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Indybay Feature

To SF from Ottawa

by IMC SF Americanadian (salem [at] indymedia.org)
Some reflections from a Californian in Canada to protest the G-8
So would a few thousand people march two days in a row in torrential downpours of rain for the sake of freedom of expression and for autonomous living? Well, yes if they are the hearty folks of Canada where a left is not a bygone idea but a working reality. While the majority of NGO type activists groups wandered around Calgary the more militant northern comrades gathered in Ottawa to "Take the Capital". Some of the players may seem foriegn to the average Bay Area seasoned veteran of the street actions of the past few years. Such names as the Ontario Coalition against the Tories, or le CLAC, or Ontario Coalition Against Poverty are not readily available on the local activists lips in the intellectual cafes of the Mission district or pot lit rooms in sunny Berkeley. The Canadians have their own way of doing things, although subtley different from their southern cousins in Amerika, here one works in Coalitions, not Coalitions comprised of softy lefties that are just trying to remember how to con their way through additional funding via the paper trail of grant proposals, rather Coalitions of other radicals that are seeking to unite their causes in a single confrontational, although not violent, body of resistance. The Quebecker Communists with their emblazoned red flags with yellow CP letters, the red and black of the Anarcho-Communists, the Green flags of the Eco-Anarchists, and here I introduce my new phrase Eco-Syndicalist-- one that believes humans should be organized along anarcho-communists structures via deep ecological values. They all will take part in meetings on equal footing and will form a consensus based on the principles of radical resistance to the wanton destruction that modern life has become in the face of more harmonic means of living.
So with that in mind it is no suprise that 4000+ radicals lined the streets of their capital and snake marched their boogying butts off as the police played hands off and the cameras of the corporates clicked to the jubilantly moist hands of the radical resisters. So what, big deal, that's no Seattle, that ain't no Quebec city where one breathed CS residue more readily then polluted Quebecker air, blame the Yanks, these protests are unimportant in my craftier then-thou-world view of crusty kalifornia counter culturing. Well, maybe but nothing has been happening in kalifornia of note lately so what is it about these Kanatians that allows them to get a few thousand radicals marching through the streets festively and without incident? Seems organizing and coaliton building would be the key, but that is just a limited observation. If I regularly see over 40 people at boring OCAP planning meetings in a city the size of San Francisco but with a radical population one-tenth why can't we see a similiar number turn out for something as simple as a Food Not Bombs meeting, yes they are still at it call them at 415.675.9928. What would it take to duplicate these efforts in are wonderfully overbooked franciskan scene of overly wrought art-for-art's sake, perhaps no more then a little wave to each other and a whisper as you pass each other on the picket line, like they say at OCAP: "fight to win!".

And someone schedules a room.
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