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The rich of St.Henri targeted

Apr 032015

Business owners of Saint-Henri are tired of being victims of vandalism on the part of those who blame their luxurious shops for the gentrification of the neighborhood. They are now considering hiring a night guard.

“If you sell anything other than hot dogs at 25 cents in Saint-Henri, you are not always welcome,” says business owner Corey Shapiro. Every day, people spit on the windows of his hair salon and its luxury eyewear, both located on rue Notre Dame.

In December, two businesses in this sector, including Mr. Shapiro’s hair salon, were sprayed with white paint. An anarchist blog then claimed that stunt. Despite the intervention of the authorities, storekeepers who own more upscale boutiques in this popular area continue to be the target of vandalism and intimidation.

Scourge

The Journal spoke yesterday with four storekeepers of Notre Dame struggling with this problem.

Tony Campanelli is one of them. The businessman, who owns a café and a men’s clothing store, has become in spite of himself “a face of gentrification” in Saint-Henri, in transformation for two or three years.

Sprayed with oil

“They want to blame the gentrification of the neighborhood on me. It’s still not my fault that the condos are increasing and rents are rising, “says Campanelli.

Two weeks ago, oil was sprayed the front of his two businesses, which stained the stone facade.

“I’ll have to call a cleaning company to remove it all,” said the entrepreneur.

The contractor has installed cameras to pin these vandals he describes as “anti-capitalist”. Him and his neighbors are now considering to come together to pay a night guard.

“More than 50% of the local population lives below the low income threshold, said the mayor of the Sud-Ouest, Benoit Dorais. So yes, there are people who find the arrival of wealthier people difficult. ”

The Mayor strongly condemns these acts of vandalism, but believes that this phenomenon only affects a small number of storekeepers. “Overall, new businesses are welcomed,” he said.

Other acts of vandalism targeting the high-end businesses in Saint-Henri

Broken windows
Graffiti saying “No to the gentrification”
Spit on the windows
Excrement left by the door
Anticapitalist posters pasted on windows
A mixture of berries to replicate the entrails of an animal that had been left at the door

The ASSÉ won’t bring the Spring

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Mar 302015

From Printemps 2015

Revolt is stirring all across Quebec, and is spreading on a daily basis. 66 student associations have already voted a reconducible strike. Night demos are adding up. At the Vieux Montréal and the Université Laval, campuses are being taken hold of and transformed into political spaces. The UQAM was blocked today. While it took the 2012 Spring a few weeks to really get in gear, the 2015 Spring has taken off in the space of a few days. The movement begins at the point where 2012 had stopped. The strike is on the march.

Repression, too, has struck fast. Massive arrests have taken place, both in Montreal and Quebec city. Dogs have jumped at the most peaceful of demonstrators. A young student was even shot at point blank range by the cops. And the UQAM management is now threatening 9 militant students with political expulsion.

It is in this tense but invigorating context that the ASSÉ’s executive committee throws its cobblestone : a call for the end of the student strike, even as it is in full swing in universities, belying the many pessimistic forecasts. Here the ASSÉ executive committee’s voice should be understood as the reasonable and paternal voice calling us back to strategic evidence. The executive committee would seem to have its own agenda, its own ultimatums : a mega-demonstration on the 2nd of April, calling for a strike in the Fall that would act in tandem with a public sector workers’ strike, more particularly within the education sector. According to this « reasonable » voice, we would be lacking today the power to strike – without worker allies – and would therefore be facing the danger of a defeat with heavy consequences.

And yet, with this reasonable and paternalistic call, the ASSÉ executive has just undermined its legitimacy, as it puts into a question a strike that was adopted by over half of its member associations.

Ever since the birth of the 2015 Spring movement, this same executive committee has been hammering the same strategy in every general assembly and congress, reminding us every time that the strike would only be efficient in the Fall. And yet, these same assemblies have refused their watchword by initiating a strike on the 21st of March. So much so that it is now beyond any doubt that this same executive committee is not respecting the very minimal conditions that would allow it, today, to call for the end of the strike. Supreme irony : the ASSÉ used to repeatedly denounce the student federations (FEUQ-FECQ) when they made use of the mass media to influence their members’ votes. It is now dirtying its own hands in similar manoeuvers.

The 2015 Spring strike has been organized upon a framework other than the ASSÉ’s traditional structures. By calling for the end of the strike under the pretext of a strategic withdrawal, the executive is attempting again to muzzle a base that is increasingly evading its hold.

With every one of its manifestations, the contestation does not wear out its forces. The opposite is true : our strength feeds, and becomes contagious. Would we be speaking of a social strike in 2015 if there hadn’t been a strike in 2012 ? And yet, during the first weeks of 2015, nobody could have predicted the breadth of what occurred. A strike now does not rhyme with the impossibility of a later strike in the Fall. That is precisely what a « rampant spring » means : a movement that inscribes itself in duration, that takes different forms and knows many moments of effective power. What is most important is that in this movement allies may meet, tactics be invented and forces get organized. Instead, the ASSÉ executive cultivates a vision of forces that should be saved, as if we were single use little soldiers that should only be sent to fight at the right moment (and to the great trade unions’ advantage).

But to delve deeper, this blind trust in these trade unions’ mobilization is puzzling. These same unions that, in 2012, at the peak of the greatest social movement Quebec had ever known, never considered the strike. These same unions that are against any form of illegal strike, that supported the Charter and do not take positions against oil and gas production. What if the trade unions didn’t go into strike in the Fall of 2015, as their logic seems to indicate, what is ASSÉ’s plan then? Are we going to put our political destiny into the hands of trade union leaderships ?

The ASSÉ executives responsible for this « proposition » might answer that they too have never believed in the trade union leadership, but count on local union members to bypass the leaders in a movement against austerity. Still far from exhausting its own contradictions, the ASSÉ executive makes the same gesture as the great trade unions : out of fear of being bypassed by its fierce members, the executive calls them back to reason and order. Moreover, this focus on the public sector unions’ agenda puts aside all of those that the call for a social strike is trying to reach. Community organizations, the unemployed, workers of the private sector : so many forces ready to mobilize themselves and who are just as affected, if not more, by austerity measures.

In the current context, abandoning does not only mean putting an end to a movement hitherto unseen in terms of the radicalism of its demands and the autonomy of its forms, but most importantly means abandoning necessary struggles : what could come to the rescue of the nine comrades over whom hovers the threat of expulsion at UQAM, if not a combative movement that puts pressure on management so that it may drop its charges ? And what about those wounded by the police ? Who will spread their word, who will defend their dignity ?

Being overtaken by its base should always be good news for a union, rather than a threat to the strategic plan of a paternalistic leadership. We are betting on a social strike : that is a bet on the combativeness of the base, on people who are already now resisting the threats, the repression, and the well-paid trade union leadership. But more than anything, we are betting on the impetus that has already brought thousands of people to take the streets, many times in a single week.

This impetus is not strictly limited to the student strike. It will be prolonged into the 11th of April, at the demonstration against the Council of the Federation meeting on climate change, during the May 1st social strike, and then during the summer in local struggles against gas and oil production projects.

AIA retaliates in solidarity with Demilitarize McGill

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Mar 272015

From Contra-info

In the evening hours of March 24 2015, we slashed the tires of a McGill security division SUV and attacked the James Admin. building with flying chunks of concrete, vanishing quickly thereafter into the darkness of night.

We claim responsibility for this latest attack in retaliation to the University’s profiling, surveillance and harassment of students and activists affiliated with the group Demilitarize McGill.

Recently released internal documents reveal that as early as 2013, agents of the McGill security division were given orders to monitor, photograph and follow individuals present at Demilitarize McGill activities, including after they’ve left campus.

In honor and recognition of the fact that we share a common struggle against the same system and the same authoritarian social institutions, we took action to make it clear to our enemies that Demilitarize McGill is PROTECTED. Whether it’s disciplinary charges, another police intervention on campus or evidence of surveillance and harassment by the security division; we want the Administration to understand that any further acts of repression levelled against Demilitarize McGill will be met with instant retaliation at the hands of revolutionary campus guerrillas.

Solidarity isn’t just a cute slogan. For us, it’s a dangerous six-letter word spelled: “A-T-T-A-C-K”.

The University is at war; so are we.

Anti-Imperialist Action (AIA)

AIA disrupts presentation featuring McGill weapons researcher

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Mar 212015

From Contra-info

On Wednesday night, February 25th, we pulled the fire alarm in the Macdonald Engineering building of McGill university, disrupting the presentation of professor Andrew Higgins, a McGill weapons researcher, as a minimum gesture of sabotage and revolt against the University’s ongoing complicity in colonization and imperialist warfare.

This action was simple, required little planning and zero expertise, disrupted our enemies where it hurts and was infinitely more uplifting than any symbolic protest or SSMU general assembly we have witnessed in recent time. We believe that acts of resistance – both large and small – against those who profit from and those who facilitate the growth of the military-industrial-complex are valuable, and ought to be carried out whenever and wherever possible.

The University is at war; so are we.

Anti-Imperialist Action (AIA)

Pour un monde…

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Mar 092015

arsonpolice PDF

How to make wheatpaste

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Feb 242015

Wheatpaste is the glue for postering in the streets. It is mostly composed of flour and water, and will keep your posters up for as long as a year.

Recipe to make 2 litres of wheatpaste:

9 cups of water
3 cups of white flour
glue or matte modge podge (optional)*

Start to heat the water at a medium temperature, stirring in the flour in small amounts with a whisk to avoid clumping. You should be adding flour and heating the water for about ten minutes, whisking throughout. Before it gets to a boil, take it off the heat and check the consistency; you are looking for something like watery glue, keeping in mind that the paste will significantly thicken as it cools. You may have to stir in more water if it is too thick, which would cause it to be opaque.

When the paste is ready, you can transfer it to milk containers to look inconspicuous in the streets, and just pour it onto a brush. Thoroughly wet the smooth surface you want to stick the poster on, have someone else firmly place the poster and smooth out any creases, then go over the top of the poster with more wheatpaste. Brush out any drips, and paste under any edges that aren’t sticking. The paste should be warm when used.

*To make your posters stay up for longer, you can add an adhesive as well. After taking the paste off the heat, add 1 1/2 cups of cold water to cool it so that the adhesive won’t clump, then stir in another 1/2 cup of flour. You can add 2-3 containers of white glue, or a similar volume of matte modge podge you can rack at art stores. Stir it in, then reheat the paste a bit before going out.

A Blast from the Recent Past: an interview regarding the 2012 Quebec student uprising

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Feb 242015

From Fire to the Prisons

In February 2012, as the Occupy movement tapered off, a strike broke out against austerity measures in the Québécois higher education system. Prevented from occupying buildings as it had in 2005, the student movement shifted to a strategy of economic disruption: blockading businesses, interrupting conferences and tourist events, and spreading chaos in the streets. At its peak, the resulting unrest surpassed any protest movement in North America for a generation.

The following is an interview with Steve Duhamel aka “Waldo”. A frustrated exstudent, and Quebec-er.

FttP: What was the context for the massive upheavals, mobilizations, and riots that broke out in Montreal in 2012? What took place before these events that helped propel them forward?

Waldo: The original context was an always rising tension between students and the government around the tuition hike issue and a general conception of what public education should be. Kind of boring, but it gets better. We all knew about 2 years in advance that this tuition hike was planned, and in the previous years/months, there were different actions and demonstrations to warn the government that this one will not pass. This government, who had been in power for 9 years, didn’t care much about these protests and arrogantly decided to go forward. They knew that no “political” opposition (as in the official and classical politics) could defeat them, whatever they did, and that they had all the legitimacy to repress any form of “street politics” that wouldn’t recognize their authority.

To get a more general overview of the context, let’s say that what people call society was also becoming more polarized than ever, since both political parties running Québec have a neo-liberal rightwing program and have been alternatively doing some shitty reforms for the past 30 years in order to save their damned economic growth. While the opposition (PQ) was getting its popularity from being the defenders of the French-speakers against the Anglo-Saxon cultural hegemony, they kinda lost all of that slight legitimacy since they’ve been doing the same shit as the federalists from the governing PLQ. This mostly means that social movements progressively took a distance from the Québécois Party (PQ) which itself was born out of (the recuperation of) popular unrests in the 1960’s. This contributed for a long time to prevent any social upheaval, and helped justify a lot of what some folks call “class collaboration” between bosses and the poor. But now, the PQ has a hard time convincing the Québécois folks that the State can really work for them. The last time a tuition hike led to a general student strike was in 1996, while PQist Pauline Marois (the one that was elected in the aftermath of the 2012 movement) was minister of education. Who could believe in her when she came back to oppose Charest?

While PQ usually masks its agenda behind a thin social-democrat veneer, the very “liberal” PLQ openly shits on the poor and doesn’t bother with fake public consultations to sell the province to promoters, mining industries, fracking business, and so on. The Liberal Party of premier Charest came back to power in 2003, and as soon as 2005, a large student strike fought against its plan to cut a huge part of the student scholarship programs (that were set to be replaced by loans, i.e. always more debts). The 2005 strike was really inspiring in its forms of actions, and its spirit was still very present to a lot of the 2012 strikers (way more than what happened in California in 2009, for instance; to a smaller degree, some people were inspired by what was happening then in Chile). Upon entering the movement, large parts of the students already had a mistrust of the reformist federations and even of the more militant ones like ASSÉ. Many people also knew that the strength of the strike came from the uncontrollable multiplication of all kinds of economic and institutional disruptions. And not from the ultra-democratic idea of unity that would decide for any meaningful action and discourse of the movement. That leads to your second question.

FttP: What was the relationship between more insurrectionary anarchist/autonomous groups and the student federations?

Waldo: There wasn’t a single attitude amongst the anarchists in relation to the federations. Where all of them agreed to critique even the ASSÉ (the more militant federation that calls for free education and some kind of self-management) on its reformist demands, a lot of anarchists, even insurrectionary etc, thought it was cool that ASSÉ existed, or at least the CLASSE (which was a coalition of ASSÉ and different independent local unions) because it made it easier to organize a large scale mobilization, to create the event, that could afterward be overwhelmed. On one hand, some anarchists really think the direct-democracy model of the federation’s unionbased assemblies is valid and should only be carried further, that the problem is mostly the lack of consciousness or radical [perspective] of its members, and they think it’s all about radicalizing these spaces, criticizing their discourse on non-violence; a lot of these folks kind of wish there wasn’t a contradiction between the black bloc and the federations. Some others also dream of direct democracy but think we cannot hope anything from the federations except betrayal, and therefore we should build our own spaces and assemblies and organize/ coordinate outside of the “Rand-formula” type mandatory unions we’re stuck with.

Attempts to create such parallel assemblies mostly failed, in 2012, except for a small period between late May and June, when people had these big neighborhood assemblies born out of the massive potsand-pan marches against the “special law.” On the other hand, other anarchist tendencies don’t believe at all in the unions as the basis for the future anarchist society and all of these radical democratic mythologies. While some are more into a nihilistic perspective of the confrontation, against any form of schooling and any possible demands, others think it has never been a question of being for or against the unions, that we should just never believe in it, never think any kind of solution can come from there, or from school in general. It’s rather a question of how to deal with it, how to see the potentiality of it, beyond any moralism or radical purity; how can we compose with the federations, if they are to be there anyway. In any case, federations are to be considered as something alien, that we cannot identify with, but upon which we can intervene, we can meet, make use of, in a way or another.

FttP: Before large scale street demonstrations began, students occupied buildings. How did these actions pave the way for things to come? Were these initial occupations influenced by student occupations in the US or elsewhere?

Waldo: In fact, I wouldn’t say that 2012 was highlighted by any occupations, not being the street itself. Some actions involved blockades of schools or public buildings, disruption of financial centers and such, but from what I know, none of the actual schools in strike were really occupied. On the first day of the strike, people did take over the famous CEGEP du Vieux-Montréal (a pre-university college downtown) whose occupations were once considered the stronghold of the student movement in the previous student strikes. But this time, hundreds of fully-equipped robocops came right away to remind the youth that revolution was no picnic and kicked their asses out of there. About 45 people were jailed and legally banned from the protests for months. The others were dispersed with concussion grenades and pepper-spay. The college was then locked out for the next six months of the strike.

This doesn’t mean people didn’t want to occupy, or that it wasn’t part of our mythology, but the facts are that people didn’t even use many university spaces in the daytime to meet and organize. While in 2005 a lot of people would organize sleepins on different campuses, and cook tons of food to sustain the occupation and make it possible for people to stand together on the frontline, the 2012 strike mostly happened in the street, with people moving all the time, endlessly marching until burning themselves out— when they wouldn’t burn anything else. Yes, occupation of the street, but I would add: mobile occupation, in two different ways. 1.) There were very few attempts to take outdoor public space and keep it, and it was never aimed to last more than a couple hours (I heard about an “occupy” camp outside U.de M., but it didn’t work out). 2.) Outside of that, we could say that it really was the students themselves that were occupied, busy as they were with facebook and twitter and all that shit all the time. No doubt, the strike was really “occupied” by all these new “communication” devices, livestream and everything…

FttP: Anarchists and insurrectionary autonomists promoted their ideas through publications and saw many students join in their ranks during the yearly March 15th protests against police brutality. Can you talk about how insurrectionary antiauthoritian ideas were spread, and took on new currency during this time of struggle? For instance, anarchists and insurrectionists have talked a lot about how the use of masks spread through the long process of militants doing it during demos/riots, and also explained why they were doing it in conversations and flyers.

Waldo: I’d say that, as opposed to previous movements, this strike was amazingly rich with radical literature, specifically in the couple months leading to it, but then almost nothing consistent was really produced during the movement. It was as if every political tendency, anarchist circle or whatever (often born out of the 2005 movement), had their own publication ready before the strike in order to set things clear, to share what they had learned from the past struggles and go forward with a couple propositions.

Once the strike was launched, very few texts were circulating outside worthless opinions on the internet. Still, from what I recall, at one point (after a demo where some excited douche bags had beaten the shit out of a couple of black clad kids) we saw at least half a dozen different flyers criticizing the authoritarian pacifist ideology that undermined solidarity amongst demonstrators. As for the masks, more than any literature, I’d say it’s the practice itself of wearing them, and the cops practice of systematically filming protesters, that led to widespread use of masks. The same for the March 15th demo, I think it got bigger that year because of the context, where a lot of people were experiencing daily repression by angry cops and a guy lost an eye like 3 days before the demo. Even the mayor advertised for the demo on TV, telling people not to go!

FttP: What led to the student movement spilling out in the wider social terrain?

Waldo: To make it short, I’d say that first, there was already popular support of the students, that was made visible by the widespread use of the “red square” pin by millions of people and also by the 500,000 people marches like the one on March 26th, where the majority wasn’t even student, and showed the growing unpopularity of the Charest government. People literally had enough, and students were seen as the only sector of society that could massively mobilize, since all workplace unions and work laws make it almost impossible to build a real massive and coordinated union-based general strike.

A lot of people that weren’t students didn’t want to get too into the movement since they thought it wasn’t theirs, so they remained in a solidarity position, but what made a clear difference was the insolent and arrogant attitude of prime minister Charest, his constant provocations and specifically the declaration of a “special law,” in the night between the 17th and 18th of May, that made demonstrations illegal and added expensive fines for any acts of striking, blockading, occupation and so on. This law also locked out students from their schools until the end of summer to allow businesses to hire summer jobbers, and incidentally produce a demobilizing effect, since there was no more university to block. Maybe worst of all, the law came with the announcement of anticipated elections in the first week of September. The first weeks following the declaration of the dirty law saw an unprecedented social reaction: daily demonstrations in different towns and neighborhoods, with thousands of people defying the State; you would see your unknown neighbors smiling at you, chanting along the common motto: “The special law, we don’t give a damn!”

But then, after I’d say the week of the Grand Prix, (around June 10th), people slowly started to take a break, go on vacation to rest until, we all thought, the real war was to begin. The government forced schools to reopen around August 13th, starting with the CEGEPs, but even with all the motivation of the most determined strikers, a lot of assemblies finally and sadly voted with a slight majority against the continuation of the strike. Many students either got scared to lose their semester, and others thought it was pointless to remain on strike while there was going to be an election soon which meant there was no government to deal with yet. That fucked us real bad. A lot of leftists started to say we should spend our energies mobilizing for the elections, so that Charest would be kicked out. That was also a big reason why popular support got weaker; a lot of people thought we should vote and drop our bricks and stones.

Then, what we saw was no surprise. PQ got elected – with only a minority of the assembly – that silly Marois became premier and she did proclaim the abrogation of the special law and temporarily canceled the tuition hike. But that was just bullshit, it took a couple weeks before she said we would have to negotiate some kind of tuition hike sometime soon and she didn’t revoke all the municipal laws that were declared during the movement— e.g. making it criminal to wear masks and to march without permission from the cops. The most ridiculous part of this history is that Marois, who survived an assassination attempt by an Anglo redneck freak gone mad the night she got elected, didn’t politically survive the reactionary populist move she made the year after, aimed at imposing her “chart of values,” supposedly to protect the Québécois “secular” culture against foreign influences. So multi-culturalist PLQ came back to power less than a year and a half after the end of the strike that our funny syndicalist friends claimed was victorious!

FttP: During Occupy in the US, we largely saw that when the state attacked, the movement often quickly folded. Whereas in Montreal, we saw people go on the offensive. Was this because people found that they could win street battles? As in the famous scenes of people making the pigs turn tail and flee?

Waldo: Québécois or Montrealers aren’t more courageous, or even more anarchist than anywhere else. The end of the movement has proven that. Only, there is the specificity of the situation: an overly and counter-productively arrogant government in front of a massive and determined movement that leaves a lot of autonomy to its base, all of that in a relatively tight-knit society where anything echoes really fast. This might be an explanation as to why the Anglo campuses weren’t as mobilized, even if they were, more than ever before. People were pumped by Charest and the cops, who underestimated the determination of the students and their popular support (politics is often a gamble). This easily led to an escalation, were people saw they were strong and felt it was OK to kick a few cops asses.

FttP: Can you talk about how resistance to Plan Nord brought anarchist, student, and indigenous struggles together? Can you explain what Plan Nord is and why people were interested in destroying it?

Waldo: Plan Nord is just the name for a new phase of in-your-face colonization of the North-Eastern part of the continent, that is claimed by the colonial states of Québec and Canada. It’s hard to tell how seriously the average students marching against Charest took Plan Nord, or how many of those same students stormed the Plan Nord convention because of anti-colonial and ecologist convictions or whatever. Of course, there is an official sympathy amongst the movement toward these struggles, but I think the disruption of the congress and the riot that occurred was made possible because everybody knew it would make Charest angry, since Plan Nord was like his “little thing” he was so proud of, and that every decent person thinks it’s robbery. I still think that it’s in these kind of social upheavals that struggles that appear to be different show how much they are related, and impact one another. It’s still because of the strike they were involved in that many people got interested in native peoples’ struggles, and specifically in the fight against Plan Nord.

FttP: When the government outlawed protests of more than 50 people, the movement grew and more people joined. Community popular assemblies sprung up. Can you talk about these gatherings? How widespread were they?

Waldo: I’ve talked about that earlier, but let’s say theses assemblies were spontaneously created in at least a dozen neighborhoods of Montreal, and for about a month, they would meet around once a week, in a park or a community space, and, depending on the neighborhood, there were between 30 and 300 people. This number slowly went down as the summer came, and also, we must admit, as they got formalized and semi-institutionalized. What was interesting is how much different the organizational issue differed from one neighborhood to another. I mean, some were super obsessed with structures and sophisticated mechanisms that are supposed to help prevent domination and oppressive patterns in groups, others were more relaxed, but weren’t necessarily more effective, some would focus more on community issues while some remained in a position of solidarity with the student movement.

But yeah, too little too late, I suppose. I think it would have been really different if theses assemblies would have started earlier in the movement, and more than everything (and more realistically), if the strike had continued in September. It would have totally changed the quality of the movement. I mean, it could have opened a place where the union assemblies wouldn’t be the main space to discuss and organize the struggle, and it could have spread more easily to non-student issues and places. The elections really killed all these potentialities.

FttP: In an interview with Submedia, one anarchist participant talked about the use of projectiles in creating/defending space from the police, and the ability that physical attack gave people in expanding the conflictual nature of the strike. Can you speak to this?

Waldo: I don’t know what to say about that. Is it the expansion of the conflict that makes it possible to attack, or the opposite? Is it going both ways? The ability to attack didn’t always mean ability to get away with it. A lot of people got badly wounded with nothing much to show for it. There has been a lot of talking amongst anarchists in the last 15 years about “diversity of tactics,” but very few people thought about diversity of strategies, leaving this problem to union bosses, Leninists and social-democrats. And to the police, and the capitalists. Let’s say there is a confrontation. What is the space that we create, that we defend, while doing what we do? It’s not always quite clear. I’m totally not against all kinds of direct action, but I think sometimes there is a dangerous belief that direct action is good in itself, while it can often make us weaker. Black bloc was once a tactic, nowadays it often looks like an ideology, an identity. We should never denounce comrades who engage in this type of action and we should be ready, as much as we can, to protect them against cops and violent pacifists, but I think “attacking” can never become a strategy in itself; can never replace the need for a strategy. This said, the question should never be whether we attack or not, but rather how do we do it, when and where. What makes it possible to attack in a way that gives us more strength instead of isolating us? These are serious questions.

We should not neglect the anxiety that direct actions create amongst the activists themselves and their friends, when it’s done without thinking, because it’s seen as the radical good. It’s not just attacking that makes people able and willing to attack, that expands the conflictuality of a movement, it’s the strength that we build through all kinds of links, shared experiences, shared spaces and materials, tools and stories, and languages, shared love and thrust, etc. All kinds of things also come into play when it’s time to fight, which constitutes our strength, and that we cannot put at risk for a matter of purity or for a romantic belief in the power of action. An action is not good because it’s against the right enemy nor because it has good intentions: it’s only good when it makes us stronger. To the moralism of pathological pacifists, we should not impose another kind of moralism.

FttP: What does the future hold for those in Montreal? Will we see continued unrest at the universities and beyond?

Waldo: Everything is possible. The tuition hike is showing up again and the federations are already mobilized. The experience of 2012 is still fresh and a lot of people don’t want to lose what has been learned and built. The repressive machine is better prepared, and more determined than ever, it’s hard to say if people are too. There is already some organizing being done outside the unions, and the electoral threat should not be part of the play this time. It’s hard to tell if there will be as much popular support, but there are apparently more chances that we will see different unions from the public sector go on strike in the next months (even the cops are currently protesting against the Québec government). I still think we should not hope for anything and just do what we have to do. Things always happen anyway, it’s just a matter of staying ready.

More on the 2012 Student Strike:
www.crimethinc.com/texts/recent features/montreal1.php
In French:
faire-greve.blogspot.ca

An interview with Zig-Zag

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Feb 242015

From Fire to the Prisons

The following is an interview with Gord Hill (Kwakwaka’wakw nation), who frequently writes under the pseudonym Zig Zag. He is also the author of The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, The Anti-Capitalist Resistance Comic Book (both published by Arsenal Pulp Press), and 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance (published by PM Press).

Fire to the Prisons (FttP): In 2014 there has been a flurry of activity in Native communities who are engaged in blockades of roads against timber sales, mining projects, against missing and murdered aboriginal women, occupations of hydro dams, against trophy hunting, and also large blockades against oil pipelines. Can you tell us more about these campaigns and actions and the context in which they are happening? What drives these struggles?

Zig Zag (ZZ): Native peoples in Canada have been carrying out blockades and other actions since the 1970s, in the modern era as it were. In the last few years, beginning perhaps in the early 2000s, there has been an increase in these activities of protest and resistance for various reasons; I don’t think there’s one particular reason. Each campaign or struggle has its own history and characteristics; events that make them grow or decline. Having said that I would also add that there seems to be an overall increase in political consciousness and activity over the last decade, and I think this is occurring on a global level so that when Native peoples in Canada see events such as the “Arab Spring” or Occupy, or the Toronto G20 [riots], there’s a sense that protesting is something that’s more “acceptable” or common, or perhaps even productive. But as I mentioned, each struggle also has its own dynamics that drive it.

In regards to the missing and murdered women, this has been a campaign that began in the late 1990s and in particular the high number of women that began disappearing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, when there were somewhere around 70 missing women dating back to the 1970s, and mostly through the ‘80s and ‘90s. By the late ‘90s, Native women’s groups in Vancouver began organizing, including an annual memorial march on February 14th. Since that time, other towns and cities have also begun organizing similar rallies and marches to draw attention to this issue. So that’s how this campaign has increased, and more recently, over the last two years, some communities have also carried out temporary blockades of highways and trains.

The anti-pipeline struggle is another example of a campaign that has emerged over the last few years, as a result of increased Tar Sands production and Canada’s goal of becoming a major petro-state for the Asian and US markets. All this requires pipelines to transport the oil and gas, originally envisioned as passing through central British Columbia (BC) from Alberta, to coastal ports and then on tanker ships. These proposals for several major pipelines have given rise to an unprecedented mobilization of Natives in central BC and along the coast in opposition to both major pipeline projects and oil tanker traffic. Even government-imposed band councils have voiced their opposition to some of these (while making agreements for others). And this anti-pipeline, anti-oil tanker movement is informed by various factors, including the Exxon Valdez oil spill in southern Alaska and northern BC that resulted in extensive environmental damages that persist to this day, the 2005 sinking of the Queen of the North ferry in an area similar to the route proposed for oil tanker traffic, the 2011 Gulf of Mexico BP oil spill which horrified people around the world and across BC, as well as ongoing and frequent reports of new oil pipeline ruptures and tanker spills.

Protests and blockades against logging have been somewhat common since at least the 1970s, and in fact occur less frequently now due to a decline in the forestry industry overall, although some communities such as Grassy Narrows in Ontario are still fighting to stop clear cut logging.

In regards to mining projects, some of the more recently proposed mining projects have been in central and northern BC, areas which have only been opened up to large scale exploration and industrial activity since the 1970s and ‘80s. Some new mining projects, as well as oil and gas development, is the result of new technologies that make it economically worthwhile to build roads and other infrastructure, so in these areas as well Native peoples are mobilizing to defend vital parts of their territories, such as the Tahltan in north BC who have resisted various mining and gas projects for the last 7-8 years. More recently, there was a major disaster in BC at the Mount Polley mine, when its tailings pond ruptured sending large amounts of contaminated water into a river and forest system. Operated by Imperial Metals, Mt. Polley is located in Secwepemc territory, who are already opposing other mining projects. Now, other communities facing similar mining projects, including those operated by Imperial Metals, are more determined to stop new mining projects.

Overall, you can see an increase in industrial development in more northern regions across Canada, as well as an increase in Indigenous resistance against these projects. I also wouldn’t discount the effect of social media and people being able to not only gain counter-information, but also the ability to produce their own communications when, for example, a small isolated community carries out a blockade. In the 1980s, it would’ve taken longer for information to get out unless the corporate media was covering it.

FttP: There is a long history of indigenous resistance in what is called Canada dating back to European invasion. In the last several decades, there has been large scale armed defense of land occupations. Can you tell us about this history and how it informs current struggles?

ZZ: The first Native armed actions in Canada occurred in 1974, following the siege at Wounded Knee in 1973. These were at Cache Creek, BC, and Anicinabe Park in Ontario. Without doubt, the most significant armed standoff occurred in 1990 involving the Mohawk communities of Kanesatake and Kahnawake, both of which are near Montreal, Quebec. This standoff emerged over a conflict about the municipality of Oka’s decision to expand a nine hole golf course and to build a condominium project into an area known as the Pines, which contained a Mohawk graveyard, lacrosse field, as well as the last patch of trees left in the area. Many non-Native Oka residents also opposed these projects. Over the course of about a year the Mohawks and citizens organized protests and petitions, and in the spring of 1990 began blockading a small dirt road. On July 11, the Surete du Quebec (Quebec provincial police) attempted to raid the blockade and dismantle it, but their heavily armed tactical unit was met with armed resistance by warriors. After a brief fire fight one cop was killed, and the rest of the police retreated, abandoning their vehicles which were then used to expand the blockade to include nearby highways and roads. At the same time Mohawks in Kahnawake blockaded the Mercier Bridge, a major commuter link from the suburbs to downtown Montreal. This set in motion a 77 day armed standoff. By August, the Canadian military deployed a mechanized brigade of about 5,000 soldiers.

The standoff at Oka generated widespread solidarity across the country, with Natives occupying government buildings and blockading highways and trains. Some sabotage also occurred, with railway bridges and electrical transmission towers brought down. The golf course was never expanded, and the condos were never built. Oka had a tremendous effect on Indigenous struggles in Canada and set the tone for resistance actions through the decade and to this day. The imagery of masked and camouflaged warriors has been emulated across the country at numerous protests and blockades, without the AK-47s.

In 1995 there was another armed standoff in south central BC at a place called Gustafsen Lake located in Secwepemc territory, who called the lake Ts’Peten. This standoff occurred after a US rancher sought to evict a Sundance camp which was located on Crown land. After his cowboys had threatened an elder and his family, warriors traveled to the camp to offer protection, and the New Democratic Party, a social democratic party then in power as the provincial government, authorized a major police operation involving over 450 heavily armed police from the RCMP. They acquired armored personnel vehicles from the Canadian military, flew surveillance planes over the camp, and on September 11th ambushed a vehicle used by the defenders by detonating an explosive charge which blew up the front end of the truck and then rammed it with an APC. This initiated an hours long fire fight, during which police fired over 77,000 rounds of ammunition, killing a dog and wounding one defender. This standoff lasted about a month, and ended after the defenders laid down their arms. One elder, Wolverine, received the longest jail sentence of 8 years.

While these acts of armed resistance are historical events which had profound impacts on Indigenous people’s struggles in Canada, they are not very common. While the Mohawks have both the resources and personnel with military experience to engage in these types of actions, most communities do not. Most communities are more capable of carrying out low-level acts of resistance, including blockades, which are far more common than armed actions. I think the recent example of the Mi’kmaq anti-fracking struggle in New Brunswick is a good example of this, and one that more communities could engage in. Another recent example would be the resistance at Six Nations, where hundreds of people from the community engaged in blockades as well as acts of sabotage to stop the construction of a condo project.

FttP: In a recent interview with the Canadian anarchist Franklin Lopez, they talked about how the success of road blockades has driven many people to continue and expand the tactic. Can you attest to this success?

ZZ: Indigenous peoples in Canada have been using the blockade tactic since the 1970s, and in the ‘80s the governmentfunded band councils also began using blockades during negotiations with government or industry as political leverage/ public relations types of activities. But certainly many grassroots movements continue to use the blockade because they are effective in disrupting industrial activity and creating political pressure on the state. In addition, many highways, roads, and railways are located near reserves or cut right through reserves, so they are easily accessible.

FttP: In an interview you did regarding the Idle No More movement, you talk about the class dynamics of the leadership structure and the limit of reformist aims. Can you tell us more?

ZZ: The official organizers of INM came from middleclass professions: lawyers and academics, so this class position determined their overall methods which were entirely focused on legal-political reforms. They worked closely with another middle-class element which were Indian Act band councilors and chiefs. They came out strongly against any radical actions such as blockades and attempted to impose control over the movement, in particular their pacifist beliefs. In fact, it was the first time a major mobilization like this imposed pacifist methods on Native peoples. The main goal of this movement was to stop the federal government from passing an omnibus budget bill that was going to change many federal laws, including ones providing some level of environmental protection for land and water. The bill passed in mid-December, however, and despite a few more weeks of large rallies the movement was unable to sustain itself.

One aspect of their legalistic-pacifist approach was a strict limit on the types of actions people could carry out, so they were really limited to “flash mob” round dances in shopping malls and city streets, which ultimately have little impact. Thankfully this movement, while it did indeed mobilize thousands of Natives out to rallies, did not last long. We can compare the tactics of INM to those used during the Quebec student strike of 2012, which included not only ongoing rallies but also occupations and militant street protests that cost the Quebec government millions of dollars in property damage and lost revenue. The strike led to the cancellation of the student tuition increase as well as a change in the provincial government. Or you can look at the Six Nations land reclamation, which cost the state tens of millions of dollars in property damage, compensation, paying for policing operations, and lost business. That condo project has never been built.

FttP: In a recent talk you did on anarchism and indigenous resistance, you discuss ways in which the two struggles work together and support each other. Can you tell us more?

ZZ: Well I think I mostly talked about the similarities between anarchist and Indigenous struggles and how there were more possibilities for solidarity as a result of this, and in particular the general absence of a centralized State system, the emphasis on decentralized and autonomous forms of self-organization, and the need for anti-colonial and anti-capitalist analysis in both movements. This can be compared to other forms of organization used by groups such as political parties or unions, as well as NGOs, all of which typically have bureaucratic or even hierarchical structures.

These types of groups often align themselves with the Indian Act band councils, which are often in conflict with genuine grassroots movements.

FttP: In the same talk, you relate the black bloc to Warrior Societies. How do you think anarchists could popularize more confrontational tactics to be seen in a more positive light, and not as ‘outside agitators’ or people who bring upon repression to social struggles?

ZZ: I think one of the big problems the Left or “progressive movements” have in North America is a real lack of fighting spirit or combativeness. They are so controlled and dominated by professional organizers who pursue strictly legal-political forms of struggle; that people who want to engage in more radical and militant actions are marginalized and isolated, which makes them vulnerable to State repression. Every successful resistance movement in history has used a diversity of tactics, including militant actions. When a movement wants to raise the level of militancy I think one of the most important steps is to build a culture of resistance, and to begin to “normalize” acts of resistance. At the same time, movements also have to go through learning phases. A lot of people who get involved at first think purely in terms of legal-political reforms, petitions to State officials, peaceful rallies, etc. This is “normalized” by the bureaucrats who run most of the social justice, NGO-type groups, as well as corporate media and entertainment. Only by participating in struggles and learning first-hand the futility of using strictly legal-political means will people become radicalized and begin using more militant tactics.

FttP: In one of your latest publications, “Smash Pacifism: A Critical Analysis of Gandhi and King,” you argue that in the US, pacifist movements are largely headed by middle-class leadership. You also argue that riots had a much larger effect on policy changes than non-violent pleas for reform. Can you tell us more?

ZZ: Well the “official” leadership of the Black civil rights movement were certainly middle class, they were Baptist preachers, lawyers, and other professionals who, because of their greater resources and “legitimacy,” were able to exert significant influence and control over the movement, as occurs in virtually every social movement in North America. In regards to the riots, the official history of the civil rights movements showcases the peaceful rallies and arrests as being what made significant change, when in reality it was a diversity of tactics including armed resistance as well as mass urban revolts, which inflicted hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to property. It was this economic disruption, and the threat of even greater unrest, that prompted the federal government to enact civil rights legislation and to also begin dumping millions and millions of dollars into poor communities and organizations as part of the “war on poverty,” which led to the institutionalization of the non-governmental organization industry. But I don’t think it’s as simple as saying the riots did more than the civil rights protests, because they all contributed to overall rebelliousness of the Black population. Some of the main proponents of militant Black Power came out of the “nonviolent” groups, such as Stokely Carmichael, for example.

FttP: As we speak, from droughts to diseases and disasters brought on by climate change, things continue to get worse as capitalist civilization pushes us closer to the brink. Some small towns are without water, and fracking pollutes watersheds and threatens people’s lives. What advice would you give militants and radicals working within this context?

ZZ: Along with anti-capitalist and anti-colonial analyses I also advocate a dual strategy of survival and resistance. Resistance is necessary to defend land and people to ensure our survival into the future, while at the same time we must consider the overall situation and the increasing possibility of substantial systemic failures arising from various intertwining sources, including economic and ecological crises. If we were to simply focus on survival we would prepare, learn skills, secure land, etc, but vast areas of land could be contaminated in the meantime that would severely erode people’s ability to survive in the long term. I think that by organizing a broader resistance we can also build stronger networks that will also assist in long term survival.

FttP: Throughout your art work and writings, you often discuss how drugs and alcohol are used against Native peoples and aid in their subjugation. From trailer parks where meth is produced to ghettos filled with CIA funded crack-cocaine, we see similar realities elsewhere. Do you have any advice to others working for radical change in these situations?

ZZ: The subject of drug and alcohol addiction is something I touch on, but I wouldn’t describe it as “often.” It’s a social reality that oppressed populations suffer from higher levels of social dysfunction, with drugs and alcohol being common. From my experience in working with communities it’s best to not take a judgmental attitude or you’ll just alienate large sectors of the population. You have to know people’s strengths and weaknesses, and if they have drug and/or alcohol addictions then that needs to be considered when planning actions or campaigns, knowing that some people will not be reliable for some types of work, or can’t be trusted with handling money, etc. But these people can change, and I know when communities are actually engaged in resistance and large numbers of people participate, the levels of drug and alcohol abuse decline because people are working together, feeling solidarity and purpose for a common good.

FttP: What can people expect from you in the future? What projects are you working on that you are excited about?

ZZ: I am presently maintaining the site:
WarriorPublications.wordpress.com where I post news relating to Indigenous people’s struggles, primarily in Canada.

Just One More: Santa Martha Prison for Women – Amélie Trudeau

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Feb 242015

From Fire to the Prisons

A new prisoner arrived in my cell on Wednesday, three days ago now, after spending a month in Ingresso (1). We are four now, in a cell with five beds (One bed is empty). Ingresso is where you go when you first arrive in prison. In the days that follow your arrival, your fingerprints are taken and you have to fill out lots of paperwork. Then, it’s meetings with “professionals” who assess your character in order to classify you and finally, you are assigned to a permanent cell with other people who correspond to your profile assessment. You have to meet a psychologist, a criminologist, a social worker, an addiction specialist, a technician, the person in charge of cultural activities and sports, and the person in charge of spiritual and religious activities. All together, their reports make up your profile and classification.

I start to chat with the new arrival and she tells me her story, a story that in her own words denounces the context of the prison in Santa Martha (2). A friend wrote me a letter asking that I write something for FTTP telling what I wanted of my experience here. I wasn’t sure what to write, and I didn’t want to write another “anarchist propaganda” text filled with concepts. It’s at this time that the new arrival started to tell me her story:
B. arrived in Santa Martha on October 18th, imprisoned for passing marijuana into the men’s prisons. She arrived here four and a half months pregnant. On October 21st, a Tuesday, she was transported to “Juzgado Oriente” (3). This is a common occurrence at the beginning of a trial; they can send us to court up to three times a week. Going to the Juzgado means that you are told at 2 AM that you need to be ready by 5:30 AM to get stuffed into a barred prison-bus guarded by cops with machine guns at the front. The Juzgado itself is inside the prison for men, where many co-accused are imprisoned.

On this particular morning, B. was transported in one of these buses with 17 other women. In these bus-cages, there are about 40 seats. After spending the whole day at the court, the women were stuffed back in the bus to return to Santa Martha around 7:30 PM, but this time, there were 80 on the bus. The guards decided to fill just one bus with all the women from court, and also from the conviviencia (4). Throughout all this, B. decided to stay standing in the bus and to try to maintain her balance. There was also another pregnant woman on board with her. Together, they told the guards with machine guns: “We are two pregnant women, it seems to us that there are a lot of people on this bus.”

And the guards responded: “That’s not our problem, it’s the administration that makes the decisions.” The return trip takes about 40 minutes, and all of the women are hyper-stuffed in this bus that bounces every 15 seconds over bumps and holes in the pavement. Finally B. arrives back at Santa Martha just before the cells get locked for the night, around 8 PM. By pure coincidence, the authorities put B. in a cell by herself – meanwhile, there are cells with up to 20 people for only three beds.

The prison is pretty old and the metal doors of the cell lock with a chain and padlock. In the hallways, there are no cameras. 8 PM comes and goes. The cell door is closed and locked. B. starts to feel ill and notices a reddish liquid coming from between her legs. Around 9:30, she alerts the people in the cell across from her about what’s going on. They advise her to lie down and rest while they start to call out for the guards. B. is on the second floor and the guards are all on the first floor in the control booth. One after another, all the other women on the second floor start to yell out. After 20 minutes, a guard finally comes upstairs. B. is losing a lot of fluid. When the guard learns of the situation, he goes back downstairs to call a doctor. He comes back five minutes later only to announce that there is no doctor in the medical centre of the prison; there are only nurses. He tells B. that the only way she can get to the medical centre is by walking there. She goes down two flights of stairs and walks the 400 meters to the medical centre all on her own. All along the route, she is losing fluid. Finally, when she arrives, the nurse performs an ultrasound to check the health of the fetus and decides to send B. to the Bosque de Tlawac (5) hospital.

She arrived at the hospital around midnight. The placenta did not contain any more amniotic fluid and the baby was dead. The doctor induced contractions and the baby was still-born around 6 AM on the October 22nd. The doctor told B. that if she had arrived only a little bit earlier, he would have been able to save the baby. B. did not get to see her family. The body of the baby was given to B.’s husband, the baby’s father, later that day and was buried the next day by the family. As for B., the guards returned her to Santa Martha that night, the 22nd, around 7:30.

On her arrival, the director of the prison, panicked by what had happened, asked to meet with B. She said she was unaware B. had been pregnant, despite B. stating so to the prison doctor upon her arrival and that her pregnancy was recorded in all her official documents. The director wanted B. to say that if she had a miscarriage, it was because of what she had been told in court that day, even though she only had to go to court to sign some simple papers. The director added that, given her crime, the miscarriage must be B.’s fault due to drug use, even though B. didn’t consume drugs at all during her pregnancy. Next, it was the criminologists’ and the psychologists’ turn to make the events all her fault. One after another, the authorities disavowed any responsibility for the situation, all the way up to the human rights lawyers of D.F. (6)

This is just one story among many others. Here, they put us in a cage and treat us like CATTLE. One more death is seemingly unimportant. All of this happened 30 days ago now, and my companion is telling me this story, one among all the others that make up our daily existence. This type of story is SILENCED and everything continues like nothing ever happened.

2000 women shut into a hole with cockroaches, bedbugs, and trash. Meanwhile, the prison director and her bosses play sympathetic figures in the media with their leftist discourse, because they organize soccer tournaments and movie screenings “for us.”

Let’s be done with domination, imprisonment, and domestication. Dignity and freedom to all.

Those responsible for our imprisonment deserve nothing less than a bomb in their well-feathered nests.

Amélie Trudeau

1. Ingresso – From Spanish: “Entrance”
2. Centro Femenil de Reinsercion Social Santa Martha, D.F. Mexico.
3. Juzgado Oriente – From Spanish: “Western Court”
4. Once a week, women from Santa Martha can go visit their husband, partner, or members of their family in the men’s prisons. They leave around 8 AM and return around 7 PM.
5. Bosque de Tlawac (sic) – Bosque de Tlahuac
6. D.F. – Districto Federal – Capital city region of Mexico/Mexico City

ON THE 5E3
Solidarity with Carlos,
Amélie, and Fallon /
Solidarity with the 5E3

The following is an excerpt from the 5E3 support publication that can be viewed in entirely here

On the night of January 5th, 2014 Carlos, a comrade from Mexico, and Amélie and Fallon – two comrades from Canada, were arrested in relation to a Molotov attack on the Ministry of Communication and Transportation and a Nissan dealership in Mexico City. They were arrested at a time of intense crackdown by the Mexican state on anarchists; from attacks on demonstrations, torture of arrested comrades – including the torture and deportation of Gustavo Rodriguez, and barring the entry of Alfredo Bonanno. The state is now attempting to spin a narrative of foreigners coming in and causing disruption, thus ignoring and even erasing the rich history of anarchist struggle against the state in Mexico. Over the past few years in Mexico City, an insurrectionary anarchist struggle has intensified.

Bombings of banks and churches, among other institutions of domination, have taken place frequently, and solidarity with insurrectionary anarchists in Mexico and worldwide has been central to these actions. We must recognize that the repression and penalization that comrades are facing now occurs in this context. Regardless of the guilt or innocence of these specific comrades, we want to express solidarity, complicity, and a strong desire to see attacks on the state and capital continue and spread. In reality, the Canadians causing disruption in Mexico are the mining companies and military technologies; the same ones that exploit unceded Indigenous land in Canada and elsewhere around the world. Given that capitalist exploitation and misery knows no borders, the struggle against capitalism and the state apparatus must not stop at national borders. Our strength lies in our capacity to recognize the commonalities of our struggles so that they may spread, and to act in solidarity so that the struggles of our incarcerated comrades may continue.

We write this statement to express our deep solidarity with and love for our friends and comrades – Carlos, Amélie and Fallon. Although we are writing from a different context, it is critical that our solidarity is also with the struggle in which this action occurred. Our friends and comrades facing these charges are experiencing the intensity of repression. Our solidarity must meet that intensity with respect for where they stand, admiration for their strength, and a continuation of the struggle in Canada, Mexico, and globally.

Love and freedom to the 5e three,
For freedom and anarchy,
Friends in struggle

Write to the 5E3

Carlos López Marín
Reclusorio Preventivo Oriente
Calle Reforma #50, Col.
San Lorenzo Tezonco
Delegación Iztapalapa, C.P. 09800, Ciudad de México, D.F.
México

Fallon Rouiller
Centro Femenil de Reinserción Social Santa Martha Acatitla Calzada Ermita,
Iztapalapa No 4037, Colonia Santa Martha Acatitla Delegación Iztapalapa, C.P. 09560,
Ciudad de México, D.F.
México

Amélie Trudeau
Centro Femenil de Reinserción Social Santa Martha Acatitla Calzada Ermita,
Iztapalapa No 4037, Colonia Santa Martha Acatitla Delegación Iztapalapa, C.P. 09560,
Ciudad de México, D.F.México

The 5E3 are Amélie Trudeau Pelletier, Fallon Poisson Rouiller and Carlos López. They are called the 5e3 because they were arrested on January (Enero) 5th and they are 3 individuals. After being indefinitely held without charge under “anti-terrorism” laws by the Mexican state for many months they were finally sentenced based on two separate charges, two separate times. First, on October 31st, 2014, they were given a sentence of 7 years and 6 months. Shortly after they were sentenced to an additional 2 years, 7 months, and 15 days, as well as a 108 thousand pesos in restitution. The sentences will run parallel with each other.

Carlos, Amélie, and Fallon have taken a completely uncooperative response to the state assaulting their lives. They continue to remain active inside prison, and their beautiful hearts have inspired actions in their name that have reached far beyond their prison walls. In recognition of their courage and strength, we have listed a few solidarity actions with the 3 below. Their fighting spirits are contagious, and impossible to fully contain amidst our borderless solidarity.

SOLIDARITY ACTIONS WITH THE 5E3

January 17th, 2014, USA
Police cars were attacked in Bloomington, IN in solidarity with the 5E3.
January 31st ,2014, USA
Locks are glued at a yuppie supermarket in Bloomington, IN in solidarity with the 5E3 and Indiana state prisoners protesting prison conditions on hunger strike.
February 11th, 2014, USA
Anarchists march on the Mexican consulate in Seattle, WA.
April 12th, 2014, USA
ATMs were destroyed in Seattle, WA in solidarity with the 5E3 and prisoners on hunger strike across WA.
May 22nd, 2014, Quebec, CA
In a small suburb of Montreal, over 60 school buses were attacked in solidarity with the 5E3 and against the educational system that looks to condition us all into accepting capital and the state.
July 18th, 2014, USA
Twenty-three vehicles were attacked at a Nissan dealership in Olympia, WA, in solidarity with the 5E3. The solidarity action resulted in $100,000 in damage.
Mid-August 2014, USA
Equipment on a construction site for a new McDonalds in Portland, OR was sabotaged by pouring bleach in all the fuel tanks on the site. The action was claimed in solidarity with the 5E3.
October 1st, 2014, Quebec, CA
A railroad telecom was burned and three residential development panels vandalized in response to an eviction of Native resisters in Gatineau and in solidarity with the 5E3, somewhere in southern Quebec, Canada.
November 10th, 2014, USA
The Mexican consulate in Tucson, AZ was attacked with paint bombs. Graffiti outside the consulate claimed the action in solidarity with the 5E3 via the message: “VENGEANCE FOR LOS NORMALISTAS AND THE 5E3.”

Mexico, 5E : Open letter of Amélie Pelletier and Fallon Poisson, February 14, 2015

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Feb 152015

from Contra-info

On February 14 there will be an event in the museo de la tolerancia[*] that aims to raise money for political prisoners and anarchists.

Being in prison we have little information about the event.

We don’t know who is organizing it, but we know our names appear on the list of prisoners for whom the event is done.

We wanted to clarify that it seems strange that people we do not know and with whom we do not share affinities are using our names without notifying us. That we’re in jail doesn’t mean we have no voice. These acts of solidarity where all prisoners are mixed make us think of the blind recuperation of imprisoned people. Whether they are “Political” or “Anarchists”. Since the beginning, we always remained firm in our positions and ruptures. It seems rather strange to see our names beside those of Brian Reyes, Jacqueline Santana and Jamspa at a public event of solidarity. Perhaps their intention is to build relationships between different bands of people. That we understand, but we also know that there are reasons for this lack of relationship. There are very different methods and intentions and probably irreconcilable schisms.

For us the feeling of affinity is primordial in our struggle. We do not consider ourselves as “Political Prisoners” and do not attack the institutions of Power to improve society.

On the other hand, in prison we have relationships with all kinds of people, with whom we do not necessarily share “affinities of struggle”. People who do not care about “politics”, of which most believe in god, and never went to school. With them we also build strengths and live multiple moments of subversion of the existing order. It would be ridiculous to organize only with self-proclaimed “Political Prisoners”. We do not like most political prisoners, and neither most anarchists for that matter. The trick is to start from here with the energy there is. If we separate ourselves from this group that organizes the event it does not mean that we cut off everyone. We separate ourselves from those who identify as authoritarian, political partisans or left-leaning. We also learned that the event will be held at the Museo de la Tolerancia,[*] State Institution.

We want no mediation with the State.

Let it be said, we have no affinities with any of the people mentioned —except Carlos— nor with the people who are organizing the event. They do not consider ruptures that already exist, they only reproduce “presismo”.[**] We do not want to be recuperated. Go ahead with your solidarity events but without our names. Those who support us know why, and share affinities with us.

The best Solidarity is always Attack.
For Total Destruction of the Existent.
Fire to Civilization.
To infinity and beyond.

Fallon and Amelie
Reclusorio de Santa Marta, México DF

Translators notes:
* The event was, in fact, held at a different place called museo “casa de la memoria indómita” as originally scheduled.
** The term “presismo” refers pejoratively to a form of victimization and idealization of “political” prisoners, and of making anti-prison struggle a specific, partial one and in which the main activities are characterized as assistance to “political” prisoners and prison reformism.

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