Workers World June 22, 2000: Thousands protest U.S. trade schemes at Windsor, Ont. OAS meeting

Email this article

------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 22, 2000 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------

Protests in Windsor, Ont.

Thousands hit U.S. trade schemes at OAS meeting

By Mark Marzolf

Detroit

Thousands demonstrated international working-class solidarity in protests at the U.S.-Canadian border here June 4. Their target was the Organization of American States General Assembly meetings that began the same day in Windsor, Ontario.

Labor unionists rallied with young activists in an attempt to shut down the U.S.-dominated OAS meetings. The protests focused on the organization's role in the economic restructuring of the globe to serve the imperialist and corporate interests of the United States.
Five thousand demonstrators rallied around the convention center, site of the OAS meeting in Windsor. At the same time another 500 marched across the river in Detroit.
The protests demanded that so-called free-trade policies be abolished, and an end to the agenda the OAS pursues--undermining workers throughout the hemisphere.
At the forefront of the OAS meetings was a discussion of implementing the Free Trade Area of the Americas by the year 2005. As the extension of NAFTA, the FTAA aims to consolidate the entire Western Hemisphere into one "free trade" zone through "economic unification."
The FTAA--like similar World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund policies--is yet another extension of U.S. imperialist domination. It declares war on the poor and working class for the gains of corporate capital, takes over the domestic markets of less industrialized countries and destroys organized labor forces.
"The corporations have their global links with institutions like the WTO, IMF and OAS in privatizing everything, taking away our self-determination," said a member of the Canadian Auto Workers. "As their agendas increase globally, so must ours. Workers must fight for each other."
The CAW joined members of the U.S. and Canadian steel workers' unions, Service Employees, Ontario public employees, locked-out Detroit newspaper workers, and many other unions in the battle against the OAS and the imposition of the FTAA.
Drug trafficking was also listed as a topic on the agenda of the OAS meetings in Windsor. In reality the United States has used this as a cover for the Pentagon to militarize regions of Latin America. In particular Washington has used the pretext of a "drug war" to intervene in what is really a war to crush the growing armed popular insurgency in Colombia.
'Whose streets? Our streets!'
For weeks before the OAS meetings, newspapers ran scare articles on "security issues" about the upcoming protests. They invoked the Battle of Seattle, as though the protesters there had unleashed violence on the police.
In fact, as is clear from documentary footage and eyewitness accounts, the violence in Seattle was a riot by the forces of the state against demonstrators.
But law-enforcement agents used violence-baiting about the Seattle protests as an excuse to set the stage for their own repressive occupation of the U.S.-Canada border. They suspended the basic constitutional rights of anti-OAS protesters.
Anti-OAS protesters were met with what residents and reporters from the two cities were calling a police state.
Thousands of cops came from all over Ontario to beef up the Windsor police force. In Detroit the police outnumbered demonstrators four to one. The city of Detroit spent over $6 million on riot training and police overtime.
Police helicopters and boats buzzed the border between Detroit and Windsor, monitoring the thousands of demonstrators. Field units of police were on every corner in downtown Windsor, creating an imposing presence in military-style outfitting and armored vehicles.
Police in riot gear flanked the perimeters of the eight-foot-high fenced-in zone where delegates were meeting. Concrete barriers and steel fences cloistered the OAS delegates from the protesters, creating a fortress within which they could conduct their agenda.
Police pepper-sprayed and clubbed several demonstrators with batons for attempting to hang a banner on the steel fence.
Demonstrators marched through the heavily police-patrolled area, chanting in unison: "Whose streets? Our streets!"
Representatives from the International Action Center joined the lead of the march carrying a banner demanding: "U.S. hands off Colombia! Money for jobs and human needs, not the Pentagon!"
Twenty people were arrested for wearing masks--which the city council had outlawed just days before the protest. The law also banned hoods, squirt bottles, and any container used for transporting fuel--all in an effort to "assure that Detroit does not become another Seattle," one city council member claimed.
Preparations to shut down the 2001 OAS conference in Quebec are already in the organizing stages.
Christina Polsinelli of the International Action Center also contributed to this article.

This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)

HOME :: U.S. NEWS :: WORLD NEWS :: EDITORIALS :: SUBSCRIBE :: DONATE