FW: Down with the FTAA (con't.)

[Barry Stoller <bstoller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Montreal Gazette. 22 April 2001. Frustration aimed at chain-link fence.
Excerpts.


Passive activists abandoned peaceful protest to join others in direct
confrontation yesterday, hurling Molotov cocktails and slinging marbles
at police in a clash that shows no signs of subsiding.

For many, the only way to get the attention of officials negotiating a
free- trade agreement at the Summit of the Americas was to attack the
security perimeter - the same chain-link fence they breached the day
before, the fence that has come to symbolize the neglect people feel
from their elected leaders.

Radical protesters tore down the security perimeter briefly in at least
two areas yesterday, then retreated. The hopes and voices of many others
collapsed in waves of tear gas, as well-organized police pushed back
activists.

This city's streets are bleeding noxious fumes. Almost everywhere, one
feels the gas burning lungs and skin. In certain quarters, it has seeped
into homes and hotels. It is the police tactic of choice to contain
disaffection.

Two police observers from Seattle, the site of the 1999 World Trade
Organization meetings, said they were amazed at the police efficiency
and control.

...[T]he area surrounding Place D'Youville was the heart of discontent.
For most of the day yesterday, it was an unremitting clash zone between
police and protesters.

Helicopters whirred, police dogs barked incessantly and water cannon
after cannon advanced on the barriers. Police fired rubber bullets and
tear gas at advancing protesters. The demonstrators shrieked and
hollered and came back for more.

... The fights escalated with protesters lighting fires and lobbing
flares, Molotov cocktails, bottles and smoking tear-gas canisters over
the barrier at riot police. Thousands amassed on the exit ramp to the
Dufferin-Montmorency Highway, just out of reach of the billowing tear
gas, but in full view of the Hilton Hotel and the convention centre
where delegates to the summit shuttled uninterrupted.

The frustration did not abate overnight.

Even before the peaceful marches began in the lower city, clusters of
activists up the hill shook the fence again, bolstered by their security
perimeter break-in at the same spot Friday.

Police blasted back shouting protesters, many of them Black Bloc cell
members who engage in selective violent protest, with high-powered water
cannons.

Activists went down like shooting ducks. But after round upon round of
alternating tear gas and water cannons coming at them at point blank
range, they got up - again and again.

The protesters seemed to revel in the dousing, taunting police to keep
on spraying. One protester even continued playing the bagpipes as the
water drenched him.

Riot-squad officers continued using plastic bullets yesterday to quell
the protesters, often firing them at individual demonstrators at
point-blank range.

And for the first time this weekend, police used pepper-spray on
protesters. One Surete du Quebec officer ran up to a line of activists
standing right up against the fence and sprayed them all in the face
before retreating.

The competing drum beats urging the activists on were deafening.

One protester would climb halfway up the chain link, cling to the wall
and face the water head on, one second, two seconds, three seconds,
before falling back from the pressure of the water bursting out the
police hose only 2 metres away.

Activists hurled toilet paper, sticks, hub caps, a box of doughnuts,
feather dusters, glass bottles filled with wine, firecrackers and a
steady stream of tear-gas canisters that only moments before police had
fired over the fence.

... Confrontations for much of the afternoon yesterday came in spurts.

At the site of the first perimeter breach, the conflict quickly
reignited when a few hundred protesters, who had dispersed, came back.

One black-clad protester launched a large chunk of concrete that hit an
SQ riot-squad officer in the head, knocking him flat on his back.

That attack launched a massive round of tear gas spraying from the
police, sending protesters and onlookers scrambling away teary-eyed and
coughing.

...[T]he police reaction seemed to harden protesters' views of the
repressive measures they claim are being taken to shut them out of the
summit.

Many protesters complained that police were tear-gassing
indiscriminately, failing to differentiate between those who just wanted
to be present at the wall and those bent on destroying it.

"One guy gave a rose to the police," said Laurie Fourneau of Montreal,
as she rinsed her red eyes in an alley not far from the front line. "No
one here (now) is attacking the police, but they're attacking us."

[N.B.] Everywhere there were protesters it seemed, there were residents
willing to help them. At one corner in the Lower Town, a bar-owner ran a
hose for appreciative protesters as they passed by on their way to
another demonstration. They rinsed their handkerchiefs, washed their
faces and filled up water bottles as the man held the hose.

"This is my form of protest," the man said, as tear gas filled the
street and the his eyes started to water. One protester poured vinegar
on the man's sweatshirt so he could hold it over his face.


...........................

Barry Stoller

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/downwithcapitalism

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