Canada - Dave Bleakney
Interview Details
- PGA Affiliation: Canadian Union of Postal Workers
- Region: Canada
- Language: English
- Interviewee - Dave Bleakney
- Interviewer - Lesley Wood
- Date: November 2016, Toronto
- Audio File: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bngkj4gab7rnluo/PGA%20Canada%201.m4a?dl=0
- Transcript: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7163cxe7mhpnlck/PGA%20Bleakney%202.MP3?dl=0
Video/Audio
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Transcript
Interviewer: Alright do you wanna use your name, or not use your name…or do you wanna figure out what you want to use after the task?
Interviewee: Figure out after…
Interviewer: That’s right
Interviewee: I’m not…my fear is not my union, they can’t touch me, they’ve always tried but they can’t, my fear is that actually being like, speaking like I’m somebody else, I don’t identify as somebody who would do that, right? […] that makes me feel uncomfortable. So, I’d have to see it afterwards.
Interviewer: That’s totally reasonable.
Interviewee: Yeah.
Interviewer: Alright. So, how did you get involved in this whole PGA thing…back in the day?
Interviewee: We’d just come out of a strike, postal, national postal strike, and it was quite heated and there was division in the union and, one of the proudest achievements I think in most successful direct actions I was ever involved in was the shutdown of the Pearson airport—which nobody ever talks about—was a really coordinated, systemic shutdown of the airport, for a day, where and […] so that passengers were allowed to travel, but people were leafletting in the terminal, saying, you know, “We’re shutting down the cargo freight today, there’s no trucks, no commerce today, no corporation using these planes, but we know people want to visit families, and weddings, and funerals and stuff, so we’re not here to interfere, you have a good trip”.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Interviewee: […] And they actually let people remain and leaflet, because they wanted us gone so bad, you know, they were bending over backwards. Sorry, I am kinda diverting, but it was such a great moment…
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah, yeah
Interviewee: […] it’s just such a great story. There was a guy with binoculars on the top of the high-rise, with a full walled map of the airport, an aerial map, he took you know, “Unit 3, go to Exit 12, we need some shoring up of defenses!”.
Interviewer: [laughs]
Interviewee: It was like a military operation. And it was just…the trucks were lined up down eastern avenue as far as you could see: they couldn’t get into the airport. Beautiful day, cops were begging us, you know, and they couldn’t […] they didn’t really have the forces to deal with it yet, they needed an injunction because we were a labour dispute, and corporations were blocking us…
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah, yeah
Interviewee: [the corporations] had interfered in our collective bargaining. We said, we didn’t come to them; they came to us, right? They had secret meetings with ministers of labour and da da da, talked about what they were going to do to us, so fuck that, they’re involved in our bargaining too. So, it was a really nice day. And, coming out of that, the president was quite pumped, and then this email flew by, about this thing in Switzerland about bringing people together from all over the place, and the thing that struck out for me, frankly? […] was the direct action part, nothing else, direct action! Oh! People coming from everywhere, due to direct action! Wow, I wanna meet those people [I thought]. So, I talked to the union leadership at the time, and the president said, “Go for it Conrad!” and it gave me something to do.
Interviewer: [laughs]
Interviewee: […] so, it was like that. It was almost like cowboy-ish, like, “Woah, we’re going to meet the big leagues!”, but now we really ought to shut shit down, you know? It was like that. Of course, getting there was much, much more of a deeper pollination that maybe in the later questions […] ‘cause it influenced us, it impacted us, those relationships, and those perspectives, right?
Interviewer: Tell me about that? I know it’s out of order, but whatever.
Interviewee: We became, as far as I know, [incoherent] different kind of picture, first national union that I know of, in North America (other than maybe the UE years ago and stuff), but certainly not in recent times, to name capitalism as the problem. Like, I don’t know any union that does that, and to me, that is significant, that comes out of PGA. […] And also unify with anti-capitalist struggles. So, it gives our members a wider license or commission. It’s interesting—when we go to places like, you know, different summits and things, you’ll see mainstream labour movements are not connected with social forces on the ground.
Interviewer: Yeah, no, exactly.
Interviewee: […] but postal works will be. You know they were on the front lines in Seattle…
Interviewer: I’ve always wondered about that! Okay, I go obviously, there’s a history there, but I mean…y’all stepped up and kinda took on a leadership role, in a way, right? I mean, you were with the secretary, and I’m like, how did that come about?
Interviewee: I think it was because there was nobody else, really. I wanna talk about that for a minute. Just how that when, we could have done a really great job as a secretary. I mean, the idea was to, collect and sort of […] reveal things to everybody, sort of, you know, to put it out there. And we could have done that, and I wonder sometimes, if it wasn’t sabotaged. Because we took on that secretary, and I think it was after India, and coach of [incoherent]. It was for a very short time. And what happened was, my computer started doing weird things, weird things like my computer would meltdown, data was lost. And then, weeks after Cochabamba, I was busy with my union stuff, just working at night, to collect all the applications somewhere, to sort of like, put them out to everybody. ‘Cause, you know, this is who applied and stuff? That’s when everything crashed. None of that stuff was ever retrieved. The IT people took the hard drive, and they couldn’t […] all those PGA emails, all those applications, all that shit, for a period of probably two years? Interviewer: Wow…
Interviewee: […] just vanished off my hard drive. And I was sure it was sabotage. And I told people at the time at the union and they think I’m crazy! “Oh, c’mon! This is…you know, they wouldn’t do that!”, right? I know very well they would.
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah.
Interviewee: I think that’s naïveté. But it blew up, gone.
Interviewer: Well that’s interesting. I thought y’all took the secretary right from the beginning, so…
Interviewee: Um well maybe. Then I’d have to think back…it’s possible
Interviewer: No, no I could do that
Interviewee: I thought it was after India, maybe it was […] maybe it was Michael, maybe it was the Pennsylvania folks, but I remember collecting applications in the retreat, in the place where it was planned.
Interviewer: the address?
Interviewee: Yeah, I remember that. And that was happening after Bangalore. So, I’ll have to go back and check. It could have been taken on a little early, but I mean, it’s not much […] so that’s how that happened. And we tried to encourage others to get involved. And even the mainstream, right? It was difficult, and because the diversity of tactics debate and stuff, just took over everything and I think we became […] a false argument. People do that, “Why are we talking about this over and over?”. In fact, I observed, and often at these actions, and you couldn’t say at the time because you felt there was this kind of lid on, you didn’t want to be seen as criticizing anybody for taking a stand. But people punched up. They went to the fire. So you’d have these zones […] but people always went to the fire, right?
Interviewer: Yeah, absolutely. Interviewee: To me, that was weird too. So we couldn’t have those kinds of strategic conversations, there was always “Down with the base!” or “Support diversity of tactics”, and that was the argument. And I think that killed a lot of spark. I think CUPE was arrested, their national office was getting involved. We had passed a resolution in the international constitution, endorsing PGA, right? […] which is pretty huge. But, uh a lot of people were interested. I mean Jean-Claude Parrot, from the CLC-O [Canadian Labour Council – Ontario] was having conversations with him at the time, he was arrested. But it also needed to connect with the grassroots which the unions don’t fucking do. Which is why I got sponsorship to send OCAP [Ontario Coalition Against Poverty] to the first PGA.
Interviewer: In Geneva?
Interviewee: I don’t know if you knew that.
Interviewer: No
Interviewee: Because OCAP wasn’t ready. What I sensed was, there was a kind of, distance, like there was a kind of […] I felt there was a stigma, like this is a trip to Geneva, for whatever right. And not really getting we were getting grassroots, global anti-capitalist movement in the streets, right?
Interviewer: And this would have been…’98?
Interviewee: ’98. First meeting, yeah. And somebody did come. And I would have her name as […] a young woman, it certainly opened her eyes. But OCAP should have sent organizers.
Interviewer: Absolutely.
Interviewee: And then, there would have been these deep rooted connections all over, everywhere, right?
Interviewer: I think there’s this tension between this idea that there was this local, and somehow this was there was the global that was like […] and that tension
Interviewee: By 2001, OCAP was mobilised for FTAA [Free Trade Area of the Americas], but sad because there was a real opportunity. And my hope was that someone in OCAP would get so plugged in that it would have spread that way, a more horizontal way.
Interviewer: Mack and I were in New York at the time, from ’98 to 2003 so that was a different time.
Interviewee: So we sponsored OCAP to go.
Interviewer: I think I did know that but had forgotten! Okay, so you go to Geneva, and then you get hooked into this network. I don’t know, were there sort of like key events, in terms of this network, or so much you could talk about from that point forward, right? The question is, what are the key events, or kind of turning points that stand out for you?
Interviewee: After or at Geneva you mean?
Interviewer: After. You could talk about Geneva as well…
Interviewee: I think first global anti-capitalist days start happening.
Interviewer: May 16th, first one?
Interviewee: I think so, yeah I have to go back. And they were humble, here. Some in India they were huge, right? And you’re saying, “Look there’s people here”. What I remember in Ottawa, there was a small group of people for another direct action aside, people just painted up a sign that said, “World Trade Organisation: Global Government for the Rich”. That’s it and hung that over the highway overpass, rush hour. And everybody stopped. Like the highway just slowed down. Everybody. And talk radio because they’re so stupid and they just don’t get it, people on their cellphones phone in, “I’m on the highway 417 and there’s a sign here about the World Trade Organisation, holding up everybody” and they’d repeat that on the radio, you know. Protestors on the road against the World Trade Organisation. Nobody had heard about the World Trade Organisation; I mean this is 1998. People didn’t even fucking talk about World Trade Organisation. So, they’re saying this on talk radio, like on their traffic reports, right? So eventually cops come. And they’re like, “You can’t hold the sign here.” And we’re all like, the signs are all on the highway, these fucking billboards, right? So we’re all arguing and telling you blah blah blah […] this is where the union cover always comes in nicely. I said, well, this is a union dispute. We’re in struggle against the World Trade Organisation, related to labour rights. So you better call your labour liaison in here, because we can be here a long time. And goes and he phones a guy, ‘cause labour needs to be controlled. So there’s a guy who does that, who works with some hothead testosterone filled moron, and he comes in. And he’s […] we wanted to leave actually. Because it was like 9:30 now, 10 ‘o clock. We wanted to go to work and now these cops were telling us to leave are now telling us to stay. “Stay! You have to stay here!”. And finally this guy pulls up, and he’s in a plain car, “I’m really sorry you guys, I would have come earlier, but I got stuck in the goddamn traffic”. And we were like, hey we were trying to get out. And he’s like “Oh well that’s fine. See you later. Here’s my card if you need anything”. So it was nice. That’s my memory of that day. And hearing about much more magnificent, deeply rooted […] Ecuador, India, Bolivia. All these places where there’s really substantial organising and depth about what the World Trade Organisation is, and what it’s prepared to do. In a way, all these educated unions with money had no fucking clue about it. They were listening to ITUC (International Trade Union Confederation) about side accords, labour rights and all this bullshit.
Interviewer: Yeah. We want to be at the table for negotiations.
Interviewee: It’s like being present. Being permitted to be present at your own execution, right? And it’s like, you don’t have to come in here. And here’s the gun and we’ll pull the trigger.
Interviewer: So there was the May one, and the carnival against capitalism one, then there was Seattle.
Interviewee: Carnival against capitalism, for sure. And it was growing. In Ottawa there was a much bigger demonstration. Sorry, I’m speaking locally. But for us it was important. These movements were pollinating us, they were bringing us into something, that’s how I saw it. It wasn’t like we knew shit. It was like, “Woah, we’re being pulled into something amazing and huge and we had to amplify, magnify it in Canada”, we could contribute to this, right? So that was kind of our thinking about it and these things were important. There was also an action against the Multilateral Investment Agreement, I think? I think it might have been just before […] and Seattle of course, was a big one. What disappoints me about Seattle, and that’s been forever lost. Personally, I chose not to […] my partner, we had a young child, so she went and I stayed. So we organized a Caravan across Canada as well. There was a Canadian caravan, and that was written about. And there was a full report detailing all the amazing shit that happened. And that got sent to somebody in Europe—who was going through a serious mental illness at the time, I found out years later, he was going through a severe mental breakdown and lost everything. And my computer melted down and lost everything. So, that story is lost.
Interviewer: Oh!
Interviewee: That story went to several Canadian cities, and what I saw was a really good moment.
Interviewee: Oh yeah. […] so anyway those documents got lost in the computer meltdown and lost through whatever cyber world, and they no longer exist and it’s unfortunate. We hear about the American caravan and not about the Canadian caravan, and that electrified a lot of towns. What I do recall about it is that it went into like 15-18 towns or something, and all of them had protest events with Seattle in their towns. Sam and RBC, people marched downtown to the post office and demonstrated against […] It’s not just Postal Workers, it’s much more than postal workers, so it becomes much broader and this is happening in Sudbury and Thunder Bay, and all these places like Winnipeg and Regina, and that was exciting, right?
Interviewer: How was that connected—I mean I know but I want you to say it—how was it connected to the PGA story?
Interviewee: Yeah it did. Not enough. Part of it was we had other unions contribute, and so, and they had their own person who wanted to tell their story so there’s a person to contact. So it wasn’t frontline PGA stuff but it was
Interviewer: …connected?
Interviewee: Yeah. And so, I think there was somebody for SALAMI [anti-globalization organization in Ottawa]. We had our own people on there. I tried to get people from the Global South. I can’t remember why we didn’t. Maybe it was probably my own lack of organisation, being ahead of the game […] everything comes up so quickly. We should have done that. But the idea was that this RV would blow into a town, and people would put them up in the town and we got out of the union world that we’re going to stay in hotels, we’ll have an expense account. No, the town put the people up, had to feed and house them, and people just had amazing experiences. And if you’re on a long route, hell you can go to the back and sleep or cook or write.
Interviewer: One of the few things […] a few years ago I was asked to read something about Seattle. And they were like, “There was a high Canadian, disproportionate population participation in Seattle!” and I was just like, I remember pointing to the caravan and being like, this is one of the main reasons it did really mobilise across…
Interviewee: The best thing is, when you get into western Canada, really and people were like, “What, what is this”. NAFTA and it’s worse than the MAI on steroids, so it was very educational, in terms of how ominous this thing was. There was this big demo, and I am proud to say, our members came down and defended people as trade unionists; and cops backed off, because they didn’t want to fight trade unionists, right? So they were trying to keep that separate when people showed up. And then, we had an activist in our union who freaked out about that, how our union had divided the labour movement, about breaking off and people made really powerful and strong arguments about solidarity. That all went away.
Interviewer: So there’s these days of action for sure in the way that the network went local and affected Canada…
Interviewee: Uh huh
Interviewer: Were there also like going to other events, international events that you felt that those stories need to be told or…like I don’t know. Going to Geneva, going to Cochabamba, going to India…you know. I mean for you
Interviewee: I didn’t go to Cochabamba
Interviewer: Okay. [Laughs] It was interesting timing
Interviewee: I mean, yeah. We sent somebody, I think we did. I was actually really jaded at that time. Too…immaturity took over. There was this big fight, there was this big cry that let’s send people from each region, and that there have to be people from oppressed groups, right? But nobody tried to organize to send those oppressed groups, they organized and sent themselves. That’s what happened, yeah. And I was very conscious of that and saying no, I’m not going to go because it was for other people, you know?
Interviewer: You were at Amherst? That was a shit show.
Interviewee: Uh huh. I take some responsibility […]
Interviewer: [Laughs] “I take some responsibility for that too!”
Interviewee: It was just crazy and that was probably the turning point for North America.
Interviewer: Can you tell me your perspective on that, I don’t feel like that story has been told however
Interviewee: I’m not sure I fully even understand it. Um, I again think a lot of it boils down to diversity of tactics bullshit. And activist consumerism [..] what I mean by that is cherry-picking your activism and thinking you’re a frontline activist, right? That’s generally how I see it. And also that’s not me, having the capacity of understanding what was happening. Wanting to be so ultrademocratic, open that things weren’t channeled into ways that made sense. And who knows, maybe that was, deliberate or not. ‘Cause I think there’s a real entitlement about activism, and again, the diversity of tactics argument really pissed me off. I mean our activism against the man really boiled down to incessantly talking about whether they did or did not support diversity of tactics.
Interviewer: Strategy? [Laughs]
Interviewee: I’ve often wondered about that.
Interviewer: We’re kinda jumping, but that’s all good. So what happened to PGA, either locally or internationally? The diversity of tactics maybe locally I guess where we’re going with that, and internationally?
Interviewee: I don’t think it really died. It gave birth is what it did. So what it did was a real success story, that deserves to be talked about, that story has never been told: the impact that it had. And there’s no question, I can say that for us, it absolutely had impact. When we did the Bolivia Rising tour in 2008, that would have never happened without PGA and indigenous activists toured them around Canada, caravan style—that would have never happened without PGA.
Interviewer: What are some of its other children?
Interviewee: [Chuckles] I have to give that a little thought. I thought it created a view across alliances, a view across sectors, cultures and places are common and that worked in different ways and still does. I mean we saw it in the streets of Toronto at the G20 and after Seattle. So it gave birth to a collective rising rage, and the ability that you can go out to the streets and say no, that they’re not going to keep it secret, shine a light on things. […] I’d have to give a little thought to that because there’s so much that’s happened. I’ve often talked about in the union, certainly there was a larger picture that was a big success.
Interviewer: One of the things I keep tracking as I go about my day to day life, and lately I’ve seen a discussion of the water movement, and internationally, some of the fishing stuff. The hallmarks are like still here; the movement defense committee uses the PGA hallmarks. The effect of clack on the student movement in Quebec. Apparently, you talked to this fellow from Brazil from the Brazilian student movement. Sometimes there are all these invisible, or not known implicit connections.
Interviewee: Uh huh, I know in Ottawa I’ve encountered groups, all their principles are EPJ and they don’t know a thing about the PGA.
Interviewer: That’s right.
Interviewee: Uh huh. Yeah that’s pretty cool.
Interviewer: I wonder if there was something particular about PGA, the way it was set up or organized that made those reverberations happen?
Interviewee: I remember, I mean, that was debated [the paper] was debated day after day…
Interviewer: the hallmark?
Interviewee: and a representative of each continent who would work all night who would pull all those diffuse positions together into a statement that might be livable and then go back again. There were tensions […] they probably had no problem cells, even then on gay rights and stuff. We can’t take that back, the middle east and stuff. That was amazing intensity, the intensity with which people worked to pull all these diffuse statements together
Interviewer: And then the hallmark shifted?
Interviewee: Yeah and so. […] Jean Groshaltz. You know Jean?
Interviewer: Oh yeah right!
Interviewee: She was there! She was there. She just moved into a new place too, you’ve got to talk to her
Interviewer: I interviewed Jean ten years ago about Cochabamba.
Interviewee: Yeah? She’s one of the most amazing people ever and she was there, she was there for those conversations. She played a key role, she played a very key role in crafting those conversations.
Interviewer: What was her role?
Interviewee: Well she was the person from the States. She […] we need somebody to represent us. Now you’ve got somebody in this room to hammer it out so um, yeah.
Interviewer: How interesting
Interviewee: Yeah, now I am trying to think how was she there. My memory is by, that there was a continent kind of like, Europe right, South America. North America, people sent me, because we only had people there from North America, so you go, you do it. So, I did but I didn’t really do anything. Frankly, I was a frontline fighter that came from a small town in New Brunswick, I had no academic background, all this talk at night, at some point I’m just like I just want to go smoke a joint, “Shut it down, shut it the fuck down”, that’s all it should say. Maybe it was like, she was there as just, I don’t know, ‘cause it wouldn’t have made sense that she was representing North America then why was I there. So yeah.
Interviewer: Maybe it could be a couple people.
Interviewee: Yeah, but she played a very, very key role. Olivier did as well. I can’t remember who else was there from the South. Swami, or maybe he had somebody else, I can’t remember.
Interviewer: It’s a long time ago now, eh?
Interviewee: Yeah. I remember Swami, his stories also impacted me. The Indian farmers movement were really inspiring, and years later, the honor of being invited into his home when I was down there participating in a press conference. He could fill a room in a press conference, I was just amazed, I was a guest at the press conference. I couldn’t get a reporter to hear anything I said in Canada and here’s a room full of people, but he was there for them, I was riding his coattails. I was there to say that free trade had fucked over Canada because they hadn’t had it yet, and were hearing about how great it was. I got the same thing in Delhi actually. I went to the National Press Centre, this time it was just me and they wanted to hear about free trade.
Interviewer: And you went to go to the…?
Interviewee: Bangalore thing. But Swami would tell these stories, and again the reason I went was for the direct action where you could break into different meeting rooms and different discussions, when I went to Swami’s, he talked about how farmers had done things like, they had notified Monsanto, that you have until this point to get out, you have to leave. And if you don’t leave, we’ll throw you out. And on that day, they said they’d go down and burn down their fields, burn down the Monsanto fields. Or the one about surrounding the World Bank and throwing shit at it, throwing cow shit at it. And I’m thinking what do you do with that, and their laughter, where they would go and have these massive demonstrations where they would just go and laugh at them. And the cops are paralysed, because they’re laughing at us. We can’t go beat a man in pink in front of everybody, oh we can’t do that, because they would see us as weak. And I think it was like placing women at the front of rallies in the Middle East in the Arab spring, where women would often be at the front of the rallies and the cops wouldn’t hit them. They’d hit their wives, but they just couldn’t…the macho thing, they just couldn’t hit them…
Interviewer: their self-image…
Interviewee: Yeah. Anyway.
Interviewer: No, no. Who knows what are those stories that are like, you’re right are these actions that inspire people and like, okay they get the idea that we’re in this together, in different ways, you know.
Interviewee: And the experience of staying in squats too, right? First time, right? You’re coming out the labour movement, you come into a place like Geneva and you think, “There’s nobody there to meet you!” and eventually you find someone who looks kinda spotty and you go, “Oh you’re going to this thing too?” and you go, “Yeah yeah me too” and a crowd would gather and somebody eventually would say, “Oh you’re here for…”. Somebody will drive you through town and stuff and then, go into a squat. And I was just amazed at the arena…the beautiful fucking squat—they had their own restaurant, high ceilings, I was in a room with a fireplace going, “Wow! This is better than any hotel!”. And then starting to process the fact of coming from a consumer state where everything is through payment, to people just having and turning to, “Wow, can you just have it” and trying to work all that out, so. Yeah, anyway.
Interviewer: So what do you think like in terms of what worked and what were difficult challenges and moving, I guess into lessons for others in recent movements?
Interviewee: I think money. Because people need support. I mean it worked […] by cops beating people in Geneva in ’98 worked. I mean they attacked people and I believe there was a lawsuit and complaints. Was it ’96? So there was money from the cops that they got for settlement and they used it for PGA stuff.
Interviewer: Oh I didn’t know that
Interviewee: In some ways, the cops through their stupidity and violence helped assist PGA in a major way, it was a significant amount of money.
Interviewer: That’s very cool.
Interviewee: Yeah, a significant amount of money. And Olivier knows more about this, he would know the amount, but very significant. I’m thinking hundred thousand dollars, at least. But probably more, right? But it was a lot
Interviewer: That feed into the caravan? The farmer’s caravan, maybe?
Interviewee: Maybe? Yeah. The other significant things, I mean you should talk to the Bangladeshis and the Indians, because they have done a number of caravans related to PGA in that region, even heard talk of a Nepalese one.
Interviewer: Oh really?
Interviewee: Yeah. Somebody who can tell you a lot about the caravans, because he’s a bit of a traveler is and used to go on them is a guy named xx?
Interviewee: Um anyway. Michael knows all about the caravans. If there was a Nepalese one, he would know about it, he would know about the Bangladesh one and the Indian one, yeah. ‘Cause I’m in isolation from that—I’m only telling the story from where I sit.
Interviewer: Of course.
Interviewee: […] the money certainly, hard to come by. Also, I think, you know, you don’t want to turn it into a charity thing…so that’s a challenge. So it becomes solidarity and not charity.
Interviewer: Yeah, I remember that whole discussion around, you know, ‘cause a lot of the folks are in North America were pretty poorly resourced in some ways. And it was the right idea that we had to fund delegates going from the Global South, but it was like…how?
Interviewee: So there’s that issue. And, we had no avenue to fundraise. And I think no central, operating network. There was the secretariat and there was the informal, and that’s what drove PGA was that eurocentrism. But without it, nothing would happen.
Interviewer: Because the coordinating or the support committee is called the European thing, but those people tended to have more access to resources like this project. But it’s not necessarily where the grassroots struggle is.
Interviewee: Yeah, so this is a real challenge, of course, right? Isn’t it? I mean how do you…
Interviewer: and the intentionality of it!
Interviewee: I remember thinking at the time and I said it, and Sergio and others were like, “don’t go there”. I actually proposed having a hired person, who all they did would be coordinating our messaging, and communications, right? And people I think saw that as too centralised. It would kinda become like central…I mean it did have good plus and minus points, the person doing it would have to be an exceptional person, right? A person who wouldn’t abuse that power. I could see it failing then, in 1998 for those reasons. A path having no sustainable rock, in a way. Because people are just too busy, especially on the frontlines. And you’re expecting them to go out and do their sort, coordinate that and get to a PGA meeting and they’re trying to survive.
Interviewer: And they’ve got all the forces coming down on them, whatever that is. Yeah, no, there is that tension.
Interviewee: And those were the richest movements to meet with. When you’d meet with those people, it just made me…[incomprehensible]. The depth of the human soul and wisdom would be coming out, I think for me too, that was a major PGA moment—those deep rooted struggles where the power of humanity rises above the ego and thrives.
Interviewer: I remember hearing when I did interviews last time, a discussion about folks in your, folks focusing on processing, getting stuff done. And some of the folks in like Latin America are like, we need to focus on building trust, and stop worrying so much about this stuff. And different kind of timing of things, like speed of organising…it creates a lot of good stuff but it is also a tension.
Interviewee: And I hear it, we don’t do that, and indigenous people do it: that’s culture. I wouldn’t want to downplay that but you recognise that spirit when it’s there and it’s strong. And yeah, now that I do remember, I remember those kinds of discussions and also being almost like, “What the fuck are they talking about! Of course, I trust them!”. This kind of not even really understanding…that. And I can see that in others too, right? Especially in Bangalore, there were long, tedious European interventions, yeah.
Interviewee: I remember this guy xxx, and he was involved early on. He went to Bangalore and I would say about a forty-five-minute rant about our privilege. And when he’s done the Indians are like, “What the fuck are you talking about!”. [Laughs] Everybody let him talk and everybody wanted him to stop, but we let people talk before they’re finished, right? So that was it, that was a hard moment. Anyway.
And there are ethnic tensions, I observed hostility, between, like tension, very tense between say, the Pakistanis and the Indians, I remember the Nepalese wanted to pull out of Bangalore because they were like, “We’re not your poor cousins. We’re people too”. So there was this kind of, you know…I guess Indian imperialism that was present in a way, or Hindu imperialism that wasn’t overt, but we all carry these biases in some ways and they were feeling it, right?
Interviewer: There are real histories of struggle that are not always coordinated.
Interviewee: […] so there was that. I’m sure impatience, as well. “Why don’t they just sum up!”, Germans do that. They just say what they mean. So you know…
Interviewer: –different styles
Interviewee: of you know, even looking! People don’t like you to look at them when they’re talking, they don’t like to look at you when they’re talking! All these norms, and the one that is really obvious is the one you end up doing when you’re in India, when people are agreeing with you, they shake their head.
Interviewer: So how has this played out in your kind of organising and your way of being?
Interviewee: Uh, I think just generally more open to possibility and understanding, a deeper way of knowing, I’d say. Certainly connected me and rooted me with a respect for indigenous struggle in a way I don’t think I would have had, had I not had that experience. Like, the depth—it changed my life. It’s almost emotional.
Interviewer: There was some indigenous, like I remember a compiler of some other stuff and there was an indigenous activist from the western part of Canada, some that were involved at different points and I think I’m maybe confusing some of the encuentro that happened in Spain before Geneva.
Interviewee: Yeah, I think so. I’m trying to think who was there. See, this is where, if it happened today, we wouldn’t go to Geneva unless we had supported a movement, whether it’s Idle No More, or a particular struggle whatever it may be, we would have supported that, if they had chosen that was something they’d chosen to do. See, we in ’98 weren’t ready for that. We didn’t have this context. We though the native struggle was an assembly of First Nations, it’s not like we could do and go and ask them, of course, you know?
Interviewer: There were some indigenous activists who went to Cochabamba I think? Maybe up north?
Interviewee: That wouldn’t surprise me. I don’t know. By Cochabamba, I was pretty much, with the experiences in the US, I was…I wanted to continue…
Interviewer: Was this post the Quebec City…?
Interviewee: Yeah, I wanted to continue, I remember being in Puerto Alegre and there was a big PGA meeting in Puerto Alegre in 2003, big meeting. It wasn’t called…but people were just there, so let’s have a PGA meeting.
Interviewer: Hmm I didn’t know about that.
Interviewee: […] A lot of Brazilians, and I would bet that would been a moment of input because there would have been some resonance in Brazil. People would have heard of Brazil, EMST were involved, so on and so…
Interviewer: Some guy was saying, I think the one you were talking to in xxx, saying it was more of the anarchist folks in Brazil who took it on, even though I missed he was officially affiliated…there were other formations that were actually, really living it.
Interviewee: Yeah, he…uh. We had a few meetings in Puerto Alegre, now that I think of it. But we had one very big one, I remember a huge circle. I remember xx with the Beehive collective for a while. She was from Quebec; she was with the Quebec group. I don’t think it was sal-almi, it was somebody else.
Interviewer: CLAC?
Interviewee: No not CLAC, but she was affiliated with the Beehive collective for quite a few years. She was also…she was at that meeting in Brazil, and seems to me that she may have been in Geneva. So, she was from some Quebec group, and later when I met her next time, she was working with the Beehive collective in Maine.
Interviewer: I should find her…
Interviewee: People who know her, would know how to find her. She would have very good Quebec perspective…
Interviewer: yeah, yeah
Interviewee: …so who else. So that meeting happened, and there was also a PGA meeting in Venezuela in 2006: small meeting, much smaller and that’s when I got the feeling—for me—that’s like I could see in the south that it was like, over.
Interviewer: Was it the one when there was also a social forum in Venezuela?
Interviewee: So again it was the same thing, let’s have a meeting, much smaller. The one in Brazil was quite large, I remember.
Interviewer: Uh uh. And that’s 2003?
Interviewee: Yeah
Interviewer: Yeah I mean everything has its moment, and uh then it has its children. What do you think we should be asking people? You’re like my first interview
Interviewee: Oh my god, wow. Well, I have to think about that
Interviewer: Like, what do we want to figure out? I mean one of the things that…do you want something else to eat?
Interviewee: I want water and I’m going to order a coffee. Jeez, yeah…can we just…those lessons learnt that can generate a stronger movement or has that happened already, without us seeing it, you know? How can you track what impact that had, I mean I remember, in those days, nobody talked about capitalism. There’s a really key meeting in 2000 of the IMF in Krogstad in 2000 and afterwards even in Germany, there was stuff that went on. I remember us saying, all of us saying how amazing it is that people are actually using the word ‘capitalism’ because in 1998 they weren’t! They weren’t saying the word ‘capitalism’. And how we’ve actually broken through by naming it and what a great thing this is. So to me that is PGA, it started naming the system in a global way and started putting people in the streets. They were saying, “We have to stop the corporate agenda, the corporations have too much power!”. I was like, “Capitalism is fucked”, I was saying that in 1998. I think that was very, very significant. Certainly, liberal movements shied away from that. [To another person] Do you work here?
Interviewer: I wonder about…my sense is, and I don’t know about movements in Spain well enough. But my sense is, there has got to be lineages there, right? In Indignados and some of the horizontal…I don’t know, Occupy. I mean I know a direct action network…
Interviewee: Oh absolutely.
Interviewer: [direct action network] my own, took it on and those folks were involved in Occupy. And so there’s that lineage, I don’t know
Interviewee: It spilled into unions too, because some unions did direct action training. CUPE did it and we did it, and we did extensive direct action training…and
Interviewer: Free Quebec?!
Interviewee: Yeah!
Interviewer: And Windsor
Interviewee: Yeah, we did direct action training with many of their members, and here’s what the problem with it. Initially, we did direct action training for the event, and then people in the union started going, “Direct action, direct action”, right? “Let’s do a course on direct action!” And they would go do the union course, I remember Toronto doing one in Aurelia near the lake, so it becomes a theoretical exercise
Interviewee: So, you’ve got to do this training and this is what the unions did. Oh we’re training health and safety. But if you’re not training to do something, you’re just talking about it. So they’d just watch films about Seattle, so it was really hard and watching this, because I was the educational [incomprehensible], I was responsible for writing material, I didn’t have political power. I hated executive committees and executive reports, I didn’t want political power so I stayed out of that. But then, the politicals got, “Let’s do direct action training” in the middle of nowhere.
Interviewee: Well, our members used it. It was one of those PGA inspired actions, and nobody ever talks about it, we’re just not on the radar on this stuff, people hate us or what, I don’t know what. We shut down the road in Kananaskis, it was a martial zone, they had snipers, right? Not even the Black Bloc joined us there, people were afraid to go there because they were fucking told there were cops, fucking guns, helicopters in the trees and that nobody gets through, period.
Interviewer: It’s the fear…
Interviewee: It was the clear tone of the martial law, and we challenged that. Postal workers. And we broke that fucking line and we kept that road tied up for the whole day. We were the only news story that night, but it hasn’t been written about anywhere, not been talked about…
Interviewer: I’ve never heard that, actually
Interviewee: Yeah! We’ve got film footage of that, I mean it’s amazing they didn’t know what to do with us. What we did is we went to the most right wing city in Calgary, in Canada, Calgary. They’ve terrified the city, especially in Calgary with these unbathed hippies coming in and all this stuff, right? So we go in those streets and turn it around by saying they’re holding the big summit up in Kananaskis and spending a billion dollars on security. We’re postal workers, we’d be happy to deliver any message you want to the Prime Minister. And everybody wrote a message, I mean, everybody! Everybody is writing shit. And good stuff too, like “Resign”, “You’re overpaid” etc. And to have this from citizens of Calgary is remarkable, right? So then we organized to go in with our uniforms to deliver the mail and the cops, the first line of cops stopped us and said we couldn’t go in. We said, “we know you’re doing your job, no problem and we’re doing ours. It’s a criminal offense to delay delivery of mail in Canada and there are all these letters to the Prime Minister, and we’re postal workers and we’ve got to deliver ‘em, it’s our job!”. And they go, “Well, we’ll let you through. Go down to the next line and talk to Captain Whatever”, right? This just kept going on and nobody wanted to deal with it, till finally, Putin couldn’t get in, because we had the road blocked. They had to finally send Andy Goldenberg from the Prime Minister’s office, like he couldn’t hold it on to any longer. And we just embarrassed him in front of the national media. Not by yelling at him, just being like, “Here are these letters, take the mail”. He’s sweating ‘cause it’s really hot and he doesn’t look good. Like Nixon, in 1961
Interviewer: [laughs]
Interviewee: [Imitating Andy Goldenberg] “Thank you very much. Very grateful to see democracy in action and participation”. And we go, “Wait a minute, we’re not giving them to you, we’re reading them to you” [laughs] We start reading them, one at a time.
Interviewer: Oh my god…
Interviewee: That was PGA inspired. That was inspired by the Indian farmers, their creative tactics, we saw them using their enemy’s power back at them, right? We saw them using their own laws and their own language, by not being angry, or telling them to fuck off, but just…you know
Interviewer: Simple…
Interviewee: Yeah…and created this paralysis. So that was a great day. But, postal workers did that. There was nobody else, just postal workers. And an interesting phenomenon happened with that training—it was a one-week training, we were preparing people emotionally. Like, they were laying down a martial law zone in Canada, it wasn’t easy. The protestors in Calgary, they never came out there. An interesting thing, first day of the training, these were people from small local places in BC and Alberta, like these are small town activists, and the guys were like, “Fuck them! We’ll shut them down, they’re not going to take us on, we’ll go there”. In fact, we were doing our training at a reserve close by, and their RCNP came and pressured them to shut it down. And we had to move to Red Deer, and then we had all these women and people from small towns going, “I don’t know, I don’t know if I should be here”, right? So, we wanted to make that people could do the action
Interviewee: We were either going to do the action or support it. But as we work through the stakes and what we’re doing, a complete switch changes. The people from small towns step up in unbelievable, powerful ways. And all the guys, who were saying shut it down, they decide they’d go to Calgary where they can do more organising work, and they could articulate what we were doing, do legal support and stuff like that.
Interviewer: Hmm. Are you still in touch with some of the folks you met through the conferences or some of the international movements?
Interviewee: Um, I have been, not regular contact, but uh huh. There’s a guy from Nicaragua, whose name is Daniel Querol and he was really well connected.
Interviewee: Querol. Q-U-E-R-O-L.
Interviewer: I saw Coultard speak last weekend and he was talking about the Dennais internationalism in the 1960’s and how there’s a Canadian delegation to Tanzania. It’s a quite funny story, and who’s the father? George Manuel or Arthur Manuel?
Interviewee: George
Interviewer: Yeah, he was there and he was mistaken to be the head of the delegation and so he ended up spending a whole lot of time talking to Nyerere
Interviewee: Nice
Interviewer: And they’re reading Fanon, and talking about the rub. I mean obviously, the PGA is built on other histories of connections you know? But there was something that was happening at that moment, because of the global institutions?
Interviewee: Yeah, who were we talking about?
Interviewer: Daniel Querol…because you do have different kinds of struggles we’re linked in that had very…Well, on the one hand you’ve got folks from Nepal who’re saying, here we are, bombing police stations and we are part of the PGA, and there are other groups who then have kind of gained power in some parts of Latin America, calling against you
Interviewee: Cocolaros? Yeah, that was huge. Um, just an aside, another interesting story I’d like to know more about and I learned this, sometime in the 80’s that several members of our executive were flown to Libya by Gaddafi for some international meeting, but they don’t want to talk. Those people are still around, they went to Libya and met Gaddafi and to North Africa in the 80’s.
Interviewer: Some of the stories, when Mack was doing blockading on the West Coast, there was like a Libyan connection, through the warriors that you know, obviously somebody knows about, the people who were there.
Interviewee: Couple of things that are interesting about that trip though—the one to Libya—there’s a guy on the plane who is president at the meetings, who later turned out to be Grant Brisa, the Sisi agent…he was there
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was present at the meetings?
Interviewee: Yes, he was there with that delegation. And another interesting thing about that period, that at the same time, there was a Canadian journalist who committed suicide by allegedly jumping off a building. So you know, what is that fucking story, right? And Brista was in the post office in 1981 working at Gateway, while he was setting up the heritage fund with [incomprehensible]
Interviewer: I mean you think about, okay you’re talking about PGA networks in North America. PGA, I mean this is the thing about this project, because you’ve got a stronger sense of how it played out in Canada than anyone. I mean some of the folks in CLAC, but when I’m talking to folks in Europe, it was much more thin, so they go are you going to go interview people who were influenced by PGA, but there are not many who were involved in PGA. It wasn’t an intentional thing like, you’re a member of. Um, so I’m not even…so there are people who went to the actions, there are people who went to the summit, the gatherings, I’m not even sure how to like even, map this in Canada and the US. But there are stories.
Interviewee: I think there are some important stories
Interviewer: You don’t want to lose those stories. Especially if we go back to the lessons question, I mean I’ve finished my formal questions but…
Interviewee: I mean, North America was always a disappointment, right? And even, I have to say, when I look back—not to disrespect anyone’s activism—I saw a lot of spoiled young children in PGA in North America, that’s what killed it. Lack of maturity.
Interviewer: I don’t think I’ve ever talked too much about this or talked about this, I mean Mack and I were pretty involved in Amherst and then walked out, left out of frustration, at the end. And we’d been trying to circumvent the people who had the most resources who went to Cochabamba as representatives, knowing that there was, that people needed to represent grassroots movements, knowing that there weren’t networks that could push it.
Interviewee: Exactly.
Interviewer: I don’t know if it’s the right strategy. I remember talking about it with David Graber, and he was like, “Isn’t it better that somebody goes instead of nobody?”. I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t know. I wonder now, maybe it would have been the same. But it’s like do you want to fuck it up, do you want to repeat that model or fail at the other one. I don’t know. I think there’s actually like, maybe it wasn’t about the going. Maybe it was about the stories and the grassroots movement to global justice, those networks continue to be active in mobilising poor people and people of colour, shape the US social forum process. Like the defenders of the land, some of that…
Interviewee: Yeah and the fact that some of that has a broader, mainstream—still not enough—but more than it has at any other time, even the point now we can say as white people that we don’t think that the AFN speaks for indigenous people. That couldn’t be said 15 years ago you’d be seen as or felt racist, and now you can say now there’s the traditional elders, the traditional societies have a voice about the Earth, about property and stuff.
Interviewer: I wonder though, if you look at the more recent wave of stuff, Arab Spring, Indignados struggles, they’re connected but there’s no formation like PGA that’s operating right now.
Interviewee: No, that’s true.
Interviewer: And could there be…
Interviewee: And how could it communicate too, we have Skype now. We wouldn’t need to always go everywhere; communication would be a lot easier now. There’s still the languages and the interpretation, things are generally done in English and Spanish, there’s always interpretation but you can still do regional meetings or whatever. I mean there were some heavy hitters involved in India, and Bangladesh. Strong movements, you know? And you know, the struggle is over here, why are we going over there, like the OCAP thing. That has some resonance and some truth, right? Coordinated action days, for sure. And they’re hard to get too, because somebody wants you to coordinate an action day around their struggle—let’s have a day about Bolivia, and everybody in the world you know, it’s hard work and why the hell so. So, what are the aims and they should be brushed off and stuff. Um and again the feeling that it was the Europeans that had time on their hands, so they become the shapers and movers.
Interviewer: Uh huh. So, who do we talk to, to get the stories? You’ve given me some good names
Interviewee: Well, Daniel for sure and I have his email
Interviewer: Sweet. Does he speak English or…?
Interviewee: Oh yeah, English and Spanish. French and whatever else
Interviewer: Both. But right now I’m personally trying to figure out North America.
Interviewee: Michael was on the first tour
Interviewer: The across Canada one?
Interviewee: No sorry, that was a second one. That was the second caravan and it was a disaster. That was for…
Interviewer: Separate Quebec?
Interviewee: 2001 WTO.
Interviewer: Oh!
Interviewee: 9/11. That’s what happened. So we’re planning the caravan, I think we even have CAW to buy in which is huge for us, right? And 9/11 happens and the vice-president makes an announcement we shouldn’t do anything…
Interviewer: We had the October 15th thing…
Interviewee: fucking shit, so we say we have to go ahead. In retrospect, we shouldn’t have. It wasn’t just 9/11, everything went wrong with that tour, everything. Like we just, from the people on it, from the infighting, from the handholding, mainstream elements involved, mainstream you know…
Interviewer: I think it did though, I mean it’s not as deep, more like oh okay, you’re aware of stuff you wouldn’t be aware of. You think about things in a different way.
Interviewee: There’s another letter carrier that went to Bangalore.
Interviewer: Oh really?
Interviewee: Somebody from Hamilton. We still talk, he might be interesting to talk to because he was a real outsider on all this, like this wasn’t his thing but he wound up going. What did he experience, what did he remember?
Interviewer: How many people went to Bangalore? I mean, how many people were at Bangalore?
Interviewee: I’d imagine at least a couple hundred. And it was great because we stayed at a compound outside the city. It was great, people either slept in tents or communally on the floor. There were no sleeping bags, people just crashed out. We were fed, everything was there. Yeah um, if I go back and look at emails and stuff and flesh out some…Yeah I think, Tampa Bay Action Group, are they still around?
Interviewee: I have to say, I was most impressed, most impressive moment I saw around direct action and PGA and everything was in Prague. Nobody could agree what kind of action we wanted, people wanted to fight the cops, [incomprehensible] and they had the non-violence and the Gandhists, and the fact that there were brown people there who the Czech police would be particularly hard on if they got arrested, so they didn’t want to get involved, right? Fronts, we had three fronts, people lived up to those fronts. People participated in those fronts. There was one odd moment where the Black Bloc came in and threw rocks at the police over who they thought were silly, non-violent protestors and the cops retaliated against the people sitting down, right? And they’d beg ‘em, please stop throwing stones, you guys go to your other place, “Oh you’re fucking crazy, fight the cops!”. So, I saw this and in fact, there is in fact a film. I was in the medical car, where we said there will be a white person with a brown person and we were in one of those places where people started throwing shit. And we had to run because cops broke through. And she wasn’t young, so running wasn’t easy. We fell behind the crowd and the cops were gaining on us, and you could hear them, coming up behind us. And you know it was deep doorways, it is a medieval city with deep doorways, there was no way we were getting away, so we grabbed her hand and pulled her into this doorway. And the film—you can see it from the air, there’s the crowd running, there’s a couple where they pull her in the doorway and the cops keep running.
Interviewer: What’s the film?
Interviewee: Um, the film with the IMF in Prague. I have it. I can send you the CD.
Interviewer: And the one that I have is a funny one, sort of like, it uses music…
Interviewee: Oh that’s the one, reclaim the streets one, where there’s like dancing and…
Interviewer: the pink stuff is in that?
Interviewee: Oh the pink stuff? Oh the pink stuff is Prague, because what happens in the pink stuff is that the pink fairies are only people who succeed in backing the police to the centre. Police don’t retreat anywhere else, but when pink fairies are coming at ‘em, they back up in terror. They’re looking at each other and like, “Does it mean I’m gay if I touch them?” or “Do I get AIDS?”, their totally peabrains are freaking out. It’s something they don’t understand, so there are PGA activists that are interviewed in the film, a few times identified as PGA, a few times as whatever activist community they’re coming from, right?
Interviewer: I think I know this film. Is it called “Crowd bites Wolf”?
Interviewee: There’s another one that’s quite interesting around the reclaim the streets action.
[End]
Transcription of audio file 702_0009
Interviewee: Is it working? There’s a lot that happened also even though it wasn’t called PGA if you look at you know 2009 and the climate summit in Copenhagen, there was the trade to climate caravan and where…this uh two buses traveling across Europe starting at the WTO and then you know going to different targets and meeting with organic farmers and then meeting back up in Copenhagen. That was certainly PGA related even though it wasn’t called PGA, those were front line networks and front line struggles from around the world. It was a very interesting experience. Incidentally, we were stopped. I remember this—pulled over, leaving Germany. I’ve never heard of people being pulled over leaving Germany. Like I’ve heard the EU is just a kind of seamless thing, right? But even still, usually there’s a sign that says you know, “Welcome to Germany” or “Welcome to Denmark”. But this time, we were stopped, leaving Germany, which is, you know…tells you a lot, right.
Interviewer: Yeah
Interviewee: I don’t think most people are stopped leaving Germany and, um but we were, and they went through everything and held us for quite a while and stuff. And then they followed us—all the way to Copenhagen. We were tailed. But anyway, we stayed in Christiania and we stayed in a movie theatre; a place with beach sand for a floor, which is very cool, and we slept there in sleeping bags and it was heated by a giant wood furnace and had a kitchen in the back. But those were PGA related folks.
Interviewer: Yeah
Interviewee: And there we were back in back together, you know, fighting there. And there was an action in the summit, where uh we tried to go in with people in the frontline struggles of climate. People that are climate refugees, people that are from islands that are now disappearing. So, we tried to go in to the summit and, of course, they wouldn’t let us. There were beatings and gassing and stuff and harassment. but also Evo Morales and his delegation tried to leave and come out and show solidarity. They were roughed up, they were prevented, like a world leader was prevented from leaving to come join us. So this Europe thing is kind of weird. It’s almost like when they don’t want you, they stop you from leaving. Which is really an odd thing when you think about it, what we hear about highly repressive countries. But, uh, I remember too, on the march, having to be very, very sophisticated in terms of discipline. We actually had to shove our bodies into each other. And keep sometimes our arms linked. So, imagine ten thousand people just sandwiched and why? Because cops kept trying to come in to provoke. They kept trying to a jab or a pull or whatever, they were trying to make something happen that whole march. And so, we just held tight. Ae just you know we had to stay like this really close up and close together and firm and going forward, because of that provocation. And I remember raising this later at the ITUC meeting, International Trade Union Confederation because being the union guy, I kinda wore two hats, I wanted to be in those struggles and be with the PGA related things, but also it was important that I attend a few of the union meetings, so I’d go to a few of them. And what I noticed, a couple things about them. One is they were completely removed from anything else going on. The union meetings at the climate summit were in a building that was far away from anything and people generally, they met until 5 at night and then they went home to their hotel, which was about 30 kilometres outside Copenhagen. So, very clearly designed to separate the movements, right?
Interviewer: Yeah
Interviewee: By design, even physically and geographically, you know? And for the labour march, it was boosted by till, by huge numbers by the activists, boosted the numbers to like 100, 000 people or something.
Interviewer: yeah
Interviewee: And the cops nettled, even though it was a completely non-violent march. It completely, in ten days of action in Copenhagen there was one broken window. So, nothing there happened, it just didn’t happen. And yet the cops kettled these thousand over a thousand people, just pulled them out of the march. And held them, and I raised this at the ITUC meeting—two thousand people overall had been arrested. There had been no violence other than by the police, at all, and not even retaliation, and yet this continued and we had to condemn this and these people were in the labour protest and supporting us. And I remember the first response was met with anger, incredulity and European trade unionists saying quote, “this is the land of Hans Christian Anderson! The police would not do anything like this here.” And, it’s like oh my god, what do you say?
Interviewer: And they just did
Interviewee: Yeah, and they just had done that for days and everybody knew it. Thousands of people were in jail, but what interesting thing happened, you get these international delegations you get the feeling that these people from the global south are dependent again, on the Europeans
Interviewer: Hmm
Interviewee: So, for finding whatever, you want to travel, so, they tend to “go along” but I think a white guy complaining about the treatment of people from the global south, in Copenhagen, gave permission. ‘cause I noticed this divide where people were all of a sudden people from South America, other trade unionists from Africa were getting up and complaining as well. While the whites were shutting it down like this would never happen here
Interviewer: You must be dreaming
Interviewee: Yeah. but incidentally, I did remind ITUC months later when people won huge settlements, like around twenty thousand dollars for the mistreatment, those who had signed on—um, got settlements. I sent that to ITUC and said, “So, what do you have to say now?”.
Interviewer: Well I mean that’s where, where my academic stuff has been going is looking at the cops, right? The policing of protest, and you see that they’re learning and by the time it hits Copenhagen, they’ve learned a lot.
Interviewee: Yeah
Interviewer: …about how to try and just shut things down.
Interviewee: I did not get in an affinity group in Copenhagen for that reason. I could see what was shaping up and I always had a flank that was open, always. And just ran around, took pictures. I could see it developing. I said I’m leaving the affinity group. this is what’s gonna happen. You know and that’s what happened, right?