As the people of Toronto prepare community level mobilizations against their lived experiences of the negative effects of G20 control, a much smaller group of people is planning to sit down and speak directly with G20 leaders on behalf of Canadian civil society.
These groups are clustered together as a G20 focused campaign called At the Table, which focuses on vague slogans about eliminating poverty and saving the earth that sound good to people who understand that the world is a messed up place.
But while the At the Table campaign calls for Canadians to “take bold action to end poverty at home and abroad,” their members are actively pacifying people who want to take to the streets to make their message heard.
“We're trying the critical engagement approach,” Make Poverty History head Dennis Howlett told the Globe and Mail in March. “Doing anything outside the security perimeter, it's going to be a nightmare with security.”
Howlett’s dissuasive comments reflect a broader issue in movement building in North America.
“What has happened to the great civil rights and black power movements of the 1960s and 1970s? Where are the mass movements of today within this country? The short answer: They got funded,” wrote Adjoa Florência Jones de Almeida, a community organizer with the Sista II Sista Collective, in the 2007 book The Revolution will not be Funded.
Termed the “non-profit industrial complex” by INCITE! Women of Colour Against Violence, this is a phenomenon that continues to be worth exploring in the context of mobilizing against the G20 in Toronto.
“Usually when we use the word NGO we’re talking about groups that are financed by the government and regulated by the government,” said Yves Engler, a Montréal based author who is writing his fourth book about international development NGOs. It’s important to differentiate between their work and that of grassroots community organizations, says Engler, and tracing the flow of money is one way to make that distinction.
“There’s a history of these organizations sort of defining the parameters of critique,” said Engler.
The Assembly of First Nations, Oxfam Canada, Development and Peace, the World Wildlife Federation, World Vision Canada and other members of the At the Table are heavily funded by various agencies of the federal government. Some groups facing defunding from Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), including the Canadian Council for International Cooperation and Kairos, continue to participate in the campaign.
At the Table labour groups like the Canadian Auto Workers, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, and the Canadian Labour Congress are not government financed, but do receive funds from CIDA for international development projects. Members of these groups are concentrating resources on organizing a permitted march on Saturday, June 26.
History is repeating itself once again as some of the civil society groups inside the security fence at the G20 are assisting the state, the media and the police in creating a binary between “good” protesters and “bad" protesters.
In the context of mobilizing around the G20, Stephen Lewis, former UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa who helped launch the At the Table Campaign, told the Globe and Mail that demonstrators engaging in “violence” must be kept “under control” in order for groups like his to gain concessions from world leaders.
This type of messaging, which portrays people in the street as “violent” even as police and security forces spend nearly one billion dollars on weapons, transportation, and staff time, attempts to define the parameters of acceptable expression with regards to the G20 summit.
In addition, messages around being able to get concessions out of G20 leaders by acting diplomatically towards them undeniably legitimizes the G20 Summit. This distracts from the a key message of grassroots organizers in Toronto, who "ask nothing of the oppressive, illegitimate and non-representative G8, G20 and B20."
Given the historic pattern of government funded groups defining the continuum of acceptable resistance, Engler has a warning for people who support the work of large NGOs.
“It’s very dangerous for people who think they’re involved in progressive causes to be so dependent on government money,” he said. “The effect that has in terms of limiting political independence is very extreme, and in many cases the NGOs have simply become an arm of imperialism.”
This weekend, in a now familiar story line, huge fences and thousands of police will serve to protect heads of state from the people. But what's important to remember is that the fences and police will also separate at least 200 NGO delegates from the thousands of people in the streets.
Curious as to why tens of thousands are protesting the G8/G20 summits? Go to 2010.mediacoop.ca for up to the minute G20 and G8 Summit Protest Reporting, straight 'outta the Alternative Media Centre!
