Groups plan mass protests for Ottawa to mark G8 summit

BY Andrew Mills

Ottawa Citizen May 30, 2002 p.B1

MONTREAL - Beneath the stark and buzzing fluorescent lights of L'X, a dilapidated concert hall on Montreal's east side, a group of 50 militant radicals planned and plotted for "physical confrontation" in Ottawa next month.

Late into Tuesday night, they spoke of snake marches and blockades along roads leading into Ottawa in the days ahead of the June 26-27 G8 summit in Kananaskis, Alta.

They spoke of using a "diversity of tactics" - including possible "violence" - to deliver their message. They earmarked corporate and political targets. They spoke of "solidarity" and the "armed tactics" of their comrades in uprisings as far away as Mexico.

Although the G8 summit is taking place in a remote area of Alberta, about 35 radical groups from Eastern Canada and the northeastern U.S. are mobilizing for mass protest in Ottawa.

They've dubbed it "Take the Capital."

Representatives of each group secretly met in Ottawa last weekend for a "consulta," a planning meeting where details of the mass protest were hammered out. Throughout this week, those representatives are divulging the details to interested activists; the Citizen sat in on one of those meetings Tuesday night at L'X Concert Hall.

The Anti-Capitalist Convergence holds a general assembly here every other week to discuss its militant and confrontational struggle against capitalism, neo-liberalism, patriarchy, racism and homophobia. This week, plans for the upcoming Ottawa protests are at the top of everyone's mind. An Anti-Capitalist Convergence member known as Tanya (members use first names only) attended the weekend "con sulta" and made her report to the assembled crowd.

"There are going to be two snake marches that will try to hit political symbols as well as symbols of capitalism and the G8," she said in French. Each snake march is expected to be a random march of protesters through downtown streets.

According to Tanya's presentation, both marches will take place on June 26, one beginning at noon and the other at 1 p.m., each originating from a different, as-yet-unnamed downtown park. Snake marches were staged at the G2o Summit in Ottawa last November and at a Toronto anti-capitalist protest last October. Both marches snarled traffic and some protesters damaged property.

The snake marches will come m the wake of what will likely be traffic headaches between June 23 and 25, when activists plan to mount a blockade of routes leading to Ottawa. A Montreal group calling itself the "Bikesheviks" is planning to cycle slowly from Montreal to Ottawa in the name of "raging in angry protest against those who would coerce us to drive cars, eat genetically modified corn flakes and wear clothes made by oppressed workers." Another group plans to use vehicles to blockade Highway 401 on the afternoon of June 25.

The 35 radical protest groups planning to make the trip to Ottawa from as far away as New York and London, Ont., use a range of tactics, from public education campaigns to forms of violent direct action.

Phillippe, another member of Anti-Capitalist Convergence, told newcomers Tuesday "We have to act in solidarity with our comrades all over the world and many of them have to use armed tactics and violence." He was referring international groups that ha mounted armed uprisings, such as the Zapatista Army National Liberation, which led an armed occupation in Chiapas, Mexico, in 1994.

The activists at the meeting were not encouraged to arm themselves for the Ottawa protests. "We haven't got t that point - yet," an Anti-Ca1 italist Convergence membe said.

Some protesters have planned an action in which members of the Industrial Workers of the World, an inter national union that endorses "revolutionary industria] unionism and the abolition of capitalist wage slavery," plan to visit Starbucks Coffee outlets across Ottawa where they will "kick the yuppie patrons out and chat with the staff about unionizing."

Other planned actions on June 26 include a 4 p.m. march on the U.S. Embassy by "an anti-Imperialist Coalition" and what is being called a "knit-in" by the Ottawa division of the World March of Women in front of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, where protesters plan to knit what they call "a social safety net."

In addition to the actions discussed at the Anti-Capitalist Convergence meeting, individual protest groups are expected to plan actions of their own. For now, these details remain unconfirmed or unpublicized, as protesters try to keep police off-balance.

Organizers are setting up June 26 to be potentially the more volatile of the two protest days. "On the 27th, we will be militant, but not physically confrontational. We won't be doing the kind of things we'll do on the 26th," said Jaggi Singh, a veteran of many protests.

Mr. Singh told the Anti-Capitalist Convergence meeting that on June 27, an "anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist" demonstration march is designed to be "non-confronta - tional," in order to include a number of non-radical groups such as trade unions and student groups.

The route of this march is not yet clear, although it is expected to target the israeli Embassy. Mr. Singh told the meeting the Anti-Capitalist Convergence would not tolerate any anti-Semitism. "We're against the actions of Israel, not the actions of Jews," he said.

Mr. Singh and Take the Capital organizers could not be reached yesterday in order to further discuss their protest plans.

Ottawa police have been monitoring the plans' although police spokeswoman Staff Sgt. Monique Ackland says they did not send an officer to last weekend's consulta.

Police have yet to release any information about the protests to Ottawa residents because, Sgt. Ackland says, plans hatched last weekend could change between now and the end of June.

"The closer it comes to the date, the firmer these details will be," says Sgt. Ackland, and then the police will release any details they know

Another planning consulta has been scheduled for protest groups in the days leading up to the protests.