Activists were trying to stop another so-called “free trade” agreement that supported big businesses. This time it was the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). This was in 2001 and the text of the draft treaty, the FTAA, was secret. Aside from some top government officials and 500 accredited business representatives, nobody knew what exactly was in the text – not even US senators or Canadian members of parliament.
The negotiators planned to release the text to more people and open up the first round of negotiations in April in Quebec City. The police, expecting large groups of protestors, set up a police state. The predominant framing, fueled by the organizers of the FTAA negotiations, in Canada was: “Will these rowdy protestors tear up our city?” Nothing about the meaning of the FTAA was in the popular conversation.
The meeting itself, called the Summit of the Americas, had no specific achievements to reach, no outcomes planned – and therefore was virtually unable to fail. Those backing the FTAA were setting the stage to bias the public against “those protestors” and frame themselves as coming out smelling like roses.
The reality groups knew was that the FTAA was an expansion of NAFTA – for thirty-four countries in the Americas backed heavily by the US government. Like NAFTA, it was to promote “free trade” and expand neoliberal policies of profits over people (they called it removing barriers to trade). Based on the experience of NAFTA, it was clear it would promote a race to the bottom of wages, reduction of environmental laws, and fewer health regulations.
Because of all of that and more, they wanted to keep the treaty from being signed.
But it was hard to mobilize a public outcry to the draft of a secret treaty. How do you mobilize against a treaty that is secret, but likely to continue the downward spiral of privatization (privatizing schools, post offices, libraries, even the water supply) or forcing governments to hire the lowest bidder irregardless of labor practices or environmental responsibility? (As, indeed, the FTAA promotes.)
Operation SalAMI, a Quebec-based group, was one of a number of groups that wanted to expose the FTAA in order to get the treaty defeated. To develop a response to the FTAA, a dozen activists from SalAMI spent a weekend retreat in a camp setting to formulate a strategy. They started with their goals and objectives. They reached several broad goals. They included: describing the objectives of the FTAA, calling into question the very legitimacy of the process, offering thousands of citizens the means of getting involved in a positive, organized manner; and showing the diversity of individuals and constituencies opposing global capitalism.
With their goals in mind, they next looked at who to reach out to. They started by intentionally looking at the constituencies around Canada. In fact, they used the spectrum of allies tool to do that, noticing who were the “passive allies” and “fence sitters.” For example, one of the passive allies they targeted were the labor movement, identifying specific unions to reach out to; another neutral/active opponent they wanted to bring closer to them was the media.
They also used the force field analysis to examine the social forces at play, especially so they could get into the heads of the FTAA officials to understand its vulnerabilities.
Out of their conversation, they found a framing that they felt would widely appeal to folks, which also implied the first specific objective. Philippe Duhamel describes it:
We asked ourselves this question: What is a widely-held value that current trade negotiations are violating?
…We remembered how the secret Multilateral Agreement on Investments [MAI] was torpedoed in 1998. First, it was leaked on the Internet and, as a result, people started paying attention. From there, many realized the horror of its objectives and the mobilization was launched. To win the battle against continental free trade, we had to spur the same level of interest in the FTAA that had sunk the MAI.
What was the Achilles’ heel of the Summit of the Americas in general, and of the FTAA in particular? At last, we found an answer. It was its secrecy. In other words, what was one widely held value that the current Free Trade negotiations violated: The right to information, the basis for democracy. Certainly, the right to information was also a value widely shared by journalists. We were on to something…
Based on this analysis, we decided the first strand of our demands, and the one which – both on the educational and tactical levels – would be the most powerful and compelling, was the demand the complete texts of the FTAA (in a draft form at this stage of the negotiations)… Our long-term goal remained a complete rejection of the agreement. However, focusing on the process of the negotiations could bring many more people to see the danger inherent in such disregard for democracy. In so doing, they might then be moved to act before the agreement was signed. That step was in the right direction.
It appealed to unions and, especially, media (who have a core value about getting access to information).
The framing clearly highlighted the injustice (anti-democratic values). And it had the identity component – “us” citizens left out by the exclusive elites – which was a far cry from the “protestors” versus “our city” framing in current operation. The agency component became clearer as they and others who supported them garnered thousands of signatures for the demand that the text of the FTAA become public.
They gave the government a public ultimatum that the text be delivered by the 20th of March 2001, 12:00 noon Eastern Standard Time (5,000 copies in French, 10,000 copies in English, 1,000 copies in Spanish, and 500 copies in Portuguese).
The petitions put people in the offensive and people wanted that. They rallied their passive allies into action and over 18,000 people signed petitions. But what if (as was likely) the government didn’t produce the documents from just a petition?
Philippe writes of stumbling on the next tactic one night:
Now, it seemed insufficient to make our demands and then wait passively for an answer that would probably fail to come. To demonstrate our seriousness to the federal government as well as to the entire population, our demand had to be physically embodied…
…[And suddenly] there it was: We would send an ultimatum for the texts to the government and, when it failed to publish them, we would simply go and try to retrieve them ourselves from the minister’s office. Hence the Search and Seizure Operation.
…On the given day, groups of citizens would line up before the building most likely to hold the secret information and announce, in the name of democracy and public interest, that they would attempt entering the premises to search for and seize the documents.
Operation SalAMI publicly announced their intent, letting the media, police, and public know the time and place for the nonviolent raid -- April 2nd – if the texts were not made public.
March 20th went by and no response was from the government. Operation SalAMI announced they now had a “Citizen’s Warrant for Search and Seizure.”
When April 2nd came around, trained activists from around the US and Canada descended on the Department of International Trade and Foreign Affairs in Canada’s capital, Ottawa. With police snipers on the buildings and the entire building shutdown and surrounded by a gate of police, the protestors gathered outside the building.
This final showdown was emerging, and journalists jostled to get good coverage. By this time large segments of the population had been wondering what would happen. It was good for the media because they love stories where the end result is unclear; and, besides, organizers had framed the issue to appeal to journalists, too (freedom of information).
The protestors arrived in a spirit of fun and playfulness. A large contingent of protestors dressed up as Robin Hood’s as they went over. Others went over with an over-sized key (“to unlock government secrets”) or a magnifying glass (“to investigate what’s really going on”).
As they announced the raid they invited the police officers to join them (none did this time). The first wave of two people went over the barricades. They were immediately arrested. Cheers went up.
The next wave took their time. They knew that the media were watching their actions carefully, and they wanted to keep control of the situation. If they rushed the barricades, the police would arrest them and they would lose control of the situation.
“We gauged what we could get away with and pushed the envelope only so far that, for one, we could not be ignored.” Over the course of an hour, almost one hundred people went over the barricades reading the same statement:
We ask you, police officers, to do your duty and help us retrieve the documents to which we are entitled by right. Do not become accomplices in the secrecy and manipulation of this government. If you refuse to seek and retrieve the texts on our behalf, we will have no option but to attempt to retrieve them ourselves.
After each person went over, the crowd would cheer and send their support as the person was arrested and hauled away. More cheering. Some songs. Some games -- such as bowling, with “pins of injustice” and the “bowling ball of free information." No hurry. The police were left waiting.
All the while, the images were being sent across the country. Because of their organizing and the announced dilemma that they had put the government in, the government had been forced to respond to their every move.
The framing had shifted from “What will these crazy protestors do?” to “What will happen when they raid the building?” to “What is the government trying to hide?”
Philippe explains that the action “forced the government’s hand by revealing the lengths to which the government wanted to keep the process secret. The resulting media and public outcry made our goal a reality – broader public awareness and debate on the FTAA.” The result of this and other pressure tactics (letters to editor, etc) exactly one week after the action, the Canadian government gave in and made the text of the FTAA public. (Declare victory for winning the short-term goal!)
And it took more months and additional organizing, but eventually the FTAA eventually failed, too.