From the Convergence des luttes anti-capitalistes
On Wednesday May 1st, at 6:30pm, in Square Cabot, the anticapitalist caravan is back at it again to say fuck your borders and fuck your prisons!
For people fleeing miserable living conditions, what are borders if not fences around prisons? After all, what’s the difference between forcing people to live inside arbitrary perimeters against their will and imprisoning them?
Being forced to work for a Canadian company in Honduras, Haiti, Colombia, or elsewhere isn’t much better than being detained. These companies produce all of the useless junk that forms the basis of our modern comfort. The fact that the factories are so far away from Canada makes the exploitation less visible for westerners, though it is clear that slavery has not vanished; it’s only been given a different label. Exploited people pick our fruits, sew our clothes, catch our fish, and die for the rich to get richer, day after day, after day, after day…
When those exploited try to rebel, imperialist states are always happy to sell corrupt governments, armed groups, local prison guards all the weapons and tools to repress anyone who wishes to change the system. Police officers in Central America, guns in Africa, funds in Asia… everything needed to keep local populations under control. Everything needed to support the shaky pyramid of capitalism.
Under these circumstances, how can we not see migrant caravans as people fleeing prisons of poverty and misery? Escaping endless exploitation? This escape is however unacceptable for an imperialist state. States finance complex networks to kidnap freedom seekers and take them back to their original cells where they can waste away working; a network made up of border agents, prisons for migrant families, and immigration police. An entire chain running from Canada to international neo-colonies. A chain made up of imprisoned children, families torn apart, abused women, dead men, and assassinated hopes.
Capitalism is the accumulation of wealth up North at the expense of the global South. It’s the construction of a padded fortress destined for a privileged handful, at the expense of all human decency. Capitalism is the eternal exploitation of three quarters of humanity. This Mayday, let’s attack the sinister agents of capital, the bloodied hands of slave masters: the border infrastructure, the companies gaining wealth building prisons, the inhuman deportation machine. This Mayday, we say fuck borders, prisons, and all who continue to build fences between peoples.
This Mayday, let’s march for freedom! Let’s march for the death of a system that spits on humanity! Let’s march against Capital!
Main Starting Point
- Meetup at 6:30 in Cabot square (Atwater metro station).
- To follow the state of the protests on Twitter
- Legal Support (in French)
Other Demonstrations and Starting Points
- IWW demonstration (détails to come soon)