June 2000
“This is David Solnit. He’s the Man.”
That’s how the legendary activist from San Francisco was introduced to me last Friday. We were at the University of Windsor at the time, both giving speeches at a teach-in on the Organization of American States. Of course, I already knew that David Solnit was the Man. He was one of the organizers of the shutdown in Seattle. And I have been hearing his name for years, usually spoken with reverence by young activists who have just attended one of his Art and Revolution workshops.
They come back brimming with new ideas about protests. How the demonstrations shouldn’t be quasi-militaristic marches culminating in placard waving outside locked government buildings. How, instead, they should be “festivals of resistance,” filled with giant puppets and theatrical spontaneity. How their goals should be more than symbolic: protests can “reclaim” public space for a party or a garden, or stop a planned meeting the protesters believe is destructive. This is the “show don’t tell” theory that holds that you don’t change minds just by screaming about what you are against. You change minds by building organizations and events that are a living example of what you stand for.
As I’m not schooled in this theory myself, my speech to the students was a straight-up lecture about how the protests against an expanded free trade agreement for the Americas are part of a broader anti-corporate movement—against growing corporate control over education, water, scientific research and more.
When it was David Solnit’s turn, he asked everybody to stand, turn to the next person, and ask them why they were here. As a child of hippie parents and a survivor of alternative summer camps, these instant-intimacy rituals have always made me want to run to my room and slam the door. Of course, David Solnit had to choose me as his partner— and he wasn’t satisfied with “I came to give a speech.” So I told him more: how writing about the commitment of young human rights and environmental activists gives me hope for the future and is a much needed antidote to the atmosphere of cynicism in which journalists are so immersed.
It wasn’t until we had to share our discoveries with the room that I realized this wasn’t just a get-to-know-you game: it was also an effective way to torment barely undercover police officers. “Yeah, uh, my partner’s name’s Dave and he’s here to fight oppression,” said a guy in a nylon jacket and buzz cut.
Less than twenty-four hours later, David Solnit was in a Windsor jail cell, where he stayed for four days.
The day after the teach-in—which was the day before the large demonstration against the OAS—Solnit led a small puppet-making workshop at the university. After the seminar, only a block away from the campus, the police pulled him over. They said he had been convicted of crimes in the United States and was thus considered a criminal in Canada. Why? Because fifteen years ago he was arrested at a protest against U.S. military involvement in Central America; he had written (in washable paint) the names of executed Sandinistas on the wall of a government building. Yesterday, after the protesters had already gone home, an Immigration Review Board inquiry found that Solnit’s arrest was wholly unfounded, and he was released.
David Solnit preaches revolution through papier-mâché, which makes it tempting to dismiss the police’s actions as raving paranoia. Except that the authorities are right to see him as a threat—though not to anyone’s safety or property. His message is consistently non-violent, but it is also extremely powerful.
Solnit doesn’t talk much about how free trade agreements turn culture, water, seeds and even genes into tradeable commodities. What he does in his workshops is teach young activists how to decommodify their relationships with one another—an original message for a generation that grew up being targeted by ads in their school washrooms and sold canned rebellion by soft drink companies.
Though Solnit was locked away until the OAS meetings had concluded, his ideas were all over Windsor: art was not something made by experts and purchased by consumers, it was everywhere on the streets. Activists even developed a free transportation system: a battalion of “blue bikes” —old bikes repaired and painted for protesters to use at their discretion.
Communications theorist Neil Postman once wrote that teaching is a “subversive activity.” When teaching puts young people in touch with powers of self-sufficiency and creativity they didn’t know they had, it is indeed subversive. But it is not criminal.
David Solnit was the object of a well-planned, cross-border police operation. He was identified as a political threat before he arrived in this country. His past was researched, he was followed, then arrested on trumped-up charges. All Canadians should be ashamed of the actions of our police. But most ashamed should be the trade bureaucrats in Windsor. It seems there is still one aspect of human life not covered by free trade: the free trade of empowering ideas.