CALGARY (CP) -- Planning to steer clear of Alberta next week and avoid any G-8 street protests? That's OK, the street protests may come to you.
Many anti-summit activists -- citing burnout, lack of funds, extreme security and the remoteness of next week's Group of Eight meeting -- plan to avoid Kananaskis, Alta., and hold "satellite" protests across North America instead.
"The main reasons are just distance, time, effort and money," said Jason Mark. Members of his international human rights group Global Exchange won't be leaving San Francisco to protest the summit of leaders from Japan, Canada, Britain, the United States, Russia, Italy, Germany and France.
"Some people are thinking of other ways to address these issues about global inequality and corporate globalization rather than travelling all the way to the Canadian Rockies."
Plans are underway for demonstrations in New York, Washington, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, San Francisco and Missoula, Mont.
The largest protest during the summit will likely occur at the Take the Capital protest in Ottawa, where activists plan to run buses from Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto, and other Ontario cities including London, Guelph and Peterborough.
"It's clear it was easier for us to mobilize a lot more people to do action in Ottawa," said Karina Chagnon of the Convergence des Luttes Anti-Capitalistes, based in Montreal.
"Seeing that there is going to be so many soldiers and so much police presence in Kananaskis, it's really working on people, scaring people from going," she said.
Take the Capital organizers have for months been planning to hold several protests snaking through streets near Parliament and a "chill zone" in a park for poetry readings, street theatre, workshops and musical improvisation to show G-8 dissent.
Eric Laursen of the New York City Direct Action Network, a coalition of global justice activists, is organizing a protest on Wednesday for thousands of activists to march through the Big Apple.
Laursen says he's appalled at the "absurd extraordinary" security measures taken for the G-8 meeting.
"Kananaskis was a planned location to begin with because it's hard to get to, it's obscure, there's very little in the way of facilities to accommodate thousands upon thousands of visitors," he said.
"It was deliberately chosen as a place that would maximize difficulty for activists to get to and for them to organize."
That's a sentiment that activists planning protests for the G-8 say they know only too well.
For the past several months, activists have been trying to nail down a site for a "solidarity village," an eight-day tent-city festival where protesters could camp near the G-8 summit to voice their dissent.
"We've put in an enormous amount of energy and resources and time since last fall into trying to organize a safe, structured opportunity for people to come together and learn about the G-8," said Calgary activist Sarah Kerr.
"And we've just been thwarted at every turn."
Activists claim that all three levels of government have blocked their attempts to secure land for the solidarity village.
When plans for a site on an aboriginal reserve near Kananaskis fell through earlier this year, protesters asked for permission to hold the festival in a Calgary park, but were denied a permit. They're now considering a court challenge on the grounds their rights to free expression have been violated.
"Divide and conquer is nothing new to us," said Sarah Dover, an Ottawa activist who has spent years organizing anti-globalization protests and is now in Calgary to plan events.
Protesters are still trying to rally the troops for some local action, urging others over Internet Web sites to join protest marches to clog streets leading into Calgary's downtown during the summit.
A preview of what is to come may have played out in Halifax last week, when protesters clashed with police and were hit with tear gas after they stormed a security fence at a meeting of G-7 finance ministers.
Not all Calgary events will be taken to the streets.
A conference called the G6B, named for the six billion people not invited to the G-8 table, will run at the University of Calgary prior to the summit. Labour and human rights groups will discuss issues and methods of helping the world's poor and disadvantaged.
Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham has promised to meet with them and pass on their recommendations.
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