The Quebec Summit:
A Mad Cow's Perspective
W hat do I remember? I couldn't take
notes as I was imprisoned inside a cow
costume. Memory is very selective. But usually
the highlights stick with
you. The issues: animal rights-an unsung cause.
Franny (my wife) and I
walked with Global Action Network (GAN). They
espouse the rights of
animals and are against the flagrant abuses that
seem so part and parcel of
Free Trade: the proliferation of factory farming,
the spread of disease
like mad cow disease, no controls over puppy mills
and more species
becoming extinct.
The demonstration brought together
the entire spectrum of the left: the
Trade Unions, CSN (Confederation des syndicals nationaux)
which is also the CNTU (Confederation of National Trade Unions) chanting
"solidarity";
feminists for the environment and for animals; environmentalists;
educators-all concerned about the perceived erosion
of human rights, the
growing gap between the rich and the poor, increased
power in the hands of
expanding corporations. Our group, walking behind
the Global Action Network
(GAN) banner, advocates rights for animals, those
who have never had a
voice, who have never been able to defend themselves.
In support of the
concept of stewardship and not "dominion over the
animals" we marched to
protest the fact that free trade agreements allow
our federal, provincial
and municipal animal protection laws and environmental
standards to be
classified as "barriers to trade." Thus we marched
in protest to protect
the few laws for animals that exist in this country
and to defend our
rights to achieve new ones.
It was through the prism of my cow
costume cage that I observed and felt
the movement of people and ideas. The issues are
many and complicated.
Perhaps the title of Maude Barlow's FTAA paper sums
up some of the main
concerns: The Free Trade of the Americas and the
Threat to Social Programs, Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice
in Canada and the Americas. (The paper can be downloaded from the Council
of Canadians Web site.)
However, the issue isn't only Free Trade; it's also how the drama of democracy
and its ironic dance with protestors is played out. In the name
of security the erection of a concrete link fence around the perimeter
of the summit centre in the old city of Quebec testifies to a curtailment
of civil liberties. Such is our dubious security. Our "security" can be
challenged; it can also be torn down.
Does the state know best? Are we in
fact being colonized by corporate
power? Does one march peacefully to exercise
our democratic rights-the
right to dissent, the right to be heard or to say
whatever we want without
threat of incarceration or torture, no matter how
far away one
demonstrates? And does location matter? Apparently
it does. Isn't protest
more effective if the protestors can be heard by
the delegates? The issue
then becomes the emptiness of protest, how distance
makes dissent
ineffective. Perhaps we're witnessing a different
kind of totalitarianism
in this displacement or watering down of democracy.
Unfortunately, the
fence itself becomes the issue. Social justice,
environment, education,
health, poverty are all subsumed symbolically into
a link fence.
On the march (Chretien called it a
"parade") happy, peaceful protestors
with cameras asked me and others in cow outfits
to pose for proof of how
wonderful their day went, their/our day of political
protest: the
bare-breasted girl with slogans written all over
her body, linking her to
an America which needs to be more open, more forthright.
Surprising absence of booze and no signs of violence at all on this march.
I've been at St. Jean Baptiste Day festivities where the ribald rabble
riots and trashes wherever they are, and everyone has heard of the excesses
of zealous fans
after the Montreal Canadiens win the Stanley Cup.
But we didn't go to the
fence where aggressive police acted out their parts
in this drama of
dislocated democracy: throwing tear gas at peaceful
demonstrators,
resorting to the use of rubber bullets and
exercising the kind of muscle
that one associates with martial law. In one
instance, friends told me, an
older woman approached the fence to give flowers
to the police and was
rebuffed with a direct hit of tear gas.
Perhaps the violence comes from zealous
police thinking they are only
doing their duty, or perhaps, as a fixated media
reports, it comes from a
few anarchists and to-hell-with-it "hooligans."
A poor strategy, this
violence. It takes us away from the real issues.
The media focus on the
violence and the issues are lost in the turmoil,
in the sweat and tears of
tear gas, water canons, rubber bullets and circling
helicopters.
On the march the puppets of the Americas
presented themselves-large parade puppets representing corporate power.
America was represented by Ronald MacDonald and all the evils of transnational
free trade, ubiquitously symbolised by the hamburger. I also noticed that
hot dog wasn't translated
into chien chaud or hamburger into hambourgeoisie
as they are in Montreal.
The language police are worried about Montreal,
but they're not so worried
about Quebec City. Ironically, English gets
a better break in Quebec City.
I expected to see more Quebec flags. They were handing
them out but very
few people wanted to take one. And there was one
group, which no one seemed to heed, representing a sovereign Quebec, and
on the sidelines a group defending business and investors espoused
the right to support monied interests, suggesting through their chant
and rant that Free Trade was the best thing to happen to us since the
toilet. And there were Americans in the crowd with American dollars taping
their mouth shut, suggesting that the voice of money is the only voice
we are allowed to hear: "Money doesn't talk it swears" (Bob Dylan). Then
there was the street theatre of people in chains fighting the worst effects
of globalization. Choreographed street theatre-a host of black-garbed
people acting out a drama of slavery, chains and oppression.
Some time into the march I heard a
group chanting, "a la gauche, a la
gauche - a la gauche, gauche, gauche". It
reminded me of the hypnotic Hari
Krishna chanting of Expo '67 and that energy of
a bygone era, of my almost
hippy/yippy youth. Not thinking about our
context of marching and moving
down the street, I thought I heard a call to the
left. I thought how nice,
people are finally becoming more conscious, more
progressive; they're
chanting for us to become lefties. And though this
may have been the larger
implication, the chant was literally directional-they
were directing us
marchers to the left, to the fence. We were walking
the symbolic barricade
and the fence was becoming the actual barricade
where the confrontation was taking place.
Thought: the unions, especially my
union in the education sector, have
been seriously weakened. The trade unions want to
protect their contracts;
they are in Quebec's pocket, the hand that feeds
them. What then does the
cry for "solidarity" mean? Now unionism is alive
and well and marching in a
popular demonstration. Their moment is now. Many
of us are older, with
mortgages and responsibilities, hardly winning conditions
for revolutionary
behaviour. Yet it is still thrilling to see all
these toughened, tatooed
paunchy guys and gals, good-naturedly plodding through
the warming sun with their banners and megaphones, making the protest
curiously their own.
Today, the progressive left seems
united, at least for now. It will only
split over the issue of the fence: symbol of bondage
and curtailment of
civil liberties, preventing dissent, making people
feel unheard and unseen.
Some will stay on the march and some will go to
the fence. The protest can
exist anywhere. Mass solidarity can create its own
location, its own drama.
Better that 60,000 had held hands and peacefully
demonstrated en masse at
the fence or away from the fence. No matter where
it is, a mass rally, like
an unsplintered chunk of rock or wood, is stronger
and more effective.
Splintered violence, rooted in anarchy and angst,
needs to be superseded by
the forceful power of peace. But we all know how
difficult it is to
orchestrate a united front that's effective and
sustainable.
A question of strategy: if everyone
had participated in a peaceful march,
with its street theatre, puppets, drumming and dancing,
leaving the fence
alone to be guarded by frustrated and self-conscious
police, a strong
protest statement would have been clearly registered-that
the $35,000,000
spent on security was spent for nothing, that the
action that demands media
attention is indeed the passion and good will manifest
in people power-true
democracy on the move. The police, the tool of a
government which sees its
own citizens as its enemy, acted excessively. Better
if they had been made
irrelevant. Without the fence the peaceful march
itself would have become
the locus and focus of the action. No confrontation,
no violence, would
have made the Woodstock-like statement that indeed
, "the times, they are a changin.' "