Sensational media coverage is already beginning to portray anti-G20 protesters as a single homogeneous group preparing for violent opposition to September’s G20 meeting. Some of the reporting has simply been ridiculous with the likes of KDKA, a local CBS Television affiliate, suggesting that protesters are hoarding human feces to throw at police, but even the more reasonable media coverage has sometimes failed to represent the protesters as the patchwork of ideologies and interests that they are.

Determined to get beyond the local news hype, BLACK AND WHITE spoke to Melissa Minnich at the Thomas Merton Center to gain a better understanding of the protests and protesters. Located on Penn Avenue in Garfield, the Merton Center has served as a clearinghouse for dissent and activism in the Pittsburgh area since its founding in 1972. The Merton Center is coordinating the G20 protests, a natural role based on the Center’s history as an organizer of and headquarters for diverse activists and causes. Ms. Minnich said that people simply expected the Center to assume such a role and that she received three phone calls within 20 minutes of Pittsburgh being announced as the summit’s location all asking her what the Merton Center’s position would be. From there, the Center began holding meetings to plan for the summit and things took off with the Center’s Anti-War Committee coordinating events including a massive permitted march Downtown planned for September 25^th.

Ms. Minnich said that the Merton Center’s main goal is public education about issues such as the military industrial complex, unemployment and the environment. The Merton Center and the groups it represents are positioning themselves to raise awareness about specific issues relating to G20 nations and policies. Toward this goal, the Merton Center is working with groups to organize panel discussions, tent cities and a sustainable-living fair.

These activities are being organized legally with permits being sought for actions in Point State Park, the Hill District, Oakland and other neighborhoods in the city. The fact that these actions are being planned legally and with education as their goal, is what unites these groups in preparing for September’s G20 meeting. Responding to concerns that protests might turn violent, Ms. Minnich said, “Everything that we organize is organized to be nonviolent.” Indeed, the hallmark of the Merton Center is that its actions are nonviolent, legal and educational. Ms. Minnich said that upwards of tens of thousands of individuals are expected to take part in the various legal protests planned in opposition to the G20.

But whereas the Merton Center and its affiliates have planned their protests to be nonviolent, legal and educational, an umbrella group for anarchists and anti-authoritarians are indeed planning to disrupt the G20 and protest outside the bounds of the law. The group, the Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project, is planning two days of direct action when they say on their website that they “will be taking to the streets to express our anger and our rage against the conditions [the G20] are imposing on us.” The website also states that it is their purpose to “disrupt the summit and undermine its legitimacy.” Toward this end, the Resistance Project is planning an illegal march on September 24^th that will begin at 2:30 pm at an unannounced location in the East End. The Project has also designated September 25^th as a day for dozens of direct actions to begin at noon throughout the city.

Whereas Ms. Minnich was very clear that the Merton Center’s actions would be nonviolent and educational, the Resistance Project describes its plans in vague language speaking of direct actions and being careful to say that they will be “unaware of what is planned” by individual organizations involved in street protests. These direct actions could take the form of nonviolent civil disobedience or of violent vandalism. Either way, the Resistance Project is planning the actions in secret and refusing to accept ownership for the tactics employed. Such attention to plausible denial stands in stark contrast to the Merton Center’s public organizing of protests and represents a clear division between the protesters. This is what much of the sensationalized media coverage has missed: There are two distinct elements intending to protest at the G20 with one element committed to nonviolent permitted protests and the other planning “direct actions” in secret.

Of course, while the groups’ tactics are different, they share similar goals and this has led to some cooperation between the Merton Center and the Resistance Project with the Merton Center advertising the Project’s events and the Center’s Anti-War Committee endorsing the Project’s list of principles. But beyond this limited cooperation, the Merton Center and the Resistance Project represent two very different visions of opposition to the G20.

Recognizing these internal divisions, it’s obvious that the actual protesters are far more complex than the feces-hoarding terrorists that local television news has been portraying. Indeed, the vast majority of the thousands of protesters to turn out for the G20 are expected to be nonviolent and focused on raising awareness about their niche issues be it the environment, women’s rights or opposition to the military industrial complex. To-date, a very small minority of protesters is intent on disrupting the summit illegally and their actual organizing has gone largely unnoticed by a media portraying protesters as a homogeneous group of violent miscreants.