The Globe and Mail

I am a protester. I believe in the power of mass groups of people gathering to stand up for an issue that would otherwise be invisible. I was there in Seattle in 1999 in the rise-up against the World Trade Organization, and in Quebec City for the protest against the Free Trade Area of the Americas in 2001.

Street protests have been my political coming of age. I remember being 23 in Edmonton at my first official job working for one of the political parties. We had just elected two members into Parliament and were flooded with calls from all over the province – single mothers unable to make welfare, students facing bankruptcy with ever-increasing tuition rates, recent immigrants with nowhere else to turn. As a young woman wanting to make the world a better place, I felt like I was drowning in a sea of pain.

Over lunch one day with a seasoned union activist, I heard for the first time the idea of global economic agreements, institutions and decisions having an effect on what was happening in our own backyard. It felt like a log was being thrown to me, and that rather than drown I could find a way to stay afloat.

I started to raise awareness of the major international trade agreement being negotiated at the time – the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. A small group of us stood outside the Edmonton farmers’ market every Saturday, passing out flyers. We organized conferences, brought in speakers and co-ordinated rallies. I went on to do many of these same things at the national level, except that now there was a salary attached. Although we did defeat the MAI in 1998, the same rules favouring investors over issues such as climate change, poverty and human rights cropped up in other forms. As the years increased, my reserve of hope went in the opposite direction.

I began to question how much impact these mass protests were having on decisions being made. Should I just accept that inequity was the name of the global economic game and make peace with it? There were enough people encouraging me to move beyond my “rebel” phase and accept this truth about the world. Yet my heart wouldn’t have it. Certain moments were locked away in that most irrational of organs that kept pulling me back when my head began to stray.

One of them occurred in 2000 when the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank held their meetings in Washington.

There was the usual mass march on the first day, and then most protesters left the city. The second day had seen a number of peaceful direct actions with young activists sitting, arms locked, blocking downtown intersections. When you feel powerless to influence unjust decisions made at levels way beyond your control, sometimes putting your own body on the line is the only tool left.

Many arrests had already been made and people’s spirits were starting to sink. The smell of tear gas hung over everything. That third day there were a few thousand of us left, and we met in a park to march back downtown to where the meetings were still taking place.

I was exhausted, yet I remember my first view as I came around the corner. It had been raining and for a few moments there was a break in the rain and the sun shone through. A rainbow arced over the motley crew in front of me. People were carrying massive handmade puppets – the face of the sun, a giant turtle – as well as signs and banners in countless languages, the colours above mirrored by those held in human hands below.