Trading Lies for Truth

The thousands of us who went up to Quebec City that weekend were not out for "a good time" or to "blah blah blah". The Canadians among us went because we thought we had a country, believed we had important things to say, and felt we had a right to be heard. Our "democratic" government saw it differently, and they used our money to put up a seven-foot wall and line it with riot police to keep us out. They made Quebec City a war zone so that they and their corporate buddies could continue to force their version of "free" trade down all our throats.

What those of us who disagreed with that agenda got in our throats instead was a burning, choking poison. What we saw when we could open our stinging eyes again was the lines of riot police, like the storm troopers from Star Wars, advancing on peaceful protestors and shooting more canisters of tear gas into the crowd to blind more people as they tried to flee, stumbling, through the caustic clouds.

Yes, it was a hard place to be for a while. But in the company of our Latin American and Caribbean friends, we had to put it in perspective. While we face increasing repression here in our country -- tear gas and water cannon and rubber bullets and time in jail -- many of them face not only all that, but a daily reality of hardship and hunger, and all too often incarceration, torture, and death, just for trying to survive.

And yet they were the ones who gave me hope. Like the young people Allan writes about, our Via Campesina sisters and brothers are a powerful source of inspiration for us, both in who they are and in what they do. If we want to learn how to mobilize and educate masses of people, how to organize effectively with no money,

how to build a strong farm and rural movement grounded in reality and committed to change, we can look southwards.

So it is clear that this bringing together of North and South was no altruistic exercise. The corporate forces we are battling are global forces, so any real challenge to them must take place in that global context. What people like Vilson Santin, Renwick Rose, Blanca Chancoso, Jose Bove and so many others are doing is linking their grassroots local reality with a global analysis, and taking action which combines the two. This is key to their effectiveness, and it is likewise key to any hope that we may have.

Here in Canada, farmers and consumers are told that food is just a commodity, land and water only "resources" to be exploited, animals and plants merely material to be manipulated as we see fit for maximum monetary profit. We are being conditioned to see other Canadians only as "stakeholders", "consumers", or "investors". We are being trained to see other countries only as current or potential "trading partners", and their citizens as either markets or competitors. And we are told that we must embrace corporate trade agreements or languish in abject poverty and backwardness forever.

These are lies. Nobody who was in Quebec last month can ever believe them again. We have traded in those lies for truths -- truths which sting the eyes and burn the throat, but which also offer us hope for the kind of world envisioned in our Forum statements.

Our struggle has indeed got a long history -- a global one. And we are determined.