FTAA & Wu Ming

[FrodeauxB at aol.com]

Been busy lately so I ahven't been reading the digest, but I ahve noticed a 
lot of commentaery on the Quebec City revolutionary activity. I found the 
following quite interesting and hope you do to.

Subj:   /Giap/digest/#9 - Comments on the Quebec City Riots - 28 April 2001
Date:   4/27/01 4:00:02 PM Central Daylight Time
From:   giap at wumingfoundation.com (GIAP)

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.
 
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.


Info on the G8 summit in Genoa, July 2001:
http://www.genoa-g8.it/index.htm
http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/

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Power to the people! Vive le Quebec! Vive la Louisiane!
Your Gallic Hobbit,

TTFN,

frodeauxb