9 June 2000
The whiffs of pepper spray have cleared, the concrete barriers and fencing has been removed and the riot police disengaged as the city of Windsor, Ontario resumes "normalcy" once again after the convention of foreign ministers known as the Organization of American States.The OAS meeting drew a lot of attention as city council members looked to it to bring in the big bucks for tourism and making Windsor a "player" in the "major leagues" (in the words of Windsor Mayor Mike Hurst).
The prelude to the event was a media barrage of fear mongering on the part of city politicians that they would not tolerate "another Seattle" with any of those who wished to protest against the OAS (a reference to the rioting against the World Trade Organization last year).
Community groups, students and so-called "affinity groups" decided to make the OAS a target of protest, to expose human rights abuses, issues of poverty, child labour, environmental destruction in OAS member states. These groups, often composed of students, declared they would shut down the OAS proceedings.
The trade union movement agenda was to speak to the weaknesses of the OAS, to talk about the hypocrisy of its political leadership, and to tie the issues of social concern to that of free trade economics.
Nearing the day of planned protest Windsor resembled an armed camp. Concrete barricades were raised. Security checkpoints were maintained, businesses asked to board up store front windows. Plainclothes police walked in clumps down city streets. Others maintained watch on city buildings. Helicopters hovered looking for potential protest. The Canada-U.S. border was under heavy surveillance. RCMP agents showed up on the door of local political activists to query them about their involvement with the protest. Groups were "monitored" with any comment about self-defense against police brutality to be considered as promoting violent confrontation.
On the day of the protest 2,000 police (local, Ontario Provincial Police, and RCMP) gathered in full riot gear, armed with mace, pepper spray and guns. On the other side of the barricades an amalgamation of 3,000 trade unionists, community group activists and students.
During the march around the OAS conference headquarters RCMP indiscriminately pepper sprayed protestors because one small group of protestors tried to erect a banner on fencing. That children, retirees and those in wheelchairs were nearby was no concern to the security forces.
In another instance a group of students peacefully sat down in front of a van carrying OAS participants to the site. The group was quickly surrounded by a phalanx of RCMP. Without warning the group was doused with pepper spray and hauled off in choke holds to be arrested. It was a brutal and needless action on the part of the police.
After five hours the main protest was over.
What was accomplished?
On the positive side, 3,000 people rallied with some very real concerns about what they see around them. They are fed up with empty promises, with lies and distortions and hypocrisy of various capitalist governments.
The demonstrators who believed that the forces of the Canadian state would not attack peaceful protestors had their eyes opened. The preparations on the part of Canadian federal government officials and security forces was not about controlling potential violence, it was about the suppression of dissent. Criticism would not be tolerated.
Student activists did raise the nature of the OAS as a capitalist institution. Despite its boasts that it speaks to social issues, to democracy, the OAS role appeared as the fancy glaze on the capitalist cake that includes the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund.
One could not help but admire the many young activists who were willing to engage in civil disobedience to "make a statement". But herein lies the weakness.
It is not enough to be "anti-capitalist".
The message of many of the protestors was confusing. Some argued that the OAS should thoroughly engage in practising the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Others believed in throwing more money into alleviating poverty and called for governments to redistribute wealth. In the end, it meant supporting a kind of "capitalism with a human face". Hardly anti-capitalist.
Because massive educational work was not done with the public the message of those wishing to practice civil disobedience was lost as the focus of political debate became the very act of disobedience, not the reason for it. Furthermore, the danger is that such tactics, unless practiced en masse and with incredible discipline, can be considered elitist putting those working class demonstrators who do not necessarily support such actions at risk from indiscriminate police retaliation.
The OAS is a capitalist-tied institution created by, and for, capitalist states with a capitalist agenda. Disrupting and stopping OAS meetings or even calling to reform the OAS will not stop or reform capitalism, nor will it change the inherent abuses of capitalism because it is a system grounded upon the very exploitation of the working class.
That is why I say to the dissenters, to the protestors, examine Socialism.
Help us engage in the very real work of winning over people, to learning
and educating them, in battling the lies and hypocrisy in a very real and
tangible way. The real battlefront is not in individual acts of civil
disobedience but in engaging the minds of the vast majority of the working
class. It's in building a real movement for a very real alternative -
Socialism.