The diplomats are there to negotiate the sweeping Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement. But to the protesters, Quebec City's new wall is a metaphor for the way the agreement has been negotiated -- with opponents walled out of largely secret negotiations. The FTAA, an idea first spawned at the Summit of the Americas in 1994, would dismantle protectionist policies that ban trade on certain products and services and would eliminate tariffs on goods imported and exported between member countries.

"What they're doing in Quebec City is wrong," says Leo Gerard, president of the 700,000-member United Steelworkers of America union. "They're saying that they want to take down trade barriers, but they're building walls as they negotiate in secret. If you try to get to the other side of the wall, you'll be jailed. All around the world, in order to try to minimize the exposure of dissent, countries are criminalizing the protesters."

The Steelworkers are deploying thousands of members to participate in the People's Summit of the Americas, a shadow summit being organized by human rights organizations, labor and groups like Doctors without Borders. Steelworkers are also participating in actions planned by the dozens of protest coalition groups descending on Quebec City, hoping to disrupt the meeting to hammer out the FTAA. Organizers expect 15,000 demonstrators, some of whom, like anarchists who deride the future pact as "brawny and bigamist 'free' trade" would like to stop the FTAA altogether, while others want its negotiations to be more open and inclusive, and lead to increased protections for labor and the environment.

The Quebec City protests are one of several sequels to the battle over free trade that flared up over the December 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. The Seattle protest drew 35,000, and collateral anarchist violence -- including the smashing of windows at stores owned by multinationals like Starbucks and Nike -- led to 600 arrests. The protest was largely successful in shutting down WTO negotiations, and its organizers hoped for a repeat a year ago, at the annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank. But the Washington protests were met with a stronger police response (the ACLU would later sue the city for its heavy-handed tactics) and the meetings proceeded without interruption, after 1,300 of 10,000 protesters were arrested.

The battle got a little uglier last September at a World Bank meeting in Prague, where protesters chucked the city's ancient cobblestones at police. While the police estimated that only 6,000 protesters showed up, there were more than 420 arrests and 100 injuries -- including some 63 police officers.

Some FTAA protest organizers are hoping for a rerun of Seattle. "We intend to shut down the Summit of the Americas and to turn the FTAA negotiations into a non-event," declare the leaders of Montreal direct-action group Operation SalAmi ("dirty friend" in French), on the organization's Web site.

Two competing factions are coordinating the main Quebec protests: While Operation SalAmi advocates nonviolence, La Convergence des Luttes Anti-Capitalistes (CLAC, which is organizing a "Carnival Against Capitalism") and the Summit of the Americas Welcoming Committee (CASA) endorse whatever forms of protest are required to shut the summit meeting down.

In a recent article about planning efforts by CLAC and Operation SalAmi, Canadian journalist Andrew Duffy wrote that "Ideological clashes between the camps have colored a series of organizational meetings over the past four months." That rift has centered on whether or not property damage -- like the windows of McDonald's or other multinationals -- should be included in the groups' definitions of violence. That split ultimately led to two different organizations who share the same views but apparently don't hold the same values.

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