The Summit of the Americas is "an institutionalized set of meetings at the highest level of government decision-making in the Western Hemisphere". The next summit is being held in Quebec City from April 20-22, 2001. Overshadowing all other issues is the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement, or FTAA. This agreement builds immensely on NAFTA and includes 34 countries (every country in the west except Cuba).
There will be at least 6000 police to stop the peaceful protests which will be taking place from numerous activist groups. A 4 kilometre 4 metre high concrete fence is being built to complement the huge wall that already exists along the upper
part of the city. Previous summits were held in Miami (1994), Santa Cruz (1996), and Santiago (1998). The FTAA is supposed to be fully implemented by 2005, but many corporate-backed politicians, such as George W. Bush are pushing for 'fast-track' power so that the policies are implemented sooner.
Many activists have demanded for the text of the FTAA agreement to be released to the public domain, and were arrested. You can read what they want you to know at www.summit-americas.org.
Two weeks after the summit in Quebec City, Jaggi Singh is still being held in jail, because of his wooden catapult which was used to toss teddy bears at the riot police. The RCMP said that it used 3,009 canisters of tear gas, and 502 plastic bullets, while the Quebec provincial police used 1,700 canisters and 320 rubber bullets. I have heard of one case of a person being shot in the neck with a plastic bullet, who was in critical condition and is still recovering. This is unconfirmed, but should not be surprising, considering any 'sub-lethal' weapons simply have a certain probability of not killing anyone.