[asia-apec 674] Remember what APEC protests were all about

[Jaggi Singh]

>From the TORONTO STAR
September 17, 1998
www.thestar.com

Remember what APEC protests were all about
by Naomi Klein


We've been outraged by the pepper spray bath on the nightly news. We have
heard the Prime Minister deny he gave direct orders to the RCMP. What is
getting lost is the reason students were protesting in the first place. 
        
What with Reform Party members latching on to SprayPEC to get them through
those autumnal blahs, it seems like a good time for a refresher. 
        
The Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation summit held in Vancouver last
November was a forum for world leaders to meet with bankers, economists,
and corporate leaders. Like so much of the acronym alphabet soup which
makes up our de facto global government, APEC has resisted all calls for
it to meet the standards of transparency and accountability which
democratic countries demand of their national governments. 
        
It has also refused to couple its push for increased trade liberalization
with a strategy for dealing with the human and ecological impacts of that
trade. 
        
The effect of APEC policies on workers in Asian export sweatshops, on
aboriginal people living on resource-rich land, and on farmers up against
the agribusiness giants are simply not on the agenda. 
        
Why? Because APEC is not an alliance of nations but of denationalized
"economies." It attempts to seperate the flow of money from all other
aspects of what makes up a civil society -- from wealth distribution, to
labour, to human rights. 
        
Unencumbered by the cloying demands of their citizenry, politicians at
APEC are free to act according to the same rules as private corporations.
Just like on the stock market, economic growth -- not people's welfare --
is the only measure of success. 
        
Given all of this, when it was announced that Vancouver would be APEC's
next backdrop, there were deep divisions among the summit's opponents over
how best to rise to the occasion. Should those committed to labour, human
rights and environmental sustainability push for "social clauses" to be
tacked onto any APEC agreement?  Or should they dismiss such clauses as
"table scraps" and oppose APEC outright? 
        
The unions, the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic
Development and several other established groups opted for the first
approach and staged an official People's Summit. There were speeches by
activists from around the world, lively debates, daily press briefings,
meetings with Lloyd Axworthy, mock trials, and lots of legal-sounding
resolutions. 
        
It was so official, in fact, that you could almost have forgotten that
none of it mattered one iota to the politicians and business leaders
locked in their embarrassment-free enclave over at the real APEC Summit. 
        
Then there were the distinctly more confrontational activities of groups
called No to APEC! and APEC Alert! The activists involved, many from
grassroots immigrant women's groups and students from the University of
British Columbia, argued that APEC's opponents should expose the summit as
a glimpse at the global economy in fast-forward. It was too late to tinker
around the edges. 
        
Some, like student and community activist Jaggi Singh, claimed that to
engage with APEC at all was to legitimize the anti-democratic process
which had excluded them in the first place.  If you have not been invited
to a party which is redesigning your future, don't throw your own pretend
party like an obedient child -- crash the real one. When the bouncers toss
you out, well, they will have made your point for you. 
        
Which is precisely what ended up happening. 
        
Because the students were willing to put themselves on the line to force a
head-on collision between two radically different visions of
globalization, the rest of us got a close-up shot of the ugly face of
APEC's brand of global governance. When the RCMP swooped down on the
protesters, they gave Canadians images we would never have seen if APEC's
critics had restricted their activities to carpeted hotel conference rooms
and polite marches. We saw citizens transformed into outsiders looking in,
and into trespassers dragged out. 
        
As the RCMP Public Complaints Commission examines whether or not students'
civil liberties were violated and by whom, let's remember that the debate
about who would be heard at APEC began long before the police started
ripping down signs and wielding their canisters of pepper spay with
Shwartzenegger-like zeal. 
        
For its opponents, APEC was always about being shut up and shut out. The
protesters were relegated to having to scrawl their concerns on signs from
the wrong side of a security zone precisely because those concerns had no
place on the side of the fence that actually mattered. 

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