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News :: Miscellaneous |
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This is Not News |
Current rating: 0 |
by Paul Kotheimer
Email: herringb (nospam) prairienet.org (unverified!)
Phone: 123-456-7890
Address: urbana.indymedia.org |
13 May 2001
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Journal entries from the Summit of the Americas protests |
Dear Laura, dear future, dear friends:
Not knowing whom to address, but needing to write TO some reader, I\'ll tell you what I saw and felt in Quebec City, and on the way there, and now that we\'re home.
ORGANIZING OURSELVES
Interest grew and grew. Momentum built up and up. The feeling was that we were all committed to this, as a challenge, as a necessity, as an act of free speech and conscience. At first there were a handful of us, meeting at Sarah and Sascha\'s apartment, scouring the websites, compiling lists and lists of lists, groping for camaraderie, affinity, a plan from what little we could gather of this Citadel city and of the activist network which we KNEW was out there, but couldn\'t quite
co-ordinate with. Then there were eight of us going. Then thirteen. Finally, sixteen altogether--and the first carload that pulled out from Urbana probably wasn\'t even sure exactly who was in the other two cars--very last-minute--conviction, impulse, diving in.
We found a rhythm for working together. We raised the funds we needed. We built on the experiences of N30/Seattle and A16/DC, and on the resources and alliances we\'ve been building here in town since the start of this--whatever THIS is. It felt like we might just know what we\'re doing, this time.
Having heard that activists were being turned away at crossings into Canada, we got obsessed with the border. Could we bring the tools we needed to express ourselves--placards, puppets, scripts--or would our artwork bar our travel across borders? Would a song-book or a map or a haircut or a particular car or a particular bumper sticker seem too subversive, too suspect? Would we make it across? Should we be prepared to walk across the border through the Mohawk reservation in upstate New York? Would we be questioned, targeted, singled out, detained? Would they know? Could we lie to border guards, plausibly and with impunity?
THE DRIVE
As it turned out, we crossed the border without incident. Sarah, Sehvilla, Cindy, and I rehearsed all the way through Michigan for this 30-second interview--trying to adopt in full the mindset of a normal, Christian family and friends from church on our way to a 40th birthday party in Toronto. Is this how pervasive surveillance has become, I wondered, that anything outside the kind of \"normal\" we were trying to imagine ourselves into would forfeit its rights at an international border? Is this kind of psychological control what\'s required to keep goods flowing freely around this proposed \"Free Trade Area\"?
The border guard at Sarnia, Ontario, gave us a smile. She was in her early twenties or so. It was after one in the morning. We performed our parts and stayed pretty well in character. Whether the guard suspected that we might be anything other than what we purported seemed remote, irrelevant. We were a kilometer or two into Ontario before we realized that THAT was finally finished, and we cheered.
Toronto was great hospitality and fitful sleep. The second evening\'s drive was exhaustion upon exhaustion. We arrived in Quebec City just before sunrise for three hours\' sleep before heading out to get our bearings and join the CLAC march to the perimeter.
IN QUEBEC FOR A20
The first day, I was sleep-deprived to the point of tears, borderline psychotic--it felt like--broken-spirited and in need of care, ALREADY. I was very afraid of not being able to do what I\'d come to do. Aloof from the group. Trying my hardest not to make a scene or say something really destructive to our team-work.
The convergence at Universite Laval was uplifting, invigorating. Drums, banners, megaphones, singers, chants, face painting. A carnival in the streets, against the macroeconomy of oppression. A dozen retired folks from Montreal had come to sing from a mimeo sheet, in French, \"Solidarity, My Brothers and Sisters\" (to the same marching tune we know as \"Glory Glory Hallelujah\"/\"Solidarity Forever\"). I imagined they had been doing this for forty years together. A thousand drummers with five-gallon plastic buckets. Scores of independent media-makers. Dozens of Radical Cheerleaders. Announcements in French, then English, then Spanish. Clowns. Super-heroes. A Revolutionary Klezmer Band.
I got to speak with medics who had trained for weeks for this event. I got to sing my \"Radical Cheerleader\" and \"FrankenFood Toxology\" lyrics for fellow-marchers. I got to interview face-painters and record drummers and singers. I spoke with independent journalists and mainstream press, and I felt like I said what I\'d wanted to say. I was indymedia and a protest singer and an ordinary citizen speaking my mind--the roles I had said I wanted to play. That part was satisfying.
But now, more questions come: Is there a better way to express what we want, what we propose INSTEAD of this system of racist neo-colonialism, a dictatorship of faceless beurocrats, backed by interminable violence? Is there a way to organize ourselves such that, when we amass in the streets, we\'re not strangers? Is there a way to form affinity groups across the continent, across cultural divides, across generations?
None of these questions is meant to imply that I\'m dissatisfied with the solidarity of direct-action mass demonstrations against global capital. It\'s just that I don\'t want to feel lonely in Urbana before I go, or alone with my guitar when I\'m there, or like--in some way or another--we\'ve come home empty-handed.
TEARGAS DEMOCRACY
I was three intersections back from the perimeter when the teargas clouds started rising. The shock of it, to the crowds on the sidewalks at de Sallebury and Rene Levesque, was palpable: The fact that it was a sunny Friday afternoon and a parade had just gone by; the fact that locals were happily shopping, luncheoning, enjoying the day, when all of a sudden chemical warfare was declared on their neighborhood; the fact that 3 square kilometers of the provincial capital had been walled off, and suddenly people were forced to ask \"Why is this happening?\" and remember that the confrontation was for real.
When a smoking canister of gas bounces onto the sidewalk, hundreds of yards from the security perimeter, in front of a small boutique, with two stories of apartments above, and residents sitting idly by on the stoop, what changes?
The corner where the Shell gas station had been vandalized, some three or four intersections west of the perimeter at Rene Levesque, turned out to be a good vantage point from which to observe--It was just far enough away not to be cordoned off by cops; there were lots of shops which were determined to carry on with business as usual; there was almost no automobile traffic. Our group, losing track of eachother in the chaos, found eachother there, mostly by accident. We could see the curtain of gas rising to the east--changing direction, changing opacity, harshness, ominousness.
Maybe a half-hour or so after the gassings became noticeable at this intersection, the first batch of \"front line\" direct action demonstrators passed us as they fell back. A small group of black-bloc retreated past us, along with the now-famous teddy bear catapult which prompted the arrest of Jaggi Singh. They received a round of applause. When an armored truck with a water cannon mounted on it barreled past us, westbound down Rene Levesque, I remember feeling sick and angry and powerless and afraid and indignant.
I yelled fuck you fuck you as loud as I could. I don\'t know why.
And then, I was spent, and I needed sleep, and Anora took care of me. We half-huddled in a doorway along the sidestreets and pretended we were on vacation in Indiana--the fantasy was not delirium but rather a conscious escapism, a much-needed coping mechanism. I fell asleep, fast asleep, right there on the sidewalk.
I don\'t want to write about the sleep-deprivation teargas-inhalation dehydration sunstroke madness I felt that evening, except to say that inside of it there was a kind of clarity in which I knew I just needed to sleep and sleep and then I\'d wake up okay. The rest was bad, really bad, and I wondered how much trauma, collectively, we have to go through in order to actualize the desirable change we envision, or at least avert the nightmare century that capitalism has planned.
Back at the gymnasium where we were staying, along with hundreds of fellow-activists from who-knows-where, crashed on the floor around the boxing ring, a punk band was rehearsing just downstairs while we were trying to get to sleep. I pulled Anora\'s sleeping bag over my head and sobbed and sobbed like fifth grade homesick at Camp Ondessonk, but worse.
A21 MORE OF THE SAME?
Better prepped, better oriented, and much better rested, I started out on the second day in Quebec City. Sarah, Sascha, Jay, Anora, and I went to find a breakfast spot in the Limouilou neighborhood. We found good hospitality, a feeling of being welcomed--This neighborhood of 3-flats and small shops, populated with ordinary folks, was on our side.
The five of us drove across town to the Cote D\'Abraham, where a gathering of tens of thousands was amassing just west of the Museum. This march contained a far greater percentage of Quebecois than the Friday CLAC convergence--It was tough to find English speakers outside our own group, at times. Also, Saturday saw a wider variety of folks: Retirees, parents out with their kids, highschoolers in bunches, as well as the usual post-punk twentysomethings from the CLAC march.
We all got a kick out of a lone demonstrator suited up in yellow jumpsuit, red wig, striped stockings, and the golden arches logo to play the role of \"Ronald McCapitalism.\" He told us he chose this outfit to bring a message of opposition specifically to young kids.
The five of us decided to move east on Lavesque and join demonstrators in the \"Yellow Zone.\" This meant marching past the vandalized Shell gas station and past the de Sallebury intersection toward the perimeter--the same territory we had covered the day before.
Here are impressions of those hours, and of getting gassed the first time on Saturday afternoon:
Losing track of one another, when we were just a few yards apart. Lines of riot cops appearing on the crest of a hill. A woman with bright eyes and bass drum breaking the eerie silence with a muffled beat. The sour sting in the eyes. Bloodshot, haunted looks all around. Patience, insistence, courage on the part of everyone who remained in the streets. Kids seated in a circle. Hearing \"Don\'t run. Don\'t panic,\" from voices you couldn\'t locate in the crowd. Fear for my friends. Hoping we\'d all find eachother again under the green sign by the parking garage, downhill and downwind of the gas, a few yards away and safe after the chaos. Anora\'s there and we clasp eachother. Someone I\'ve never met, someone I never saw, douses my eyes with \"Seattle Solution\" from a squeeze bottle. A mound of snow still standing on the shady side of a brownstone--A handful feels good on the neck, the top of the head, on the eyes--on the eyes, again.
Retreating. Doubling back down the sidestreet. Trying to keep hacking it and keep the numbers up, keep the intersection for us protestors. Feeling the morbid curiosity of it--wondering what will there be to see next. And the blind adventurism, wanting to be there and be able to say you were there. Trying, simultaneously, to bear in mind the real motivations: Clean air, clean water, free speech and conscience, peaceable assembly, jobs with dignity and decent wages, non-violence, equitable distribution of resources, a livable planet--a desirable society...
Here\'s a story for the second round of gassing we got:
Jay with videocam. Anora with photo camera. Me with my guitar in a gigbag on my back. All of us in our vinegar-soaked bandanas. A moment of calm, no drumming, no chanting, for an interview with a street kid whose hand had been hit by a gas canister shard. We\'re all standing on the median strip. The vagabond kid is telling his story, showing us his bandage, goofing for the camera in choppy English. Now, gas is floating towards us and we all try to backpedal away from the cloud. Jay\'s letting the camcorder roll. The street kid hunches down, melts away. People are scattering in slow motion, silently. A bullhorn is calling out tinnily, \"Don\'t run. Walk, please. Marchez,\" but we can\'t tell from where.
Anora hesitates, paces forward a ways--three steps, four steps, maybe--to get one last photo. A canister is arcing towards us like a softball--fifty, sixty feet in the air. For a few seconds, Jay and I can see it\'s headed straight at Anora. We\'re trying to judge how short of her, how far to the left, it might hit. I\'m calling out, begging Anora to back up, back up, back up, back up! The gas lands two yards from her left shoe.
The panic is like almost drowning. A lungful of CN gas is like shrapnel in the trachea. You wish you could only ever exhale. You wish you could put your head above it, fly up to get a real breath. It nauseates you. You wonder whether you\'ll choke on your own vomit as you\'re backstriding. You\'re head goes hazy and you think about blacking out and you can\'t take another shallow, burning breath. Anora is yelling, Medic! Medic! when I say I\'m going to hit the pavement. But then I\'m calmer. She locks arms with me at the elbow, and it\'s just a matter of a dozen more steps until the air is breathable.
The Geneva Accords of 1969 declare the use of this stuff a war crime. I\'m punch-drunk and I shout out, \"Hoo! They served that one up extra spicy, now, didn\'t they?\" Pretending to be a thrillseeker, talking shit like I\'d go back for more just for kicks--a cartoon character voice in my head to shake the fear off with.
...It wasn\'t funny.
A22 A WALK AROUND THE WALL
Fallout from all the gassing had settled in with the street dust all around downtown. When the wind kicked up, everybody would sneeze and get teary-eyed. On the inside of the perimeter, the hotels had to install huge wind-machines on the sides of the buildings to keep the residue out of the suites.
I walked around the wall, into St. Jean-Baptiste, past the street musicians and the trendy nightclubs with the plateglass removed, past a lone white rosary protecting a basement-level windowpane near a little Lebanese restaurant, through the alleyways where one side of a courtyard was inside the perimeter, the other outside, down through the pristeen tourist shopping court, where a fellow demonstrator happened to strike up a conversation with a Summit delegate from the Dominican Republic. The delegate, after a half-minute of chat and without prompting, handed the protestor a copy of confidential documents from the Summit. It was a strange moment.
Heading back, I chanced across what has become my favorite part of the perimeter wall--a section which had been decorated by the children of the St. Jean-Baptiste neighborhood. I decided that the thing I wanted was a record of the security perimeter--a compendium of all its graffiti--as a 2 1/2 mile long collaborative newspoem, a cultural record of this event--before Quebec tears it down and pulverizes it into road gravel, or whatever.
Walking along the perimeter from the northeast side around to Battlefield Park, where the perimeter disappeared out of sight along a cliff facing the St. Lawrence Seaway, I managed to get a good portion of the perimeter graffiti down on paper. Included are photocopies of some of my notepad sheets from that project. For a complete listing of graffiti, please see NewsPoetry.com\'s entry for
April 28, 2001.
HOME NOW
we\'ve been back almost a month and the trip still seems vivid. we need more support, more resources to make this sustainable. we need a rodeo clown bloc, whose job it is to neutralize canisters of teargas by means of fifty gallon buckets of whatever solution will work. sehvilla will invent the formula for the best way to neutralize a poison gas attack by cops. we will keep honing our skills in the streets of odd cities. i fantasize about being useful when direct action against global capital comes to chicago, a city where i know almost every street. i want to know every IMC-sta and every radical folksongwriter in the world. i want to feel the solidarity.
i\'ll keep working, i guess. lovepaulkotheimer: ) |
See also:
http://www.newspoetry.com/2001/0428.html
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Comments
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great writing - keep it going! |
by number 96235347
jwebb66 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
14 May 2001
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Nice descriptions of the horrors of capitalism - I felt as if I was reading something being churned out by
a down-trodden citizen of a totalitarian government - no freedom of expression, mind-control,
violent defense of power - the solitary man is nothing, cannot stand in the way of the country,
the power-hungry politicians who bring destruction to the earth, and they blame it on human nature,
saying, "if i don't steal all this money, silence all these automatons, someone else will......." |
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Thanks for Bringing It All Back Home |
by Darrin Drda
d_drda (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
14 May 2001
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I have so enjoyed your personal narratives - first the one from the Folk Fest, and now this piece. Your writing is like your music: lucid, honest, witty, and full of heart. Just like I was there in body, not just in spirit. Rock on. |
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Thanks for Bringing It All Back Home |
by Darrin Drda
d_drda (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
14 May 2001
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I have so enjoyed your personal narratives - first the one from the Folk Fest, and now this piece. Your writing is like your music: lucid, honest, witty, and full of heart. Just like I was there in body, not just in spirit. Rock on. |
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thank you |
by sandra ahten
spiritofsandra (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
23 May 2001
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paul, thank you for taking time to record your experience, feelings and reaction. i bow to the good in you. i admire your activism, your propensity to persevere, your willingness to share yourself for the greater good.
sa |
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