After getting out of jail for my attendance at the Montreal WTO protests and chugging a cold one, I snickered at the press coverage of the Monday protest. Both the media and the security forces condemned our so-called riot, while simultaneously coveting it like a prurient preacher ogling a stripper.
Shocked, shocked, shocked they were when windows at a Canadian military recruitment centre, Gap and Burger King were broken. Such lurid acts generated extensive images of revealing photos and righteous commentary. Ironically, this coverage severely damages public support for globalization. It's hard to sell the WTO, NAFTA, the World Bank, etc. when riot-cops, tear gas, prisoners, and broken glass sully the picture.
Alongside the police barricades are media barricades shutting out any serious discourse opposing the secret capitalist globalization meetings shaping our future. Every "acceptable" and peaceful tactic the busy anti-globalization movement uses has been largely fenced-off from the public by the corporate media. When we do what the press admonishes us to do, we're ignored. When we do what they criticize us for, we get enormous coverage. They love to hate us.
Monday's march with a few broken windows got far more media attention than Sunday's larger and peaceful No One Is Illegal demonstration - this despite the participation of more than 80 organizations demonstrating solidarity with immigrants and refugees who face the human consequences of globalization. The Gazette's headline stated the Tuesday protests, which also didn't break windows, were a "fizzle." Wednesday's peaceful public teach-in was barely mentioned, but later when one of us kicked a trash can and was arrested at the Palais de Justice - that was big news.
Many of those arrested at these protests are articulate people - activists, academics, nerds and policy wonks - who are mighty frustrated by the gimmicks needed to generate media coverage of our positions.
I previously belonged to a medicare advocacy group, Solidarité Santé. Along with student activists and a large Canadian NGO, we failed to spark any press coverage about how then finance minister Paul Martin broke the Canadian medicare system by stripping $5 billion from health and education after receiving International Monetary Fund advice. Our press releases and peaceful protest probably were too normal and boring to get media attention. In hindsight, maybe we should have smashed windows as symbolic of Martin smashing public health care.
The police also act suspiciously. They assisted the window breaking by pushing Monday's WTO protesters onto commercial Ste. Catherine St. Their deposition against those arrested stated that police were near the stores when a half dozen people shattered windows, yet not one moved to prevent any damage. The large mobile riot squad was kept away for political reasons to allow the property destruction to characterize the protests and the protesters. (This is not unusual. Police videos of the G20 protest in 2000 showed undercover agents throwing objects at the riot squad.)
Instead, the police sent out specialized "snatch squads" and arrested two medics when they were peeing in the wooded area of a park, and activist Jaggi Singh at a distant press conference. Later, they arrested a large group of us for "unlawful assembly" at a teach-in in a vacant lot.
What happened over the last few days is typical of the bizarre relationship of the players to each other.
Hidden in secret meetings behind tremendous security measures, the capitalists have succeeded in furthering their global takeover and stomping on our social rights. Yet the confrontational protests are also smokescreens hiding the failings of these globalization meetings to commit the agenda to poor nations, and that the U.S. is expanding its empire by manipulating the trade agreements
The state security forces have benefited most. It is not just because they opportunistically exaggerate the "violent" threat of the protesters to swell their budgets. The trade agreements exempt the military industries from foreign competition rules. This encourages enormous government military subsidies while governments are prevented from subsidizing agriculture, public services and commercial manufacturing.
Finally there is the large anti- corporate globalization movement. While we don't speak with one voice, we are articulate and our resistance is growing.
Here is where it gets surreal and ironic.
I feel we are trapped in the Jerry Springer show. Clearly, our press relations stink as we rarely can get the media to print two coherent paragraphs of why we oppose corporate globalization and the alternatives we offer. Just as clearly, the hostile press and police guarantee that our most controversial tactics succeed in shattering the popularity of these corporate globalization talks and organizations.
Scott Weinstein, a nurse, was one of the 248 people arrested during the Montreal WTO protests, including 22 fellow medics and a doctor.
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