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Conspiracy Theorists and Neonazis: Who Are the Organizers of the July 8 Anti-LGBTQ+ Demonstration in Québec City?

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Jun 282023

Warning: this article contains explicitly homophobic, racist, and antisemitic elements

A demonstration “against LGBTQ+ propaganda in schools and institutions” is to be held in Québec City on July 8. The demonstration is part of a series of events that have been taking place in Québec for some time, with the apparent aim of demonizing LGBTQ+ communities and their allies. The pretext for holding the rally in front of the Musée de la civilisation in Québec City is a current exhibition examining “the multiple realities linked to gender identities.”

François Amalega Bitondo, whom we have mentioned several times in recent months, is involved in this mobilization, but he is not the instigator. Perhaps to bolster his somewhat shaken credibility, this time he has teamed up on Facebook with some mysterious “young people” who claim to be behind the action.

Who are these young people, and where exactly is this call to demonstrate coming from? This article aims to show that the initiators of the July 8 anti-LGBTQ+ demonstration are, in fact, a small group of young keyboard neo-Nazis (including one we’ve been following for a few years) and that the support base for this mobilization is firmly anchored in Québec’s far-right and neo-Nazi networks, including the entourage of Sylvain Marcoux’s Christian Nationalist Party, which clearly exerts considerable influence over these young minds.

In light of the information provided in this article, it is clearer than ever that the communities concerned and their allies must mobilize and resist by any means necessary the rise of anti-LGBTQ+ hatred, which is clearly encouraging fanaticism in conservative and conspiracy theory circles these days.

A counterdemonstration will be held in Québec City on July 8;

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Who Is LUCAS ALI BOUCHER THÉRIAULT?

For several weeks following the creation of the Facebook event by a certain Lucas Ali Boucher Thériault on June 8, 2023, the only two publicly listed organizers were Thériault and conspiracy theory activist François Amalega.

More recently, other co-organizers have been added, including Carl Giroux, an anti–health protocols influencer, and two other individuals who seem to be connected (at least via social media) to young Boucher Thériault: Justin Crépeau, from Québec City, and the “Chose Mat” account.

Lucas Boucher Thériault is a resident of the Lanaudière region (Joliette, Saint-Jean-de-Matha) who is no more than fifteen or sixteen years old, but who has already been on our radar for a few years, due to his dubious activities on social media. We’ve been following him on Instagram and Twitter, as well as on Discord, where he created an “identitarian” channel when he was just thirteen.

By the summer of 2021, his activity already betrayed a far-right orientation, and it is clear that young Lucas has only become more fanatical since then. As well as adopting all the well-known antisemitic motifs (on Twitter, he recently recommended a neo-Nazi propaganda documentary that is extremely popular in these networks), his discourse has focused incessantly on LGBTQ+ communities, which he associates entirely with “grooming,” i.e., the grooming of minors for the purposes of sexual exploitation. This longstanding far-right obsession, combined with the established homophobia that comes straight out of religious morality, has been getting the conspiracy theory circles all worked up recently, as evidenced by the hallucinatory (and explicitly transphobic) language surrounding recent attempts to mobilize against drag queen story hours.

In June 2021, Lucas Boucher Thériault created the Instagram account “lucas_le_patriote”; from summer to winter 2021, several other accounts were also created under different pseudonyms, and numerous clues (photos, clothing and accessories, cross-references and redundancies, etc.) made it easy to link these accounts to Lucas Boucher Thériault. The screenshots below indicate that the accounts “Metalbuzz268,” “Vector_the_boss,” “Blair_insta_,” “Tomate_kasher88,” and “Lucasbackup14” are all administered by Lucas Boucher Thériault. Note the use of the numbers 14 and 88, two notorious neo-Nazi codes, and the many other far-right references. Even in the absence of conclusive evidence, we believe that the “Tabarnak38tabarnak” account is part of the same little system. However, it could also belong to a friend. We leave it to our readers to draw their own conclusions.

From June to August 2021, Lucas Boucher Thériault was also active on the Discord platform, under the pseudonyms “Commander Lucas” (Christian Power) and, later, “Loyalty.” After creating the “Québec identitaire” channel (first called “Xero’s Anti-Governement,” then “Nam Deus”), he and others discussed the creation of a patriotic militia, to which he devoted a chat room. He even published a “manifesto” (in reality, a very bad English essay), the metadata of which reveal his identity. It was at least partly in this toxic broth that he became a fanatic.

He turned up on Twitter in October 2021 with the account @knowyourenemyt_ (created in July 2018). He adopted the nickname “Bad Goy” (goy means non-Jew). As examples of his activity, he promotes the antisemitic webcasting platform Goyim.tv and the Goyim Defense League, described by the Anti-Defamation League as an informal network of individuals whose “goal is to cast aspersions on Jews and spread antisemitic myths and conspiracy theories”; on June 15, he shared a tweet from the neo-Nazi group Active Club in California; on June 17, following the disappearance at sea of hundreds of refugees off the coast of Greece, Lucas Boucher Thériault posted a tweet expressing regret that twelve people of Pakistani origin had survived the shipwreck. . .

It is perfectly reasonable to think that Lucas Boucher Thériault is just a child in need of attention who has made a series of deplorable choices under the influence of malevolent ideologues; that’s absolutely true. However, as soon as this young person’s bad choices led him to advertise himself as a neo-Nazi—for several years, with no sign of any desire to consider the direction he was drifting in—and finally to publicly organize an anti-LGBTQ+ demonstration, a red line was crossed. We believe that it then became necessary to denounce him in an equally public way. The same reasoning applies to the other young people named in this article.

We take no particular pleasure in introducing this young man and his cronies to the consequences of their actions, but some important lessons have to be learned the hard way when basic common sense or parental guidance aren’t enough to correct the faulty direction in life. Neo-Nazi nonsense behind a keyboard is one thing; organizing in real life is quite another. It’s never too early in the game to understand that the consequences are proportional to the level of commitment.

Signal-Boosting the July 8 demonstration

There is, therefore, no doubt about Lucas Boucher Thériault’s role, but we also believe it would be useful to trace the origins of this call to demonstrate the chronology of the signal-boosting, which reveals the role of other Nazis in this shambolic plan.

On Telegram

On June 2, the Telegram channel “Comité Anti-Grooming” was created, describing itself as a “group of dissidents opposed to LGBT propaganda aimed at young people.” The call to demonstrate was published there.
It was also posted on Instagram on June 14 by an account of the same name (recently renamed “anti_grooming_quebec”), which another Instagram user publicly stated was administered by Justin Crépeau. First interesting coincidence.

We have also learned that Sylvain Marcoux was part of the small « Comité Anti-Grooming » Messenger group where the idea for the July 8 demonstration was developed.
On June 7, 2023, the Telegram account “FierCF” (@Skullmaskowner1488) posted the appeal on the public chat channel Nomos-TV.

It should be noted that the “FierCF” account avatar when this was published was a Totenkopf (SS insignia) and the username was @Skullmaskowner1488 (the skull mask and the number 1488 are two broadly recognized neo-Nazi references). The user in question later changed his username to @fuckni**rs1488 (the racist word is redacted here), and more recently to @jeanpatriote14. At the time of writing, his avatar is a Carillon Sacré-Coeur. Note here the transposition of the symbols of French-Canadian nationalism onto those of Nazism.

It is not possible to state with certainty that this Telegram account is linked to the young co-organizers named here, but there are strong indications that it is, and this user’s efforts to promote the July 8 demonstration on the Nomos channel coincide perfectly with the activity during the month of June of the other social media accounts cited here.

On June 8, Lucas Boucher Thériault created the Facebook event for the demonstration; it was posted the same day by the Parti nationaliste chrétien, Sylvain Marcoux’s neo-Nazi-inspired group.

On June 22, “FierCF” confirmed in the Nomos chat room that the event would take place.

On Twitter

There is every reason to believe that the @AntiwokeL73304 account (created in June 2023) is administered by one or other of the co-organizers of the July 8 demonstration. Although the name and look of the account have since been changed, for a few days the public nickname was “Anti F***t Army” (the homophobic slur is redacted here) and its avatar was a Totenkopf. The profile description read “Also a proud NS,” which stands for National Socialist, i.e., Nazi. The current name of the @AntiwokeL73304 account is “Vieux rat grincheux” [Grumpy Old Rat].

On June 13, after sharing Amalega’s callout for the demonstration, “Vieux rat grincheux” revealed in a comment that he was one of the organizers. Two days later, he expressed surprise that the antifascists hadn’t yet mentioned his detestable demonstration. (That did it!) We quickly confirmed by consulting the account’s subscribers that this user is in the sphere of influence of Nomos-TV and Sylvain Marcoux’s Christian Nationalist Party.

On Facebook

Around the same time, Justin Crépeau (“el_grand_zouf” on Instagram), who is listed on Facebook as a co-organizer, was also actively promoting the July demonstration on various pages.

It turns out, by his own admission, that Justin Crépeau is the real mastermind behind the July 8 event, and that Lucas Boucher Thériault is the only other real co-organizer, with the support of François Amalega.

As for the co-organizer “Chose Mat,” we haven’t gathered any conclusive information about him, apart from the fact that he says he studied at the CÉGEP in Lévis and that he follows François Amalega, Le Harfang (Fédération des Québécois de souche) on Facebook, Nouvelle Alliance (a crypto-fascist nationalist Nouvelle Amanchure), Sylvain Marcoux’s Christian Nationalist Party (him again!), Éditions Tardivel (linked to Atalante activists), and an empty page whose avatar is the logo of the defunct neo-Nazi forum Iron March.

It turns out that last November, a certain Justin Crépeau contacted Montréal Antifasciste by Messenger to ask us if we really intended to “do an article on him.” Clearly, someone (not us) must have used this threat to intimidate him. Before we’d even replied to his first message, he was quick to denounce “un autre fasciste d’extrême droite neo nazi” [another far-right neo-Nazi fascist] (note the choice of the word “another”) “qui appelle à la mort des juifs et des noirs c’est **** **** il a 19 ans et vit à st-jean chrysostome lévis (sic) [who calls for the death of Jews and Blacks is **** **** he’s 19 and lives in st-jean chrysostome lévis (sic)].”

Update : The day after the article was published, **** **** contacted us on the advice of a friend. He swears he was added as a co-organizer without his consent by Lucas Boucher Thériault. He assures us that he has no political affinity with the other two organizers, and that he never intended to organize or even participate in this demonstration. He claims to have followed the fascist pages for the sole purpose of informing himself and “trolling”. He also claims that Justin Crépeau set up the denunciation against him. According to him, Justin Crépeau is the real mastermind behind the July 8 demonstration, and Lucas Boucher Thériault is the only other real co-organizer, with the support of François Amalega. We’re giving him the benefit of the doubt and have chosen to amend the article accordingly.

Carl Giroux, for his part, is a baseball cap–wearing nutbar who makes frustrated videos in his car—the pandemic generated hordes of them. He runs the LibreChoix Facebook page, which has recently embraced the anti-LGBTQ+ cause. We don’t have much to say about this douchebag of the people, except that he was present at the May 16 Mercier-Est anti-drag queen story hour demonstration, and the hostility he encountered there apparently took him by surprise. Giroux may be unaware of the neo-Nazi pedigree of his comrades, but he will no longer get the benefit of the doubt after he reads this article. It’s a good bet that he’ll say that the antifa invented it all under orders from George Soros and the globalists.

Who is behind these Little neo-nazis?

Beyond the sordid details, what does this demonstration reveal about these adults who associate with young people they know nothing about for the sole purpose of boosting the credibility of their hate-filled crusade against drag queens, trans people, and “gender theory”? And what about these young neo-Nazi racists who are taking advantage of the influence of a fruitcake of Cameroonian origin to infiltrate the populist anti-LGBTQ+ movement? Under the circumstances, we are be hard-pressed to say who is who’s useful idiot.

If we have to talk about grooming, beyond the moral panic that is unfairly targeting LGBTQ+ communities, it would undoubtedly be more relevant to look at the extremely toxic influence exerted by false prophets and fascist ideologues like Sylvain Marcoux and his neo-Nazi party or Alexandre Cormier-Denis and Nomos-TV on a section of the new generation that is perhaps overly susceptible to their idiotic and hateful propaganda. They are the ones who are really responsible for this mess, as are those who, in more polite language, stir up the same anxieties in the media and the political arena.

Perhaps we also need to acknowledge our collective failure, having allowed the memory of the Holocaust to be lost to the extent that the appalling legacy of Nazism can today hold this sort of appeal for section of the new generation.

This development poses a much more imminent threat to Québec society in 2023 than does a museum exhibit on gender diversity, grag queens reading stories to children, or the comings and goings of members of LGBTQ+ communities who want nothing more than to live their lives in peace and dignity.

Let’s not let this scourge spread. Let’s fight fiercely against the influence of these toxic individuals.

Now and always anti-fascist!

End the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) and Open the Borders

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Jun 162023

From Solidarity Across Borders

A coalition of non-profit groups who work on refugee issues are organizing a march in the coming days as an act of protest against the Safe Third Country Agreement. We wanted to take the time to share it with you here, in a spirit of critical solidarity. We know the organizers of the march have been working incredibly hard on this action, and too many of our members have known first-hand the violence inflicted by the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA).

We would also like to take this opportunity to point out that the STCA is but one particularly hypocritical manifestation of the overall violence of the colonial, racist and capitalist border, part of a broader system of imperialism in which Canada is an active participant.

We demand, like the organizers, the end of the STCA. But we demand this because we are fighting for the abolition of the border. We are fighting for status for all those undocumented migrants living here in so-called Canada, and for regularization upon entry for all who are forced or who simply choose to migrate here in the future. We believe that migrants are inherently worthy of dignity and security regardless of their ability to contribute to the capitalist economy and regardless of their reasons for leaving their homes and making the journey here.

No one is illegal on stolen land!

March – June 17-18-19 from Montreal to Roxham Road
https://www.facebook.com/events/286104663755514/

What’s in the Contracts? Trying to Learn More about the Proposed Women’s Prison in Montreal

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Jun 152023

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

For more background information, check out this piece about who has been awarded the new contracts and a bit about the project to build a new prison for women on the island of Montreal.

The first step in fighting new development projects is usually trying to find as much information about the project as possible. That research can involve many things; since the first contracts have already been awarded for the proposed new women’s prison in Ahuntsic-Cartierville, we wanted to get our hands on them. Long story short, that was pretty difficult. The province has put some annoying security mechanisms on the contracts that makes them somewhat easy to download anonymously but very tricky to open and share. However, we’ve seen them and they don’t contain much. We wanted to share all the relevant parts here for people looking to fight the new prison.

First, the government has not been honest about the real size of the new prison. The media reported that the new prison will have the capacity to warehouse 237 people. In fact, the contract calls for buildings that can be expanded to eventually hold 405 people. Yes, it is true that the timeline of this phase of the project stops at the point where there are 237 cells, but there are clear plans, though no proposed timeline, to expand it further in the future. These numbers are bigger than the original Maison Tanguay, but smaller than the capacity at Leclerc (which, let’s not forget, is an old federal prison with a sizeable capacity in a collapsing, leaky, drafty building.).

Second, the Elizabeth Fry Society of Quebec has their hands deep in this project. For those who don’t know, E. Fry Societies exist in most provinces. There is also a national organisation with the same name. They all seem to operate autonomously from each other, with the national organisation having the most radical politics. All of them have a mandate to help women who are experiencing or who might experience conflict with the legal system. The documents state that E. Fry Quebec is part of proposing a new model for the long term incarceration of women in Quebec, including ongoing consultation on this new prison. Clearly, the prison system has a not-for-profit wing, and E. Fry Québec is part of it. This is not necessarily a change from the status quo, but a clear example of collaboration.

Third, the documents include five core things that need to be a part of the new prison. 1. The prison will be laid out in pavilions. 2. There will be different security levels adapted for different prison populations. 3. The exterior architecture will be aimed at deinstitutionalizing the buildings. 4. The interior appearance of the prison will preserve the dignity of the prisoners by offering an environment that is secure and calming. 5. The acoustics will promote the intelligibility of conversations.

What do they each mean? The first point likely means the new prison will be designed in pods. This can look different in different prisons, but, according to Escaping Tomorrow’s Cages, “pod prisons originate in a tough-on-crime approach from the 1990s when the system was preparing to lock up more people for longer. They are designed with two main considerations: cutting prisoners off from the community and saving money.”1 They also remind us that “the infrastructure matters more than the use” so we assume the trajectory of this new prison might resemble the “bungalows” that were built in some of the new regional federal women’s prisons after the closure of the Prison for Women in Kingston in the mid 90s – nicer at first, then eventually stripped down to solely their potential for surveillance and securitization.¹

The second point, different security levels adapted for different carceral populations, is very clear. This trend in prison construction has been in the works for at least three decades now and is already present at many prisons in the country. It seems like the new Tanguay will have a segregation unit and a maximum security wing. Due to centuries of colonialism and white supremacy, Indigenous women are incarcerated in Canada and Quebec at high rates. There are especially high rates of Indigenous women in segregation and maximum security units.²No surprise the government wants both segregation units and a maximum security wing at this new prison.

The third requirement for this project is also part of a trend in prison construction in the last decade. By making the prison look friendly and welcoming, the government hopes that everyone will be convinced that it’s not a place where poor people and people of colour are locked up and punished. The same goes for the interior environment, which must be both calm and soothing. Basically, you need curtains on the windows and pretty pictures on the walls of the maximum security unit. Last but not least, acoustics that allow conversations to take place. This says more about the acoustics of most prisons than anything else. Prisons are very noisy. They want to try and make this one a little quieter. Someone applaud them. It was also pointed out that maybe it’s a safety issue. If conversations are more audible, they’re more recordable. It’s not clear what this is about, but it’s a not great either way.

We’ll take an aside here to preach to the choir. Prison reform is a dead end. Ann Hansen said it well in Taking the Rap; “New prisons come wrapped in progressive packaging, decorated with pictures of rehabilitation and programming, but once they are opened, out comes a shiny new prison filled with all kinds of technological gadgets designed for enhanced surveillance and security that cost so much, the prison regime claims it can no longer afford all the progressive programming promised on the packaging.”³

What else is in the documents? There is a timeline for the project. Its all planning and demolition work into 2024. Call for tenders for construction starting in May 2025. Construction slated to happen from July 2025 to April 2029. Here’s a screenshot of it.

The fifth and final thing in the documents is a list of names and responsibilities of people involved in the project. If you’re looking for some specific people to hold responsible for this project, here’s a few to start with: Project Head (project manager, SQI) is Amélie Viau. Minister’s Representative is Bruno Gosselin. Contract Manager (Head of expertise, SQI) is Nathalie Duchesneau. CGPI (integrated practice management consultant) who participates in the first steering committee and remains available to support the project team throughout the project’s mandate is Sébastien Parent. BIM Representative is Zakia Kemmar.

We’ll leave the last words to Ann Hansen; “Prison reforms are doomed to eventual failure, but that does not mean that we cannot use the fight for reform within a revolutionary context as a means of raising awareness. Real people are suffering in prisons now. If any one of us were stuck in solitary confinement for years at a time, would we want to wait for the revolution before anyone tried to help us? The answer lies in the murky grey zone between struggling for reform and struggling for revolutionary change. These struggles are a false dichotomy in which the murky grey zone can be bridged. As long as concrete campaigns for reform are framed within a revolutionary context and are guided by revolutionary principles, then they can play a role in the campaign to abolish both capitalism and its social control mechanism, prison.”⁴

1. From Ann Hansen’s book Taking the Rap: “Between my two short stints in GVI [Grand Valley Institution, a federal women’s prison in southern Ontario] during 2006 and then again in 2012, i witnessed the devolution of GVI from a prison compound where women cooked and lived collectively in bungalows perched neatly in grassy, tree-lined yards, where vegetables were grown in kitchen gardens and the women moved freely from eight in the morning until ten at night throughout the compound… to a multi-security prison complex with few jobs or programming and with double-bunking everywhere, including maximum-security units and segregation. This devolution unfolded in all six regional federal prisons for women during the fifteen years after P4W closed in 2000. this feat is surpassed only by the fact that the entire federal prisoner population for women actually in prison had increased by 40 percent, to 550 women, in the ten years after the closure of P4W. This in a country where the crime rates have been on a steady decline over the past two decades.” p. 336-7

2. Quebec doesn’t keep stats about this specific thing as far as we can tell, but as of 2019-2020, Inuit and First Nations women made up 9.6% of the women’s prison population in Quebec. “Les Inuites, les femmes sans diplôme, les célibataires, les femmes vivant seules, présentent des taux, d’incarcération nettement, plus élevés.” A recent report showed that 96% of the women being held in the new SIU seg units in the federal system were Indigenous women.

3. p. 339, Taking the Rap

4. p. 343, Taking the Rap

Advisory. Deportations are Increasing. Let’s Support Each Other and Stay Safe.

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Jun 152023

From Solidarity Across Borders

Montreal, 11 June 2023 – The Solidarity Across Borders network has noticed an increase in people being called in to CBSA offices to start deportation proceedings in Montreal. In addition, in the past weeks, we are aware of two incidents in which the CBSA (the border police) came to the homes of undocumented community members. They were both under arrest warrants for not having shown up for their deportation. CBSA somehow found their addresses and went to their homes to arrest them.

We are sending this advisory so people can be aware and prepared.

Why is this happening?

It may just be that CBSA is finally catching up on their backlog of work after the pandemic. It may be CBSA’s way of preparing for the long-awaited regularization programme. There may be some other reason. It is impossible for us to be sure.

What can we do?

Here are some suggestions from our collective experience of ways to protect ourselves and each other.

1) My Refugee Application was Refused and I Received a Letter from CBSA

If your refugee application has been refused and you receive a letter from the CBSA to come in to start deportation proceedings, consider getting in touch with Solidarity Across Borders or an organization you trust. We can share some basic information about what to expect and some general tips. Knowledge is power and we will share as much as we can.

If other members of your community are also facing deportation, consider calling a community meeting. You can plan collective action to fight your deportations and demand regularization together. Indian international students in Ontario are an inspiring example of what can be done to fight deportations. They are currently on their 15th day of a sit-in outside CBSA offices. Get in touch, Solidarity Across Borders will try to support your actions. See below.

2) I Stayed Past a Deportation Date and/or Didn’t Attend a Meeting with the CBSA

If you have already remained in Canada past a deportation date, or have not gone to a meeting that CBSA ordered you to attend, an arrest warrant has probably been issued for you (unless you were under 16 at the time).

Many people in this situation move if CBSA has their address and then keep their new address confidential. However, CBSA sometimes finds them and comes to their home to arrest them. In our experience, this usually happens because other people who know their situation have denounced them to CBSA. It is a good idea to prepare for a CBSA visit to your home, even if you think that they do not know your address:

Important Facts and Experiences

An arrest warrant for you does not give CBSA the legal right to enter or break into your home. CBSA officers can only force their way into your home if they have a court-authorized search warrant or someone is in danger. This means that, in most cases, they are not legally allowed into the apartment if the person answering the door says they cannot enter.
If you live with someone and that other person answers the door, they have the right to remain silent. They do not have to answer CBSA’s questions. In reality, it can be very difficult to remain silent. Thinking through in advance what that person will say, and practising it, is a very good idea. Importantly, when CBSA has come to arrest an undocumented person in the past, they have had the person’s full details, including their photo. The CBSA officers have shown this to the person who answers the door and asked them if the undocumented person is at home.
Previously, when the CBSA has arrived at a home, they have positioned officers at all exits, to catch people if they try to escape out the back door.
In past situations, undocumented people who stayed quietly inside and did not open the door when CBSA arrived, have managed to stay safe.

Make a Safety Plan

Make a plan beforehand. This could help you to stay calm and better able to act in your best interests if CBSA comes to the door. Think through how you and the people you live with will act if there is a knock on the door. Some questions you can ask yourself: Is it really necessary to open the door when you are not expecting visitors? If you do have to open the door, who should open it? What will the person who opens the door say if it turns out to be the CBSA and they ask for you? Where will you be when the other person is opening the door? If you live with people who do not know your situation, or people who may be too scared by CBSA to protect you, how should you prepare?

Other Precautions

CBSA doesn’t seem to usually carry out proactive investigations, but many people take basic precautions such as not using a real name on facebook or not posting clear facial photos in public social media accounts. If you receive unsolicited messages such as job offers, it may be better not to respond, or to ask a trusted friend or organization to verify that the message is authentic before responding.

3. My Work, Study, or Travel Visa is Expired or Cancelled and I Didn’t Leave the Country

If you entered on a valid work, study, or travel visa and didn’t leave Canada after it expired or was cancelled, an arrest warrant is not automatically issued for you. You can still be arrested by CBSA (or the police) if they are aware of your status. But, they will not normally actively look for you because you aren’t on their radar.

Why Collective Action is Important

While it’s vital to prepare individually, it is important to remember that you are not alone in confronting an unjust immigration and refugee system, whose laws are used to justify violently forcing people to leave. We have to continue to organize, mobilize and collectively fight back against detentions and deportations, which tear apart lives, families and communities. Political victories are possible.

Solidarity Across Borders and its allies are currently campaigning to push the government to grant permanent status to all undocumented people and refused refugees in Canada and immediately stop deportations and detentions. And the government is listening: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mandated Immigration Minister Sean Fraser to explore the possibility of a regularization programme; and undocumented migrants met directly with Fraser to tell them what they wanted last October. Fraser promised that deportations would stop when a regularization programme was announced.

Join us in this struggle because status for all will help keep us all safer. Make calls, email and visit Federal Cabinet Ministers in Quebec. Come to an online assembly on 14 June at 7pm. Please get in touch if you have questions, need support, or if you want to join the fight for #StatusForAll!

United, we are strong.

—

Phone: 514-809-0773
Email: solidaritesansfrontieres@gmail.com
Website: www.solidarityacrossborders.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CiteSansFrontieres
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ssf.sab/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SolidariteMTL

Slogans Written on a Wall in Solidarity with G.Mihailidis

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Jun 142023

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Slogans were written on a wall in Parc-Extension, in solidarity with G.Mihailidis.

‘Solidarity with G.Mihailidis, we want you alive and free, death to the autoritarian world’

Giannis is on hunger strike since 12/5 demanding his release from prison after having done the part of imprisonment that allows him to be released under conditions. At this point he is continuing his struggle with a thirst strike as of 10/6.

Freedom for Giannis. Fire to the prisons.

Popular Self-Defense Camp in Rouyn-Noranda

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Jun 142023

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

The Rouyn-Noranda popular self-defense camp is a community initiative born out of refusal of the agreement between Glencore and the government (15 ng over 5 years). The solution of a buffer zone proposed by Glencore and different bodies will not prevent toxic gases from spreading across the entire territory.

We are making a call for solidarity and unity to all people and groups from all walks of life which struggle to protect the ecosystem from the capitalist machine. Let’s converge our struggles and our revolt! Join the front lines of the fight, at the foot of the smokestacks of the Glencore Horne foundry, of which five Quebec subsidiaries are among the 100 largest polluters in the province.

You can visit our site and sign up.

Call for Solidarity : Has the Ante been Upped in Montreal Tenant Union’s Struggle with the State and Major Local Landlord, the Cucurulls?

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Jun 142023

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

This is a call for solidarity and support for the Montreal Autonomous Tenants’ Union – known by most as their French acronym, SLAM. The tenants’ union has put together a picket line for this Friday, June 16, at 4:00pm in front of the landlord offices of 5301 Parc. This callout explains the ongoing situation of state and landlord repression, and why it is important that we, as a movement, help match these adversaries in their upping of the ante.

If this renewed mobilization is anything like the last SLAM picket, weekly picket lines will follow at the offices of the Cucurulls. It is probable that further actions will be organized to increase pressure.

We have copied an excerpt from the GoFundMe – donate if you can – written by SLAM, explaining their current situation in their mobilization against the Cucurull real estate family:

After beating a court injunction, our union is calling for renewed solidarity in organizing against the Cucurull family, a group of major local landlords. Our tenants’ union initially called for support after a delivery of a petition to the offices of the Cucurulls turned sour. The Cucurulls have spent tens of thousands of dollars to secure injunctions stopping our union from publically releasing information on their actions. All public information on the company was ordered to be taken down, picket lines could not move forward, and our legal fundraiser was taken off of public pages.

A recent victory over parts of the injunction allows union members to once again speak publicly about the company. Not only have the Cucurulls still not provided an action plan for tenants’ demands listed in their petition, but a $380,000 lawsuit targetting the union has been initiated by the real estate family. Tenants request compensation for the Cucurulls’ actions during the petition delivery at their office, and an action plan for repairs, respect, and smaller rent increases.

The Cucurulls run as many as 29 buildings and up to 446 units. The real estate family has been involved in hundreds of cases in the housing tribunal in the past two decades. In 2019, their offices were subject to an occupation by tenants condemning long-time residents being evicted so the companies could raise rents. The family attempted to use injunction proceedings to secure the de facto eviction of one tenant who participated in the recent petition delivery, but failed.

This legal and solidarity fund has been set up to assist tenants in the union facing court proceedings initiated by the Cucurulls.

Join our regular Friday picket lines outside of their offices at 5301 Parc, donate what you can, and organize tenants in your building to build tenant power on our streets and in our neighbourhoods! A better city will grow from solidarity and community! Solidarity in each and every struggle with landlords!

Donate! Share! Unionize your building!

An open letter was signed by about 20 local, national, and international organizations. It published by the collective Premiere Ligne, called “La justice fait taire les locataires! – Communiqué.” The letter explores the reprehensible actions of the landlords, Ian Cucurull & Martha Cucurull, against members of the SLAM delivering an innocent petition. Hair was pulled, a SLAM member was choked, a tenant of the landlord was trapped in the landlord’s office as the landlord, on video, smiled out their window, waving a knife.

The police, not charging the landlords, have chosen to target tenants involved in the petition delivery with such charges as extortion (for organizing for demands), harassment (for generating continued public pressure against the landlord) and breaking and entering (for visiting the landlord’s office collectively). Other details on the later court injunction, which included a failed attempt at a “de facto” eviction of a tenant, are explored above in the Gofundme text.

As for some reflections on the need for a movement response and continued solidarity with Montreal’s tenant union:

1) Tenant unions are new in Montreal. The state and landlord’s response today to tenants organizing on a basis of collective action will determine their future responses. If tenants organizing together and taking action together using pretty traditional tactics is criminal or worthy of court injunctions, and we allow that to go uncontested, we lose one of our most useful strategies to confront the housing crisis. Essentially, tenants’ right to organize publicly is being challenged here. Will that challenge succeed?

2) Relatedly, we can only assume that landlord organizations like CORPIQ and other landlords may be watching these situations and taking key lessons. Will this intensive repression – including a $380,000 lawsuit, court injunctions, thousands in legal fees, criminal charges and police investigation – lead to defeat or victory?

3) An opportunity has presented itself for organizing against a major local landlord. This is a public campaign at a moment of intensifying public concern with housing relations and the relationship of power between renters and landlords. As a popular movement, let’s organize where the class tensions and antagonisms, the failures of our courts and police, are clearest to people outside of our movement. Anyone knows when learning about this situation that a serious injustice is being committed.

4) Finally, these strategies of repression should never be tolerated by our movement, against any of our members. Solidarity, today, is a call to action against the Cucurulls and their companies: Immopolis and Topo Immobilier!

In case people want more information on keeping up with SLAM’s activities or find their events: https://linktr.ee/slam.matu

[Note: The above message is a sign of solidarity, that was not done with the permission or knowledge of SLAM]

Help Mashk Assi Defend Nitassinan

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Jun 112023

From Collectif Mashk Assi

Enough is enough!

The forests, animals and ancestral sovereignty of the Innu people are under attack from the forestry industry, which is abusively operating on Nitassinan (Innu territory) without the consent of the territory’s guardian families.

On May 29, the Mashk Assi collective, an independent group of territory guardians, delivered an eviction letter to seven foresters advising them that their logging operations are illegal. No trees may be cut for profit on unceded land without the consent of the landowning families.

On May 30, the Mashk Assi put the foresters’ eviction notice into effect by setting up a blockade at kilometer 216 of Route 175, with the support of numerous native and non-native allies.

The collective needs financial support to continue its struggle. We call on the solidarity and generosity of our Quebec allies, environmental groups, associations for the preservation of flora and fauna, unions and militant groups who oppose the destruction of forests and the violation of the rights of indigenous peoples.

The collective also opposes the Petapan Treaty, which seeks to extinguish the ancestral rights of the Innu to their territory.

The funds raised will be used for our daily needs on the ground, such as food, fuel and the equipment needed to maintain the blockade. They will also be used to support our political and legal efforts to stop the logging and the extinguishment of our rights.

Help us to continue defending Nitassinan against abusive and unconsented logging!

Tshinishkumitinau, thank you!

https://www.gofundme.com/f/aidez-mashk-assi-a-defendre-de-nitassinan

Yves Engler Should Have to Walk to the Couche-Tard to Take a Leak

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Jun 112023

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

The author was a member of the MABC (Montreal Anarchist Bookfair Collective) between 2016 and 2020.

It is always an interesting question as to how, and to whom, we should assign blame for things that bother us. On Sunday, May 28, a strange scene played out on the footpath between the two venues in Little Burgundy’s parc Vinet, CÉDA and CCGV, where the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair takes place—a small crowd of pro-Ukrainians and/or Ukrainian nationalists[1] waved flags and sang and chanted in Ukrainian in order to drown out the words of an even smaller crowd of tankies[2] with a sound system. This took place in the assigned area for workshops, and it also disrupted the flow of pedestrian traffic between the two buildings. The commotion was overseen by Montréal police, which ruins the vibe at an anarchist event a little bit.

In the end, nothing particularly bad happened, at least as far as I know. The riot cops, who were spotted a block away, were not actually deployed. The tankies had a bad time, but I don’t especially care about them. A lot of anarchists had some fun taking in the stupid spectacle of it. That said, scheduled parts of the bookfair programme were disrupted, and some of the people responsible for organizing the bookfair were stressed out a bit. It’s not hard to imagine how things could have ended up really sour, too. Thus, if you care about any of this, this episode is a valid reason for conflict with whichever person might have been responsible for stunts what happened. That person is Yves Engler.

Okay, he’s not entirely to blame. But he, and the other tankies in his camp, are the ones who planned this event for this particular time and place. This got the wheel rolling for the pro-Ukrainians to hear about it and respond with a counterprotest, and the pro-Ukrainians, in turn, called in the cops. Even if it had just been the tankies, however, this rally—ostensibly against CÉDA, the underresourced community centre that mostly provides services to immigrants and pensioners in the neighbourhood—would have been obnoxious. Yves in particular is worth talking about because he has a history of conflict with the organizers of the bookfair that dates back a few years now.

Yves describes himself as a “Canadian Author and Activist” on the header of his website; the background to this text is a Canadian flag. A lot of what he does these days is get into politicians’ faces with a camera. He articulates the reason he pursues this strategy, while encouraging others to pursue it as well, in this blog post. After these disruptions, he typically writes a blog post about it, or he talks about it on his YouTube show, or he leverages it into an appearance on RT. This appears to be how he makes a living. It’s not up to me to tell other anarchists how they should feel about any of this, but I expect that few would care about him much either way if he hadn’t also chosen to make the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair a site of these stunts.

In September 2021, during the one-day, outdoor anarchist gathering in parc Lafontaine (a stand-in for a proper bookfair), Yves showed up in protest of “those overseeing Montréal’s Anarchist Bookfair” who had “lost the plot” because Black Rose Books, the publisher of some of Yves’ books, was not invited to participate. He was confronted and asked to leave. As Yves says in his blog post about it, the “ban” was indeed because of Black Rose’s association with him, but not only; there was at least one other matter that informed this decision, which has since been resolved. The part of the story that involves Yves is worth recounting, however.

During the 2019 bookfair, Yves spoke at a Black Rose “multi book launch event”, the actual details of which were not provided until a week before the bookfair itself, e.g. long past the deadline of when we had requested them. In the context of that chaotic week, a single person read the email; she, specifically, did not know who Yves was at that time, and we were not able to have a collective conversation about it. Multiple people asked me, over the course of the bookfair, why we had let an antisemite speak; I felt that the MABC’s good faith with respect to Black Rose, letting them get back to us a bit later with details about their book launch, had been abused. This was a valid grounds for conflict, too, but not an irresolvable one, and it should be noted that Black Rose was present at the bookfair in 2023.

The reason that the MABC would not have been okay with Yves getting a platform to speak at our event in 2019 is, above all, this 2016 article—one in which he takes about as provocative a tone as he can with respect to Canadian Jews, ostensibly as a function of his support for Palestinians’ liberation from the Israeli occupation.

There is a plausible deniability to his animus against Jews, and yet, throughout the article, he trivializes the historic oppression of Jews by means of comparison to the oppression that other groups have faced. He even writes that “compared to some other ‘white’ groups Canadian Jews have fared well”, citing as evidence the internment of Ukrainians during the First World War and the forced quarantine of Irish immigrants in the 19th century. But Yves’ reading of history is a partial one. He ignores, for example, the thousands of Jewish refugees from Austria and Germany interned by the Canadian state during World War II as “enemy aliens,” or the countless would-be Jewish refugees kept out by Canada’s “none is too many” policy and condemned to death in Hitler’s killing fields—refugees whose exclusion was motivated by the racial logic of protecting Canada from the “intermixture of foreign strains of blood”.

None of these details of history seem to matter much to Yves, who instead insists on associating Canadian Jews with wealth and privilege, noting, among other things, that they are more likely than the general population to be represented in “the billionaire class”.[3] What’s more, he implies that there is something nefarious about the fact that there are some Montréal suburbs where Jews comprise the majority of the population and about the fact that Canadian Jews often marry other Jews. He concludes: “Without an intervention of some sort, the Jewish community risks having future dictionaries defining ‘anti-Semitism’ as ‘a movement for justice and equality.’”

Since 2016, my assessment has been that “journalism” of this type fails to help Palestinians in Palestine. What it may do, however, is reinforce the idea that some Canadian Jews have in their heads already, namely that the only place where it might be safe or even just unremarkable to be Jewish is the territory of the Israeli state—which is bad for Jews and Palestinians alike. It’s bad for everyone else, too, except for those whose rent gets paid with reckless provocations.

With respect to the 2023 disruption, Yves once again possesses a degree of plausible deniability as regards his involvement. The rally was ostensibly organized by Montréal pour la paix (“Montréal for Peace”), a group that had previously booked a room at CÉDA (on the bookfair weekend, to be clear) for an event on “peace in Ukraine”; CÉDA subsequently canceled the booking. Yves, as well as Alex Tyrrell (the leader of Québec’s Green Party) and Samir Saul (a professor at UdeM), had been invited to speak during the original event. They chose to go ahead with the event anyway—and Yves wants us to think it’s merely a coincidence that this happened during the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair. For my part, I call bullshit. Yves knows about the bookfair, he was in a position to share what he knows to whoever is involved with Montréal pour la paix, and he could have always declined the invitation to come himself. But he wanted the confrontation.

The Montreal Anarchist Bookfair is, ostensibly, an event that is open to everyone. However, there have always been limits to that general principle. First of all, cops, fascists, and indeed tankies—in a capacity as proselytizers and pamphleteers, not merely as book buyers and hang-arounds—aren’t welcome. Second, at least in the past, journalists have also been asked to identify themselves if they want to show up (and relatedly, it has been asked that photographs only be taken with the consent of the concerned parties, so it is worth noting that Yves, while getting shit-talked at the door of CÉDA on the Sunday of the 2023 bookfair, moved to take a pic of one of his interlocuters with his smartphone). Third, of course, people with a history of intimate abuse have also been asked not to come. Finally, there are at least a few cases wherein people who have been shitty to one or more of the people who put in long unpaid hours throughout the year to make the bookfair happen have also been asked not to come, or to tread lightly if they do. Yves can be slotted into three of these categories, so I think it is reasonable to exclude him from the bookfair as a whole.

I am no longer a member of the MABC, so a decision to exclude Yves from the bookfair is ultimately not mine to make. I will say, however, that I would support a decision to exclude him, principally as a prick and an attention seeker whose antics in 2021 and 2023 made the bookfair more of a shitshow than it needed to be, and only secondarily as a tankie. Obviously, however, anarchists do not need an MABC mandate to make him feel unwelcome when he enters our spaces. When he walked over to the CÉDA building after participating in a protest of CÉDA, presumably because he needed to drain his bladder, it was quite proper that people got into it with him about his bullshit. He was arguably let off easy.

To conclude, although Yves has been reporting that it was one of the pro-Ukrainians who turned off the tankies’ sound system during their rally, credit actually goes to an anarchist attendee of the bookfair who simply thought the tankies were annoying as hell. May this same spirit animate our future collective encounters with this insufferable dweeb.

[1] I now prefer the term “pro-Ukrainians” to “Ukrainian nationalists” (which is used in other reports about this event) even though I previously said “Ukrainian nationalists” myself while talking friends over the past two weeks.

I think it is fair to guess that a large percentage of them were nationalists (and/or supportive of Ukrainian nationalism), whether of a more 21st-century, Zelenskyan, “civic” type (which, in and of itself, I consider no more and no less objectionable than a woman born in the Philippines having a Philippine flag up in her window) or a more 20th-century, Banderist, “ethnic” type (which is Nazi shit). Nevertheless, some of them may not have been Ukrainian nationalists themselves, but “allies”, or they may have been Ukrainians whose participation in the counterprotest had nothing to do with a nationalist imaginary. I didn’t interview them.

[2] I do not think “tankies” is the best way to describe them, but it is an easy way. Unlike the original tankies, who were members of the French Communist Party who supported the Soviet tanks rolling into Hungary to crush the uprising against the government there in 1956, these tankies probably never supported Putin’s tank columns rolling towards Kyiv. They might even really want peace. Nevertheless, in focusing on the governments that rule us (as well as governments with which the United States and Canada are friendly, like Israel’s, as well as intergovernmental organizations like NATO), they inadvertently (or maybe quite consciously) reproduce the media narratives promoted by other imperialist states governed by their own self-interested ruling classes. This is, at the very least, a distraction from anarchist revolution or whatever the hell we should be doing. It also tends to alienate immigrants to North America who understand that the governments in their homelands are shit.

[3] It’s worth noting Yves’ manipulative use of statistics here. In 2016, roughly 20% of Canadian billionaires were Jewish. That does sound pretty shocking, until you realize that in 2016, Canada only had 33 billionaires in total. This is hardly a sample size from which we can draw any meaningful conclusions. Moreover, looking at this sample, we can additionally conclude that Chinese-Canadians, Italian-Canadians, and Québécois people were, in 2016, disproportionately represented among “the billionaire class”. What of it?

Laval Migrant Prison: Detention Delivery Fundraiser

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Jun 022023

From Solidarity Across Borders

Since the opening of a new prison for migrants in Laval Quebec in October of 2022, we’ve been consistently hearing from detainees about the terrible conditions. In-person visits have been suspended, while detainees are blocked from accessing their medication, have complained of being served rotten food, and many have continued to see their mental health spiral. All this in a brand new facility, that the federal government touted as a “more humane” form of detention. Now more than ever, it is clear that detention can never be “humane”, and only ending the practice of immigration detention in its entirety can put an end to these abuses.

While we work towards our ultimate goal of abolishing immigration detention, and obtaining status for all, we are doing what we can to support detainees on a day to day basis. Although visits have been suspended, we are still able to bring deliveries to the prison. Common requests include toothbrushes and toothpaste, shampoo and soap, socks and underwear, deodorant, cigarettes, international calling cards and clothing, especially winter clothing. These modest contributions can provide some small dignity and improve detainees’ living conditions, but more importantly, they send a message to detainees that they are not alone, that others are aware of what they are going through, and that people recognize the injustice of their mistreatment. On the outside, our deliveries keep us in touch with detainees and keep our political work grounded, as we fight alongside them for their liberation.

We are calling for donations to keep the deliveries going. Any amount that you can give can go a long way towards providing support to someone locked up inside the Laval migrant prison.

Most importantly, we need people to continually denounce Canada’s practice of imprisoning migrants. Rather than pouring millions of dollars into the construction of new prisons for migrants, like the one in Laval, the federal government needs to focus on the real solution: an ongoing and inclusive regularization program! The struggle continues until every last detainee has been liberated! Free them all, Status for All!

https://www.gofundme.com/f/detention-delivery-fundraiser

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