The Saint
20-20 Vision
Elizabeth Hewitt and George Stewart Photo Credit: Supplied
If anyone can stretch their memories back as far as April of this year, surely one of the most memorable events was the G-20 in London and the protests that went along with it. Headlines during the London G-20 recorded not the progress of the summit, but the instances of violence, vandalism, even death associated with the protests. Hoards of activists packed into the streets of the city to try to have their voices heard. Images of angry protesters and violent encounters between police and demonstrators dominated the news.
After all the showmanship and circumstance in London, surely the following G-20 would not be forgotten. The city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, chosen by American President Barack Obama, anticipated crowds of thousands and countless dollars of damage. Months in advance, the summit was classified as a National Special Security Event. Yet, as the G-20 rolled into the city of Pittsburgh, it seemed that the motivation to stick it to the man nearly fizzled out.
Aside from a few protests and a large banner put up by Greenpeace, the City of Bridges escaped largely unscathed, with damage costing a total of $50,000 - less than the cost of damages that followed the Steelers football victory in the Super Bowl last January. In London, the Royal Bank of Scotland sought £40,000 compensation for damage caused by a single protester. Thousands of protesters flocked to the streets of London, with one rally attracting approximately 35,000 on 28 March. Police estimate that the total number of participants in protests throughout Pittsburgh was around 4,500. The G-20 protests in Pittsburgh by all means seem to be a completely different animal to those of London.
The Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors - nicknamed the G-20 - was formed as a forum for discussion about the international financial system among the largest industrialised and developing economies in the world. It is comprised of nineteen countries and the European Union. The heads of state of the G-20 met in Washington, DC in November 2008 and London in April 2009 before the third summit in Pittsburgh. Although the main agenda of the recent G-20 has been recovery from the global economic recession, the summits have attracted attention from activists campaigning for positive action on climate change and human rights, and more.
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Much of the protest activity at the Pittsburgh G-20 was led by large activist groups. Greenpeace, impressive as always, hung a massive banner from the West End Bridge. The banner called for action on CO2 emissions. Groups advocating social justice, labour and non-violence held demonstrations. However, protests were limited from the outset. Pittsburgh required permits for any protest action. They were granted only to groups with established reputations for peaceful demonstration.
The event attracted activists from all over the United States. "I am here because I think the G-20 is in part an organisation among others that leads to the subjugation of people all over the world," Joshua Nichols of Colorado told The Associated Press. "We need to stand up and say that were going to put an end to this or it's going to get ugly." He drove for twenty-four hours across the country to participate in the G-20 protests.
"The G-20, for us, is violence," Noah Williams of the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Movement told ABC Channel 4. "The G-20 controls the world economy from behind closed doors. It puts in place free trade policies which mean people starve to death, which mean people die of preventable disease, which has certainly ruined our economy in town here."
In London, the student population of numerous universities turned out in high numbers to support activist groups in the demonstrations. Although Pittsburgh is home to many universities including the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon, Point Park University, and Duquesne, students did not play the largest role in the protests.
The subdued nature of the protest in Pittsburgh is at least partially due to the approach of city officials. While in London, commuters and businessmen were warned to stay out of the city centre, in Pittsburgh it was the protesters who were kept out.
The most dramatic protest of the two-day event, however, was the People's G-20 March, which wound its way along a course of several miles from the student population centre in the Oakland neighbourhood north of Downtown. The march, which was comprised of several thousand people, passed through the peripheries of Downtown and ended in the North Side, across from the David L. Lawrence Convention Centre where the G-20 leaders were meeting. The march, which had a legal permit to assemble and follow its given route, proved to be the most effective in catching positive attention.
The police forces praised the majority of protesters for staying organised and acting in a measured fashion. In a from assistant city Police Chief William Bochter, it was made clear that following the largest of the protests there were no problems. Arrests were made in separate incidents but none were reported in conjunction with the march.
"The crowd has been very peaceful. They had the opportunity to express their First Amendment rights and we had the opportunity to keep them safe while they did," Bochter said.
Illegal marches in the East End ended in 60 arrests and left bystanders with a negative view of the protesters as they participated in an action they knew was illegal and attempted to resist arrest. The Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Movement encouraged protests at a number of businesses around the city. The list of 40 sites included Starbucks, American Eagle Outfitters Inc, Whole Foods Market, and Biomedical Science Towers.
By many accounts, protesters had little opportunity to get out of hand. The city put in a request for about 4000 police officers in addition to 900 local and 1000 state officers. Dressed in riot gear and armed with rubber bullets, pepper spray and sound cannons, the battalions resembled soldiers more than cops. "Government officials decided a massive, preemptive police presence was necessary to avoid the raucous demonstrations that marred past economic summits," wrote Steve Hallock, a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer. "They established a virtual police state that quickly extinguished any spark of dissent, and a federal court ruling gave them free rein to do so."
On Thursday night, an incident occurred near the campus of the University of Pittsburgh. Hundreds of officers surrounded a large gathering of students, firing canisters of pepper spray and smoke into the crowd. "We need jobs, we need health care, we need education, we need housing," said anti-war activist, Cindy Sheehan at the final rally. "We don't need the united police states of America.'
The management and behaviour of protesters at the Pittsburgh G-20 is particularly relevant to St Andrews as the next summit approaches. This November, the G-20 finance ministers will be meeting in our own corner of Fife. Although it is not a meeting of the heads of states, as in London and Pittsburgh, it is likely to attract a fair amount of attention. Activist group Put People First is holding The People's G-20 Summit in St Andrews on Saturday, 7 November. Through cultural events and workshops, PPF hopes to provide people with an opportunity to voice their alternatives to business as usual.
"We don't see the events that were planning as protests - I think that its important to be clear about that. The kind of confrontations that we've seen at G-7, G-8 and G-20 summits in the past have been incredibly damaging to the efforts of the environmental and development movement to engage constructively with the political process," said Ben Murray of PPF, events coordinator for the Peoples Summit. Coverage of any violent or destructive behaviour will inevitably dominate the print and broadcast media, distorting popular perceptions of the entire event, no matter how peaceful it might have been.
The People's Summit will be held in the Students Association. Murray is optimistic that they will fill the capacity of about 400. Its possible that many more people will come along to the beach event in the morning.
"My role is to ensure that the PPF events in St Andrews are safe, effective and take place without any nasty surprises," said Murray. "I think that the very term protest itself is loaded, and not useful in the context of the events that were planning."
More special coverage on the G20
