley@ctel.net

Copyright © 2001 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group

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