Metro Pulse/Cover/Quebec: Tearing Down the Fence

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First Person: Transforming the Streets
One protester's reflections on Quebec

6:30 p.m., Thursday, April 19

The fence is up.

After the spokescouncil, I had to choose between a press conference at the People's Summit, a free dinner nine blocks away hosted by a group called the People's Potato ("vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free," the flier promises), or trying to find Hobbes for the beginning of a candlelight march. I decided to go look at the fence instead.

On the way up the hill along Rue St. Jean, a quaint touristy strip that's a likely scene of major "activities" tomorrow, many of the stores have their precautions in place. Plywood sheets cover some doors and windows; others have opted for chicken wire. A bookstore called the Librarie Partout may have the best protection of all: a prominent window display of leftist political books with titles like "The Globalization of Poverty." Most stylish are McDonald's and The Gap, which are both smart enough to know they're symbols of international corporate hegemony. McDonald's has even removed the raised letters from its facade, leaving its name spelled in a ghostly outline on the concrete. The restaurant has decorated its wooden window covers with cheerful daisies and fluffy white clouds in blue skies. The Gap's placards have been painted to match the sleek trim on the surrounding woodwork.

At the fence itself, an equal mixture of tourists and prospective protesters mingles (and for the moment, you can't really tell them apart). It's already adorned with banners, most in French, saying things like "A police state—is this what you want?" and "Life before profits." There are ribbons and cut-paper flowers and one entire section strung with dozens and dozens of brassieres. Some of the graffiti is overtly political, including a handful of pro-Cuba and pro-Castro slogans. But much of it is broader: "Free and accessible education for everyone," "Violence solves nothing," "It is necessary to be polite in life." The most poignant thing I find is a letter written as a poem:

Dans ma tête
c'est
la plus belle ville au monde.
Dommage vous ne pourrez pas
la
découvrir
Messieurs les Presidents.

("To my mind, this is the most beautiful city in the world. It is too bad you won't be able to discover it, Mssrs. Presidents.")

Some thoughts on anarchists:

I've never met any real anarchists before. None of the Knoxville protesters identify themselves as such. And even in Quebec, they're a small minority. But they're here. It's probably not fair to label everyone dressed in black as an anarchist, but that is their preferred attire. In costume, with bandanas pulled up over their noses, they look menacing, like ninja shock troops. But before they put on the masks, they strike me as a bunch of goofy kids, a college Science Club gone haywire.

At a bus stop Friday morning, as Hobbes and I are waiting for a ride out to the Université where the protest march will begin, three guys and a girl walk up. They're all in black. The girl asks if we went to "the meeting at 10 o'clock." When we look at her blankly, she quickly says, "Oh, never mind." They're busy strapping styrofoam chestplates and arm guards under their clothes, obviously anticipating some action.

The anarchist newsletter I have, published by the Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists, states their goal as "a classless and non-hierarchical society." The four at the bus stop chatter excitedly to each other, joking and laughing. The girl looks at her watch and sighs heavily. "This," she says with annoyance, "is the least organized thing I've ever been to."

The normal rules don't apply.

I'm sitting on the steps of a bank in a neat middle-class neighborhood along the Boulevard René-Lévesque. My feet hurt from walking and so I'm taking a break to watch the parade go by. It occurs to me that the bank is not in a great location for a "Carnival Against Capitalism," as CLAC has billed this march. Even as I think this, a woman wrapped in a rainbow of silk scarves runs out of the parade and up the steps next to me. She has a spray can with her, and as I watch, she sprays a big red "R" in a circle on the bank's plastic sign. Then she runs back into the crowd. I don't know what the "R" means—Revolution? Resistance? Somewhere in my brain, I realize that if I had seen something similar happen in a different setting—say, downtown Knoxville on a weekday—it would seem strange and even threatening. Here, it's just part of the pageantry.

Soon I, too, rejoin the throng and wind my way from the back to the front. There's a group of Latino marchers in sarapes chanting, in both Spanish and English, "The people/ United/ Will never be defeated" (it sounds better in Spanish). There is a black-clad anarchist drum section, pounding out syncopated beats. There are two girls and a guy pulling pink cardboard tanks on leashes; the tanks have big cartoon eyes and smiley faces. There is a woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty who walks the entire parade route on stilts. There are songs and chants and more costumes than I can count: bowlers against free trade, a soccer team with the name "John Doe" stitched onto every shirt, men dressed as mad cows. My favorites are the Radical Cheerleaders, dressed in matching red-and-black skirts and sweaters and doing choreographed dance routines to chants like, "Riot! Don't diet! Get up get up and try it," and "Hey NAFTA, hey NAFTA, we know what you're afta!"

Estimates in the paper the next day will put the crowd in this parade at about 4,000. It takes a good 10 minutes to pass any given block, shutting off traffic from all sides in the interim. There is no police escort; oncoming cars merely turn onto side streets. Local residents of neatly maintained middle-class neighborhoods come out to their front lawns to watch. I approach one man who's standing with his young son. His name is Paul LeMieux. I ask what he thinks of the spectacle. "As long as it's done peacefully," he says, "I think it's important that people are here from all over the world. I think it's good that people express their opinion." I ask what he'd think if his son wanted to join a protest some years from now. He shrugs. "If he wants to, I think he should," he says. "He must have his own ideas." I notice that none of the spectators is harassing the marchers, and many wave and cheer them on.

A few blocks from the fence, one of the CLAC organizers is talking through a bullhorn. "If you don't want to get arrested, turn left and follow us," he says. "If you want to go on to the fence, go straight." I very much don't want to get arrested, but I've come this far and I want to see what happens. I get to the fence ahead of the parade and station myself along the side of it. There are only about 10 police standing behind the perimeter, all in bulky olive-green riot gear. They're members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but they in no way conform to Dudley Do-Right stereotypes. They look ready for combat.

The first protesters who reach the fence don't know what to do. One or two climb to the top to take pictures or just hang there for a moment, but they scramble down quickly. After about 15 minutes, though, there's a critical mass of several hundred pushing against the barrier. They start throwing things over it: rolls of toilet paper at first, then empty plastic bottles. Then come the golf balls and hockey pucks, most landing before they hit the police but a few balls pinging off their helmets.

There's still a festive air, but there's also rising tension. A few people next to me throw peanuts at the police and make monkey noises. A short guy with a beard and a red rubber clown nose climbs a spindly tree and throws two whipped-cream pies in the direction of the troops. Further back in the crowd, a homemade wooden catapult hurls an array of stuffed animals over the fence. But now there are chunks of pavement too, landing near the police with threatening clatters and skipping across the asphalt. Then I see a glass bottle come flying over and smash in a fiery gasoline puddle on the ground: a molotov cocktail. Another one lands near an officer's leg and appears to singe his pants; several of his colleagues leap in with extinguishers and hose him down. And then the fence starts rocking.

About five protesters dressed all in black are on one section, pulling it backward. It goes with surprisingly little resistance. In less than a minute, there's a breach in the wall. At first, no one seems to know what to do. Then a handful of protesters slips through. The police stand their ground about 40 feet away. More people come through the fence, and more sections of it start to fall. Objects are still flying through the air, and there's smoke coming from somewhere. A second squad of police arrives and charges forward at the protesters. They're avoiding physical contact, relying on intimidation to push people back. It works for a few minutes until a more aggressive group of black-clad demonstrators (apparently members of the Black Bloc, a secretive anarchist group) rushes forward pushing a metal street barrier before them. The police fall back. But then a third squad of Mounties arrives. Several of them are carrying guns that I recognize as gas cartridge launchers. I wasn't sure things would go this far. I'm not sure what to do. I'm in jeans and a sweater, not really dressed for this sort of thing. I keep taking pictures. Then the gas hits.