She can't find them. As it happens, Quebec City is itself embroiled in an effort to maintain its identity as a French-speaking city a familiar struggle in the globalization era, when the language of profits is so often English. The city is divided into the old Upper Town, where the Congress Center is, and the old Lower Town, down by the port. Maria Louisa Mendonca, a documentary filmmaker and director of Global Exchange's Brazil project, has come here with members from the MST, the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement. We can't compete with its level of infrastructure and technology.
Organizers believe they can gradually shift public opinion in their favor.
In the Upper Town, on Friday, workers hammer protective boards across shop windows as surveillance helicopters whir over the security perimeter. McDonald's has removed its golden arches and painted the storefront with yellow daffodils, making it look abandoned. Demonstrators linger by the fence, pulling at it now and then to test its strength. Thousands gather at the Universit Laval, among them jugglers, Lady Liberty on stilts, and the radical cheerleaders, who skip rope to anti-FTAA chants. Yellows and reds are mostly young, students and nonstudents, from across Canada and much of the northeastern United States.