RIPOSTE - G8 PROTESTS
'Smear job' incites community fears
BY Samer ELATRASH AND KARINA CHAGNON
In a "dilapidated concert hall on Montreal's East Side," wrote Citizen reporter Andrew Mills in the May 30 edition, militants "plotted" to bring violence into your neighbourhood sometime soon. That, at least, is how the Citizen presented a CLAC General Assembly held last week to mobilize for the "Take the Capital Campaign" against the G8 and in solidarity with First Nations, immigrants, refugees and liberation movements around the world.
The Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC) is an open group. We are candid in our opposition to capitalism and the G8's agenda of exploitation and plunder. Our group has always been public about this political position, and that is why we do workshops, public assemblies, conferences and street theatre to spread awareness of this exploitative system.
We also welcome press coverage. That is the main reason why CLAC has a media committee and elected spokespeople to present our position and facilitate the work of journalists, whose job entails presenting balanced and accurate coverage.
Yet Mr. Mills, who apparently convinced himself that he was covering a cloak-and-dagger plotting session, rather than a public meeting open to all, would have none of this dreary stuff. The result? A smear job. More gravely, it is when journalists bend the guidelines of impartial and accurate reporting in the quest for sensationalism that they inevitably end up inciting hysteria in the general population.
The context in which "Take the Capital" will occur leads us to view this tendency with alarm. Before the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in April 2001, the RCMP and Sūreté du Quebec embarked on a smear campaign against that protest, warning of more "anarchist" plots and conspiracies than you can shake a stick at.
A credulous media faithfully reported the tales as gospel, contributing to the normalization of inexcusable police repression against the protesters in Quebec City, which drew widespread condemnation from human rights organizations that monitored the proceedings.
On April 26 of this year, Montreal police quickly surrounded hundreds of people participating in public education workshops organized by CLAC, coinciding with the G8 labour ministers meeting in Montreal.
The police subsequently held the protesters for hours, arresting one at a time before escorting them onto buses. To quell objections against this callous treatment, the police pointed to a gun they "seized on the scene" and the reactions to police brutality from a few protesters. The media circulated these police claims, justifying the arrests.
It so happens, as the police belatedly confirmed, that the gun was in fact seized not from a protester but from a suspect that an anti-gang police squad was pursuing.
The list is exhaustive. After particularly brutal police repression during anti-G20 demonstrations in Ottawa last year, the police are now running through the formalities of listening to the grievances of brutalized protesters.
"We're committed to building trust," said the unapologetic Ottawa deputy chief, Larry Hill. The police also promised to abstain from sending in K-9 units to control crowds: Snarling dogs unleashed on teenagers don't make for very good public relations.
The truth is that the state is bent on criminalizing and marginalizing dissent against the corporate monopolies, the crackdowns on immigrants and refugees, and state violence. This is apparent from the treatment it is meting out to protesters.
When we find ourselves in such a situation, the last thing we need is a press that normalizes state brutality by blaming the victims rather than attacking the restriction on rights and freedoms.
Much has been made of CLAC's endorsement of "diversity of tactics." Once again, we are afraid that we have to disappoint the "committed" police and journalists who dream of unfolding the plot of the century
Diversity of tactics does not mean we are going to come to Ottawa with a specific mandate to overturn your neighbourhoods and uproot your lawns on June 26 and 27.
Our endorsement of "diversity of tactics" conveys our respect for people's capacity to organize and act autonomously without having to conform to white middle-class norms and standards.
Our endorsement rejects the hypocritical stance of acquiescing to the incineration of Afghan refugees (at the hands of "our valiant boys"), the continued expropriation of First Nations land and the oppression and humiliation of millions of Palestinians (by our good ally), while reducing ourselves to hysterics once we are faced with opposition against the rule of a select few over the world's resources and nations.
Samer Elatrash and Karina Chagnon are members of CLAC.