The Dilemma Demonstration

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:17 -0500

The Dilemma Demonstration

by Philippe Duhamel

Download full notebook in English and Russian and a brief summary in Armenian below.[*note]

In this notebook you learn how Operation SalAMI created a situation that placed the Canadian government in a real dilemma regarding their position and actions in the negotiation process of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA). When the government refused to make public the draft documents, hundreds of its citizens showed up at the Ottawa headquarters of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade holding "Search and Rescue Warrants" for the release of these draft documents. When the government responded by arresting one hundred citizens for requesting their right to information, the media and general public demanded to know what the government was trying to hide. Behind the success of the campaign was a strategy that included a number of common tactics, including petitions, letter writing, etc., but with the added twists of an unequivocal ultimatum, civil disobedience training on the premises of the Canadian parliament and the drama of the Search and Seizure Operation, a type of nonviolent direct action. Operation SalAMI’s dilemma demonstration tactic, as part of a broader nonviolent campaigning strategy, pressured the government to act according to its professed values and at the requests of its citizens.

On the morning of April 2, 2001, a group of citizens conducted the dilemma demonstration1 dubbed a "Search and Seizure Operation" at the Department of International Trade and Foreign Affairs in Ottawa, capital city of Canada. Facing a line-up of police, three rows of anchored barricades and a crowd of journalists and media crews, they declared: "We ask you, police officers, to do your duty and help us retrieve the documents to which we are entitled by right. Do not become accomplices in the secrecy and manipulation of this government. If you refuse to seek and retrieve the texts on our behalf, we will have no option but to attempt to retrieve them ourselves."They proceeded to give their names and said, "I am here to exercise my rights as a citizen; please, let me through." Two by two, they climbed over the police barricades. Their goal: exposing government secrecy by attempting to reach the building and retrieve the secret documents of a draft trade treaty.

For months, the Canadian government had persistently refused to make public the draft papers for the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), a trade liberalization treaty being negotiated among 34 countries of the Americas. In the weeks prior to the action, the government was issued an ultimatum and a petition tens of thousands strong. We also used extensive media relations work, support demonstrations and a call-in and fax jamming operation for supporters. All these efforts were brought to bear with Operation SalAMI’s dilemma demonstration, creating a climactic moment with the arrest of ninety-nine people by the police. No charges were laid and most were released within 24 hours. The larger impact was heard across the country, a new debate was raging around the question: Why is the government refusing to publish key public policy documents, choosing to arrest its own citizens instead? The pressure soon proved unbearable on the government. Exactly one week after the Search and Seizure Operation, the Canadian International Trade Minister, Pierre Pettigrew, after consulting the negotiating partners, finally agreed to make the documents public and announced the release of the draft texts of the FTAA.

This nonviolent action is an example of a dilemma demonstration. To work, it first requires a demand that creates a dilemma for the target: In this case the Canadian government was faced with a demand for transparent access to information. The state could only refuse the demand at the risk of appearing secretive and undemocratic. Second, by articulating the demand through high-visibility, media-friendly, nonviolent civil disobedience, the state was forced to act–it could not stall or delay. And the nature of this civil disobedience was skillfully and ironically modeled after the accepted state mode of getting information that is being illegally withheld or hidden: the "search and seizure operation." This created yet another immediate dilemma in which the police would be forced to arrest people for doing the same thing the police would do if roles were reversed–an irony not lost on the media. Finally, by maintaining firmly disciplined nonviolence, the demonstration created yet a third dilemma, in which the state appears to use repressive measures against an entirely peaceful and orderly demonstration asking only for what is a citizen’s legal right–access to information.

In this notebook I will describe, how Operation SalAMI turned our own dilemma–how to inform the Canadian public about the real dangers and inequalities of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas when we were not even allowed to see the documents–into a larger dilemma for the Canadian government by revealing the secrecy on which the approval of the agreement depended. Through a careful process of analyzing previous successes and failures of citizen interventions in trade agreement processes, we were able to realistically assess our own strengths and weaknesses as well as the lessons the Canadian government had learned from these same past actions. This provided the foundation for understanding our most potent leverage point–Canadian citizens’ right to information, a value we hold very dear. We then combined a variety of tactics to call attention to this lack of information and generated a dilemma for the government by making a specific and public ultimatum requesting the release of these documents based on our right to know. The dilemma demonstration forced the government’s hand by revealing the lengths to which the government wanted to keep the process secret. The resulting media and public outcry made our goal a reality– broader public awareness and debate on the FTAA.

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from www.adobe.com.

Tactical Notebooks, Operation SalAMI

The Dilemma Demonstration

The Dilemma Demonstration