A short article questioning the manner in which the protests in Quebec city were presented by the media. Further, a call for personal and political reflection.

An unsuccessful attempt was made to post an earlier version of this article. The result was garbled text.

Some Reflections on the Provocation in Quebec. by M.T. Adam

A disproportionate amount of the mainstream media coverage of the protests surrounding the Quebec summit on the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas focused on the confrontations between demonstrators and the police - rather than the actual reasons for the protestors' anger. This coverage tended to conform with the official line that the clashes were provoked by the demonstrators. Having witnessed many of these clashes myself I know how difficult it is to trace the sequence of events. Who provoked whom? But certainly this description does not tally with what I personally witnessed on at least three occasions when tear-gas was fired upon groups of peaceful individuals well back from police lines. My impression was that the police had strategic reasons in mind in taking such steps to temporarily escalate the violence.

What is objectionable here is not merely the one-sided presentation of the actual encounters, but also, and much more importantly, the superficiality of the analysis. Even though it is also true that on particular occasions demonstrators initiated confrontations with the police, few in the mainstream media seem to have locked on to the fact that it was the very presence of the wall itself that constituted the main provocation in Quebec City. The wall provoked anger, fear and disillusionment not only among those who were brave enough to directly challenge its presence, but also among vast numbers of ordinary citizens. This is why so many Canadians lent their moral support to the protest, and why so many actually made the journey to Quebec to express their concern (a veritable multitude, greatly underreported).

It has been said that construction of the wall was necessary for security reasons. But this just begs the question. We must ask why such an extreme security measure was deemed necessary, so necessary that the government would choose, in implementing it, to override the very constitution of Canada (quite probably, it should be noted, illegally). The answer usually given is that without the wall people would have disrupted the meeting of their elected heads of state. Remember Seattle? But here again we must push our questioning. Why would people have taken the time and trouble to disrupt a trade meeting? The answer here is not simple, but one general sentiment that appeared to be shared by all opponents of this particular agreement was a feeling of being excluded from decisions to which they felt entitled some greater input than that afforded through the normal electoral processes of their respective states. Now if we ask why people are having such feelings, we finally get to the point where serious personal and political questioning can begin.

While I leave it to the reader to reflect on this question for herself, I will conclude with one thought that appears fairly certain to me. If, in planning this meeting, the governments and corporations involved had spent some more time and effort finding ways of including citizens, as opposed to excluding them with such a provocative symbol of disrespect, the entire chain of reasons leading up to the clashes and clouds of teargas could well have been nipped in the bud. Now why didn't they do that?