[The article below, written by Karina Chagnon and Samer Elatrash, two members of the CLAC in Montreal, was submitted to the Ottawa Citizen last Thursday in response to "Militants aim to 'Take the Capital'" by Andrew Mills.]
In a "dilapidated concert hall on Montreal's East Side", wrote Ottawa Citizen correspondent Andrew Mills, militants "plotted" to bring violence into your neighborhood some time soon. That, at least, is how the Ottawa Citizen presented a CLAC General Assembly held last Tuesday to mobilize for the "Take the Capital Campaign" against the G 8 and in solidarity with First Nations, immigrants, refugees and liberation movements around the world.
The Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC) is an open group. We are candid in our opposition to capitalism and the G8's agenda of exploitation and plunder. Our group has always been public about this political position, and that is why we do workshops, public assemblies, conferences and street theatre, to spread awareness of this exploitative system. We also welcome press coverage. That, in fact, is the main reason why CLAC has a media committee and elected spokespeople to present our position and considerably facilitate the work of journalists, whose job entails presenting balanced and accurate coverage. Yet Mr. Mills, who apparently convinced himself that he was covering a cloak-and-dagger plotting session rather than a public General Assembly-open to all -would have none of this dreary stuff. The result? A hodge-podge of misquotations and a smear-job. More gravely, it is when journalists bend the guidelines of impartial and accurate reporting in the quest for sensationalism, that they inevitably end up inciting hysteria from the general population.
The context in which "Take the Capital" will occur leads us to view this tendency with alarm. Starting before the Summit of the Americas in April 2001, the RCMP and Surete du Quebec embarked on a smear campaign against the upcoming protest, warning of more "Anarchist" plots and conspiracies than you can shake a stick at. A credulous media faithfully reported the tales as gospel, contributing to the normalization of inexcusable police repression against the protestors in Quebec City-which drew widespread condemnation from human rights organizations that monitored the proceedings.
On April 26th 2002, Montreal Police quickly surrounded hundreds of people participating in public education workshops organized by CLAC, coinciding with the G-8 Labour Ministers meeting in Montreal. The police subsequently held the protesters for hours, arresting one at a time before escorting them onto buses. To quell objections against this callous treatment, the police pointed to a gun they "seized on the scene" and the reactions to police brutality from a few protesters. The media circulated these police claims, justifying the arrests. Well, it so happens, as the police belatedly later confirmed, that the gun was seized not from a protester but in fact from a suspect that an anti-gang police squad was pursuing.
The list is exhaustive. After a particularly brutal police repression during anti-G20 demonstrations in Ottawa last year, the police are now running through the formalities of listening to the grievances of brutalized protesters. "We're committed to building trust," said the unapologetic Deputy Chief Larry Hill. The police also promised to abstain from sending in K-9 units to control crowds-snarling dogs unleashed on teenagers don't make for very good P.R.
The truth is that the state is bent on criminalizing and marginalizing dissent against the corporate monopolies, the crackdowns on immigrants and refugees and state violence. This much is apparent from the treatment they are meting out to protesters. When we find ourselves in such a situation, the last thing we need is a press that normalizes state brutality by blaming the victims rather than attacking the restriction on rights and freedoms.
Much has been made of CLAC's endorsement of "diversity of tactics". Once again, we are afraid that we have to disappoint the "committed" police and journalists who dream of unfolding the plot of the century. Diversity of tactics does not mean we are going to come to Ottawa with a specific mandate to overturn your neighborhoods and uproot your lawns on June 26th and 27th. Our endorsement of "diversity of tactics" conveys our respect for people's capacity to organize and act autonomously without having to conform to white middle class norms and standards. Our endorsement rejects the hypocritical stance of acquiescing to the incineration of Afghani refugees (at the hands of "our valiant boys"), the continued expropriation of First Nations land and the oppression and humiliation of millions of Palestinians (by our good ally), while reducing ourselves to hysterics once we are faced with opposition against the rule of a select few over the world's resources and nations.
Samer Elatrash
Karina Chagnon
Members of CLAC
[The following is an op-ed submitted to the Citizen by Jeremy Bell, an organizer with Take the Capital, in response to the same Citizen article. As of Saturday, it has yet to be published ...]
Upon reading your recent article by Andrew Mills entitled "Militants aim to "Take the Capital"", it became clear to me why there is not always a healthy relationship between anti-capitalist organizers and large news distributors.
As someone who has been active in organizing the Take the Capital campaign here in Ottawa on the 26th and 27th of June, as well as the second North-East Regional Consulta that occurred here last weekend, the 25th and 26th of May, Andrew Mills article was enlightening and angering. It was enlightening because, up until reading his article, I was unaware that Take the Capital was organizing toward an armed and violent attack upon our nation's capital on the 26th and 27th of June; it was angering, of course, because such allegations are both unfounded and untrue.
Although Mills is correct in asserting that Take the Capital has been organized under a basis of unity that respects a diversity of tactics, his fascination with violence and secrecy is not grounded in Take the Capital's organizing initiatives. At last weekend's North-East Regional Consulta, a public forum organized by Take the Capital for the purposes of discussion and dialogue around the actions occurring in Ottawa at the end of June, over fifty representatives from communities across the North-East region met to do just that: publicly discuss and debate their intentions for June 26th and 27th. At no point during these two days of discussion did any organization claim to be organizing violent physical confrontations. Mills' allegations that the Consulta was "secret" and attended by "radical protest groups" using "forms of violent direct action" are opening slanderous and offensive to all of us that attended the Consulta.
As social justice organizers who have continually strived for transparency and end to violence in our public institutions, Mills' depiction of Take the Capital, the Anti- Capitalist Convergence, the Industrial Workers of the World, and other organizations, as bands of deceitful and violent hooligans is about as insulting and slanderous as a slap in the face. Mills' continually implicit claim that a "respect for a diversity of tactics" is synonymous with violence contradicts all our efforts to publicly show just the opposite. A respect for a diversity of tactics calls for a clear respect of all forms of resistance. As such we are unwilling to marginalize those that are placed in positions of violent uprising, such as the Zapitistas in Chiapas and Palestinians in occupied Palestine. That a respect for a diversity of tactics de facto means we must take on the same tactic of violent uprising is both ridiculous and false.
On the 27th of June, Take the Capital and various other organizations have called a "No One Is Illegal" march. That this march, which is overtly pro-immigrant and opposed to all forms of war and imperialism, would expect those that potentially fled the violent uprisings and wars of their home countries to participate in a violent uprising here in Ottawa is nonsense. A respect for a diversity of tactics has always meant a respect for various backgrounds and struggles. To read this as a call to violence fundamentally misses the point.
Take the Capital will continue to publicly organize for two days of resistance to capitalism and imperialism for the 26th and the 27th of June. We will continue to do this in a way that is supportive of all forms of struggle. As we have done in the past, we will continue to invite both the media and the public to dialogue and participate in these actions. We hope to minimize police violence and repression. We want to see our public institutions as both accountable and transparent. Our work is concerned with ending capitalism and imperialism, as well as those institutions like the G8 that continue to forward their agendas. Only with an end to capitalism and imperialism will we end what are potentially the most vicious forms of violence that face our planet today.
-- Jeremy Bell