Unabomber

Unabomber News History

Copyright 2000 Southam Inc.

The Gazette (Montreal)

June 3, 2000, Saturday, FINAL

SECTION: The Review; B1 / BREAK

LENGTH: 2567 words

HEADLINE: Back to the barricades: Anarchists set their sights on OAS meeting in Windsor

BYLINE: ANDREW DUFFY

DATELINE: WINDSOR, Ont.

BODY:

A Web site used to marshal the forces of mayhem for this weekend's meeting of the Organization of American States reveals both the threat and the limits of the new anarchism.

The Infoshop News Kiosk - ''anarchist, activist and alternative news'' - includes a call to shut down the Windsor meeting where foreign ministers will discuss a continent-wide free-trade agreement.

''The experiences gained in Seattle and Washington will help our struggle against global capitalism remain autonomous, democratic and effective,'' the missive on www.infoshop.org begins.

''However, experience has also shown that our effectiveness is only limited to the organizational cohesion of affinity (protest) groups. We cannot stress the importance of meeting regularly with your affinity groups frequently before you come to Windsor.''

Organizers ask the groups to answer a few essential questions online: How many are you? What level of risk/confrontation does your affinity group represent? How many arrestibles are in your group? Is there anything other affinity groups should know about your group or your intentions?

On the March

They conclude with an apology for such an unseemly imposition of order: ''We realize this sounds like a very centralized process, but we're trying to facilitate autonomous co-ordination, and are always open to any suggestions.''

Once assigned to the quiet shelves of history, anarchists are back on the march and in the news.

Their long dormant philosophy - and its emphasis on empowering the individual - has breathed intellectual energy and destructive force into protest movements worldwide. Curiously, it is anarchism that has provided the glue between fringe elements of the environmental, anti-trade, animal-rights, labour and anti-poverty movements.

Although they might be difficult to organize and direct, these are anarchists with a cause. The disruptive power of the free-form radicals was on display at the World Trade Organization's gathering in Seattle and, to a lesser degree, at the April meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Washington.

Starting tomorrow, Windsor will confront the same spirited and fleet-footed opponents of corporate power and state authority. Calgary, host of this year's World Petroleum Congress, faces them next week.

As the radicals ready themselves, police officials and politicians are trying to assess the threat they pose and agree on appropriate counter-measures.

Jaggi Singh and Genny Santos canvassed door-to-door in downtown Windsor this week, just days before the mayhem is scheduled to begin. Self-described anarchists, they were trying to spread their anti-corporate message among the city's working class and win recruits to their cause.

It was tough going, though; the reputation of these radicals preceded them. The rampage in Seattle cost businesses there $17 million U.S. The people of Windsor are on edge.

The city has barricaded a downtown city block with chainlink fences anchored in concrete, businesses have boarded up their windows, and about 2,000 police officers - including Toronto's mounted crowd-control unit - are preparing for the worst.

Singh, 27, and Santos, 22, organizers with the OAS Shutdown Coalition, say their presence here is misunderstood.

''Windsor is a working-class town. We're not targeting the city; we're targeting the OAS,'' said Singh who played a key role in the 1997 APEC summit protests in Vancouver.

''This idea that we'd come to trash the city is just horrible,'' he said. ''I don't think you'll see any of that.''

Yet when pressed, Singh said he couldn't say for sure what will happen since the coalition's primary job is to attract so-called affinity groups to Windsor. The groups - like-minded people committed to the same brand of disorder - are expected to decide for themselves what they'll do during the protest. Some will perform street theatre, others are expected to scale buildings. Still others might heave rocks through windows. It's all part of what the new radicals call ''direct action.''

''People are tired of having rallies where they walk around in circles and don't have any kind of impact,'' said Santos, a University of Toronto political-science graduate.

Direct action, she said, affords individuals the chance to alter the workings of unelected and hugely powerful organizations, like the WTO, the World Bank and the OAS.

''They're the problem,'' Singh said, ''and we're going to confront it directly.''

In keeping with the anarchist model of organization - and yes, Singh insisted, there is such a beast - there's no leader. Each group acts for itself, but is supposed to send an emissary - or ''spoke'' - to the planning council, which passes on information about potential strategies.

One pamphlet, for instance, notes that Casino Windsor lies outside the no-protest area being established by the police: ''A huge, cash-sucking casino is located in this area ... and we hope to bring the spirit of anti-capitalism and anti-greed to this charming locale. Puppeteers, clowns, dancers, radical cheerleaders, freaks, musicians and guerrilla gardeners should plan to revel in this neighbourhood.''

The anarchist structure makes it easy for radicals of all stripes to feel comfortable in the same formless tent. But it means the messages that emanate from protests like this are often lost on observers who understandably view them as anti-everything.

''There's this idea that we're professional protesters, and you can use that term if you want, but it comes from a political perspective: the idea that this is a bigger struggle,'' Singh said. ''If it's a blockade to save forests, if it's standing up for low- income housing, or fighting against police brutality or brutality in prisons, they're all part of the capitalist system.''

In many ways, the message is the mayhem. It's meant to remind everyone that the authorities are not in control. And indeed, the organizational structure reflects that goal since neither Singh nor anyone else is sure what's going to happen. No one knows when the first bottle will be thrown or how to stop the violence should it escalate.

''We can't predict what anyone is going to do, but you should also ask that of the police,'' Singh said.

In Washington, Seattle, and at the APEC summit in Vancouver, it was the police that unleashed the violence, he said.

But the police must protect property against anarchists, many of whom do not regard property damage as violence. It makes clashes inevitable.

''If you had property downtown and someone was destroying it, you'd expect us to do something,'' said Windsor police Staff Sergeant Dave Rossell.

For their part, protest organizers are also prepared. Affinity groups have been warned to come equipped with mineral water and alcohol swabs to defend against pepper spray. Legal and medical teams have been assembled.

''We're not giving anybody any orders,'' Singh said in rejecting a suggestion that anarchist organizers are, in effect, the puppetmasters of disaster.

''We're giving people all the power and tools they need to be effective. That's not a form of control, that's a form of empowerment.''

Born and raised in Toronto, Singh attended the city's venerable St. Michael's High School where he had his first taste of activism, taking part in anti-apartheid and environmental protests. ''I came to see that there was a lot wrong with the world, but the kind of activism I was involved with was the feel-good activism.''

It wasn't until university - he studied philosophy, history and linguistics at the Universities of Toronto and British Columbia - that he came to believe more radical action was necessary.

Influenced by social critics like Noam Chomsky, Singh decided that rather than ''trying to smooth the edges of a bad world, we should try to change it altogether.''

The growing anarchist movement caught his attention. And its focus on the destruction of capitalism appealed to his own sensibilities about what was fundamentally wrong with society.

He didn't like rampant materialism; he objected to the exploitation of nature for commercial gain. Anarchism's values of voluntary association, mutual aid, and autonomous, self-governing communities struck a chord.

At UBC, Singh helped organize the APEC demonstrations and gained national notoriety when he was arrested in advance of the protest on flimsy charges that were eventually dropped.

''When you start to challenge authority, then you're a radical,'' he said. ''I'm not ashamed to say I'm anarchist.''

Like any of today's committed anarchists, Singh wants to tear down the instruments of globalization - APEC, OAS, WTO, IMF - organizations that extend the reach and power of capitalism. He insists he's not against global trade that promises to improve the lot of workers in poor countries, but he is against a system that places corporations and their interests ahead of human rights and the environment.

''They've taken trade and made it an idol. To oppose it means you're nuts, like you're opposed to gravity.''

Singh doesn't look radical; there are no pins or tattooes. Thin, bookish, and well spoken, he wears a gray Nehru jacket over a black T-shirt. It's easy to picture him as a lawyer, and yet, as he says: ''I'm the antithesis of what a St. Mike's graduate is supposed to be.''

His mother, a nurse, and his father, a cab driver, came to Canada from India before he was born. His mother is quietly supportive of his activism, but would prefer it if he pursued his PhD or law degree.

''She obviously would prefer that I settled down,'' said Singh, who makes ends meet by writing for Montreal's alternative press, including This Magazine. ''But she sees that I'm satisfied with what I'm doing. And for now, she says she just wants to make sure if my photo is taken that I'm clean shaven.''

- - -

For much of the past 60 years, the currents of anarchism crackled softly in the relative obscurity of coffee houses and university campuses.

That changed suddenly in May 1995 when the New York Times and Washington Post published the 35,000-word political manifesto of a mysterious domestic terrorist known only as the Unabomber. Its publication would lead to the arrest of mathematics professor Ted Kaczynski - his brother recognized the tract and informed the FBI - and provide inspiration to radical anarchists worldwide.

Kaczynski crystallized the radical case against technology - he said it exacerbates the corporate control of people's lives and speeds the destruction of nature - and offered a defence of violence as the only means to alter society's path.

The manifesto won the admiration of John Zerzan, an Oregon-based writer, whose prison visits with Kaczynski affirmed the Unabomber's status as an anarchist icon.

Zerzan, 56, is considered one of the most influential of today's anarchist thinkers. A political-science graduate from Stanford University who also holds a master's degree in history, Zerzan has produced an influential series of essays in which he denounces consumerism and technology as contemporary forms of slavery.

Unlike the Unabomber, though, Zerzan equivocates about the use of violence to bring about a kinder, simpler society based on the classic anarchist model: small, independent communities that operate without elected leaders. That view puts Zerzan in what might be called the mainstream of radical anarchism. Old school anarchists maintain that the movement must be based on an ethical, non-violent approach lest one form of oppression replaces another.

More radical factions believe that words and peaceful protests have accomplished nothing in recent years. They believe it's necessary to inflict damage on the corporations that extend the reach of global trade and technology at the expense of the Earth and its poorest citizens.

The idea has its roots in the radical environmental movement.

In 1980, the Earth First! group took as its motto: ''No compromise in defence of Mother Earth.'' Its founder, Dave Foreman, produced a how-to book, A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching, that set the stage for years of confrontation between resource companies and the uncompromising activists who would sabotage their machinery, spike trees or block roads in defence of forests.

The Portland Oregonian last year identified 100 significant acts of destruction on the West Coast since 1980 linked to ecoterrorists, or radical animal-rights groups, like the Animal Liberation Front.

Although not always identified with anarchists, the radicals operate on anarchist principles that encourage autonomous local groups to take the direct action that suits them.

The philosophy has given rise to a loose and leaderless resistance movement that has played a role in riots on the streets of London, a nine-month student strike in Mexico City and thousands of tree-sits across the Pacific Northwest.

A century ago, the individual acts of anarchists caused serious political havoc: anarchist assassins claimed as their victims President Sadi Carnot of France (1894), Empress Elizabeth of Austria (1898), King Umberto of Italy (1900), President William McKinley of the United States (1901).

But today, the new anarchists are using numbers to wage mayhem. In Windsor, as the city awaits the OAS shutdown attempt, the police are still guessing at those numbers.

''We don't know if it's going to be 2,000 or 20, 000,'' said Sgt. Rossell. ''And from what I can tell, I don't think the protest organizers know either.''

- - -

Singh said he doesn't consider it a violent act to heave a rock through the window of a Gap Store or a Wal-Mart since it doesn't harm other people.

''The prospect of violence from us, no matter how you define it, is so minimal and marginal compared to the violence perpetrated in the name of global free trade,'' he said. ''Poverty is a form of violence, prisons are violence. Putting some graffiti on McDonald's is farcical by comparison.''

Although he doesn't embrace Kaczynski's extremism, Singh said he believes the trashing of Seattle stores during the WTO protest was an effective form of direct action. ''There's this boredom out there which even the people in the suburbs can relate to: the feeling that there must be something more to life than buying into mutual funds.''

For Singh, life is now about organizing anarchists and other radicals who share his views on the evils of big business and big trade deals.

He rattled off a series of upcoming international meetings: the World Petroleum Congress in Calgary, the International Monetary Fund in Prague; the Asian Development Bank in Thailand. Each of the big meetings - they're like the Olympics for protesters, Singh said - will draw radicals intent on disrupting their business.

Windsor is expected to be a small event by comparison. Singh called it a warm-up for a meeting next April in Quebec City known as the Summit of the Americas, in which 34 leaders will discuss the proposed continental free trade deal.

He warned that the chaos games in Quebec City will be ''huge.''

''It's going to be like Seattle and Washington. They're just crazy to try to hold it in Quebec City. It's a challenge to us, a slap in the face. Why would they hold it in that city when they know we're going to mobilize thousands to shut it down?

''It's crazy.''

GRAPHIC: P Photo: SCOTT WEBSTER, WINDSOR STAR / Battening down the hatches: Workers in Windsor, Ont., board up businesses in preparation for OAS meetings. ; Photo: ROB GURDEBEKE,WINDSOR STAR / Montreal's Jaggi Singh (left) chats with Mexican Oscar Carillo. Carillo is sought by Mexican officials in connection with his protesting activities.; Photo: ROB GURDEBEKE, WINDSOR STAR / Tough training: Preparing for OAS protests, Windsor police officers enter a gas-filled house, then remove masks to experience tear gas first-hand.