From subMedia.tv
Let’s face it, we live in a time where surveillance devices are all around us, be it police with video cameras, CCTV or citizens with mobile phones. So when we decide to take to the streets to oppose the state and their police, it’s wise to hid our identity.
For more tips on security culture check out these links:
From It’s Going Down
A Love Letter to Sacred Stone Camp
[from Hamilton, ON]
For weeks, your numbers and our hearts have swelled in unison.
The world is watching as you spark the revolution.
We all wish that we could join you but realize we have ways to help from here.
We have work to do right here.
And so we offer up a small act of resistance. Of defiance.
A rejection of their narrative.
Enbridge is funding the Dakota Access pipeline, as well as Line 9 here.
As of one week ago, a merger made them the largest energy delivery company on Turtle Island.
But the era of oil snakes is over.
Gone are the days where companies can profit off death and destruction unopposed.
Enbridge has blood on their hands.
We have made this clear by using our hands to cover their Hamilton office in red prints.
A message was left on the windows to have it known we stand in solidarity.
There are those that will conflate this with an act of violence.
Yet stay silent as corporations use the mouths of hounds as weapons against women and children.
These are people who value property above people.
Things over beings.
Some of us have blood responsibilities to protect the land and water.
The rest have the responsibility to support those protectors.
We fight for the water and land. For life.
And for a world where we don’t have to.
We are with you. We are watching.
We stand with Standing Rock.
From Prison Radio Show
A Letter in Support of Prisoners in the US who are striking against prison slavery
First, we want to tell you that you are not alone! We are keeping our eyes on your struggles. We support you!
In your call for a strike on September 9th you evoke the uprising in Attica that began on September 9, 1971. You write about ending prison slavery by ceasing to be slaves yourselves. We see you. We hear you. We support you.
We are a group of people, some in prison, some not in prison, and some who are in between. We are critical of the prison system and all its trappings. We would like to share with you some stories of our struggles.
Where we are, there is a traditional work stoppage inside federal prisons on August 10th. Though stronger in years past, Prisoners Justice Day is a day when prisoners here refuse to eat, refuse to work, refuse to leave our cells. We commemorate those who have died in prison. When the tradition started in 1974, prison officials would punish us for it, write us up, lock us up, dock our pay. One day in Collins Bay Penitentiary, a federal prison in Ontario, the kitchen decided to not cook breakfast on August 10th. They knew we were not planning to eat, but we knew that this day is about more than fasting. We lined up in their kitchen demanding breakfast and one by one disposed of it in the garbage.
Federal prisoners in Canada pay room and board. In 2013, our pay was docked and half of that was justified by an increase in room and board payments. In February of 2016, we wrote a list of demands to the federal government. We excerpt the section on work and pay here:
“We protest the cuts to our wages. We should have access to real wages, not pennies. CorCan (Corrections Canada Industries) is a separate entity of Correctional Services Canada (CSC). Its mission was to provide meaningful employment and skills. It was a way for long term prisoners to keep their families together and short-termers to build some money for release. In fall 2013, prisoners’ pay was cut. The bonuses/incentives that prisoners used to receive for working at CorCan were taken away… Currently, the maximum wage we make in 10 days is $69. Of that sum, we must pay $15.18 to kitchen services, $5.52 to telephone services and maintenance, $11 to television fees and maintenance, and $3.73 to savings. Only $33.57 remains. Our pay rates have not been indexed to inflation since 1982.”
We went on to demand access to the provincial minimum wage, access to the Canadian Pension Plan, and real workplace insurance. We demanded access to trades and training while in prison that have an accreditation that is recognized on the outside. We have, thus far, received no concrete response to our demands.
The complete list of demands to the federal government is included with this letter. (As this is an email, here is a link to the entire list of demands: www.demandprisonschange.wordpress.com).
If you want to write to us, for whatever reason, you can reach us here:
PO Box 55051
CP Mackay
Montreal, Quebec
H3G2W5
or at demandprisonschange@riseup.net
In commemoration of all those who have died inside, including the prisoners who died in the uprising at Attica, when state troopers stormed the prison with shotguns and teargas, we connect our struggle to yours. We will be watching.
In solidarity,
the Termite Collective
From Submedia.tv
A week of Anti-Pipeline resistance kicked off with a disruption of the meetings of the National Energy Board which seeks to approve the Energy East Pipeline, a project that aims to transport oil from Alberta’s Tar Sands to the East Coast. The disruption successfully shut down the meetings indefinitely.
This was followed up by a protest in front of Local 144, a pro-pipeline union of welders and plumbers, implicated in a series of scandals of corruption and violent intimidation, and who partner with oil companies like Petro Canada and Shell.
Union members tried to intimidate protesters and media. But the crew stayed on.
That is, Until the union members called the cops
From Interruption
This morning we hung a banner on a hydro-line pylon in St-Alphonse-Rodrirguez where the high tension lines cross Highway 343. The banner states “NO to the line 735 and its world.” Hydro-Québec wants to contruct a new line capable of transporting 735,000 volts at a time beside the line that already exists.
We won’t stop in the face of this new project that Hydro-Québec and its world is trying to impose upon us. Solidarity with those who continue to resist being pushed out because of the new projects of Hydro-Québec.
The struggle continues…
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Last Tuesday, August 16, a widespread power failure plunged Hochelaga into darkness. No more light in the streets, no more functioning cameras… When we realized what was happening, we quickly exchanged knowing looks and smiled under the glow of candles. We gathered our rain jackets and several tools, then left to play in the night. The torrential rain had disrupted the stifling machine of the city and its system of surveillance. The storm offered us a respite, a moment of chaos to not be missed. Completely drenched, with joyous hearts, we strolled in the streets, improvising our targets with excitement. We took several precautions: planning an exit route for each location, and having lookouts. Darkness was our accomplice. We hurried to play until electricity returned, then headed to our homes without any problems.
We smashed the windows of three gentrifying stores : the restaurant Burrito Revolution and an e-cigarette store on Ontario, as well as the yuppie cafe Le dîner on Ste-Catherine.
We slashed the tires of two luxury cars.
We covered several spots in graffiti. On the Arhoma bakery, which has already been targeted by a similar action in the past, we wrote : On vous lâchera pas / Hochelag ≠ Plateau (We’re not gonna let you get away / Hochelag ≠ Plateau). On the Jean Coutu : Toi aussi tu fais partie du problème / Fuck ton empire (You’re also part of the problem / Fuck your empire). On the Dollorama : Fuck l’exploitation / Solidarité sans frontière (Fuck exploitation / Solidarity without borders). On the real-estate office Royal Lepage : On veut pas de vos condos (We don’t want your condos). We also redecorated all the cars in the car dealership on Ste-Catherine, where they plan to build 120 condos, using classics such as Pas bienvenus (Not welcome) or Mange ton bourg (Eat it, yuppie), but also funky inspirations like Spaghetti.
The next time that such an opportunity presents itself, we hope to run into you in the street!
From La Solide, adapted from IGD
This is a challenge to anyone who is supportive of the September 9th prisoners’ strike but who has remained on the sidelines until now.
In order for this strike to not be snuffed out by a handful of prison censors and violent guards, it needs to spread uncontrollably beyond their reach. And because prisons strictly forbid communication between prisoners, it is our responsibility on the outside to facilitate this contagion. Spreading the call to prisons in Canada will further this contagion, and give an opportunity to link our struggle against prison and the world that needs it, through prison walls and across borders.
The first obvious step is to begin sending in word of the strike, immediately. If people on the inside are to be able to meaningfully act, they are going to need some time to begin spreading the word to their friends and formulating a plan. To that end, we are suggesting that outside accomplices begin printing the strike announcements (below) and mailing them inside en masse.
Mail to whom you ask? To anyone! To your old high school friend stuck in county jail, your friend’s little sister in juvie, to Black Liberation prisoners who have inspired you, your neighbor’s relative in an immigrant detention center, or to that person on the local news who robbed four (!) banks before she finally got caught last year.
If you’re not able to provide ongoing support to the people you mail or if you give a fake return address, please be clear about that in your letter. People on the inside need to know if people on the outside will have their backs or not. If you do maintain communication with people you contact, however, be opaque and creative in the ways that you talk about these things. Use different return addresses to confuse prison censors, or find clever new ways to get information inside without it being attached to your legal name. And don’t forget to act as a signal booster for their actions; for instance, if the strike has taken hold, and/or the prison is retaliating against them, post that info to sites like lasolide.info, itsgoingdown.org or supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org so that people can organize call-in’s or other solidarity actions to target the prison administration.
“Right away, one shouldn’t be able to start a university course, a theater performance or a scientific conference without someone directly intervening or letting loose a rain of flyers that pose the questions, ‘What has become of the prisoners on strike?’ and, ‘When will the authorities give in to their demands?’ No one should be able to walk down any street in the U.S. without seeing news of the prisoners’ struggle on the walls. And the songs that are sung about them must be heard by all.”
There’s no denying that this is a historical moment, a rare opportunity that simply cannot missed. There are no sidelines in a world without leaders. Everyone has a role to play so let’s get going!
Flyer, 8.5″x11″(Text to be printed and sent into prisons)
Here is the content:
Things are heating up in the prisons!
The letter that follows was written by inmates of American prisons involved with the IWOC (Incarcerated Workers Organising Commitee). They wrote it to inform you of a massive struggle that will rock many American prisons this September 9th. There will be a coordinated prison strike, with the goal of putting an end to prison slavery. In the US, private businesses have inmates work in federal and state prisons, in exchange for abysmal salaries. The use of their work force is an integral part of the economy of the country. All this in a context of institutionalized racism where the majority of inmates are black and latino; where slavery never ended.
In Canada, imprisonment is no less unbearable; society itself produces the crimes of those it imprisons, especially by keeping them in precarious living conditions. By no accident, the majority of people who find themselves in prison are there for these “crimes” caused by the absence of possibility offered by this society to those who its marginalizes. Colonial violence and white supremacy are perpetuated here as well: indigenous and racialized people, in particular the women in these communities, are massively overrepresented in Canadian prisons. Although the act of working can help to pass the time and is perceived as a privilege, businesses (like CORCAN) exploit prisoners in exchange for ridiculous salaries. These businesses profit from the vulnerability of inmates who are still considered sub-humans, and exploit their labour and their time.
For instance, diverse struggles have taken place in the last years against prisons in Canada. At this moment, around sixty detainees are on hunger strike at the immigrant detention centre in Lindsay, Ontario, to demand a maximum time limit to detention without charge for people who don’t have status. As well, in 2015 and 2016 there were two hunger strikes in the maximum correctional centre in Regina, Saskatchewan to demand more hours of yard time, and in 2013, there was a strike against the salary cuts in federal prisons. Organizing in prison is never easy, and yet here are concrete examples.
We wish to transmit this call for solidarity, firstly to keep you in the loop. We are aware of the difficulty of communicating between inmates in different establishments. If you are interested in contributing in any way, if you would like to write a letter of solidarity to prisoners on strike, or if you would like to communicate with people who wrote this introduction, you can get in touch with
lasolide@riseup.net
or write as at
PRS c/o CKUT,
3647 rue University, Montréal, Québec, H3A 2B3
…until we are all free
La Solide
Announcement of Nationally Coordinated Prisoner Workstoppage for Sept 9, 2016
