This is what Vaughn Barnett wrote while in his cell from Bordeau Prison in Montreal for prisoner justice day about his tactics (which kept him in prison for 18 days after demonstrating against the WTO meetings in Montreal) and about the tactics of a few others (which might have gotten him in jail in the first place)

10 August, 2003

Établissement de Détention de Montréal

Dear Comrades,

As I write this, I am being held as a political prisoner following a demonstration in Montréal against meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO). I am in prison partly as a consequence of my own tactics, which some fellow activists have had difficulty understanding, and partly as a consequence of others’ tactics, which I in turn have had difficulty understanding. Therefore, I have decided to write this letter form prison, to my comrades, near and far, as a contribution to the dialogue about tactics and what it means to respect a diversity of tactics.

The tactics of others to which I refer are acts of violence and destruction of corporate property, which I witnessed near the hotel where the WTO meetings were being held in Montréal. Since tactics of this kind have frequently been criticized, I will only briefly list my reservations concerning them:

1) they are unlawful, and hence incompatible with a consistent, principled apparition to the lawlessness of the capitalist system;
2) they typically cause physical, mental, or economic harm to innocent people (such as bystanders, residents, consumers, workers, or small business people);
3) they tend to alienate the public, whose support is vital to any cause which honestly seeks to be a people’s movement;
4) They are generally inconsequential in preventing capitalist oppression, and instead provide a pretext for further social control;
5) They thus play into the hands of our adversaries, making those who resort to such tactics either willing or unwitting agents of state repression (and indeed, we should not rule out the possibility that , on occasion, they are wed by the police specifically for that very purpose).

Under rare circumstance, where there factors do not apply, violent or destructive tactics may be morally and legally justifiable as the means of preventing even greater violence or destruction, such as to ensure the success of a democratic revolution, or to sabotage military operations designed for the commission of war crimes. Otherwise, to be justifiable, popular resistance should be peaceful and non-violent, for the reasons just given, as well as for the more basic reason of mutual respect, which means trying to treat even our adversaries as we would desire to be treated ourselves.

For the same reasons, radical protest must always be lawful, not in the sense of accommodating officials’ distorted interpretations of the law, but in the sense of appealing to fundamental legal principles. Radicalism, as the word itself suggests, is a matter of going to the roots of the system, finding the sources of its legitimacy amidst its many corruptions, and thus asserting our popular sovereignty, to enforce our own real law with its premises of justice and the common good. Any cause fundamentally important enough to call for direct action of civil disobedience is also important enough that, paradoxically, a legal justification can, and should, be found for its ostensibly illegal tactics to give them the advantage of legitimacy over the truly unlawful practices being challenged.

If any comrades reading this letter would reject my pleas for lawful and peaceful protest, in favour of tactics such as the window smashing which I witnessed, I would urge you to consider what it means to respect a diversity of tactics. Since respect means trying to treat even our adversaries as ourselves, all the more should we be trying to treat each other that way as comrades and not be imposing on one another our own tactics or the state repression which they might invite. Respect for a diversity of tactics, at a minimum, means saving particularly destructive or provocative tactics to occasions when they do not implicate innocent protesters in a riot or unlawful assembly, as happened here at the WTO demonstration. Assuming that the window smashers were not police agents (intentionally), I would like to thing that, upon reflection, they would regret having played into the hands of our adversaries, by giving the police a pretext for arresting and jailing over a hundred innocent people, some of whom were not even protesters.

Being one of the innocent protesters arrested, I have refused payment of bail for my freedom, on the same basis that I would refuse to buy back something which has been stolen from me. To those of my comrades who have trouble understanding this approach, as I have trouble understanding the tactics of others which brought me into prison, I would say the following:

First, my tactics, as far as I am aware, have not imposed an undue burden on others, at least not as much of a burden as I have been prepared to accept myself. Secondly, in terms of the history of activism, my tactics are nothing extraordinary, but merely a variation of the long recognized method of refusing to legitimize or cooperate with the fundamentally unjust and unlawful institutions, even if it means spending time in prison.

With respect for others’ decision to accept the bail for their own valid reasons (as I seriously considered doing myself), and with appreciation for my supporters on the outside (including Daron Letts, who tried to remain behind with me), I have determined that, for me, signing the bail conditions would be like signing away my right to protest. Instead, I have defiantly chosen to continue exercising that right from inside these prison walls, to draw much needed attention to the state’s policy of subverting democracy by criminalizing dissent.

From both my own experience and the accounts of others, I can say without hesitation that, in this supposedly free country of ours, innocent people are being subjected to police violence, false arrests, arbitrary detention, degrading or inhumane treatment, sham bail hearings, and unconstitutional conditions of release – all to deter legitimate exercise of civil liberties in protest against even greater human rights violations abroad, through organizations such as the WTO.

So like others before me, I am spending time as a political prisoner in the hope of arousing a few consciences, if not of our adversaries, then at least of members of the uninformed or undecided majority, as well as members of our movement. To the latter group, I would like to add that you could show me no greater support now than to circulate this letter widely, and to begin building a concencus within the movement that destructive or provocative tactics which put innocent people at risk of arrest are inconsistent with the solidarity to which we must always be committed.

If my letter can help prevent the repetition of what has just happened to over a hundred of us as the result of such tactics, my time in prison will be worth it to me. Moreover, if everyone who shares this commitment about tactics will pass it on to others, we will not only gain the strength of greater solidarity, but by publicly distancing ourselves from the above tactics, as a concerted people’s movement, we will desempower the plants among us, and deligitimize the mass arrests of our members, thus depriving the state of one of its most effective strategies for the criminalization of legitimate dissent.

In unity,

Vaughn Barnett

submitters addendum:
Vaughn Barnett was released at about 8pm on Friday August 15, 18 days after his arrest and hours after wining his superior court hearing, where the presiding judge stated that the municipal court proceedings for Vaughn’s bail were wrought with illegalities. The judge also implied that if all the 240 arrested applied the same strategy that Vaughn used (to request proof of his guilt which would necessitate his bail conditions and to call his own witnesses to prove his wrongful arrest) the court would clog and cease to function in an instant.