AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Democracy Now!, The Exception to the Rulers. I’m Amy Goodman, as we go now to Quebec City, where protesters are gathering today for major protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas. We’re joined by Jaggi Singh, who is a spokesperson for CLAC, the Anti-Capitalist Convergence in Quebec City; Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians, the largest public advocacy group in Canada; and Philippe Duhamel, who is a spokesperson for SalAMI.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Philippe Duhamel, what is SalAMI?

PHILIPPE DUHAMEL: Well, SalAMI is basically a citizen-based organization that seeks to organize and participate in education and civil resistance actions and campaigns against the whole corporate rule agenda that we see as part of the Summit of the Americas and the whole free trade negotiations.

AMY GOODMAN: It is also a play on words, isn’t it?

PHILIPPE DUHAMEL: Right. I mean, we were born out of struggle that succeeded in defeating the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, which is known in French as AMI. And we basically said, “dirty friend,” to be very educational about what we thought about the MAI.

AMY GOODMAN: And what are your plans for today?

PHILIPPE DUHAMEL: Well, basically, there’s a lot of people involved. Last night, we had a group of 600 women who redecorated a whole section of the fence with pieces of fabric, images, clothing, from various groups in the U.S., actually, and across the Americas. That was very successful. And today we’re devoting a lot of energies into this citizen FTAA, not the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas but a Freedom and Truth Area of the Americas, where about a hundred groups are having booths that are open to the public in the harbor front of Quebec City. That will allow also various theater groups and such to do a lot of outreach to the general population and demonstrators in Quebec City. We have also friends and people who are going to take part in various forms of nonviolent direct action around the city. And this promises to be a very interesting day.

AMY GOODMAN: Jaggi Singh, you’re a spokesperson for CLAC, the Anti-Capitalist Convergence. What are your plans for today? And what does the city look like?

JAGGI SINGH: Well, the city of Quebec normally has these quaint old city walls. And they’ve decided to build a whole new set of walls. And the people who built those walls don’t quite have the same aesthetic sensibilities. It’s an ugly, one-meter-high concrete barricade with a three-meter-high fence.

CLAC, which is Anti-Capitalist Convergence, along with the Summit of the Americas Welcoming Committee here in Quebec City, we’re helping to facilitate some of the direct actions and civil disobedience today. The summit is starting today, and we believe that it’s an illegitimate process, that the vision that the summit represents, the summit and the FTAA, is a vision that sees human beings simply as capital, that sees the environment as simply something to be exploited, that sees culture as a commodity. We believe it’s legitimate and should be disrupted — the summit, at least — as much as possible. So we’re helping to facilitate these direct actions. There was a large spokescouncil yesterday. And there will be all kinds of decentralized actions, street parties, civil disobedience. It will be an interesting day, that’s for sure.

One thing I want to make clear, though, is that we haven’t been organizing for one year for simply two days in April. We’re now upon those two days in April, and it’ll be interesting. What CLAC is hoping to do is to mobilize beyond Quebec. What we’d like to say is it didn’t start in Seattle, and it sure as hell isn’t going to stop in Quebec. But you can be sure that the next two days will be really interesting.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined on the phone by Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians. And on your website, Canadians.org, you have the booklet that you’ve put out on the FTAA. For listeners that are just beginning to get a sense of what’s going on in Quebec right now and to focus on the Summit of the Americas that U.S. President Bush has just gone up to today, what are the major points you make about explaining what the FTAA is?

MAUDE BARLOW: Well, first of all, good morning, and hi, Jaggi, and hi, Philippe. We’re all in different parts of the city, so this is great to talk together.

Basically, what they’re about is extending NAFTA to all of the countries of the Americas except Cuba, so 34 other countries of the hemisphere. But it’s NAFTA which is called WTO compatible. So that means more than NAFTA. And it would be bad enough it’s just NAFTA, because that includes water, that includes natural resources, that includes an investment clause that allows corporations to sue governments if they bring in any legislation that these corporations can demonstrate have lost them lost future profits. And so, there are literally billions of dollars, billions and billions of dollars’ worth of challenges out now. So this would extend corporate — North American corporate hegemony right through the hemisphere, and would be just a second colonization for the peoples of the Americas.

But what they’re also talking about is a full services agreement, which would be health, education, municipal services, prisons, water services, environmental services. Everything that governments now do would be forced open to corporate competition, and corporations would be given equal standing to public institutions in order — in effect, being able to claim public funding. So it really is basically the next level of corporate colonization of all of the peoples of the Americas.

And I’ve done this analysis based — we don’t have the text, but we do have a lot of good information — well, bad information, but it’s, I mean, not happy information, but real, because they set up nine negotiating committees of the trade bureaucrats of the 34 countries, so we have what they have proposed. And so — and two days ago, we got a hold of the investment chapter. So we know what they’re proposing. And it’s the most far-reaching, extreme free trade agreement in the world. And by the way, your listeners can access it on our website, www.Canadians.org in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, just getting a hold of this document has been a major issue. In fact, a number of people were involved in trying to get this document. We went to Canada about a week ago, when a government building was taken over to demand the release of the document. Were any of you there?

MAUDE BARLOW: I —

PHILIPPE DUHAMEL: Oh, yes.

MAUDE BARLOW: Philippe and I were both there. It was one of the most moving — honestly, the most moving events I’ve ever been involved in, because it was exceptionally dignified. We have been accused, as you know, of course, of wanting to, you know, destroy this and destroy that. And so, we were very clear that we wanted to send a message to the Canadian people about our discipline, and also to say, you know, that we have these fundamental rights. And so, there was a great celebration in this event, but also great dignity. And 87 people crossed the barrier, including Philippe and — well, they didn’t actually end up charging them, but allowed themselves to become arrested at that moment. And it was really a very powerful signal.

And it was only days later that the government of Canada said that, yes, they would take the message to Buenos Aires to all the ministers meeting — all the trade ministers meeting there, to say that the text would be released. But it still hasn’t been released. They’re now — they said they had to translate it. Well, you can’t tell us that the Brazilians are not negotiating and don’t have the copy in Portuguese, or the Argentinians aren’t using Spanish. And we think they’re probably rewriting something for public consumption. So, it was a win at one level in that they admitted publicly for the first time that citizens should have access to these documents. But it was a loss in that, of course, we’re still having to get it by stealth.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined on the telephone by Jaime Chavez, who is director of the Water Information Network, and he’s joining us from Juárez, Mexico, though he lives in New Mexico. Can you explain why you’re there today?

JAIME CHAVEZ: Good morning, Amy. How are you doing?

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us.

JAIME CHAVEZ: Good to talk with you again. Yeah, we’re getting ready for some very dynamic actions. Last night, there was a great poetry reading in downtown El Paso. Jimmy Santiago Baca, a very well-known poet, and myself read to a group of people from El Paso, and we did, through our poetry, an exposé of, really, the situation that is happening in Mexico, and, of course, now potentially throughout the hemisphere with the extension of the FTAA.

And so, we have a few actions planned. Today, we have a press conference at the Palacio Municipal here in Juárez. And the number of groups and organizations — this is an organizing effort that the organization I work with, WIN, is connected to. And I’ll give you the name of the binational organizing effort, Coordinadora Regional Fronteriza de Organizaciones No Gubernamentales, COREF, which is a binational organizing effort to connect nongovernmental organizations working to improve conditions of civil society on the border and to gear up for long-term change.

And so, we’re very excited with the people that will be coming today to oppose further militarization of the border and, of course, the impacts of pollution caused by these trade agreements, and to say no to the greedy multinational corporations and no to sweatshop exploitation here on the border into the maquiladoras and, of course, no to the assassination of women in Juárez, the disappearance of more than 200 women, working women, in Juárez, that have been assassinated and disappeared, and, of course, the lack of government investigation into the matter, no to NAFTA and no to the oppression of Native peoples. So, we’re geared up for some very dynamic, festive, symbolic events to bring together people from the states of Chihuahua, Texas and New Mexico to work on a common agenda with NGOs to solve border problems.

AMY GOODMAN: I think it’s very interesting, Jaime Chavez, you’re with Water Information Network, and, Maude Barlow, water has been one of the major issues you’ve taken on in Canada. Can you, Maude Barlow, talk about your connecting the issue of water with the FTAA, the Free Trade Area of the Americas?

MAUDE BARLOW: I think it connects at several levels, Amy. The first is that we’ve been concerned since the very first free trade agreement in the world, which was the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, which was signed January 1st, 1989. NAFTA was the next. And now, of course, there have been a proliferation on our hemisphere. The FTAA is the third. And water is in NAFTA. It is intended to be in the FTAA as a good, which means that if you start commercially exporting water for commercial purposes, you lose control to the corporations. You cannot maintain control over your own water. And, of course, we are very concerned about that in Canada, because we’ve already gone —

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask that people not move their phones, because you’re all on together, so the jogging of the phone makes it hard to hear Maude. Go ahead.

MAUDE BARLOW: So, that’s water as a good. Water — but now we’re concerned that they’re going to put water as a service into the FTAA, which means that you’ve got big service corporations — for instance, Azurix, Enron’s water division, the big energy company. Enron has now set up a water division, and they are dying to get their hands on all the public services, water services, across the continent.

AMY GOODMAN: I should add here the perspective in the United States is Enron is one of the major contributors to — was to the George Bush presidential campaign.

MAUDE BARLOW: Right. Right. And when Mr. Bush talks about a North American energy accord, I am absolutely convinced he’s including water. But I want to say, Amy, that I think it connects us at another level. I think water is going to be the defining issue for us as a movement across the hemisphere and across the world to take back the commons. We keep saying, all of us, that we’re not against certain kinds of trade, and certainly not against fair trade. And we feel there are ways you could set up rules that promote fair trade goods and so on. But water — we very much demand that there are certain issues that must be maintained in the commons, health and education, those areas of social security and human rights that are necessary for human survival and human rights, but also the ecological survival of the Earth. And I think you’re going to see water emerge as these corporations move into Latin America, as they are moving in all over the world, and claiming — they’re buying up tracts of land just for the aquifers underneath. They’re buying river systems. They’re doing deals with governments desperate for their investment. And what we’re saying is that this is a connector, north to south, that we, as peoples in the hemisphere and around the world, are going to work to take back control of our water.

AMY GOODMAN: Jaime Chavez, on the Mexico-U.S. border, on the issue of water?

JAIME CHAVEZ: Yes. I mean, you know, New Mexico, historically, is a part of Mexico. And as you know, the mining activities in New Mexico, particularly uranium mining, that occurs on Indian lands, poses major threats to aquifers, pristine aquifers, that are above EPA levels of accepted clean water, and, you know, propose in situ leach mining by a corporation out of Dallas, Uranium Resources, Inc. That proposed in situ leach mining would dislodge uranium in these aquifers. And the people in those communities are up in arms, opposed to this, because it will have a tremendous effect on life.

And in New Mexico, we have both the front end and the tail end of the impacts of the nuclear fuel chain. In eastern New Mexico and in West Texas, we have a situation developing there that we call the nuclear mall, where you will have a variety of technical services, I mean, from, you know, toxic dumping and low-level waste, isolated waste, that is being proposed for the entire West Texas and eastern New Mexico areas, which is a path of least resistance, because there are poor Mexicano communities, poor ranchers in that area, and they figure — and political payback, if you will, in West Texas, now that they were not able to get a low-level nuclear dump, similar to the Sierra Blanca situation, that, you know, they’re looking to put a box around Andrews County now and make that one of the largest nuclear dumps, a political payback for major political contributors to the president of the United States, Mr. Bush, through Harold Simmons, who contributed over $400,000 and is one of the chief stockholders and board members of Waste Control Specialists, that just eliminated a competitor in West Texas at Barstow called Enviro Care, out of Utah, a horrendous corporate polluter.

AMY GOODMAN: You also have —

JAIME CHAVEZ: And we see the all downstream effects of all of this going down to Mexico through these water channels, through the Rio Pecos system and through the Rio Grande, besides all the agrochemical pollution that’s connected to this.

AMY GOODMAN: You also have Intel, which is the largest semiconductor-manufacturing — the largest maker of semiconductors in the world, in New Mexico, that uses a tremendous amount of water.

JAIME CHAVEZ: Without a doubt. Yeah, they are really working hard on trying to be a good corporate citizen by, of course, making donations to a lot of the nonprofit organizations in the area. But still, I mean, it is lowering the water table and affecting the situation of farmers in the Corrales and in the valley areas. And, you know, it’s basically, as you know, a situation where — corporate welfare. Because of the lack of economic development in those areas, city and county and municipal governments are really opening the door to this type of industry because of a lack of grassroots, I would say, solutions to economic development.

AMY GOODMAN: There are a number of actions that will be taking place on the Mexico border. When we come back from our break, we’re going to go back up to Canada. But the actions there, from New Mexico to San Diego, Jaime Chavez, what will you be involved with this weekend?

JAIME CHAVEZ: We have a very — tomorrow there will be a protest in Parque San Jacinto in El Paso, which is — some of the information says, you know, this is the capitalist rough draft for the corporate constitution of the world. And, in fact, this is not a constitution of the people, by the people and for the people. And so, there’s going to be a very lively action at Plaza San Jacinto from 11:00 to 1:00 p.m., and on Sunday a major action recognizing Día de la Tierra, or Earth Day. And we intend to bring together the binational coalition of NGO organizations at the Juárez Bridge and also at the Zaragoza Bridge on the Mexican side. And, of course, these actions will seek to promote nonviolent solutions to social problems throughout the entire border region. But as you know —

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Jaime Chavez, if people want to get in touch through the web or by phone, how can they?

JAIME CHAVEZ: Well, I’ll go ahead and give the hotline number on the ground over here. They can contact ourselves, of people that are working both in El Paso and in Juárez.

AMY GOODMAN: Real quick.

JAIME CHAVEZ: 915-873-6475, and in Juárez, 615-6546, and, of course, using the international access code.

AMY GOODMAN: And we’ll put those numbers at the website, www.webactive.com. I want to thank you for being with us, from the Water Information Network, speaking to us from Juárez, Mexico. You are listening to Democracy Now!, as we’ll go back up to Canada and then end with Mike Davis, a professor who has moved from Los Angeles to New York, who has his perspective on the FTAA. Jaggi Singh is with us, spokesperson for the Anti-Capitalist Convergence, CLAC; Maude Barlow, Council of Canadians; and Philippe Duhamel, speaking to us with the group SalAMI. You’re listening to Democracy Now! Back in a minute.

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AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Democracy Now!, Free Speech Radio, as we continue in Canada on this day of protest and resistance in Quebec City and around the Americas. We are joined by Maude Barlow, Council of Canadians; Jaggi Singh of CLAC, the Anti-Capitalist Convergence; and Philippe Duhamel, spokesperson for a SalAMI. And they are all in Quebec City for today’s protests. The issue of direct action and also property damage, which has become one of the themes we’ve been talking about this week, Jaggi Singh, your perspective on it?

JAGGI SINGH: Well, you know, Amy, there’s going to be some violent people coming to Quebec City today. They’re organized, and they’re motivated. And those violent people are the 34 heads of state of this hemisphere. They are responsible for structural violence, the violence of poverty, the displacement of Indigenous people. When you make cuts to social programs, such as the government here in Canada did, to billions of dollars, that has profound consequences in society. And that level of profound day-to-day violence far and above outweighs any potential for violence by protesters.

We want to try to disturb the summit as much as possible. We’re not talking about a shutdown, because it’s sort of hard to talk about a shutdown when the city is sort of already shut down for you by a huge police operation. But in any case, we want to make our case heard loud and clear, and put the emphasis on where that real violence resides, and, by the same token, try to create a spirit of solidarity amongst demonstrators. That’s our goal today, the specific goal today. And that’s, I think, where we’re going to try to target our message, the fact that those 34 leaders, that those police, the policies that they’re responsible for, have very, very violent consequences in society. And that’s what we’re opposing.

AMY GOODMAN: Philippe Duhamel, I know this has divided your groups to a certain extent. Your take on this?

PHILIPPE DUHAMEL: Well, I would totally concur with Jaggi about the massive violence of this system that we’re facing now, with over a hundred species disappearing every day, 65 kids dying every minute of hunger. We are faced with one of the most violent systems that has existed on this planet, and our very survival is threatened.

But there are issues within the movement that need to be addressed. And certainly, we do need a long-term strategy to actually turn this movement, which is still emerging, which is still nascent, into a really powerful mass movement.

Now, one of the issues has been this diversity of tactics. We’ll see how it plays out in the streets today. Something to keep in mind is that the movements are still experimenting with various takes on tactics and strategies. We’ll see. But certainly, we’ve got to be very mindful of — as Jaggi said. And there’s also, you know, 6,500 men, mostly, who are dressed in black, who have been practicing throwing all kinds of projectiles for months — and we’re talking about the police. We do believe that in order for this to become a mass movement, we’ve got to have a very clear, symbolic contrast between protesters and the repression forces. We also must be very mindful of the fact that agents provocateurs have systematically been used, at least in this part of the world.

And we’ve got to really think about how to win the hearts and minds of people, and make actions that allow children to take part, the handicapped. We’ve got to be very responsible. Some people could get hurt very badly, just for the action of some individuals. And I understand that there’s attempts to sort of define zones and stuff like that. But maybe there’s still too much vagueness about what’s going to go on, what tactics are going to be happening, because certainly not all tactics are going to work in every context.

So, we’ll see how it plays out. But we’ll need to debrief after that and learn the lessons of Quebec City, much as we had to learn about the lessons of Seattle and Washington, all the other protests. This is an experiment. And we hope the movement really grows from here on.

AMY GOODMAN: The way the mainstream press has been playing the Summit of the Americas is Latin leaders, are they going to — do they believe that George Bush could push through an agreement in the Congress? That’s been the major issue, Maude Barlow of Council of Canadians. Will he be able to get a treaty like this or an agreement like this passed?

MAUDE BARLOW: Well, there’s great dissension, as you know, both within the United States around this but also through the Americas. And I just want to say, Amy, that the way we won the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, and the way we shut down Seattle, was both our civil society movement on the ground and on the streets but also the incredible work that was done within countries with all variety of groups, from peasants to farmers to food activists to human rights activists, and so on, saying to their governments, “Don’t you dare go and give away these rights. We’re watching you.” The most important component of this whole thing is a politically charged civil society.

What happened with the MAI is that when we got it, when we got a hold of it, they told us it didn’t exist. When we got it in a brown paper bag, at that point it was almost finished in terms of the negotiations. Within a year, we had doubled the number of reservations. We had forced our governments to double the number of exemptions and reservations they were claiming. And they just fell into a great big puddle of dissent, and they ended up fighting with each other and pulled out.

Similarly in Seattle, what happened was when — it wasn’t just what we did on the streets, although that was incredibly important, and it wasn’t just the Third World delegates, although they were terribly important, but it was also the fighting, infighting, between the so-called First World governments, because they had their constituents at home. I mean, I love that the Europeans were fighting with each other. The trade ministers were prepared to give — to sign a genetically engineered — a treaty on genetic engineering food, basically banning countries’ rights to control it, while their health and environment ministers were saying, “Are you crazy? We can’t go back and face our constituents.”

AMY GOODMAN: Maude Barlow —

MAUDE BARLOW: That’s what we’re going to do here in the Americas. We’re going to destabilize this within our own countries and attack it the same way. And there’s a tremendous movement in the United States with whom we work and upon whom we —

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you all for being with us, Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians, Jaggi Singh of the Anti-Capitalist Convergence, and Philippe Duhamel, a spokesperson for SalAMI, all in Quebec City for the protest today.