First paragraph (Teaser):

Leading up to, during and after the Summit of the Americas protests in Quebec city many people spoke about the term direct action. To many activist this means many things, and unfortunately the corporate media associated direct action with violence when direct action encompasses a much broader spectrum of activists. I took the time to sit to talk with a few different activists who took part in the FTAA demos and are looking toward what direct action will mean in the future of activism.

Rest of the text:

Direct Action the myths the hopes and the dirty details.
Compiled by Stefan Christoff

Leading up to, during and after the Summit of the Americas protests in Quebec city many people spoke about the term direct action. To many activist this means many things, and unfortunately the corporate media associated direct action with violence when direct action encompasses a much broader spectrum of activists. I took the time to sit to talk with a few different activists who took part in the FTAA demos and are looking toward what direct action will mean in the future of activism.

Mike Gagne a trainer of direct action. An active member in preparations for the protests against the Summit of the Americas.

What is your view on direct action?

Any time that one acts to take on a problem directly rather than lobbying the government or waiting for someone else to do it. Any time that you directly confront something that you see as an evil or an injustice. Direct action is to either resists or directly create an alternative to these evils and injustices.

Direct Action holds a huge realm of possibility. In terms of resistance there is economic as well as political, there is boycotting, strikes, blockades, sit in's and occupations and these are all forms of resistance. As well as direct actions for creating alternatives such as gorilla gardening, creating a community garden or occupying a building and setting up a health clinic or a food bank.

In which ways are these two types of direct action necessary to further a movement?

It must be clear to us as well as to observers what we are against. Highlighting what we oppose as well as what we are trying to create. The simplest understanding of social change that I have and that I speak about is that social change is about taking energy out of what we don't like and putting energy into what we want to build more of. When people have this idea they can see that it is really necessary to engage in both forms of direct action. That it's not enough to try to build alternatives on the side well we let the machine run and business to go a usual we must stop the machine as well.
How do people in regular communities conceive direct action, and how is this conception influenced by main-stream media?

With in those that are involved in political struggles there is a solid understanding, but there are some limited ideas of the possibilities of direct action within the protest movement. When we look to the FTAA protest the first thing that comes to people minds is a blockade, and that is pretty much the only option. Many activists do see the realm of possibilities for direct actions and are putting their efforts into realizing these possibilities.

Do you often see individuals developing their own idea of what direct action means to them?

Many people don't have it in them to lock down and blockade a building for a couple of days. It is then in their interests to build a community health clinic or something of the sort. In terms of how the general public and the mass media portrays direct action, it seems that in many peoples minds direct action is associated with violence; unfortunately.

The term direct action has become worrisome for the general public because people tend to want business as usual; even when the public sees problems with the status quo often people are silent and accept the devil they know. Activists have become the devil which the public don't know, and when we move out of the realm of lobbying and talking to the realm of direct action this frightens people. Frightens people especially because these actions are mediated these situations are painted in a certain light, the mass media does represent certain financial interests, the financial elite.

The media have portrayed people who take part in direct action as something to the effect of the visagoths coming down to attack. This just not the case. We are looking toward a bright future though, we are doing a better job than ever in reaching out to people with direct action and this is important.
I look at non-violent revolution with a five phase approach. And direct action is a very important step in non-violent revolution. This idea for the five step approach is from George Leaky's Strategy for a living revolution.

The first phase is cultural preparation, which includes education, communicating with each other about our understandings of the world and well as the arts as means of communication and exploration.

The second is the realm of creating local alternatives where people start to live out a vision and we start to see that we can do things for ourselves maybe on a local level better than they are being done by multinational corporations. This can include food-cops, community gardens, housing collectives.

The third is direct action. Which has also been called creative conflict. I see direct action as a way of building the movement, because I don't see small scale direct action done by affinity groups are going to be enough to stop the machine. The point of the third faze is to get to the fourth faze.

The fourth faze which is the most powerful weapon that people have at their disposal which is mass non-cooperation. Power rests upon the consent of the governed. Any time that we as a society with draw our consent the machine falls. So we are looking to get to fourth faze soon to move to fifth at this point in time.

The fifth faze: mass alternatives. At this point we will have the experience of living democracy through the four other fazes, this is experience which I see many people getting right now.

It is possible for people to engage in both the creative direct actions and actions based on resistance. Direct action is extremely empowering, the big part of the problem is this lack of democracy and this lack of participation and lack of empowerment. People allowing things, injustices to move on without their consent, without their involvement. Direct action gives you a real taste for an empowering involvement. A taste of living for things which you believe in. Once you make a habit of involving yourself in direct action it is really difficult to go back to being passive.

Discussion on Direct Action with Jean-Francois Hamiltion active in the FTAA protests:

What is direct action to you?

Direct action is when someone puts their body on the line to prove a political point or to show or illustrate an issue. For me direct action is associated with politics in many ways. Direct action is necessary when the forces opposed to justice are so strong that you cannot make your voice herd. There is a point where people find it necessary to put their body on the line to prove these political points.

At times direct action becomes a necessity, however there must be a large build up toward the action. You must have mass mobilization, community support and education about the issues, you cannot live a life of only direct action. You must have the infostructure of popular support.

How do you think the main stream media influences peoples ideas about what direct action is?

The main stream media is never focused on the issues. There was a noticeable difference in the print media surrounding the issues of the FTAA and the protests against it. The issues made it into the papers more often than on to the television. Often there was horrible sensationalistic papers which highlighted awful front page covers talking about the "violent protesters" and the "uncivilized society" outside the fence. Most people when reading this coverage can tell the difference, for all the efforts that the media have focused on sensationalizing the issues I think the issues did get out there. There was talk about these issues months before the meeting actually happened, some of the important issues actually made it to the front pages of newspapers.

If there had not been that pressure of that day of direct action of April 20th, I don't think the issues would have received such large coverage. People talked about the fence and such but the day of action made the issues stand out and the FTAA and capitalism were discussed.

In this case the direct action heighten the awareness of the issues. There were only one or two days of action however there was a lot of work that went into the mobilizing for the action. This work that went into the direct action mobilization is what is much more valuable in the long term, even without the media coverage. The networking between communities is what is important.

What kind of effect do you believe the FTAA protests have had on public opinion?

The protests in Quebec city have had a positive effect, people see that it is possible to mobilize on a large scale on these issues of economic injustice and that there is a lot of support in the communities for a new kind of politics. The people who where living in Quebec city saw how people were organized and came to the protests with real ideas backing the actions. People were coming there informed they had strong opinions on corporate capitalism.

People felt that this is a big movement which is not just one individual criticizing the world but it is people coming together. Quebec city was the biggest anti-capitalist action in years in Canada.

An anti-capitalist action plays a large role it radicalizing the ideas around opposing free trade or against corporate globilization or against the FTAA. It not just fighting the FTAA that is important it is fighting the framework around these agreements like NAFTA, the MAI or the FTAA which is important. This framework, this system is much bigger than just one trade agreement. It is not enough to be just against the trade agreements. If you want to change the world and you do not want these trade agreements to appear than you must be critical of more than just the trade agreement. The opposition to the FTAA only highlights opposition on a much larger level. This opposition is always there within our communities, ourselves and throughout the world.

We are talking about struggles that last a life time. I am very hopeful. Since the WTO demos there has been a radicalization of politics and people are seeing that it is not just a fight against the FTAA or the WTO but a fight against something much bigger.

Interview with Elena Johnson individual involved with the FTAA demonstrations:

What is direct action to you?

I would define direct action as taking a strong stand, not merely protesting peacefully or protesting passively direct action is a matter of protesting more actively. Direct action plays an important role in raising awareness, because direct actions often get the media attention and raise an awareness of the cause. It is all of the ground work behind the direct actions themselves which is very important and a crucial part of what a direct action is. The ground work behind the FTAA protest, is what raised the awareness. The networking, the outreach, the media outreach the build up to the event raised the awareness.

Direct action is not only throwing things at the police. I would consider this part of direct action but I would also consider direct action marching with placard near the fence.

How do you feel the media influences the public perception of what direct action is?

What I learned after quebec was that the media is very confused as to what direct action is. It seemed that anyone who wore a gas mask was automatically part of the black block. The media perception is that direct action by definition entails violence. We must educate the media and the public. Often the media focused the violence of the protesters but often it was the police who were being violent.

Interview with Helen Hudson co-coordinator of QPIRG Concordia and active in the protests against the FTAA.

What is direct action to you?

Direct action is acting directly to make change. Weather that is by resisting a specific act which you disagree with say the FTAA, but direct action also includes community garden projects, community kitchens; anything which directly acts to bring about the changes in society which we are working for. As opposed to asking other people to make these changes for us, like lobbying or letter writing, direct action brings things into peoples own hands.

How do you think the media influences people perception of direct action?

The media tries to break things down into bite sized terms and you cannot do this without loosing a substantial part of the message. Even when the coverage of direct action has been positive it's always over simplified you miss the context of the action. This leaves a stereo type of people protesting for kicks as opposed to people taking active roles in their lives.

There is no substitute to engaging with people directly. Doing grass roots organizing with the people who we are trying to get the message to; going door to door starting collective kitchens. Looking what the needs are in a particular community and bring about the changes needed to fill those needs within your own community and those around you. The stereo types and barrier of what activism is are broken down and suddenly the message that the corporate media is putting out is not the only view of activist that people get.

The work that CASA did surrounding the summit site itself was very impressive. Walking around Quebec city talking with local people walking down the street talking the buss. In Quebec city there was not such a barrier between the activists and the local community.

I think that it is important to have both a presence at such meetings like the FTAA and within our communities. It is important to have these large convergence's, the numbers of people that you bring together and the connections that are made by people from different parts of the world. The ideas that are exchanged, in terms of protests but also in terms of community building. You really learn a lot at these convergence's.

Many of the people I met in quebec city were people who were organizing within their own communities and these connections are important. I am starting to see a cohesive movement, people working together who are very effective at organizing within their communities. Often you find many young activists jumping from summit to summit because it is exciting and liberating to take that kind of mass power into your own hands and feel like you are doing something and I think that this appeals to many people at this point.

Why the appeal?

The repression in this system is becoming more and more obvious and it think this is becoming clear. There is movement building that's going on even amongst people who are not involved within activist circles. The conditions of repression weather this is police brutality, economic repression the kind of neo-liberal cutback that are being made in counties of the south but also in countries like Canada by people like Harris, Klien. People are starting to feel the effects and that there is an alternative, despite the strong message that this is the only way that things could possible know.

How strong do you see the link between activists in the north and south?

There is a long way to go in terms of building solidarity between people in the north and south, in terms of building true solidarity but again I hope and believe that this solidarity is possible. The grass roots activists that did attend the peoples summit were able to strengthen the connections they already had and make new ones. These networks are being built, there is the upcoming peoples global action network gathering which is happening the weekend of June 1st. Things like this will start to build more of a base for true north south solidarity.

I hope for very sweeping changes within the next 20-30 years. So we might even begin to see some changes within our own life times.

Christina Xydous an individual involved in the Summit of the Americas protests in Quebec City during the month of April.

I will begin by discussing direct action in the protest environment, because that is what most people traditionally mean when they speak about direct action. They are talking about a form of civil protest. It usually refers to acts of civil disobedience, anything that involves people using their bodies in the protests. It could be something as simple as a march, a sit in, scaling fences and cutting them down.

Direct action in our communities can be understood in a far broader sense. Instead of relegating to government officials and functionaries anything that is of interest to the community, such as the management of people's affairs, services, and general needs have citizens themselves do it. Have people of the community manage their own affairs, taking back the power of their communities.

Do you think direct action plays a substantial role in changing the perceptions of the individuals involved in mass protest?

Absolutely. I don't think anybody can underestimate the real force for change that participating in direct action is. You will always hear people's stories. People who were sympathetic to leftist politics before they participated in actions and then went to the demos in Seattle, Washington, Quebec, et cetera, that's when the practical experience, and really seeing things through their own eyes as opposed to keeping things in the abstract realm of books, films has a profound impact on the way they see things. It becomes finally not so much an intellectual game but part of the reality.

The first time I ever went to a march, which is not shocking in terms of a direct action it is fairly well accepted. The act of walking in the street without a special permit from the police and understanding the break between rhetoric and reality. When you learn political science and you hear how people manage their affairs, people are the government, and all that rhetoric. This rhetoric, the nation is the people, really becomes a fact, or at least an inkling in something as simple as a march. In more "intense" forms of direct action it is really overwhelming. You really understand that its not just verbiage it is fact: people are the ruling force in any nation's state or community. At the end of the day, no pieces or paper, no rules, laws, can rule over or dominate the force of the people who have enacted them in the first place.

I think this played an important role in Quebec city. Many people's fear going in to Quebec city was that this debate between violence and non violence, property destruction or perfect Ghandian civil disobedience, would break the solidarity in the movement. People were worried that the rift between all the factions of the movement was going to be so broadened that Quebec city would be a bust. I saw the opposite happen. We can debate the details as to why this was the case. Quebec, as province, has historically been more accepting of direct action, through its particular history with regards to the separatist fight, the FLQ for instance. One factor is indisputable in the importance of how accepted direct action was in Quebec city, was the ground work done by many organizers out in Quebec city, with regards to connecting with the community on the ground. What made or broke the situation their was the fact that people worked for over six months, building ties with community organizations in Quebec city, especially around the areas were the protests were going to take place. The community was fully made aware and politicized through events so that there was not that distance between us and them. The residence did not feel like their city was invaded by a bunch of yahoos. They understood what the issues surrounding the protests were. I think that that was the most important thing in terms of the success of the direct action.

Do you think that the media attention was a success or a defeat of the cause?

I actually do think that it was a success over all. The state used a number of means with which to try to take out protester credibility. They did this by the entire shame known as the germinal arrest, done a few hours before the start of the protests against the summit of the Americas. How orchestrated that entire affair was, is really reminiscent of a police state. I saw the covers of Le Journal de Montreal and Le Journal de Quebec, and them along with the Globe and Mail, the National post and all the smaller newspapers did make an effort to portray the protesters as these rabbid little anarchists. But, with reference back to the community ground work that was laid out before, most Canadians do have a healthy dosage of cynicism with regards to the media. The only problem is, when media dominates discourse, when there is no other information that might come to challenge what is being told, people will have a tendency to believe it. But, here we have an example, at least form what I have seen in terms of relatives, friends, people who are directly connected to the activist community, the ground work that activist did by preparing people with regards to the protest. What is the Summit of the Americas? Was is the organization of American states? What exactly is the Free Trade Area of the Americas? All this work lead to a greater dose of cynicism when they were watching the news. I do not think that most Canadian citizens thought that the protesters were hooligans, or were just there to cause trouble. I think people, at the very least, understood that there were legitimate reason or concerns that these protesters were expressing.

The focuses of my activism is definitely going to be around local community organizing. I would hate to see this minor wave in leftist organizing to crash and burn because everyone is too concerned with summit hopping. I am not saying do not go to these major events, because they are very positive for moral. But do not stop there.

you can contact stefan christoff @ stef...@hotmail.com