Montréal Contre-information
Montréal Contre-information
Montréal Contre-information
Jun 132025
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

We heard you like reportbacks from anarchist festivals; may others from this one follow. May 15th-21st, 2025 in Montreal was the second edition of Constellation. Over seven days, there were book launches, parties, benefit shows, bike rides, a book arpentage, a squatted rave in an abandoned magic store, a barbecue, a barbecue that blocked fascists, a mesh networking day, a radical consent workshop, and more. People attended from across the country, from south of the border, and from overseas, and events consistently saw packed rooms, even when there were five happening at the same time.

May 17th was the anarchist bookfair, a Montreal tradition going back to the year 2000. Over ninety publishers, zine distros, artists, and groups held tables. It rained pretty much all day, and there was only space inside CEDA for about two thirds of the tables, but a barn-sized wedding tent was set up on the baseball diamond outside, plus a second smaller one, and they sure proved themselves. Meanwhile, kilos of shoplifted coffee kept attendees caffeinated, kids hung out in the childcare room or attended workshops that included the reading of an anarchist children’s book by the authors, and a kitchen team prepared to feed hundreds of people for free. Easily over 1000 people passed through, and we can’t remember the last time we’ve seen so many new faces at an anarchist event in the city.

Other workshops discussed histories of revolutionary anarchism in eastern Europe and Latin America, artificial intelligence, an anarchist analysis of cancer, the dangers of the militarization of social struggles, the history of resistance to slavery and colonialism in the southeastern US, tenant organizing around lead exposure, and living rurally as anarchists. Land defenders from the Nehirowisiw (Atikamekw) territory about two hours north of Montreal also traveled down to share the context of their struggle against logging with a packed workshop room. This discussion was particularly well-timed, because logging blockades would begin going up again three days later, calling for supporters in the city to join them. Hopefully, lots of the people who attended this discussion picked up some anarchist reflections on anticolonial solidarity in zine form at the bookfair and prepared to make material contributions to this struggle.

In place of a second day of books and zines, on May 18th, CEDA played host to what was billed as a skillfair. It was awesome. Friends reported needing to see the format first-hand to understand its potential and are excited for where it could go in the future. There were tables where people could practice lockpicking, learn how to buy hormones online with Bitcoin, practice soldering electronics, plot organizing against their landlord, learn about mesh networking, make a Riseup account, make alterations to clothes, learn how to improve the security of computer hardware, and learn some DIY chemistry. Workshops introduced people to basic auto repair, screenprinting, Balkan singing, somatic techniques for collective action, guerrilla grafting, and much more. Fewer tables, more extended face-to-face interactions, and virtually no monetary exchange might be some of the factors that provided a nice contrast with bookfair day. We’re also interested in how the skill tabling format can allow for connections to be made between projects and needed practical knowledge.

It’s no secret that the group organizing Constellation has taken a different approach than that associated with the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair Collective (MABC), different permutations of which organized the bookfair until 2023. When the MABC accused Constellation of “appropriating” the bookfair, we were happy to see that local anarchists were pretty unanimous in replying that the bookfair doesn’t belong to anyone, which is another way of saying that it belongs to all of us. We’ve reflected since the weekend on how this perspective offers a more free, dynamic, and inviting environment, while also asking a bit more of each of us.

One level on which this is true is around conflict. Any event bringing so many anarchists together in the same place is bound to see interpersonal and political tensions. We’re happy that the festival was organized without the intention of sweeping conflict out of view or suppressing it, or along the model of a special committee empowered to decide who is welcome and what is allowed. A consequence of this approach is that people who are parties to conflicts, or who have been hurt or even harmed by others, may take autonomous action in an attempt to assert boundaries, stop patterns of harmful behavior, or get retribution. But with freedom comes responsibility. We badly need a healthier culture around conflict, one that is more capable of de-escalating conflicts that are not with the enemy and of changing the nevertheless harmful patterns that give rise to them. It is in part through our responses to how conflicts are brought into our shared spaces that this culture develops as a form of collective responsibility. This can be uncomfortable, whether it’s challenging the tendencies of our closest friends, identifying the fears underlying one’s own learned responses, figuring out the assumptions that are going unquestioned in our social circle, or simply saying things that feel hard to say. At other times, it may just take some initiative.

In one instance, a poster denouncing a tabler, a local writer and zine publisher, was wheatpasted outside CÉDA the night before the bookfair. We don’t particularly like this writer, who has turned their “cancellation” into somewhat of a grift (anyone with the platform this person has is not “cancelled”). But the poster made a pair of serious claims that aren’t backed up to our knowledge by any credible information, in the context of labeling this person unwelcome at anarchist events. Making serious allegations against someone on spurious or non-existent evidence can be incredibly damaging in so many ways to our relationships of trust and to our struggles. We didn’t mind hearing that most of these posters were destroyed before the bookfair even began.

In general, if you decide to bring your beef to the bookfair, especially in a way that makes demands of other anarchists, you should be ready to hear questions, challenges, and perhaps criticism. We’re wary of any group that seeks to engage in conflict in the most public way available to them while demanding that others not intervene; this feels like the opposite extreme to the invisibilization and avoidance of conflict, making it into a spectacle instead. Both extremes deny collective responsibility for conflict, one by relegating it to the private sphere, the other by turning the rest of us into passive spectators. Neither ought we to falsely frame things in terms that shut down debate or threaten to vilify anyone challenging our claims.

Creating methods for redressing harm without appealing to or re-constituting authority feels like a lifelong project. Besides not delegating this responsibility, we’re not sure anyone got anything right on this level over the course of the weekend.

– some anarchists