Ridiculous Resistance: Did G8 in Canada Work?

As the anti-G8 protests in North America come to a close, the stunning difference between them and anti-G8 protests in Genoa last year are apparent. On one side, a level of violence unprecedented in recent 'Global North' anti-globalization protets, and on the other side a festival of passivity and photo-ops.

The protests in both Ottawa and Calgary were uneventful. While major media in Canada had built up a level of fear and an almost sexual strange obsession with the anti-globalization protesters, and the police spending ridiculous sums of cash for the latest in crowd control, it appeared as if at least *something* was going to happen.

What happened in Ottawa was far from the fiery tragedy of Genoa, but a juevenile farce that the global tyrants at Kannaskis no doubt chuckled at while sipping from their wine-glasses. With absolutely almost no police overseers, the demonstrators successfully marched the wrong way up a few one-way streets for a few hours, irritating motorists, watched and clapped as a few hardy souls opened a squat, and then converged on the 'Capital' for a giant session of taking clothes off and take photos to show their friends at home. The few acts of militancy, like paintballs and smashing of a police car window, were met with confused looks and even jeers from the demonstrators themselves. The 'Black Dot' was so small it barely escaped having the half-a-dozen police walk right behind them. Indeed, the sight of the capital was the most surreal - as over a thousand protesters climbed onto the lawn of the Capital to giggle and cheer as only forty cops looked on them with expressions of boredom. Despite the fact the crowd, had it been more militant, had the perfect opportunity to dispose of the fence and walk into the Capital themselves and even torch it had they wished, they did not. Instead, everyone waited to the film ran out and slowly rambled home.

Many protesters I believe were hoping for a repeat of the stunning anti-FTAA protests in Quebec City last spring. While these protests were well-organized by CLAC, people mistakenly took CLACs`s analytical 'diversity of tactics' approach to be some type of mantra that would guarantee success. While CLAC has been successful at many things on no small scale, such as spreading an awareness of anarchism among a general population (making anarchism in Canada at least resemble a popular movement, which is far different that the more ecological, subcultural and guerilla based anarchism of the U.S.A.) and engaging in great local actions, their diversity of tactics approach simply solves the problem of the ridiculous 'good protester/bad protester dynamic', a dynamic that in the States at protests such as N30 or A16 caused giant rifts and infighting among demontrators. However, CLAC is a small organizing team - and not street warriors. The 'punch' that led to the uprising in Quebec City was the potent mixture of CLAC's organizing, the Black Bloc (with a fair amount of imports from the States) and the French-Canadian Quebec locals wanting that damn fence and those Anglo cops of their town. So, with a local populace that had no reason to revolt and a lack of representation by militant anarchists, *ofcourse* nothing was going to happen. Successful mass-demos work like alchemy, because of a mixture of elements involved. Any protest like the G8 ones in Canada composed purely of self-professed activists are doomed to fail.

The movement in North America has stopped moving. It seems drawn towards the ineffective organizing of the peaceniks and commies like ANSWER that relies on getting hordes of people to a place to do absolutely nothing but peacefully chant and walk around aimlessly, and on the other side seems to be thinking that the 'real battle' has to happen elsewhere, mostly Palestine. All of these ignore the central tenet of the success of the anti-globalization movement: that direct action on the homefront of the 'Global North' can interfere with mechanisms of global capital. Direct action on Kannaskis would have been blockading the highways - not driving at the lowest legal speed limit, as was suggested by anti-G8 organizers. Direct action in Ottawa would have been seizing The Capital instead of merely posing for photos. Direct action is not unpermitted marching or 'snake marches', which are at annoying at best and ineffective at worst.
So as people in the movement begin to invest in infrastructure, we also now face the threat of everyone moving off to a neo-hippie commune and the resistance in the streets disappearing entirely.

The whole idea of 'solidarity actions' needs to be put to a badly needed rest - especially when the enemy is actually meeting in your country! Local organizing, such as the direct action anti-poverty groups OCAP and OCAT in Canada can and does work if a directly confrontational manner. Recently OCAP even got the Canadian government to stop deportations! Now people feel that 'summit-hopping' is just last-years's fashion, and a tasteless one at that. This ignores the fact that in North America we lack the cohesion and the militancy to put on decent solidarity actions. We only divide our numbers, militancy, and organizational abilities so that instead of one confrontational demonstration that strikes fear into the heart of capitalism, we only get laughable marches and chants that repeat the worst of the anti-globalization movement. Instead of inspiring new possibilities, these actions spread our forces so thin we lose all morale. With a continual loss of morale, such as the anti-WEF protests and now the anti-G8 protests cause, eventually the anti-globalization movement will burn out not with a bang but with a whimper. In the face of the fascist police state being established over the entire world in wake of the 'war on terrorism' and the increasingly desperate situation in the Global South, continuing down this road of ridiculous resistance makes passive anti-globalization demonstrators in the U.S. and Canada traitors to our planet and the rest of humanity. Only effective resistance in the Global North can possibly enable the global capitalist system to be overturned. While some resistance is better than none, those who are being murdered by the ongoing machinations of capitalism would find this a faint cause for hope.