Comments Off on Rad Pride 2024: How a Night Demo Defeated the SPVM in the Village
Aug252024
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Sunday, August 10th was the second annual edition of Rad Pride. Over 250 people gathered at Papineau metro, pink balaclavas mingling with black bloc and our gayest demo attire. Under the rallying cries of “No pride in genocide” and “Queerness is resistance”, the march set off down Sainte-Catherine. Now, a couple weeks later, we want to offer a look back at this evening from a tactical perspective.
On Side Banners
The conflict between reinforced side banners and “side cops” has become a mainstay of combative Montreal demonstrations. Montreal’s reinforced banners are banners with a wooden frame, held by screwed in door-handles, used to protect against riot cop charges and hits by police batons. Over the summer, with terrasses and crowds often obstructing the sidewalks, the cops have apparently received orders to enter the street alongside marching protesters. It is essential to show the cops that this provocation is a grave error. A multiplication of reinforced side banner teams may be one of the best responses, but where these teams position themselves and how others in the crowd complement them are important to consider.
At Rad Pride, a single reinforced side banner took a position at the front, left corner of the march, and it rapidly escalated into a confrontation. After side cops began pushing the banner and banner holders refused to yield, cops ended up squeezed against a low terrasse wall. They began striking people with batons. One demo participants’ flagpole was used to strike a cop in the head from behind the banner. Unfortunately, the position of the side banner at the front made it easy to cut it off from the rest of the crowd, and with enough pepper spray and baton blows, the group around the side banner had to disperse in a chaotic melee that flipped several tables on a terrasse and led to two arrests.
The decision to not move the reinforced banner with more fluidity led to entrenched positions by both anarchists, on one side of the banner, and police, on the other. A tug of war ensued. In such a stubborn situation, one side will be pushed back and have their position compromised. It may have been possible to flank the police on all sides as cops concentrated their forces on pushing back the banner. But without the determination, numbers, or abilities to use entrenched positions to our advantage, we will often benefit much more from encouraging a reinforced banner to move with more freedom, not committed to any specific place in the demonstration (especially the front or back where it is the most isolated). This approach complements one of the main advantages of street fighters versus an enemy as powerful as the police – the ability for militants to attack and retreat, to use the element of surprise, dispersing and reforming.
A Headless March
The SPVM might have hoped that the attack on the front of the march would result in the whole crowd dispersing, but they had a long night still ahead of them. More experienced protesters improvised a new front banner team, encouraged the crowd to stick together, and quickly looped back onto Sainte-Catherine.
It was evident that the SPVM wanted to avoid the PR nightmare of tear-gassing crowds of party-goers in the Gay Village during Pride. Since these crowds were heavily concentrated on Sainte-Catherine, the demo was able to avoid dispersal by staying on that street. On multiple occasions, riot cops formed lines blocking our way forward and to the south; each time, rather than turn north off Sainte-Catherine, the demo turned on its heels and reversed, with multiple banners able to swap in as the new lead.
This game of ping-pong gave demonstrators multiple occasions to take action against the handful of targets along our route. Windows were smashed at RBC, BMO, a Remax office, and Starbucks. The latter was attacked repeatedly on at least three separate passes of the crowd. After the early clash, it took the cops close to half an hour to re-establish flanking side units, showing us that an openly confrontational element in the crowd can function as a diversion, creating space and time for groups oriented more towards destruction.
As the night went on, the vibe became increasingly more festive. Towards 11pm, the demo had become a dance party of still over a hundred people, as a line of fully-geared riot police looked on. Making a laughingstock of the authorities is a calling card of successful mass resistance movements throughout history, and we certainly shouldn’t write off the potential of making the SPVM in particular look ridiculous. The night’s victory was topped off when the riot cops retreated and returned to their vans, and the crowd sang “We Are the Champions”.
This type of conclusion is simply extremely rare for destructive demonstrations in this city. It is the result first and foremost of the determination and fearlessness of participants.
On Sunday, the F.A.G.S. and its queer and trans accomplices disrupted Fierté Montréal’s corporate, Zionist, colonialist pride parade.
We gathered at 1pm in drag bloc outfits and makeup in the spectator zone at Place Ville Marie. Nearly a dozen cops with SIS armbands mobilized to surveil our gathering, as clearly a group of queers at pride protecting each other from COVID is cause for suspicion. At around 1:30pm, towards the beginning of the parade, we took to the street as Helem, Mubaadarat, and Independent Jewish Voices’ Queer for Palestine float passed by. By marching behind their float as part of the parade for a short while, we managed to sooth the fears of the anxious piggies.
After briefly marching, we stood in place and deployed an extra-long banner to begin dispersing and disrupting the parade and deliver a speech on Fierté Montréal’s corporate pinkwashing. After this, we communicated with the members of the AGIR float behind us, allowing them and several other community floats pass and continue parading, before blocking the Bubly sparkling water float.
We continued marching and zig-zagging backwards through the parade, largely evading police intervention and briefly blocking various floats tied to Zionist corporate interests. Floats and contingents in solidarity cheered us on and raised their fists as we passed. A small contingent carrying Zionist flags approached. We attempted to block them by rapidly deploying a second extra-long banner, but police brutally pushed us to the side of the road and stole our banner.
As cop presence began to escalate, we decided to switch directions and march back towards the front of the parade, following and protesting the Zionist contingent. After halting the parade several times on our way back towards the front, we stopped at Jeanne-Mance and René Levesque. Here, we blocked the entire back portion of the parade, where almost all complicit floats were located.
During this time, police, Zionists, private security and Fierté marshals attacked and insulted us while bystanders cheered us on and chanted with us. Autonomous members of the Helem, Mubaadarat, and IJV contingent came back to join us after their successful and poignant die-in disruption. Other members of the community responded to our public call for support. Our numbers were boosted to around 150 demonstrators.
As pigs multiplied and donned their riot gear, as prisoner transport vehicles arrived, as Fierté begged us to allow their corporate parade to continue, as Zionists threw projectiles at us, as the hot August sun beat down on us, we stood our ground.
As cops shoved us, pulled us, hit us with batons, tried to steal our materials, threatened us, and brutalized us in front of a crowd of our fellow queers, we remained steadfast and defiant.
We blocked the parade at Jeanne Mance for nearly an hour before police and class traitor Fierté marshals worked together to redirect the parade to the other side of the median.
After the parade went by on the other side of the road, we marched down René Levesque chanting slogans against pinkwashing and police. The vast majority of bystanders cheered us on, while certain bystanders shouted racist vitriol at us, showing their true colours as Zionist, capitalist, colonialist white cis men. We eventually dispersed into the Metro. No arrests were made.
Though we didn’t manage to cancel the parade outright, we consider this action successful.
We blocked corporate floats long enough that many of their potential spectators further along the parade route left out of boredom. We showed queer bystanders and the media that police are not afraid to brutalize queers during a pride parade. We reminded the world that pride started as a riot against the police, not as a parade sponsored by corporate interests. We showed that as queers of conscience in Tio’tià:ke, like in Tkaronto, the Coast Salish territories colonially known as Vancouver, and elsewhere across Turtle Island and around the world, we will not accept a genocide in our names.
Fuck pinkwashing Fuck Fierté Montréal Fuck the police No justice No peace
Comments Off on L’espoir c’est la lutte: Reflections on the Night Demo of July 19th
Aug012024
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
On July 19th, under a calm night sky, over 60 people assembled in downtown Montreal to march for Palestine. The demonstration was publicized without using social media, resulting in no police presence visible at the gathering location. The account that follows comes from a couple of participants in the demo. We hope to share an understanding of what went down for those who weren’t there and make some suggestions for next time.
Around 10pm, the march set off, a front banner announcing “L’espoir c’est la lutte” alongside a circle-A, and a banner reading “Liberation to the people, liberation to the land” bringing up the rear. Snaking through streets beneath skyscrapers and chanting, the energy in the crowd gradually rose as we acclimated to the strange reality: no bike cops, no riot cops, no cops in front, in back, or on the sides, just us and our friends and comrades, and their friends and comrades, and theirs, our black bloc and keffiyeh bloc protecting us from the hundred or so surveillance cameras that would inertly record our stroll.
The march lasted sixteen minutes. Fireworks were set off upon reaching Square Victoria, site of the Al-Soumoud camp, dismantled two weeks prior. Demonstrators quickly began breaking bank windows, hitting a CIBC and Scotiabank. Heading against traffic on Saint-Jacques, we were greeted ecstatically by Friday night party-goers, who stepped into the street to cheer, and drivers who rolled down their windows to high-five black-gloved militants. Some supportive passersby began excitedly following the demo as it continued towards the Caisse de Dépot et Placement du Québec (CDPQ). The CDPQ, which had been singled out by the Al-Soumoud camp a block away, has $14 billion invested in companies complicit in the genocide in Palestine. Though its windows appeared challenging to break, several were tagged, several others shattered, and a smoke device was tossed through an opening into an office space, hopefully setting off sprinklers and causing water damage.
Police sirens could be seen and heard from multiple directions, but before SPVM commanders understood what was happening, the crowd dispersed and disappeared into the night. There were no arrests, and no one was injured.
While corporate media ignored the demo, video showing the march and direct actions circulated widely on social media, including on an arabic-language account with hundreds of thousands of followers.
The local struggle in solidarity with Palestine has seen a fair variety of tactics tested in short order over the past nine months. Night demos organized without inviting the police are a new one in this context. We may want to consider doing more of them.
A week earlier on July 12th, the SPVM sent riot cops to flank both sides of a small night demo announced on social media following the dismantling of the McGill camp. The cops entered the street alongside the march and pre-emptively attacked a side banner, ripping the banner out of people’s hands, swinging batons and deploying enormous quantities of pepper spray. The crowd’s tenacity was impressive, but it was not possible to overcome this degree of police violence and begin transforming the march into something greater. One role that a night demo without police can play is to respond to events like these, tending to our militant spirits and repairing our confidence, while showing that the SPVM is putting its units in danger for nothing by intimidating and brutally repressing demos, because our targets will get smashed regardless.
We also want to reflect on how different forms of demonstrations make it more or less possible to reach beyond our existing networks. What is striking in the interactions with enthused passersby on July 19th is how the normal police presence at a combative demo would have rendered these interactions impossible. Police doing traffic control typically redirect all vehicles away from a march, and the scale and aggression of police units on all sides of a demo is extremely intimidating, limiting the possibilities for action in the minds of onlookers – and objectively. No unprepared civilian in their right mind would try to join us. Without the separation imposed by the police, we can imagine doing more in the future to enable willing passersby to take the street with us. This could look like bringing a supply of masks to distribute to people, explicitly inviting them to join, and quickly sharing any important safety information in a friendly way with joiners.
A number of windows on the demo route unfortunately withstood the blows of hammers and rocks. This raises a question of tools. Chunks of porcelain as projectiles are more effective at breaking windows than either hammers or rocks. They’re also harder to source (ask a comrade), and more care must be taken when throwing to avoid injuring anyone. In the future, perhaps “hammer teams” could make the first attempt, and if a target proves too challenging, hand it off to a “porcelain team”.
The enthusiasm for this new tactic shows that the community is looking for a new format for demos. Beyond shattered windows, exploring what autonomous groups can do within demos without police suggests new horizons. We can test new tactics and mixes of old ones, or even police response times around different strategic areas in the city. We can also improve our speed and comfort level employing different tactics so we are not attempting things for the first time with cops breathing down our neck.
With the challenges of the past few months in demos announced on social media, even in contingents, perhaps this new format can also be seen as a mobilizing strategy. If we play our cards right, we can use it to speak to the public, spreading anarchist ideas and practices, so when we show up as a contingent in a public demo our orientation is known to those around us and they might be more encouraged to join us in actions. Hopefully, it will allow us to strike a balance, to be ready to raise the stakes and be strategic in enacting a successful plan, as well as being ready to respond combatively to police violence in bigger public demos alongside hundreds or thousands of others.
Friday raised morale, built confidence and strengthened bonds of complicity. We need to find opportunities to achieve wins even when they are small and celebrate them. The same tactic can be utilized at strategic moments like a major event in the city, or to achieve strategic goals on short notice, or in response to significant police repression.
As the zionist entity’s siege on Gaza enters its ninth month, the now-dead People’s Circle for Palestine at UofT joins the ashes of Northwestern, McMaster, and numerous others as an exemplar of liberal cowardice in the face of a livestreamed genocide. Not only did this encampment fail to deliver on its stated goals of disclosure, divestment, and termination, it betrayed both the people that made it possible as well as the movement at large. Far from opening up new terrains of escalatory struggle, the organizers of this People’s Circle spent the sixty-three days of its existence working tirelessly to make it a remarkable case study in defanging and dismantling the budding militancy of the local movement. It perverted its own promises, violated every principle of liberatory organizing; it wasted multiple weeks sabotaging the efforts of its own comrades while thousands in Gaza continued to be murdered. It turned something that could have been revolutionary for the city’s organizing scene to a summer camp that years on will likely be remembered with nothing but shame. It was a disappointment and a disgrace.
Red flags had existed right from the moment it was launched, but one could be forgiven for having been optimistic back when the encampment was still within its infancy. For many in the city who were disillusioned by months of pointless rallies and hungered for more, there had initially been a few things to be optimistic about. By Toronto’s unfortunately low standards, breaking open the fences of an enclosed privately-owned space to set up camp while multiple banner-wielding crews physically blocked the police from interfering was pretty damn militant. Yet this sole act of breaking and entering, it soon became clear, was where the line was drawn. In the two months following the breaching of King’s College Circle’s fences, UofT saw not one single large-scale escalation for Gaza: no building occupations, no disruptions of Board of Governor meetings, not even convocation ceremonies were meaningfully targeted. In fact, forget escalation: even simple attempts to strengthen the encampment’s defenses were constantly shot down. Autonomous actors were repeatedly prevented even from building barricades and had to defy the organizers in order to reinforce the preexisting fences, and the tactics trainings independent crews had started in the camp were forced to a halt halfway through.
While encampments all across the world were courageously confronting police forces and taking on their universities in ever more creative ways, the organizers of the so-called People’s Circle chose to abandon the very possibility of a principled defense or strategic escalation, not only failing to build a movement that could sustain such a struggle but actively ensuring any elements that were interested in doing so were killed off. Rather than focusing on building up the community’s material capacity to defend itself and keep on escalating, the organizers focused on pandering to corporate media, on ‘deescalating’ confrontations with the pigs, on preventing any autonomous actions that might make them ‘look bad’ or ‘invite’ police repression. They devoted their time not towards principled resistance but towards crafting an image that portrayed them as ‘peaceful’ and ‘nonviolent’ in a futile attempt to initiate ‘good faith dialogue’ with a system that understands no language but violence. Instead of focusing on what they could do to continue targeting the infrastructures sustaining this genocide, they focused entirely on whether what they did remained legal, and whether it looked good on camera. And their flimsy excuses for taking this approach – namely that the risks of continued escalation were ‘too high’ to be worth it and that their priority was ensuring the continued ‘safety’ of all participants – remain precisely that. Flimsy excuses, rooted in an illusory liberal notion of ‘safety’ built on centuries of corpses.
Because there is no safety to be found in abiding by the laws of the state, nor is there safety to be found in pandering to its propagandists. It does not truly matter if an action is legal or not, because the law is fundamentally a weapon of the oppressor. If the armed swine that are supposed to enforce it are inclined to inflict violence, there is no law that will stop them. What can, however, is our own ability to evade capture, or to fight back. To defend ourselves not by appealing to the laws of our enemies but by the strength of our own ability. In the same vein, it does not matter if it looks good on corporate cameras – because for starters, no matter how legal and peaceful our actions are, it fucking won’t. Almost a year of witnessing corporate media’s relentless vilification of Palestine and her allies is more than enough proof that its sole raison d’être is to manufacture consent for genocide. Any positive press possibly gained by painting our actions at ‘legal’ and ‘peaceful’ comes at the cost of legitimizing the perceived necessity for legality and nonviolence – yet no act that poses a genuine threat to the state and its interests can ever remain either. Any ‘safety’ built upon seeking recognition and approval from the apparatus of our enemy is a ‘safety’ built on sand – and any ‘safety’ that disavows the praxis of genuine resistance is a ‘safety’ paid for in blood. Liberal notions of ‘safety’ within the imperial core are contingent upon our refusal to take the risks needed to end the continued slaughter of thousands of Palestinians. They are contingent upon letting people continue to face the ever increasing violence of manufactured poverty, of police and carceral brutality, of eugenicist policies, and of ongoing settler colonialism, right here in our own communities. We do not keep us safe by letting others be thrown under the bulldozers and tanks of colonial violence. No, as our friends at Palestine Action US tell us – and as the cowards within OccupyUofT refuse to understand – we keep us safe by escalating.
Yet OccupyUofT’s destruction of militant efforts within the encampment wasn’t merely a result of their deference to optics and legality, nor was it simply a matter of their own refusal to escalate. Organizers, after all, can be ignored, marshalls punched, and cameras smashed. For these liberal tendencies to make a dent, the rot had to go far deeper. The so-called People’s Circle’s steady dismantling of militancy was rooted ultimately in its deeply exploitative relationship to everyone outside its limited organizing circles, to the community at large, and particularly to so-called ‘outside agitators’. For some background, the People’s Circle was launched immediately after the academic year had ended, right as thousands of students were wrapping up with their exams and leaving the city. It could never have been sustained without the critical support of hundreds of local community members unaffiliated with the group and the university. It relied on ‘outside agitators’ since the beginning – yet said ‘outside agitators’ were unsurprisingly neglected at best, and vilified, isolated, assaulted, and forcibly driven out at worst. Organizers constantly demanded unending amounts of labor, love, and logistical support from the community, consistently exploiting people’s goodwill and commitment to the cause to sustain this summer camp, while reciprocating with neither care nor solidarity nor even basic respect.
Rather than empowering people to take independent initiative and do what needed doing, organizers consistently acted on arrogant, authoritarian tendencies, acting not to distribute power but to consolidate it among themselves and the select few they approved of. They withheld crucial information from others, refused transparency with regard to finances even though every cent of their funds was drawn from community donations, and created an internal culture where nothing could be done without asking for permission from the Right People. They refused to listen to criticism, acted as though they knew everything, and repeatedly patronized multiple people with far more experience in organizing. They demanded people trust them yet refused to reciprocate – not granting others any meaningful ability to participate in collective decisionmaking, while also simultaneously trying to sabotage autonomous organizing and telling people they have no right to make ‘unilateral decisions’. This so-called ‘liberated’ zone was marked foremost, therefore, by the almost immediate imposition of a hierarchy between the organizers and everyone else. Not an exit from the social order imposed upon us by those in power, but the recreation of the same within a microcosm that openly – and falsely – branded itself as revolutionary.
Every hierarchy, of course, requires the violence of its maintenance. It is thus entirely unsurprising that the range of tactics OccupyUofT employed to maintain this power structure, in several cases, was nothing short of abusive. Finding a number of natural allies amongst the liberal factions of large orgs like PYM Toronto and Toronto 4 Palestine, they and their extended network of liberal marshals and ‘deescalators’ subjected people to endless tone-policing, shut them off by invoking a supposed need for ‘maintaining unity’ and ‘centering Gaza’, weaponized identity politics even against Palestinians, and if those tactics didn’t work, harassed folks into either shutting up or leaving. They deliberately exposed people to police and Zionist violence, spread rumors about multiple individuals, publicly named comrades who’d explicitly said they did not want to be identified, and recklessly shared around people’s sensitive personal information without ever asking for their consent. Organizers relentlessly badjacketed and even copjacketed several militants, labelled them as ‘wreckers’ who shouldn’t be worked with, and in atleast one instance forcibly kicked them out of the camp after a sustained days-long witchhunt. They created a space that was not only against militant actions but actively hostile to militant presence, isolating, alienating, and traumatizing dozens of our city’s most experienced and committed organizers into no longer wanting anything to do with the encampment.
Perhaps the most powerful weapon in their arsenal of anti-militant tactics, however, was the way the organizers enabled various forms of oppression against the very people whose circle it was supposed to be. OccupyUofT deliberately excluded unhoused comrades with far more experience in encampment defense by enabling repeated instances of harassment against them, denying their offers of organizing support, and in many instances even very explicitly refusing them entry. They tolerated and enabled tokenization and disrespect against the very indigenous aunties whose land they camped on, compelling several land defenders into leaving, dismantling the sacred fire, and denouncing the encampment. They threw around racist slurs at Black and South Asian people; dehumanized queer and trans people, particularly trans women; and perpetuated an ableist culture that treated people as mere disposable bodies worth little more than their labor. They failed to keep out predatory ‘leftist’ organizations with well-documented histories of enabling sexual abuse, and they failed to adequately address instances of sexual assault and harassment when they did occur inside the encampment. They enforced a ‘campers only’ food policy that denied everyone except those staying overnight access to food – all while throwing heaps of perfectly edible meals into the compost every single week.
In other words, the organizers spent multiple weeks shutting down militant actors in the name of keeping the community ‘safe’, yet actively endangering many of its most oppressed members – while sparing no effort whatsoever, of course, in portraying themselves as welcoming and inclusive and even liberatory to their thirty thousand Instagram followers. Over the course of two months, they reduced the word solidarity to a hollow caricature of itself, a performance that meant nothing more than statements and instagram story-posts. They failed utterly to realize that the saying ‘all our struggles are connected’ isn’t some meaningless feel-good platitude, but a material reality – a reality that cannot be ignored if we are to set anyone free. In effectively reducing their efforts for Palestine to a ‘single-issue’ struggle, in alienating, excluding, and actively harming entire groups of potential comrades, in focusing entirely on posturing and performance instead of doing the actual fucking work, the organizers of the People’s Circle deprived the movement of building up its true collective power. Because the fact of the matter is this: liberation starts at home. To paraphrase a recent piece by Dr Ayesha Khan, one worth reading in its entirety: the genocide in Palestine does not exist in a vacuum. It is intricately connected to a global web of violence that includes the daily carnage taking place right at our doorstep. It is this web we must dismantle – and to do so, we must start by pulling at the threads closest to us.
Yet OccupyUofT did none of that. Instead, it operated from a shallow, arrogant, liberal middle-classist framework of organizing that focused almost entirely on political theatre at the expense of any material community- and movement-building. In doing so, it only masterfully engineered its own defeat: by the time the injunction order inevitably came, the organizers found themselves with nearly nobody willing or able to defend the camp, nor were they able to wield the threat of continued disruptions as leverage in furthering negotiations to arrive at a deal they could settle for without looking bad. They can pat themselves in the back all they want, but they know as well as we do that they did not clear out ‘on their own terms’. They did exactly what the university and the pigs wanted, because they had spent the last two months ensuring the very possibility of a principled defense or an escalatory response were rendered impossible. The so-called People’s Circle died the way it did because it had long ceased to be a protest, let alone anything that resembled a liberatory project. That ‘closing press conference’ – that’s right, a fucking press conference – marked only the end of a sixty-three day long summer camp that had all too gladly traded in the very essence of liberatory praxis for the smoke and mirrors of media attention, power-hungry nonsense, and individualist clout building. Its shameful, pathetic, cowardly end was a perfect illustration of the fact that the so-called People’s Circle had been rendered empty of substance long before it was emptied of tents – that all that remained was spectacle.
Yet the encampment is not the movement. As the zionist entity’s genocidal assault on Gaza enters its ninth month, those of us in Toronto that take to heart the phrase ‘by any means necessary’ must not let OccupyUofT’s neoliberal ineptitude demoralize us into inaction. The damage done is immeasurable: far too many of us find ourselves exhausted, traumatized, and isolated from a disintegrating community unable to do anything but watch our networks get torn apart while Gaza continues to be bombed. Betrayed by the callousness and cowardice of those that were supposed to be our comrades, far too many of us feel more hopeless than ever in this fight against the global war machine. Yet hope or no hope, we know this: there is no future for any of us within this existing order, and nothing to be done except to fight. If short-sighted and self-interested actors have harmed our collective ability to do so, we must find ways to nurture it back. We must build the infrastructure necessary for sustained, meaningful, material disruptions against every institution where the hydra of zionism and imperialism rear their ugly heads, and we must start doing so now. There is no other choice. We have never been exempt from the struggle – our task, too, is Intifada, and Intifada means attack.
Key to this task are of course the principles and praxis of solidarity, mutual aid, and community building, which not only constitute direct action in and of themselves but form the building blocks atop which all other direct action is sustained on. The praxis of solidarity can look like joining a weekly mutual aid distro, or running donation drives for unhoused people, or helping to organize jail and legal supports. It could look like inviting your neighbors over for dinner, or letting friends with abusive families crash on your couch, or sharing gatekept meds with those who need them, or bringing extra N95 masks to the function. It does not matter if’s considered capital-O Organizing. What matters is supporting each other, connecting to and building together with the most marginalized among us, and forging resilient relationships – relationships that can withstand both the unrelenting lure of liberalism and the batons of state repression, relationships that remain rock solid when things go to shit, that can form the bedrock of a movement that, in the face of a livestreamed genocide, can actually shut things down. Setting fire to cop cars or mass-sabotaging arms factories is hardly imaginable when so many of us are far too caught up in the daily agonies of surviving capitalism and barely even know each other, let alone have longstanding networks of support, trust, and care. If we seek to build militancy in so-called Toronto, we must build a culture where militants are cared for and care for each other – a culture where people are cared for and care for each other. Faced against the twin threats of state repression and an activist scene dominated by a hostile liberal rhetoric wedded to farcical nonviolence and privileged safetyism, this is a foundation we simply cannot do without.
Rebuilding our communities and support networks is the only first of many steps: we must also push back against both liberal anti-militancy rhetoric and state intimidation, we must equip ourselves with the skills we need to actually disrupt business as usual, and we must foster the radicalization of new militants. We need agitprop, education, training. We need one-on-one conversations, we need zines, we need teach-ins, we need wheatpaste and stickers and spray paint, we need weekly self-defense practice – as our friends at CUNY put it, we need escalation trainings. We need to claim ground against the pervasive rhetoric of nonviolence and stop feeding the cowardly illusion that freedom can ever be won by merely appealing to the moral sense of the oppressor. We need to build a broader collective understanding of what it truly means to support resistance, of why it is imperative for our movements to develop teeth if we hope to even leave a scratch upon the leviathan body of imperialism. We need to remember that pigs and politicians are just as mortal as us plebeians. We need to turn cross-movement solidarity into an inviolable principle and a daily praxis instead of continuing to treat it as a bonus add-on, as something to be acted on only when convenient. We need to remind ourselves that we too live under a colonial monstrosity built on genocide, that our most paramount task in the fight for Palestinian liberation will always be to fight for the death of the settler state that exists right here on these lands. We need to teach each other how to dearrest comrades, how to use Tails, how to care for our suicidal friends, how to make unsanctioned street art, how to administer naloxone, how to liberate food from corporate megastores, how to survive a night in jail. We need to do so frequently and consistently, we need to find ways to scale up our projects, we need to bring in new people, and we need to make sure they are supported single every step of the way.
Most importantly perhaps, we need to step the fuck up and practice the things that we preach. The past nine months have shown us that liberals will gladly continue to pat themselves on the back for mindlessly repeating the same useless tactics over and over again while Gaza continues to burn. The past nine months have shown us that there is no critical threshold of livestreamed Palestinian suffering that when crossed will naturally result in worldwide revolt – if as many as two hundred thousand Palestinian martyrs are not enough, nothing will be. The movement will never naturally shift from one of hypocrites shouting ‘shut it down’ while yellow-vested pigs with megaphones make sure the empire is never inconvenienced to one of principled militants actually following through on the promise of the chant. If we want militancy, we will have to build it, and we will all have to do so by actually being fucking militant. And it will have to involve all of us, because every single one of us has a vital part to play. We will need people who are down to confront pigs on the front lines and sabotage infrastructures in the dead of night, just as we will need people to secure logistical necessities and track enemy movements, just as we will need people to support injured comrades on the ground, to organize jail supports in the aftermath, to make sure we’re fed and cared for and ready to fight another day. We’ve waited for too long – it’s time we remember what we’re capable of and start organizing the sustained material disruptions we wish to see in the world. Gaza demands that we escalate – it’s time you and I heed her call.
Our efforts will never be perfect. New challenges will undoubtedly continue to emerge both from within and without. We will face increasing state repression, just as we will face liberal reaction, just as we will face internal conflicts and fractures. Yet we cannot let these challenges keep deterring us. We owe it to Gaza to try, and when we fail, we owe it to Gaza to keep trying. We owe it to Hind Rajab, to Refaat Alareer, to Mohammed Bhar, to Hamza Dahdouh, to Shireen Abu-Akleh, to Ghassan Kanafani. We owe it to Breonna Taylor, to Regis Korchinski-Paquet, to Nex Benedict and to Pauly Likens, to Corrie and to Bushnell, to Tortuguita, to Fred Hampton. To the countless others that have lost their lives in the struggle against zionism and settler colonialism – in the last nine months, the last century, the last five hundred years. We owe it to those still alive – to those that every single day continue to resist against the global industrial slaughterhouse we are all being led towards. We owe it to ourselves to fight. By any means necessary.
Comments Off on Reportback from Vancouver Anti-fascists RE: Diagolon Rage Tour 2024
Jul232024
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
On Friday July 19th. Anti-fascists around so called Vancouver mobilized to conduct surveillance of the extreme fascist group “Diagolon” on their third official ticketed stop on their cross country tour dubbed “Rage Tour 2024” by Diagolon. The event followed ticketed events in Ottawa and Calgary, and unticketed meet and greets in Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Regina, Lethbridge, Kelowna, and Nanaimo.
The email sent to ticket holders is as follows:
“Good evening, bigots!
You will be sent to a pre-location nearby the final location that could be up to a 50 minute drive from Vancouver. This is due to severe cases of Trantifa and Diagolon Derangement Syndrome (DDS) within the city of Vancouver and surrounding areas. We hope any inconveniences will be made up for in our effort to protect ticket holders from Circs. The final location will be emailed 6(ish)hrs in advance via email from this account, (please forward any q’s to inforoadrage@proton.me)
4-7pm volunteers and Road Rage Terror Tour team arrive, set up, eat at venue
7-8pm VIP’s early entry, (please be at the pre-location area 10-15mins prior if possible)
8-9pm General Admission entry, (please be at the pre-location area 10-15mins prior if possible)
9-12pm(ish) Show
– Catered food will be available for cash only purchase. Smokie combo with a drink and chips $19, cheeseburger combo with drinks and chips $19. Chips and drinks available seperately as well
– Alcoholic beverages will NOT be served at the event for insurance and safety reasons. If you arrive intoxicated or become a problem in general you will be removed from the venue. Non-alcoholic beverages will be available for purchase – cash/coins are ideal.
– Do not bring weapons of any kind or you will be removed from the venue.
– Backpacks, bags and similar cargo carrying accessories may be subject to search for safety and insurance reasons.
– This is a private event. Phones and recording devices must be disabled and hidden during the venue, left inside your vehicle or at home. The contents of the event including visual, audio recording, streams and photos are proprietary to GRIFT CORP. Unauthorized recording of any kind will result in your removal from the venue and GRIFT CORP will pursue civil litigation against offenders.
– Security teams are in place to keep an eye on vehicles and measures have been put in place to avoid Trantifa issues.
– There will be Dag swag for sale via cash or e-transfe.
– Entering the event serves as an acknowledgment and agreement to the terms above.
We look forward to seeing you!
– Jeremy Mackenzie, Alex Vriend (The Ferryman) Derek (Rants) Harrison and Morgan May(hem)
Anti-fascist surveillance teams were in place to collect information on ticket holders and attendees. A small portion of that information will be shared here.
Location:
The initial location was at the Grove Church (20784 93 Avenue Langley, BC, V1M 2W5) roughly an hour from Vancouver. At any given time there were roughly 7-15 individuals standing out front greeting guests and acting as a stationary security team. There were also roving surveillance teams in pickup trucks and what are currently believed to be rental cars and other vehicles. The perimeter was wide, and vehicles were equipped with cameras. Security was also seen patrolling on foot around the neighbourhood.
The secondary location was the West Langley Hall, 9402 208 St, Langley, BC run by the Langley Lions Club just down the street. Participants walked to the secondary location, and eventually moved the roughly 70 vehicles to the main venues parking lot.
(From left to right) Morgan May, Jeremy Mackenzie, Derek Harrison, currently unknown chud
Spotting the Fash in your town:
The Diagolon team is driving in a 2009 Jayco Melbourne Class C RV (image below). While some vehicles had unmistakably white-supremacist stickers with unmistakably white-supremacist drivers, many vehicles were unmarked, and their occupants unassuming. Obtaining the first location, and locating community halls in a nearby proximity could assist you in quickly finding the final destination. Look for individuals moving between the locations and look for the RV. Security members had headsets connected to radios and some were trying to remain unseen. Inside the venue there was a lot of chanting, raucous applause and yelling of hateful rhetoric.
Some of what we know about Diagolon:
Diagolon is a violent and bigoted group, who often speak of commiting violent acts against racialized people, queers, and leftists. They are highly nationalistic, self described white supremacists, and avowed accelerationist neo-nazis who claim they would die for their cause. Several of their members, including their founder Jeremy Mackenzie have violent pasts, including weapons and assault charges. The group came to national headlines during the Coutts border blockade in relation to the anti-vaxx protests in February of 2022 in which several Diagolon members were arrested in possession of semi-automatic rifles and armour plated vests adorned in Diagolon patches. They have openly boasted about their recruitment success in the Canadian Armed Forces (several of their followers have been confirmed to have served or currently serve in the military), and have at least one former Toronto Police Sargeant in their ranks. In clips pulled from Jeremy Mackenzies podcast The Raging Dissident he often calls for the murder and expulsion of Indians, Sikhs, Chinese, Somalians, leftists, Jews, political opponents and queers while rambling nonsensically about pseudo-scientific racial hierarchies while in fits of barely controlled rage. Jeremy Mackenzie currently lives in the town of Pictou Nova Scotia, according to his Wikipedia page, a town of just over 3100 people.
Where do we go from here:
Diagolon and their growing group of followers emerge through state-sanctioned racist, homophobic, and bigoted world views. Many of their compatriots were radicalized during the lockdowns, and often participate in anti-mask, and anti-sogi demonstrations. While we too desire for another world, our desires are incompatible with celebrations of hate and any white ethno-state-making project. Beyond collecting information, a surveillance mission with a group of trusted friends is a great way to build trust, sharpen your skills, escalate your sneak, and be better equipped for the next time fash bubble up in your town. Be sure to protect each other in tangible ways, and be ready for confrontations. Diagolon members often lament about their wishes to beat up or kill anti-fascists. This should scare you, it should also sharpen your resolve and activate you and your community. The state will not save us, whether they label groups like Diagolon & The Proud Boys terrorist organizations or not. We need to increase our communities capacities to take these groups on and protect each other in the streets and in our homes. Self defense means literally fighting back.
Around the world, countless indigenous communities are fighting extractivist projects and infrastructures, such as mining projects, hydraulic fracking, deforestation and pipelines. In the territory occupied by the Canadian state, for example, a huge project is currently under construction: the Coastal GasLink Pipeline, designed to transport gas extracted by hydraulic fracking. This project not only destroys entire regions, but also threatens the Wet’suwet’en indigenous way of life. The pipeline is to be built on their territory, crossing the Wedzin Kwa River, which is essential to their way of life as a source of water and fish. That’s why the Wet’suwet’en have long opposed this project with fierce resistance, defending their land. Their resistance is met with strong repression, but also benefits from great solidarity.
We want to show that the fight against colonization, and therefore against industrialization and destructive extractivism, knows no borders. That’s why we have attacked a company that participates and enriches itself directly on the destruction of indigenous territories: the Bauer company supplies the drilling rigs needed for the Coastal GasLink pipeline. On May 6, we set fire to two of their huge drilling machines at a construction site in Berlin. To do this, we placed incendiary devices, accelerant and a tire on their cables.
The Coastal-Gaslink pipeline is just one of many extractivist projects on stolen indigenous lands in Canada and around the world. Whether it’s oil, gas, coal, gold, lithium or hydroelectricity and wind power (now expected to produce “green” hydrogen in Canada, of great interest to Germany), all these industrial projects are part of a colonial system that destroys the land and eliminates indigenous ways of life.
We stand in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en struggles against the colonial Coastal-Gaslink pipeline project.
Whether in Canada, Chile, Peru, the Hambach forest or northern Portugal, let’s fight destructive extractivist projects and connect our struggles!
Switch off the system of destruction and colonisation!
In case you missed it, Toronto Police have recently been attempting an old tactic against Palestinian solidarity organizers: soliciting arrestees to become confidential informants.
While this isn’t a new tactic, the blatant and concerted attempt to conjure informants in community organizing spaces is.
Writing this, I know of at least four separate individuals approached by police.
Each approach has been similar: the individual is arrested, charged, and then prior to being released, approached by a detective from Toronto Police’s Hate Crimes & Extremism Unit (HCEU).
Many major municipal police forces in so-called southern Ontario have a HCEU, usually nested within their “Intelligence Division”. These are the units that track and gather intel on protests, organizers, and mobilizers. The municipal units together form a provincial network – the Hate Crime Extremism Investigation Team (HCEIT) – which attend trainings together, document and share intel in various ways, and work closely with provincial and federal intelligence bodies.*
The detective’s approach is very straightforward: they inquire whether the individual knows what a “confidential informant” or “CI” is. The detective suggests that perhaps the individual has concerns about the actions of some of their comrades, and they tell the arrestee that if they have information to share it doesn’t need to happen through their lawyer. In some cases there’s an insinuation that the detective could talk to the crown on their behalf if were to provide information, but without promising anything.
It’s worth noting that we have seen police make informational approaches to individuals in the GTHA area before.
In Hamilton during the height of Landback Lane we saw the OPP approach an individual, suggesting they may be concerned about what people they knew were up to. Likewise, Hamilton Police have previously coerced people in to coming to the police station under the guise that they were being charged. Instead they were solicited for information, then released. As well, during escalating anti-line 9 organizing, at least one individual in the Waterloo region was approached by an intelligence body to inform on people.
In each of these cases – as well as the recent Toronto examples – the individuals being approached were “newer” or peripheral to organizing (at least locally). Police intentionally choose to approach these individuals because they believe:
The individual may not have the support of others at that time, and out of duress (real or imagined) may give information
The individual has yet to develop core politics of the struggle (i.e. ACAB/Don’t talk to cops)
The individual may not have developed attachment to the people or struggle they’re being asked to inform on, and more likely to give up information as a result
While police may most often approach folks new to the scene, this isn’t good reason to exclude those new enthusiastic folks from our spaces or movements – but it is a good reason we need to take the time to get to know folks coming in to our scenes and circles as often as possible. Building genuine relational movements means people are better supported (not just in moments of repression, but especially then), and more likely to move us towards building movements that can grow in both size and risk-taking, while resisting repression.
Remember: Don’t talk to cops!
A Mini Primer on Informants
People might agree to inform because of:
Fear/Isolation
This could be fear of their legal predicament, or something police have done to covertly or overtly threaten them, or both. Especially fear in isolation/without support.
Attention, self-importance
Making themselves important to someone, even if it’s a fucking pig.
Conflict/Bad Politics
They don’t have ACAB politics – they believe police will solve whatever issue they have with whomever or whatever, or they’re pissed at someone (in combo with bad politics)
Which leaves us with: What can WE do, collectively, to dissuade or render CI’s useless?
Have and continue building good security culture and OpSec practises
Create opportunities in movements (especially) for people to question and understand anti-cop politics, even if it’s via an anonymous zine library or reading group. Learn to have hard conversations.
Actively & proactively counter fear of repression by discussing it, creating opportunities for connection and relationship building with others experiencing it or likely to experience it – both in private groups and larger ones.
Build a culture of support, debrief, openness & transparency about repression, police & police approaches
Build skills, spaces, and support for conflict resolution in community. Police are adept in creating or inflaming controversy, and it’s only leaning in to hard conversations that will move us clearly through those moments.
Other Things to Remember:
Police don’t need to arrest someone to approach them to be a CI
We give police intel in many other ways – work on things in your control. Security culture. Operational security. Tech security. Be cognizant of everything you’re doing on frontlines while under surveillance: Are you taking photos on your phone and immediately posting to a key social media account? Are you always talking to the same few people right before a big decision is announced?
Someone disagreeing with you, your ideas, or your politics does not mean they’re a cop, informant, infiltrator, or disruptor. This type of thinking can paralyze us, and is ignorant. Large movements attract a huge number of people with difference backgrounds, experiences, ideas, all at varying moments in their political development. Your differences may mean you need to have some conversations or even reconsider collaborating – but that can usually be done amicably.
And finally, some affirmation: Police making a concerted effort to flip people means they want information – which means they don’t have the information they’re hoping to have. This is good news, and in some ways may even indicate that reasonable security practises are already working. Keep at it!
* Further notes on Hate Crime Extremism Units
The following police department HCEU’s form the provincial Hate Crime Extremism Investigation Team (HCEIT): Guelph, Hamilton, London, Ottawa, Waterloo, Durham, Halton, Oxford, Toronto, York Region, Peel Region, Stratford, Brantford, Niagara.
HCEIT works with the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), Criminal Investigation Services Ontario (CISO), Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Canadian Security Intelligence Services (CSIS) & Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).
It’s worth noting that there have been recent and continuous federal, provincial funding being given to municipal hate crime units to investigate “antisemitism” and anti-muslim incidents. Antisemitism is in quotes because the state and some Jewish bodies sees all pro-Palestinian action as antisemitism, not because there have not been instances of such since October – and prior. Regardless, my point is that we are in a moment of heightened state surveillance & repression around pro-Palestinian organizing with some level of joint national and provincial directives happening. Act like it – but keep f*cking shit up!
At around 4 PM, student protesters entered the James administration building of McGill University and disrupted the Board of Governors’ (BoG) meeting to oppose its complicity in the genocide in Gaza. The BoG is the highest instance of the university and decides in which companies its endowment fund is invested, including Israeli, Zionist and arms companies. Hundreds of protesters formed a support rally around the building, with some creating makeshift barricades with fences and furniture. An hour later, on the administration’s request, a strong police presence arrived on campus, including several dozen riot cops. The latter took control of the walkway east of the building and prevented protesters from protecting the north (back) entrance, thus confining them to the south (front) side of the building.
At around 6:30 PM, cops entered the building through the back entrance. They would soon begin arresting the protesters inside, who had tried to barricade the room they were in as best as they could. Simultaneously, cops brutally assaulted the support rally, using their batons, pepper spray and tear gas to disperse the protesters, who did not go out without a fight.
One particularly funny moment captured here is Deep Saini hiding from his students, cowering behind admin staff ushered out
The level of violence from the police surprised some demonstrators, with cops aiming tear gas or rubber bullet guns at people’s heads and intentionally shooting people with tear gas canisters, in addition to using huge quantities of chemical irritants.
At 7:15 PM, a demo started marching from the UQAM (another university) encampment towards McGill. The march symbolized the end of said encampment and had been announced several days prior; it was therefore not in direct reaction to the James building occupation, though its path might have been rerouted for the occasion. Protesters meandered through the Milton-Parc neighborhood to try to reach the administration building, but their attempts were thwarted by police following them and blocking streets. The demo finally tried to break through the police line on Milton street, just a mere hundred metres east of the James building. Protesters were then met with the violence and pepper spray of bike cops, backed up by riot police. In the disorientation that ensued, the protesters ran away and, one way or another, reached the Lower Field.
The UQAM crowd slowly regrouped there, joining forces with the McGill one. Those who were still good to go started marching again, unabated by the torrential rain. The demo meandered through the streets, with riot cops clearly blocking any road that might lead to the James. Once on Sherbrooke, a Scotiabank window was shattered. The protest continued wandering through Milton-Parc and went east, eventually disbanding on St-Laurent.
Some thoughts
The author of these reflections applauds everyone who partook in the occupation or the demos, and hopes the following thoughts are not taken as negative criticisms, but as things to think about, discuss and debate moving forward.
1. On communication: publicly announcing the BoG meeting on social media would have made the James occupation impossible, as the administration would have called the cops beforehand or moved the meeting online. However, I still think it would have been useful if McGill folks had shared the information with trusted UQAM folks. For one, this could have allowed the latter to advance their demo time and thus join the support rally. This would also have facilitated the exchange of knowledge and material, namely rope to allow the occupiers to escape through the windows and things to block the back entrance. On the last point, I think more intel should have been done to make sure every entrance had been dealt with.
2. On meteorological conditions: the heavy rain created unique conditions with some payoffs. While it might have discouraged more people from attending the demo, it somewhat mitigated the spread of pepper spray and tear gas and provided a good reason to bring umbrellas. Of course, goggles and masks still proved useful that day. The wind also made its presence known: there is footage of riot cops teargassing themselves because of it. Weather conditions and terrain geography (elevation, obstacles) still seem to be relatively unexplored areas of demo planning.
3. On objectives: both the march from UQAM and the subsequent one from Lower Field apparently had the goal of reaching the James. Other than its symbolic significance, this objective makes little sense in my opinion, since the cops had already entered the building before the first march was on its way. Also, the long meandering paths taken did not help reach the destination, as the cops could always see where we were headed. Nevertheless, the persistence and temerity of the protesters is worth acknowledging and commending. Older comrades even said the demo reminded them of combative night demos from 2012.
4. On demo formations: the UQAM demo had a few standoffs with the police, who were adamant on preventing it from getting to the James. As explained in the previous point, I still have difficulty understanding that objective. However, there might come a point in time where similar ones prove crucial in achieving wider goals. I will thus share my two cents on two noteworthy standoffs:
– The first one happened with bike cops preventing further advancing on Prince-Arthur street. After stopping for a brief while, protesters started marching again towards the cops, yelling “Bouge!” (Move!) to give them a taste of their own medicine. Some rocks were also thrown (albeit not very powerfully). Despite the comedic value of the whole scene, the cops did not cede, with some deploying pepper spray and others threatening the crowd with their bikes. The demo thus chose to turn away. In my opinion, the demo did not charge fast enough to instill psychological fear in the cops. It is somewhat understandable though, since the protesters didn’t have much in the way of equipment to neutralize the bicycles.
– The second standoff occurred on Milton street, where police vans were spread throughout the street and reduced mobility for both sides. Once again, the protesters faced bike cops, but this time, they made contact, as their resolve had hardened. The first three rows respectively held the following items: banner – umbrellas – flagpoles. The protesters held the line for a while, but fell into disarray after the cops made liberal use of pepper spray and riot cops arrived on the scene. I think that with more training, discipline and experience, the demo could have stayed grouped while the medics attended to those who had gotten sprayed. This would have prevented the ensuing disorganized and individualistic retreat. I also think that expanding the demo onto the sidewalks and attacking by the flanks (while still leaving an escape route for the cops) would have proven strategic.
Another tactic worth thinking about when cops deny entry to an area is the splitting of the demo into two or more groups, provided that they remain big enough. Each would take a different road to try and spread the police force thin. This allows the protesters to increase their surface area, i.e. the number of people directly facing the cops instead of waiting in the middle of a crowd. Needless to say, the successful execution of such maneuvers would require prior training and constant communication between the groups.
5. Be like water: our force stems from our ability to be anywhere and everywhere, whether it be at a protest or other actions. According to many comrades, the riot cops’ priority seemed to be to guard the James building. This limited their range of motion, and other types of cops seemed more interested in following the demo than protecting other potential targets, like the Scotiabank. On a broader level, the events illustrate an asymmetry between the people and state forces: the former, like steppe cavalry, have a harder time defending places, but are more agile; the latter, like heavy infantry, are stronger in direct confrontations (unless at a significant numerical disadvantage), but less mobile. While the police has various vehicles at their disposition, they can be slowed down by dragging objects into the street. Now, I am well aware that habit gets a bad rep because it doesn’t really slow down riot cops and can constitute a tripping hazard for ourselves. That being said, in narrower streets, it proved useful in creating some distance from bike cops and vans and giving protesters some time to regroup after a rout.