April 18th, 2001

Brian Mulroney thinks the numbers are his friends. He proudly points to the percentage of Canada’s gross domestic product now made up by exports to the United States—40 per cent! The number of jobs created by trade—four in five! And Mexico’s status as an important U.S. trading partner—second only to Canada! These numbers are a vindication, our former prime minister believes, for the free-trade deals he negotiated first with the United States, then with Mexico.

April 11th, 2001

As soon as I wrote the sentence, I deleted it: “Is this really what we want—a movement of meeting stalkers, following the trade bureaucrats like they’re the Grateful Dead?”

It could be taken out of context, I thought; better take it out. Then I put it back in: The context was clear, and I was being paranoid. If you let your critics steal your sense of humour, they have already won. Paranoia, I’ve since learned, can be a healthy impulse.

April 1st, 2001
By Sarah Polley Clayton Ruby

Naomi Klein, actor Sarah Polley, and lawyer Clayton Ruby initiated this petition to Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in anticipation of police violence during the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. The letter sought to galvanize public opinion, particularly in the arts community. Over six thousand Canadians signed: artists, academics, journalists, judges, lawyers and intellectuals. Among them were some of Canada’s most prominent cultural figures, including Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Atom Egoyan, Michael Ignatieff, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and the Barenaked Ladies.

March 30th, 2001

“We are here to show the world that another world is possible!” the man on stage said, and a crowd of more than 10,000 roared its approval.

What was strange was that we weren’t cheering for a specific other world, just the possibility of one. We were cheering for the idea that another world could, in theory, exist.

March 28th, 2001

Next Friday, trade ministers from the 34 countries negotiating the Free Trade Area of the Americas will meet in Buenos Aires. Many in Latin America predict that the ministers will be greeted with protests much larger than the ones that exploded in Seattle in 1999.

March 21st, 2001

“I am worried that free trade is leading to the privatization of education,” an elementary school teacher in Ottawa tells me. “I want to go to the protests in Quebec City, but is it going to be safe?”

“I think NAFTA has increased the divide between rich and poor,” a young mother in Toronto tells me. “But if I go to Quebec, will my son get pepper-sprayed?”

March 15th, 2001

Anyone still unclear about why the police are constructing a modern-day Bastille around Quebec City in preparation for a forthcoming summit and the unveiling of the Free Trade Area of the Americas should take a look at a case being heard by a Canadian provincial supreme court.

March 3rd, 2001

I’ve never been to Chiapas. I’ve never made the pilgrimage to the Lacandon jungle. I’ve never sat in the mud and the mist in La Realidad. I’ve never begged, pleaded or posed to get an audience with Subcomandante Marcos, the masked man, the faceless face of Mexico’s Zapatista National Liberation Army. I know people who have. Lots of them.

December 27th, 2000

Ever since I wrote a book about nasty multinationals and the activists who bash them, I started getting the question: “So Miss No Logo, where do you shop?”

Those are the aggressive people. The nice ones ask, “Where should I shop?” Sometimes, they send e-mails requesting annotated lists of “good corporations.” Last week, an Irish radio interviewer asked me, on air, for suggestions of ethical gifts his listeners could give their children.

December 20th, 2000

Where do we go from here? There’s a big space in the political landscape for a new party, one that looks at the calls for localization and doesn’t see a dire threat to national unity.

There is a very simple reason to have a left-wing alternative to the Liberal Party: People are suffering. Despite all the wealth created by deregulated markets, many Canadians are seeing no part of it.

December 13th, 2000

When Canadian Auto Workers president Buzz Hargrove called for an emergency task force on the future of the NDP, he got blasted. Mr. Hargrove was “posturing,” an NDP insider said. “The press isn’t the place to do this,” Nancy Riche of the Canadian Labour Congress said— in the press. And NDP Leader Alexa McDonough claimed the process Mr. Hargrove demanded was happening already.

December 6th, 2000

On the weekend, the man in the mask came down from the jungle and held a press conference. In the new year, he will travel to Mexico City and address Congress on the need for an Indian bill of rights.