Pepper spray flies at OAS rally
41 arrested at Windsor demonstration

By Stuart Laidlaw

Windsor, Canada, June 5— A largely peaceful rally against the Organization of American States ended in violence yesterday after 35 protesters were dragged away by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) for blocking a bus trying to get into the meeting. Six other people were arrested for breach of the peace in connection with the demonstrations yesterday. Staff Sgt. Dave Rossell of the Windsor police last night said all those detained would be released within 24 hours without charge. Police used pepper spray as 150 to 200 demonstrators sat in the path of a bus carrying delegates into the cordoned-off meeting compound.

Several newspaper photographers covering the protest were also pepper-sprayed. Some protesters painted slogans on the vehicle and its left front tire was flattened, police said. After a tense 30-minute standoff, during which protesters donned gas masks to cut pepper spray, the gate suddenly opened up again and several dozen RCMP in riot gear rushed out.

As Mounties with shields and batons forced back the crowd of journalists and protesters, other officers grabbed the seated protesters and dragged them back through the gate into the cordoned-off area.

Other protesters tried rushing the open gate once the arrests were over, but were repelled by pepper spray as the gates were closed.

“Officers were being pelted by rocks as well as noxious substances being tossed over the gate,” Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. Dave Rektor said. Still, “this has been a fairly successful, peaceful protest, with the exception of a small, vigilant group.”

Prime Minister Jean Chrétien took no chances earlier in the day and arrived at the conference by helicopter to avoid problems, an aide said.

An earlier confrontation with the authorities came before the rally attended by about 3,000 people really began, when some demonstrators who had marched through downtown to a waterfront park near the meeting site tried to hang an anti-free trade banner from a security fence.

A homemade smoke bomb was also lobbed over the fence toward police, filling the air with mist. Officers responded with pepper spray and at least one demonstrator was hit with a baton as officers pulled down the banner, witnesses said.

Plans to block access to the meeting earlier in the day fizzled when members of the Coalition to Shutdown the OAS decided they did not have enough people in the face of a massive police buildup in the city.

An estimated 2,000 policemen were deployed in Windsor to ensure the OAS meeting went ahead. A further 4,000 police were on standby across the river in Detroit, where 200 to 250 people marched noisily but peacefully.

“The police have already shut down this city,” said Anna Dashtgard, a spokesperson for the coalition of activist groups from across Ontario.

She estimated there were about 1,000 people who came to town to shut down the meeting, adding that the group decided to join the sanctioned rally in hopes of bolstering their numbers.

The Windsor protest brought the 34-nation OAS, which also deals with trade issues, face-to-face with the same movement that obstructed December’s World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. The OAS Shutdown Coalition had hoped for a reprise of the demonstrations in Seattle, where 50,000 protesters helped sink World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations late last year by preventing delegates from getting to meetings.

Throughout the day, at rallies, news conferences and teach-ins, labor leaders and social activists denounced the OAS as an agent of human rights abuses, blaming it for spreading poverty and hurting the environment.

There were few clashes with police during the rally, largely due to the use of parade marshals appointed by protest organizers to keep the order and minimizing the need for police involvement.

Source: Toronto Star

Activists arrested in sting operations

Windsor, Canada, June 5— Vermont activist Arthur Foelsche, of the Independent Media Center and the Vermont-based Free Media Network, was arrested while walking down the streets of Windsor, Ontario Sunday morning, June 4. The charges were for alleged violations of immigration laws based on earlier protest charges from an anti-Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) protest in Toronto, Ontario last November. According to local lawyers, the charges are completely unfounded since Foelsche has yet to be found guilty of any crime in Canada (his trial for the charges from the Toronto anti-FTAA protest is set for two weeks from now).

Foelsche was in town to support anti-Organization of American States (OAS) actions in Windsor. The actions were called to protest the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which is the proposed expansion of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) throughout all of the Americas (with the exception of Cuba). Foelsche was in town to cover the actions as an independent journalist, and was arrested before any of the actions began, while walking down a side street on his way to get breakfast. Officers stopped him a half a block away from where he was staying, calling him by name and arresting him. The arrest of Foelsche has been part of a brazen campaign by the police to arrest people on ridiculous charges as a means to get them off of the streets and away from the protests (the conditions of release for some of the arrestees have included curfews, high bail and directives to stay away from the protests — a clear violation of the right to free speech).

Other people have been arrested for possessing pointy sunglasses, studded leather bracelets and other articles which are being called “weapons.” Those targeted for this police harassment have included people wearing black, people who have outstanding charges, and people who are known organizers, such as David Solnit, of Art and Revolution and the Direct Action Network (DAN) in San Francisco.

Known for his puppet making expertise, Solnit was arrested Saturday night at 11pm while driving through Windsor in his pick-up truck following a puppet-making workshop. He was arrested on a 15 year old charge related to a protest against US foreign policy where he used water soluble tempera paint to write a slogan against the Contra war in Nicaragua on the side of a building. They also confiscated his puppets, the “birds of liberation.” “They are holding my puppets hostage,” he reported from jail.

Both Foelsche and Solnit are expected to be deported after arraignments on Wednesday.

Source: Independent Media Center: www.indymedia.org

Argentines protest IMF austerity plan

Buenos Aires, Argentina, May 31-- On May 29, the government of Argentine president Fernando de la Rua announced a series of new measures designed to cut $938 million in public spending. The measures are a desperate effort to keep a commitment made with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which granted Argentina a $7.3 billion loan in exchange for a promise to keep this year’s budget deficit below $4.7 billion. The government spent nearly half that amount in the first four months of 2000.

The new measures would cut wages by 12% for government workers who earn between $1,000 and $6,500 a month, and by 15% for those who earn more; and would restructure or eliminate a number of government agencies.

De la Rua’s announcement provoked an immediate reaction from employees of the Congress, who began an open-ended strike over the projected closing of the congressional print shop and the salary reductions, and from workers at the state news agency Telam, who began a vigil in an effort to prevent the sale of the agency’s headquarters and the closing of its state advertising department.

Widespread opposition to the new austerity measures fueled strong attendance at a previously scheduled march in Buenos Aires on May 31, timed to coincide with a visit by an IMF delegation. Tens of thousands of people —20,000 according to Reuters, 40,000 according to the Buenos Aires left-leaning daily Clarin, or 80,000 according to protest organizers— marched to the Plaza de Mayo behind a banner that said, “No to the IMF adjustment.” The march was called by the General Workers Confederation (CGT), headed by truckers’ union leader Hugo Moyano and by Catholic church leaders, who have become extremely critical of the IMF role in Argentina. Ten people dressed as executioners, wearing black hoods and t-shirts that said “IMF,” carried a coffin labeled “education, salaries, small and medium-size [businesses], health.” Another group of marchers burned an effigy of Uncle Sam.

In his speech, Moyano appealed to nationalist sentiments but also surprised many observers by calling on Argentines to refuse to pay their taxes as an act of “fiscal disobedience.” (Income tax jumped between 8% and 22% in January —the steepest increase in a decade.) Moyano compared his country’s 1976-1983 “military dictatorship that tortured and killed” to the IMF’s “financial dictatorship that also kills 55 children a day in Argentina.” He added: “These organized people who defeated the military dictatorship are also going to defeat the financial dictatorship.”

The CGT, together with the independent Confederation of Argentine Workers (CTA), have called a 24-hour national general strike for June 9 to protest the government’s austerity measures.

Source: Weekly News Update on the Americas: wnu@igc.org