[Nettime-bold] COMMENTS ON THE QUEBEC CITY RIOTS

["ricardo dominguez" <rdom@thing.net>]

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.

>From saturday early afternoon to the dawn of monday, 10,000 rioters
besieged 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.


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