Submitted to MTL Counter-info
Triggering fomo (fear of missing out) in anarchists across Montreal who aren’t francophone music fans, over a hundred Francofolies festival-goers rioted last friday night after a performance by french rapper MHD. The crowd, mostly under the age of 20, threw bricks, bottles, and traffic cones at police, smashed the windows of at least 20 businesses between St-Denis and Drummond street, overturned vending carts, and attacked the headquarters of the SPVM, breaking multiple windows along its Saint-Urbain street facade. Six cops were reported injured.
Accounts say that cops had mounted the stage to confront fans who had went on stage during an earlier performance. At this moment, chants of ‘fuck la police’ could be heard, and when the show ended, the crowd proved that even the smallest indignity, relatively speaking, at the hands of police in this city is grounds for a full-fledged riot. Unfortunately, there were two arrests, and few participants wore masks.
It seems that over the last few months in Montreal, events in which anarchists have participated have created a climate in which hostility towards the police is more widely shared and more readily translated into violence against our enemies, among not just anarchists but all people living in the city who have reason to hate the police.
Anarchists, though, could be more ready to intervene in those eruptions of revolt that are possible outside of political demonstrations and anarchist-initiated attacks. Let’s recognize and act on the potential of these moments to expand the space and time of lawlessness, to create breaks with normality unforeseen by power and therefore more likely to get out of control, to shake the faith of activists in their social movement calendars, and to link anarchists with others in unpredictable complicities.
One more time: Fuck the police!