DESCRIPCIÓN DEL PROCESO.

By the time the first full-perimeter post-Seattle summit security fence was erected in Quebec City in 2001, activists, alternative media, and sometimes the mainstream press, were characterizing summit meeting locations as a “fortresses” for policy makers. Even before 2001, the image of a fortress was already part of how summit meetings were figured by activists and others. This characterization framed the heavy protection for summit meetings as akin to fortified and militarized borders to keep out immigrants, terrorists, and otherwise unwanted persons, and resonated directly with two deeply controversial permanent

security walls that were being constructed during this period: the security wall between Israel and the West Bank, and the security wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

(Source:Xispas 2006)

(Source: Delaware National Guard 2007)

The U.S. - Mexico border wall, under construction.

(Source: Hernández 2008)

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Critiques of, and resistance to, these high-tech and permanent walls was widespread as immigrant rights movements exploded throughout the late 1990s, particularly in Europe but also in the U.S., and as Middle East violence polarized the global political field to new intensities.

One of nine interventions on the West Bank barrier wall by graffiti-artist Banksy.

Discourse and tactics from these movements—including critiques of militarized border regimes and the notion that a person could be “illegal”—resonated directly with global justice movement activities generally, but the emergence of the fence at summit protests drew out the connections more forcefully. For example, the immigrant rights group No Borders Caravan, which joined many summit protests during the first part of the decade, called for a “European Caravan against the fence” at several summit protests. And during the 2001 G8 meetings in, a professor who joined the main march made a public statement associating the fence there and internal borders faced by migrant populations: "The

in the red zone in Genoa are living the experience of migrants in everyday life.” (BBC 2001a)48

During the IMF/World Bank protests in Prague the year before, despite the absence of a security fence there, the Congress Center where delegates met was often referred to as a fortress; this was surely in part because of the enormous ravine that surrounded it, but also because of the developing activist and popular discourse about the security regimes of summit meetings. Naomi Klein discussed the notion of a “gated summit” during a panel discussion called "The Question of Economic Globalisation" at the INPEG49 _{Counter Summit} two days before the main march:

…some of the very rich, and there are more and more of them, have taken to moving into what are called Gated Communities. ...These peaceful enclaves are surrounded by high electrical fences and 24-hour security guards. In the US these neighborhoods have become symbols or metaphors for the extreme stratification of wealth between rich and poor in the new economy. America, like the rest of the world, is a world of haves and have-nots—a world of included and excluded. That means that in the middle of an unprecedented economic boom in the richest country in the world the included are requiring ever more security, ever more alarm systems, fences and guards to protect them from the excluded. If the gated community is the most powerful symbol of the inequality in America, then surely the gated summit is the most powerful symbol of that stratification in the global economy. What we are seeing at meetings of world leaders in Prague, Seattle, Washington D.C. , L.A., Birmingham, Geneva, Auckland, Manila, is that politics itself has become a gated community, in need of ever more security and

repression to allow politicians and bureaucrats to carry on business as usual. And then people say that the activists are the ones who are not democratic, that they don’t

represent anyone. The activists, however, are the ones who are out in the street, the ones holding public meetings like this, yelling to be heard… The protestors did not put up that gate, they have simply made the gate visible, shown how high it really is, the lengths our leaders are willing to go to in order to protect themselves from democracy, transparency and accountability. When these meetings went on and no one showed up outside the gate, when there were no counter summits no N30s, no A16s, J18s or S26s the secret workings of globalisation were essentially invisible. We didn’t know how unwelcome we were until, that is, we decided to try to crash the party. (Fieldnotes, September 24, 200)

48_{Narratives of exclusion were also adopted by activists working inside the fence, who described}

those outside the fence as desperately desiring to join them. For example, activist Jerry Mander, speaking at the NGO-organized panel discussion I finally made it to inside the fence in Cancún, began his talk in exasperation, saying, “They’re not letting people in! They’re keeping everyone out!” as if there were thousands of activists clamoring to get inside the fence to attend the panel.

49_{INPEG, loosely translated, stands for Initiative Against Economic Globalization, and was the local}

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What is interesting about Klein’s comments is that very few of these protest events involved outright ‘gates’ around the summit meetings in the way they were about to; the fence in Quebec City the following Spring was, in many ways, a direct realization of Klein’s anticipatory description of the “gated summit”.

The notion of fences as threats to democracy and freedom became a visible theme in activist art, from the FTAA summit in 2001 on.

Photo by Ken Gould (Source:Gould 2001)

Fence decoration in Quebec City during the FTAA Summit

News stories, opinion pieces, and letters to the editor about the fence in Quebec City flared in local and national press. On the main Globe and Mail web space dedicated to coverage of the summit there were three story categories, one of which was simply “The Fence.” I found it remarkable that there was enough news material specifically on the fence— apart from all of the stories under the headings “The Protests” and “The Summit Discussions”—to justify a separate category. Headlines in this category included: “Concrete wall rises in fortified Quebec”; “Security fence seen as 'absurdity'”; “Chain fence humiliates democracy, Ruby says”; “Barricades illegal, Quebec court hears.”

The comic strip below was published on the front page of the Quebecois paper Le Soleil on April 21st_.

And finally, Tom Tomorrow’s comic strip, below, circulated widely among activists and in alternative newspapers and websites in the weeks before the summit.

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Meanwhile, public skepticism about the challenges and complications involved in hosting summits—cost-wise and otherwise—began to build more broadly once security fences were part of the security preparations. For example, directly after the FTAA protests in Quebec City, conservative Globe and Mail columnist Hugh Winsor wrote a column entitled “‘Twas a success, but was it worth it?” In it, he explained

…there are some demonstrable benefits from such summits, but only if the countries can find a simpler and less expensive way to mount them. Almost one quarter of the total membership of the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] in the country was involved, with tactical units — otherwise known as riot squads — flown in from as far away as St. John's and Vancouver. Just the rental bill for helicopters, buses, vans and other vehicles needed to move this personnel would have made a significant

contribution to the health-care system of Costa Rica or Barbados. (Winsor 2001) This contrast—spending money on summits vs. spending money to alleviate global

poverty—became a minor theme in summit press coverage over the next several years. All of these concerns about the fence—its cost, the appropriateness of its expense given other

financial needs, its impact on the town’s reputation, and its anti-democratic nature—were especially pronounced among local residents of Heiligendamm ahead of the most recent major summit mobilization, during the 2007 G8 Summit:

Heiligendamm, Germany's oldest Baltic resort, is attempting to reinvigorate its

reputation as an elegant holiday destination for the rich and famous, having fallen into a state of neglect since the 1930s. But instead of pictures of Heiligendamm's sweeping sandy beaches, it is the €12m (£8m) fence that is likely to go round the world as the summit's single most powerful image. "The central government told us it was necessary," the deputy leader of the state of Mecklenburg Vorpommern, Reinhard Meyer, insisted, referring to the fence as a "technical restriction". "We've done our best to explain it to the local people, but they're understandably frustrated." The locals do not seem convinced. …"When unemployment in Mecklenburg Vorpommern is so high and social welfare benefits are being cut, why should they be allowed to waste so much money for their fancy knees-up?" said one. They're trying to create a democracy-free zone in there and showing a lack of taste by building a barrier like this in a country that had a bad experience with walls," said Monty Schädel, of the German Society for Peace. "If these rulers believe that they need a wall to protect themselves and freedom, then freedom doesn't have a very bright future.” (Connolly 2007)

While fences provoked harsh criticism among many host city residents along these lines, they also foreshadowed grave danger.

The fences as a measure of danger

Because security fences had to be constructed and/or assembled in advance of the summit meetings, local residents witnessed the process as part of the overall preparation for summit visitors. This, of course, fed into the sense of danger built up in the press and in police warnings that anticipated protesters’ behavior. Press coverage contributed to an imaginary of protesters’ intentions and desires to get through the fence by any means necessary. For example, just ahead of the G8 summit Genoa, reports like this were common in the press:

Radicals are gearing up for what are expected to be violent protests on Friday to

coincide with the beginning of the summit. "We will try to retake every metre of the red zone," said Luca Casarini, leader of the radical Tute Bianche (White Overalls) group whose activists are staging their final preparations for Friday's offensive. The palace where the summit will take place is protected by a four-metre-high (13-foot) steel fence to keep protesters at bay but the Tute Bianche are determined to either go through them or over them. (BBC 2001b)

Media coverage like this, which presented certain types of activists as threatening in their intentions resonated with divisions among activists that deepened over time, I discuss in the

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final section of this chapter. What I want to highlight here is that intentions related to the fence became evidence of the danger posed by protesters; in other words, the fence became an idiom for measuring the threat level of activists.

The new market for fencing companies created by summit protests during the post- Seattle period also created an arena in which fences were represented as central in keeping local residents and summit participants safe from the threat of activists; for the companies who won contracts to build the fences, the structural details of security fences functioned as measures of the danger posed by protesters. Many of these companies were enthusiastic about developing their product to meet the new challenge presented by the protest context. The company that provided the fence during the 2003 FTAA Summit in Miami, for example, had a background in concert security (including for concerts by such bands as the Backstreet Boys and Lynyrd Skynyrd), but eagerly transferred their fencing knowledge to the protest context. An article ahead of the summit, called “Meet Us in Miami - Those arriving for the FTAA summit won't be wearing flowers in their hair,” included this description of the fence and the company providing as evidence of the threat presented by protesters:

The City of Miami, which will host the summit at downtown's Hotel Inter-Continental, hopes to seal off strategic areas by means of special fencing leased from Nashville-based Premier Global Production. The ProActConcept barricades, as they're known, were designed to control crowds at concerts, but they can be configured in double panels like "mini-cages," as one Premier employee describes them. The company's Website

www.premierglobalproduction.com boasts that protesters cannot hurl objects such as "ball bearings, pucks, golf balls, and marbles" through the fence's metal mesh.

"ProActConcept barricades cannot be pulled over, taken apart, or thrown like other barricades," the Website states. "Their design makes scaling them nearly impossible." But just in case, special platforms on the defensive side allow police to turn back anyone who might try climbing over. This kind of security comes at a price: $24 per linear foot. (Korten 2003)

Ahead of the G8 Summit in Heiligendamm, a German fencing company was awarded their biggest commission ever, as described in a newspaper article about the security

preparations:

Looking for a cunning business venture after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Frank Neumann had the foresight to go into fencing - predicting the demand the new free market would create for chic enclosures to cordon off everything from private gardens to sports arenas. Now, 18 years on, Neumann and his team of workers are putting the finishing touches to their biggest commission yet - a 7.5 mile long, 2.5-metre (8ft) high steel fence topped

with barbed wire, video monitors and sensors to detect movement. The daunting construction snakes through fields of rapeseed and contains enough steel - 500 tonnes - to make a ship. This barrier is transforming the elegant 18th century beach resort of Heiligendamm on Germany's Baltic coast into the tightest high-security zone the country has known for the G8 summit on June 6-8. Access through it will be controlled with airport-style x-ray machines and only those with passes will be allowed in.50 (Connolly 2007)

As an added measure, the reporter added, steel grating was rammed into the ground beneath the fence, “to discourage tunneling protesters.” (Connolly 2007)

Local residents reading about, and then witnessing, security preparations for summits happening in their cities may or may not have been comforted by the fact that fences were being built to withstand protesters plotting to break through them, scale over them, shoot ball bearings and pucks through them, pull them over, tear them apart, and tunnel under them.51