Oaklander in Ottawa - reportback

Reportback from Ottawa
A rambling note written on the long flight home to Oaktown.

I’d been warned in advance from people on the G8 listserve, so for the New York / Canada border crossing I wore a pink dress, jewelry, red nailpolish, and flashed a printout from the website of a random Montreal hotel I’d found. I was detained for all of one minute. People I saw interviewed later, who admitted to being headed for the going to Ottawa to protest, were detained for up to four hours.

When I arrived I went straight to the University of Ottawa where the pre-event evening meetings were taking place, in English and French. Organizers talked to someone in Calgary on a cell phone and relayed situations back and forth to the crowd. Victory had already been won, they pointed out, as Ottawa was shutting down: the eternal flame was doused, McDeath’s boarded up, banks closed for the next two days, etc. Everyone cheered. They talked about medical and legal issues, gave out the latest cell phone numbers. Interestingly, the cops don’t allow people to make just any phone call, but give out a list of lawyers to choose to call. So this time they had already established connections with three of the lawyers on the list. Overall the meetings were very well structured, and the diversity of tactics issue – allowing different groups to pursue their own tactic – was still in debate, and continues to be. Everyone got fed halfway through the meeting.

I met up with the couple who had agreed to house me that night and we had a great time exchanging information and getting to know each other. We were up past midnight talking about politics and protests. They’d been to the recent one’s in Quebec city and talked about the unprepared people that got tear-gassed there. My stay with them was one of the best parts of the trip. They gave me the key to the apartment, fed me in the mornings, and affectionately referred to me as ‘our protester.’

The next day, just before the snake march, a huge wind began to blow and quickly it started to rain. I wondered about the effectiveness of tear gas in a thunderstorm, but as it turned out, no tear gas got thrown. Cops stood under trees along the perimeter of the park where everyone gathered as thunder and lightning started. The marchers were going in a circle in the park while waiting for everyone to arrive, chanting and waving flags. Just as the march started up, cops made a sudden and violent arrest of a CLAC member who wasn’t doing anything. Everyone was nervous as tons of black flags flew, drums were going, chants were started (‘no justice, no peace, fuck the police’) and almost half of the entire crowd had their faces covered by bandanas and goggles – you look around and you think: ‘this crowd has been abused!’ Pairs of elders (designated observers from a couple of the local churches) wearing purple shirts and carrying notepads ran around and shadowed the cops. Everyone had goggles, and I noticed that some cameramen had gasmasks. Even elderly people had makeshift protections, glasses with the sides taped up and uncool-looking bandanas dangling around their necks. Along the way, a small truck pulled up with organizers and medics inside handing out sandwiches and water.

No teargas, no tazers, no riot Robocops . . . just lots of police with pointed hats wrapped in plastic – of all things - like US National Park troopers, except for the small green bundles affixed to their thighs, mysterious packages that stuck out strangely. Cops often walked in clusters of 5 with a middle cop filming everyone. You’d be walking along and see them filming from inside the tinted windows of a van. They filmed everyone getting off the buses. We concluded that the tactic is just to film everyone constantly and go after them later. And why the low level of assault gear? We also concluded that Chretien, being the G8 host, had decided he couldn’t risk any out-of-control situations in Ottawa this time, and ordered the storm troopers to hide out until necessary. I had heard that they were tucked away at various locations, had vans and pallets of gear in the stadium, other gear in the tech school, were prepped to take in hundreds in makeshift cells, etc.

Overall the marches felt good, very free and empowering, something I’ve never felt in the US. In Canada no permits are required so the marches can go anywhere, and did. Cops appear to have to figure out where things are going and keep in touch with leaders, then get ahead and stop what traffic they can. Sometimes they can’t, and people just swarm in around cars, encouraging them to honk. Media vans and BMWs got spray-painted with dollar signs along the way. Paint bombs got thrown at a bank. An empty house got occupied by march members who broke in and painted ‘squat’ on the outside.

One of the highlights was walking up to the Parliament and filling the huge front lawn and steps with people, while a lone helicopter flew above. About five or six people got naked and smoked pot on the steps and cameras rushed in around them. Although that was great for a laugh, it was sad – the one person speaking through a bullhorn could not be understood, only a few banners were flown, and the main media message getting out was ‘get naked at the capital.’ The media, naturally, made good use of that to make us look stupid to the public.

Eventually we made it to ‘Fortress US Embassy,’ buttressed with about 4’ high concrete barricades, surrounded by a tall metal fence with sharp points on top, and the most number of cops of any of the buildings in the city. Gee, wonder why? One reporter who interviewed me asked why an American would come up to Ottawa for this and I said that I felt that Americans have more responsibility than anyone to be at these protests. It was a great feeling, then, to see a plume of smoke rise from the crowd, and hear the shouts and cheers as a Bush effigy wrapped in a flag got burned – almost made the whole trip worthwhile! But again, the opportunity for an excellent speech was lost and only the same chants were repeated again, albeit with more force than before. By that time we were joined by many red flags and some good socialist banners.

For once – a relief - no Socialist Worker papers were being hawked. But instead, covered in plastic and despite the pouring rain, a Marxist- something-or-other newspaper was making its way around the crowds all day.

Now that it was evening (I could barely walk anymore from the past four hours of constant motion through the streets, going from completely soaked and now dried in the sun) we moved on again. We went back to the university for another meeting but I had such a headache that I slowly made my way painfully home instead. That night the local cable station ran a one-hour show on the protests. It was pretty good, although anarchists spray painted the camera, cursed at him, and gave him the finger all along the way. He got to give a variety of interviews. By the end of the show the camera was so fogged up from the rain that it was a pretty bad picture. I saw other media who had the same problem.

The next morning the Ottawa Indymedia site was full of debate, and people had posted gory pictures of abused rectums which had to be taken down over and over. That day was the march titled ‘No One is Illegal,’– a wheelchair and stroller accessible march which was even scheduled to go through a mall so that the wheel-chair bound could use handicapped bathrooms. But typical to much of the events, despite the immense amount of planning and preparation, the course was immediately altered: As the crowd milled about Major’s Park while waiting for caravans to arrive, some young anarchist suddenly screamed at the top of her lungs, "They’re towing our van!" and ran from the park with her flag whipping behind her. The rest of her group followed running, flags in hand, and suddenly the entire crowd began to empty out of the park behind them as they ran down a street. People who were arranging banners laid out on the ground, stopped and stood watching in confusion. Organizers watched helplessly as the crowd flowed away. Cops spoke into their shoulder mics and turned and followed on their bikes. Pretty soon the crowd of several thousand packed into the street and surrounded the area, chanting and drumming, and the van (with sound system on top) was released.

By then it was time for me to leave to get the car back to New York in time, so I said good-bye to my host as the rain and thunder was starting again.

Arriving back in SF was sad if not nauseating – downtown, where I’d hoped to catch a glimpse of a protest I’d recalled was to happen on Market Street - instead was only packed to the brim with the usual tourists and shoppers pursuing their capitalist dreams . . . Stores and restaurants were frantically displaying their solidarity for the expected throngs of gay consumers by suddenly flying rainbow balloons and flags for the upcoming weekend of pride events – have they ever been there before, or will they be after? At the Oaktown Coliseum BART the masses poured forth to enter their favorite stadium in numbers activists only dream of. Gays (and straights) and sports fans and shoppers will gladly come out to play for their causes but where are they all when it’s time to reign in Bushladen? Where are they on election day? Headlines indicate that the church/ state division is going by the wayside. Private religious schools funded by the poor through a new voucher system. But remember we can’t let those religious extremists take over in Afganistan, better to kill them then let it spread. Here in CA, Davis isn’t paying welfare anymore now that Enron and Worldcom have sacked the state. Then we can fill our new underutilized prisons with those post-welfare desperados that may have a tendency to break the law. . .