Numbers count, say protest groups preparing for the WTO ministers meeting in Montreal.
The last-minute bailout by the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel, which was to have housed the three-day event, "was clearly a reaction to our mobilization," Mélanie Sylvestre, spokesperson for the Popular Mobilization Against the WTO, said yesterday.
Even if the Ministerial meeting goes ahead, the protesters are claiming victory.
"We have made people more aware, and that is a form of disrupting the meetings," she said.
The protest movement has people talking about such issues as global markets and social conditions, said Francis Dupuis-Déri, a political science researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"The activists have created political debate, and that is a good thing - that is the success of the movement," said Dupuis-Déri, author of Les Black Blocs, a look at protest groups that target multinational corporations.
The protest coalition gathering in Montreal is a who's who of activists, student associations and community organizations: the Action Committee for Non-Status Algerians, Iraq Solidarity Project, Native Youth Movement, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, Quebec Women's Federation, Comité des Sans-Emplois, among others.
"It shows solidarity exists between groups that are fighting for human dignity and an end to repression," mobilization spokesperson Patrick Cadorette said.
But is anyone listening?
"It's often a criticism thrown at the mobilization groups that they represent too large a melting pot," Dupuis-Déri said.
If these groups have become larger and more vocal, he added, governments have themselves to blame.
"In the 1990s, they always faulted globalization for cuts in budgets. They would say, 'We live in a globalized world, and there's nothing we can do.' "
The argument backfired, as activists for a wide spectrum of causes discovered they had a common enemy, he said.
But the marches and demonstrations will probably have little impact on the WTO, he said.
"To be honest, it doesn't change the (trade) negotiations. It doesn't even slow them down."
The protest workshops, Web sites and day-to-day work by activists in the community create a greater impact, Dupuis-Déri said. "That's probably more important than the demonstrations, even though it's less glamorous."
acarroll@thegazette.canwest.com
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