Why are the children of prosperity marching in the streets against fast food and big cars and corporate politics? There were some answers among the shouts and drums and gas clouds in Quebec City last month.
by Jesse Fox Mayshark
Prologue
It is an unusually warm day in March, and so we are meeting outside, along the railroad tracks near Ijams Nature Center. We are sitting on the loading platform of a long-abandoned cement company, which fed off the quarry behind us. The enormous kilns are rusted, the walls are crumbling and overrun with vines. We are here to talk about Quebec.
There are eight of us—seven young Knoxvillians, most of them University of Tennessee students, and myself. I'm here because I'm curious. I read about demonstrations in Seattle a couple of years ago at a meeting of the World Trade Organization, and then again in Washington, D.C. last year. And again in Philadelphia at the Republican Convention. And in Prague. And in D.C. once more during George W. Bush's inauguration. Thousands of people in the streets, hundreds arrested, windows smashed at Starbucks and McDonald's. It was hard to piece together much from the scattershot media coverage, but it sounded like something was going on. I started asking around.
Today's small meeting by the tracks is led by Erick Haaby, known to everyone but his parents as "Hobbes" (after Thomas Hobbes, partly, but Erick, who has created his own major at UT in modern European philosophy, is quick to point out that he's not that impressed with his namesake's work). Hobbes is willowy and almost pixieish, with floppy brown hair and a predilection for black tights and a white thermal undershirt with holes ripped in the sleeves. He's 23 years old. Last summer, he spent four nights in the Philadelphia city lock-up after being grabbed in a police sweep of a warehouse where demonstrators were making giant puppets and other protest materials. The charges were dismissed, but it was a miserable and frightening experience. "I don't want to go to jail again," he says.
He starts the discussion with a half-joking caveat: "We're probably not going to transform the nature and scope of international economic policy by going to Quebec."
He's referring to the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, scheduled for April 20. Heads of state from the entire Western Hemisphere are expected to attend.
A 20-year-old to his left named David Welch speaks up. "I see certain problems where it wouldn't take many people to get a big reaction," he says. "There's a lot of widespread discontent with things."
As the conversation goes around the circle, some of those "things" become more specific. "Sort of generally speaking, you could say we're concerned about human rights, which covers all the wage and working conditions, and then we're concerned about protection of the environment," a dark-haired guy named Andrew offers. "Then after you get to those two areas, you say it's important to have a vision, and to know another world is possible."
"I don't have a solution," confesses Gabe Crowell, a Pellissippi State history instructor from Buffalo, N.Y. who speaks with measured deliberation. "I'm inspired by pranks, like the Merry Pranksters, I guess. I put bumper stickers on SUVS that say, 'My car is a waste of gas.'"
Talk eventually turns to the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement, which is on the agenda for the Quebec City summit. "It seems like we're sort of at a pivotal crossroads and we're about to hand over a whole bunch of power that we maybe didn't even know we had, and we're handing it over to corporations," Gabe says. "I don't think the corporations we're dealing with are immoral. I think they're amoral."
Soon, the role of violence enters the discussion. If they're going to protest, what's the best way? If the police strike out at them, is it O.K. to strike back? Is breaking a window a violent act? "Do you think aggressively protesting things is an act of violence?" asks John, whose anti-flag-burning T-shirt is presumably intended ironically.
"It's a question of whether using violence is retaliating against oppression," offers a dark-haired young woman named Shinara Taylor, who's been listening quietly but intently up to now. "And whether that resolves anything or contributes to it."
And so it goes. Other issues surface—racism, overconsumption, the trademarking of America in general and the University of Tennessee in particular ("In 30 or 40 years, it's not going to be a school," David predicts. "There'll just be different conglomerates that'll take over different things. Like Monsanto will be teaching us chemistry").
Last one around the circle is a young woman named Jennifer, who is dressed like a Catholic punk rocker in a blouse and skirt and tattered black nylons. Hobbes looks to her. "I agree with everything that's been said, to varying degrees," she says, and pauses. "But I'm more interested on a personal level in not being so alienated all the time."
May 10, 2001 * Vol. 11, No. 19
© 2001 Metro Pulse
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