After the Summit of the Americas in Quebec last weekend, the protests and the media coverage, I've been lucky to read several first-hand accounts of anti-FTAA protesters' experiences. No thanks to the national media, but rather email.

(A note on usage: anti-FTAA sentiment does not necessitate an anti-globalization sentiment. One can be in favour of globalization in theory, but against the specifics of the terms on which the FTAA presumes to champion it. When I use the term anti-FTAA, I don't mean "globophobes," as The Globe and Mail so neatly categorized all the activists in their editorial series leading up to the Summit.)

I don't know if the storytelling campaign was planned—it may well have been, considering the level of organization behind the demonstrations—but it has served as one of the most important aspects of the anti-FTAA activism we've all seen so poorly represented in the national media. These storytellers are raising their concerns to a public conscience by spreading the word the same way storytellers raised their concerns to public conscience thousands of years ago when angry Greeks tried to tear down the walls of Troy. If no one told the story, Achilles would just be another skull on the beach. If no one told about the Quebec protests, then people like me who weren't there would have no idea what went on: that is, other than the mainstream media version.

One of the true testaments to the storytelling campaign has been the objective detail provided by the anti-FTAA activists. Much of the writing has been disarmed of loaded adjectives and brutally categorical presumptions regarding purpose, which is more than can be said for The Globe and Mail, The National Post, and the CBC coverage leading up to the Summit. It is, after all, clear why the police were there. Protesters came for so many different reasons that it was nice to read some of them articulated in more depth than can be uttered in a three-second TV news quote.

I think the reason most of us have come to distrust the national media—even more so, since last weekend—is due in part to the categorical summary of anti-FTAA sentiment. I have more than five different friends who were at the protests and all for different reasons.

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Reason vs. Reasonable

Another benefit to having read first-hand accounts of the FTAA protests from the protesters is that we get a sense of how threatening it must have felt to be choking on tear-gas and watching friends get beaten with batons. From this we can get a sense of the circumstances that served as parameters for reasonable action. Of course we think it reasonable to hit back when we're being beaten, yet such reason isn't supposed to apply when the person beating you is an officer of the law. Now on the other hand, we can't assume that police officers don't get scared. I have no doubt in my mind that some of the officers felt threatened by the mob. This is where things break down: Who acted first? Did they have good reason? Did they act in a reasonable manner? The answers to these questions, for anti-FTAAers, shouldn't matter.

This may sound callous, but the important thing for protesters is that the message gets out to people who weren't there. The unfortunate thing for protesters—and for police—is that in the face of all this direct conflict, the real conflict—the conflict of ideals—gets clouded over. The balance between restraint and brutality needs to be navigated by police to appear reasonable.

For protesters, the balance is between peacefulness and violence. These characteristics become the measure of the sincerity of the protesters and the nobility of the police. People who are unaware of the issues surrounding the FTAA-the people the protesters want to make aware-often end up aligning their support, however subtle that support might be, with the most reasonable-appearing group, on the grounds that they appear reasonable so they must have good reason. The issues never even arise. This is why I want to talk about the issues that underlie the FTAA, with a nod to all those who have shared their first-hand experiences, both of the protests at the Summit of the Americas, and of other more direct examples of the effects of free trade. Without those stories, we wouldn't know about the issues at all.

In getting at the issues, I will refrain from unleashing an abstract, emotional, bark-fest rant in which I fling unsubstantiated opinion at you like it was cheaper than a McDonald's smile. Neither will I give you a gilded sterile tea-cozy. Neither is useful. The only thing more boring than watching the fireplace channel at Christmas is watching Jerry Springer. They are meaningless and lead to no greater understanding of the world or our role in it. This is my goal by providing an overview of the general issues, such as they can be known without a draft of the FTAA in my hands, annotated by social scientists, environmentalists, buddhas, ninjas, and thieves.