The pandemic we are mired in precarize everyone and highlights serious injustices. The stimulus wished by the leaders is an economic stimulus which is not addressed to us. It is not addressed to the artists and other people who don’t make enough profit to merit the right to exist. It does not concern sex workers, whose existence itself is still criminalized. This stimulus ignores handicapped people, the marginalized, those with mental health issues. The stimulus they talk about, it is for the oil companies, the Bombardier corporations, the party friends like Guzzo, but it is not for us. To let the governments save us from the crisis they created themselves through the constant cuts to healthcare and through their “snowbird” lives, would be to accept death. What we need to stimulate is not the economy, but the struggles for our rights and the end of capitalist exploitation.
The economic rebuilding project bets on a technological world stained with inequalities and based on dirty capitalist exploitation. The strenghtening of national borders and the abuses of immigration instances, which are illegitimate in this so-called Canada, aim to preserve these inequalities. And while in the North we vaccinate, we forget those who clothes us in the Gildan factories of Haïti. We forget that each zoom conference depends on the work in African and South American mines. Those same countries who might not see the vaccine before the next pandemic. Words of thanks and empty promises won’t bring back to life the Haitian “petrochallengers” killed by police forces trained by Canada, nor give back the eyes lost by Chilean protesters blinded by Canadian weapons. It will take much more to give back life to Raphaël « Napa » André, to Joyce Echaquan, and to all the native people killed here and elsewhere.
We saw worldwide injustices explodes in this last dreadful year. Migrants people who had the “chance” to come here now die in our hospitals and our warehouses. The streets of our poorest neighborhood are empty, the police being constantly on the hunt for their next prey. The First Nations are humiliated, attacked and killed by government instances, guided by extractivist companies. And in all this chaos we are imposed obedience, silence and self-deception in front of all that goes on around us.
We cannot let this be! Let’s refuse to police ourselves and our actions, because we recognize that to live in a world constrained by racist, colonialist and LGBTQIA2S+phobic laws is a challenge in itself. It is those same laws which feed genre inequalities which gives more reason to the most fortunate and to the rich heir·esse·s: do not legitimate them by accepting those laws for ourselves! We are angry when we see the disappearance of monetary assistance, of our jobs, and the precarization of those left, or from the imposition of a curfew with no scientific basis. We see it only as an excuse to legitimate State repression. The sanitary discourse makes no sense when we see that it is not applied equitably. The Legault government again shows its true face when it tries to safeguard the economy while throwing our lives away. We refuse this future dreamed of by billionaires, which drags our attention away through fear while they profit from the exploitation of the most vulnerable.
These billionaires, it is them who are the first polluters but the last to feel its consequences. It is those largest corporations who continue to exploit the work of migrant workers and to practice extractivism in First Nations’ territories, under the guise of economic growth and of the hypocrisy of the “green” or “sustainable” economy. While the whole world knows that the climate crisis is a major issue and will affect first marginalized people. For them, it’s business as usual as long as possible, until death do us part.
To make matters worse, the waiting lists in healthcare are even worse than what they were before the pandemic. Media took the opportunity to sell more anxiety-inducing news about the virus, casting a shadow on current struggles, especially those for the defense of the land. These struggles are alive, and we will remind them of that fact.
We are perceived as nothing but a mass of workers, empty and replaceable, but not is all lost. Together, we are ready to fight, and we are much stronger and numerous. Let’s refuse this “uberized” future and oppose to it a world of sharing and equality. And to get there, we will fight through all our might, which will take place by taking back the streets.
We will see you this May 1st, at 4PM, at Jarry park (corner of Gary-Carter and St-Laurent)!
Comments Off on You Can’t be Anti-State & Pro-Lock-down – A response to “Anarchy, Lock-downs, and Crypto-Eugenics”
Mar212021
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
It has now been more than one year since the world that we have known all of our lives came screeching to a halt. And what a year’s it’s been. The collective unconscious roils in the throes of a bad acid trip, the realization seeps slow in the mind that the crisis is here to stay, and we are all along for the ride, tossed about by uncontrollable forces like a ship in a storm, trying to maintain some grace amidst all the fear and the confusion and the doubt.
Amidst it all, we have struggled to find solid ground. How are we to organize in the midst of a global pandemic? What is even going on? What threats should we be preparing for? How can we make sure that our loved ones are safe? What do other people think is going on?
This piece is a response to a critique entitled “Anarchy, Lock-down, and Crypto-Eugenics”, which is a critique of “On the Anarchist Response to the Global Pandemic”, published on Montreal Counter-Info, as well as It’s Going Down, North Shore Counter-Info, and quite a few other anarchist websites. I am not the author of that piece, however the author is a comrade with whom I have been working closely, and they encouraged me to respond, as they are currently too busy.
“On the Anarchist Response to the Global Pandemic was certainly not the first anarchist critique of lock-downs, or to suggest that the ruling class is manipulating the public for its own gain under the guise of Public Health. In fact, there are numerous anarchist voices coming out of the U.K. that have informed our critique. Some of the most notable would include Architects for Social Housing, the South Essex Heckler, Estuary Stirrings, Winter Oak, and the Acorn. We would encourage people to check out these websites if they are interested in developing their analysis in regards to the current crisis.
In any case, we are flattered that our piece is attracting international attention! Not only has it been translated into French, it has also been re-posted on anarchist websites from around the world, including Germany and the U.K., and it has a generated quite a bit of positive feedback.
It was our intention to kickstart discussion and debate around the subject of COVID-19, lock-downs, and related subjects, so we welcome the criticism of the British writer, though in all honesty we question whether it is made in good faith.
It has gotten increasingly difficult to have respectful debate these days, a phenomenon for which social media echo chambers are partly to blame, as well as the general deterioration of political discourse across the political spectrum. Often, debates about controversial subjects devolve into name-calling, guilt by association and whataboutism.
Whataboutism, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, is a logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent’s position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument. This tactic, which was common in Soviet propaganda, was popularized by Donald Trump, and it is unfortunate to see it rear its ugly head in anarchist discourse.
The critic attempts to portray our piece as an example of “crypto-eugenics”. This is frankly absurd. Eugenics is an ideology which promotes coercive intervention in human reproduction, and nothing that we say in the piece has anything to do with reproduction whatsoever. If the response to a critique is to accuse the critic of secretly harbouring heretical views, we are in a time period analogous to the Inquisition. Furthermore, eugenics is an ideology promoting coercive intervention in natural human behaviour. We are advocating for the exact opposite.
Nevertheless, we will address some of the issues raised. In all honesty, the criticisms of the piece are mostly addressed within the original piece, and so we encourage folks to read (or re-read it), because it is fairly self-evident that the British critic misconstrues the arguments contained therein.
Firstly, the piece is primarily an appeal to anarchist values. It is clearly illogical to desire the abolition of the state and also uncritically support the expansion of state powers. The critic does not really address the question of values, and it is unclear which anarchist tendency they represent. In fact, when the critic says “As anarchists we affirm the violence of liberation” one is reminded more of Italian futurism (a proto-fascist ideology that flirted with anarchism) than contemporary anarchist discourse. But perhaps this is due to regional differences as to which theories are fashionable. All this to say: I can’t really identify any genuine anarchist sentiment in the critique.
Secondly, on the question of lock-downs: we maintain that it is an untenable position for an anarchist to support either lock-downs or curfews. Both of these interventions require the use of coercive force; that is to say, policing. We are not at all opposed to any public health recommendations, so long as they are voluntary.
We would do well to remember that the term lock-down comes from the prison system, and lock-downs are usually put into place in that context when authorities perceive there to be an increased risk of revolt.
All this to say that we believe that anarchism and any ideology promoting the implementation of draconian measures such as lock-downs and curfews are mutually exclusive, and that this should be self-evident. How can one both be against the state and in favour of state control? Ideology aside, studies have shown that lock-downs are not effective in reducing mortality. According to a recently published study in the journal Nature, “using this methodology and current data, in ~ 98% of the comparisons using 87 different regions of the world we found no evidence that the number of deaths/million is reduced by staying at home”.[1]
Third, there is the very important question of the lethality of COVID-19. The critic clearly takes issue with us for “minimizing” the severity of the pandemic, but they do not refute a central claim, which is that COVID-19 has proven to be far less deadly than was originally believed. On this, the scientific consensus is overwhelming. The disease was originally believed to have a fatality rate of 1% or more. A year later, we know that this is not even close to being true. There are many studies done on this subject, and we encourage people to do their own research, but we will quote one study authored by Stanford’s John P. Ioannidis.[2]
“Infection fatality rate in different locations can be inferred from seroprevalence studies. While these studies have caveats, they show IFR ranging from 0.00% to 1.54% across 82 study estimates. Median IFR across 51 locations is 0.23% for the overall population and 0.05% for people <70 years old. IFR is larger in locations with higher overall fatalities. Given that these 82 studies are predominantly from hard‐hit epicenters, IFR on a global level may be modestly lower. Average values of 0.15%‐0.20% for the whole global population and 0.03%‐0.04% for people <70 years old as of October 2020 are plausible. These values agree also with the WHO estimate of 10% global infection rate (hence, IFR ~ 0.15%) as of early October 2020.”
Some of the confusion regarding the lethality of COVID-19 results from people confusing IFR with CFR (Case Fatality Rate). Dr Richard Schabas, Ontario’s former Chief Medical Officer, has critiqued the Ontario government’s emphasis on using the CFR statistic, saying “Every knowledgeable observer of COVID understands that CFR is in itself an irrelevant number… CFR’s only ‘virtue’ is its ability to frighten by overstating the real risk of dying from a COVID infection.”[3]
Despite this, many people are under the impression that COVID-19 is much more lethal than it really is. This is clearly because of media fear-mongering, and yes, there are clearly financial interests at play, not those of Big Pharma, but also companies such as Amazon, Walmart, and many others who benefited from rampant stimulus spending. For some reason, Leftists have been shy to criticize the blatant greed of major corporations who are making a killing in the context of the current crisis. The Left readily decries the profiteering of both the military-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex, however, criticism of the medical-industrial complex has become increasingly rare in anti-capitalist circles. Because trusting that pharmaceutical companies have the best interests of the public at heart, one would do well to remember the particularly blatant example of how drug manufacturers fuelled the opiate crisis by heavily promoting drugs such as OxyContin. In developing our analysis of the current moment, it behooves us to take matters into consideration such as whether or not given politicians and other public officials have conflicts of interests. Until recently, this would not have been an even remotely controversial statement. It is a sad state of affairs when supposed anti-capitalists rush to the defence of Big Pharma!
So, thank you to British critic for giving us the opportunity to clarify our position. Again, our intention was to kickstart discussion and debate about how to organize in the current political climate, and so we welcome the criticism and encourage others to join the conversation. We would simply make two requests, in the spirit of having the most constructive debate possible. First, we would ask that critics engage with the actual content of what we have said, rather that resorting to whataboutism, and secondly, that if refuting any of our claims, reference is made to the best available data, that is, peer-reviewed studies from respected medical or scientific journals.
We can be reached at vertetnoire@riseup.net. We encourage people to reach out for any reason, either to send us supportive messages or to accuse us of blasphemy, conspiring with the Devil, and/or crypto-eugenics.
Comments Off on Fear and Loathing in the Age of COVID
Mar212021
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
There’s a lot of weird and crazy things in the media these days, but one of the weirder and crazier things that I’ve seen lately appeared in the Ottawa Citizen back in October. The headline was “Forged letter warning about wolves on the loose part of Canadian Forces propaganda campaign that went awry”. Apparently, “a letter from the Nova Scotia government sent out to residents to warn about a pack of wolves on the loose in the province was forged by Canadian military personnel as part of a propaganda training mission”.
That training mission also apparently involved using a loudspeaker to generate wolf sounds. I don’t know what’s weirder, that the Canadian Forces would do such a thing, or that they’d get caught. Are the Trailer Park Boys now running psy ops? (Sunnyvale is in Nova Scotia. Just saying).
Thea article quotes a U.S. professor who calls this a major violation of ethics. “This is way over the top,” Briant said. “It’s a very dangerous path when you start targeting your own public with false information and trying to manipulate them.”
“Briant said the deception has nothing to do with wolves; it was likely an exercise in the testing the military’s skills in trying to manipulate the population with false information…”
This is where it gets really interesting, though:
“The Nova Scotia propaganda training comes as the Canadian Forces spools up its capabilities to conduct information warfare, influence operations and other deception missions aimed at populations overseas and, if necessary, the Canadian public.
Briant revealed on Monday the Canadian Forces spent more than $1 million in training its public affairs officers in skills to influence targeted populations.
In July, this newspaper reported a team assigned to a Canadian military intelligence unit monitored and collected information from people’s social media accounts in Ontario, claiming such data-mining was needed to help troops working in long-term care homes during the coronavirus pandemic. The collection involved comments made by the public about the provincial government’s failure in taking care of the elderly in the province. That data was turned over to the Ontario government, with a warning from the team it represented a “negative” reaction from the public.
This newspaper reported at the same time that the Canadian Forces planned a propaganda campaign aimed at heading off civil disobedience by Canadians during the coronavirus pandemic. The plan used similar propaganda tactics to those employed against the Afghan population during the war in Afghanistan, including loudspeaker trucks to transmit government messages. The propaganda operation was never put into action.
In addition, some Canadian military officers have suggested creating fake Facebook and other social media accounts for carrying out deception operations as well as harnessing social media accounts of Canadian Forces members, military-friendly academics and retired senior military staff to challenge opposition politicians and journalists who raise controversial issues regarding the Canadian Forces.”
So, I suppose we can at least be secure in the knowledge that the Canadian Forces seems pretty inept when it comes to “information warfare”. It took a “military intelligence unit” to figure out that the public had a “negative” reaction to old people dying of COVID? And their plan was to cruise around in trucks blasting propaganda from loudspeakers? What the fuck? Damn, I guess “military intelligence” really is an oxymoron.
However, there’s good reason to be concerned as well. For one thing, isn’t it unsettling that the Canadian Forces are gearing up for “information warfare”? Who exactly are they going to war with? If the army is preparing for “influence operations and other deception missions”, for what ends are people to be influenced and deceived?
We can make guesses. On February 15th of this year, the Globe and Mail published a piece by Lisa Kramer, which advocated for using an “evidence-based approach” to COVID propaganda. Of course, she didn’t call it propaganda. She called it: “messaging urging Canadians to abide by COVID-19 lockdown measures”.
Kramer writes: “Evidence suggests people will be more likely to follow the rules when information is framed both to make it easy to grasp and to emphasize that the majority of others are behaving themselves, too… “[b]ecause lockdowns go against humans’ innate social nature, it can… be helpful to use psychology-based methods to help promote lockdown-abiding behaviour. One such approach is to curate the way we present information, building on extensive evidence that people care what others think and engage in activities that others deem socially acceptable.”
What she is referring to is the concept of social proof, popularized by behavioural scientist Robert Cialdini in his classic work “Influence”. In this book, which I would highly recommend to anyone wishing to understand political persuasion, social proof is identified as one of six “weapons of influence”. The idea, put simply, is: “monkey see, monkey do”. A person who isn’t sure what constitutes appropriate action in a given situation will look to other people and imitate their behaviour. We all know this intuitively; as we all discern what is correct through reference to what other people think is correct. This becomes all the more true in unfamiliar situations, such as during times of crisis.
Back in March 2020, a group of behavioural scientists penned an open letter urging the U.K. government to use evidence-based techniques to influence the public with comply with its commands. Their letter states: “those essential behaviour changes that are presently required… will receive far greater uptake the more urgent the situation is perceived to be.”
It seems so benign when they put it that way, but it would seem to me that what is being proposed is the state uses psychological manipulation to frighten the populace so that they are more compliant.
Other examples make a pattern clear. According to an article in Die Welt, headlined “The German Government Ordered Scientists to Produce Data to Scare Citizenry”: “a group of German lawyers has been pushing for the Koch Institute to disclose correspondence with the German Home Office in which the latter demanded that “scientists” create “scientific” documentation to scare the populace… The document, published just weeks later, finally identified a worst-case scenario in which more than a million people could die from the coronavirus.”
The same article goes on to not that fear-conditioning seems to be widely accepted. It notes that “on the website of one of the largest and best known institutions of higher learning in the US, Cornell University, the following study was found: “Modelling the role of media induced fear conditioning in mitigating post-lockdown COVID-19 pandemic: perspectives on India”.
This study (which has not been peer-reviewed) finds that “fear conditioning via mass media (like television, community radio, internet and print media),” along with positive reinforcement, resulted in “significant decrease in the growth of infected population.”
Basically, this study advocates for the use of fear-mongering propaganda in the name of Public Health, specifically through the formation of conditioned reflexes. Remember Pavlov’s dogs? They were conditioned to drool when a bell was rung. Are we being conditioned to have automatic, unconscious reactions to certain stimuli as part of a propaganda campaign?
According to the study, the answer to this question is yes. It states: “Modelling studies have shown that fear has a major influence in reducing the impact of a pandemic. Fear was shown to be directly associated with increased social distancing, as well as increased security measures… Thus, reflex fear production through incoming information, combined with other techniques, can increase social distancing and cautious behaviour. Fear conditioned reflex production, a subspecies of classical conditioned reflex production, is the making of a connection between unpleasant events and a stimulus from the environment.”
The question then arises: If we are conditioned through fear, which stimuli are triggering which responses?
The study provides one example: “in the case of COVID-19, a person can be considered to have an attached reflex if he forms a connection between being uncomfortable and touching surfaces. In this way, he begins to perceive touching surfaces as touching the virus itself.”
This is deeply troubling. People are being conditioned to be afraid of touching surfaces. How insane is that? Are we really to believe that this in the name of the greater good? What about the psychological suffering of individuals who are highly susceptible to fear-conditioning? How many children will become life-long germophobes as a result of the current obsession with viruses? How many people will develop serious phobias and mental disorders as a result of this? What will the effects on society be if there is a class of people who are afraid of everything? Will a certain percentage of people become psychological casualties of this era?
As someone with a boundless curiosity regarding the human mind, it saddens me that psychology is not being used not to uplift and inspire people, but to keep them down. I personally feel that if the goal really was to save lives, that it wouldn’t be necessary to use fear to gain compliance. It would be possible to appeal to people’s better instincts, towards caring and conscientiousness. I believe that a positive message could have been equally (or more) effective, if the goal really was to protect the vulnerable from real and imminent danger.
One should remember that propaganda is morally neutral. Anti-smoking campaigns are a form of propaganda which, if you think being addicted a carcinogenic drug is bad, you might be inclined to think was beneficial for society. Nor is reference to the principle of social proof either good or bad. However, I don’t think that the motivation of any of this fear-conditioning is to “save lives” or protect the vulnerable. I believe it is to condition the population to be compliant, so that they won’t put up too much of a fuss during a time in which society is being radically transformed into a form that none of us would have chosen.
The good news is that social movements also have the ability to employ weapons of influence. Courage is as contagious as fear, and people will, once a certain threshold is crossed, emulate acts of defiance as well as acts of conformity. That means that social proof is a principle which can we as a movement can make use of as well. By everyday acts of disobedience, we can normalize resistance. Right now, the expectation is that people will comply with any rule, no matter how absurd. We must break the spell. And how do we do that?
It will acquire just enough resistance to reach a critical mass at which the illusion cracks and defiance becomes generalized. Remember, people look to others for cues from others as to how to behave. If breaking the rules becomes more common, following suit will be perceived as less risky by others. Through small, incremental actions, disobedience becomes more possible within the popular imagination. People then will be more willing to experiment with what they can get away with, and their examples make rupture with groupthink easier for people whose personalities are on the more conformist side of the spectrum.
The point isn’t to stubbornly insist upon an alternate interpretation of reality. The point is to show that alternatives exist, and that it is possible to create them, and that in order to be free in an unfree world one must both break the rules and get away with it.
Beautification of the city under cover of night is one way to take arms against the sea of lies that is drowning the world. Make no mistake: the souls of the pacified masses cry out in despair, desperately desiring that which gives life meaning, purpose and direction. If you can express what you are feeling through any form of self-expression, you are making it easier for others to find their voices. Political graffiti and wheat pasting provocative art sends a message to those who desire to remember themselves, whispering to their truant hearts: “there are others who are like you”. A spontaneous dance party in the streets sends a message to the city: “Dance before the day is lost!”
The task right now is to remind people of what there is to live for, to call people’s spirits back into their bodies, to energize their spirits with the desire to live and to fulfil the purpose of their existence on Earth. And how can one accomplish that?
By doing it yourself. By having fun. By laughing, dancing, playing, singing, gathering together. By having a good time. By refusing to take life so seriously. By affirming the bonds of friendship and community that bring true collectivity, that which emerges through love and organic social organization, and never from the false collectivity imposed by the state.
For A Joyous Rupture with the Reality of the Fear-crazed, for the Contagion of Revolt!
Comments Off on Queen Victoria Statue Vandalized with Red Paint After Curfew on Saint-Patrick’s Day
Mar192021
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Delhi-Dublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade declares: End the monarchy in Canada; end monarchies everywhere!
March 17, 2021, Montreal — The Delhi-Dublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade re-united in Montreal last night on an anti-colonial Saint-Patrick’s Day. They defied curfew to again vandalize the landmark bronze statue to Queen Victoria — unveiled in 1900 and located on Sherbrooke Street at McGill University — this time in red paint.
According to Pádraig Patel of the Delhi-Dublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade: “There is a renewed focus on the brutal legacy of the British monarchy, which is a clear symbol of racism and colonialism. Forget about celebrity distractions, let’s focus on getting rid of monarchs as one important action linked to our movements for social justice.”
Another member of the brigade, Sujata Sands, mentions: “We do regret that we were unable to topple the statue tonite, as those cool kids did back in August 2020 to the John A. Macdonald statue.”
A third member of the Delhi-Dublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade, Lakshmi O’Leary, declared: “Just put the British Royal Family, all of them, into a limousine, give them a drunk French chaffeur, and let nature take its course.”*
Concerning the Queen Victoria statue, the Delhi-Dublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade wrote on St. Patrick’s Day 2019: “The presence of Queen Victoria statues in Montreal are an insult to the self-determination and resistance struggles of oppressed peoples worldwide, including Indigenous nations in North America (Turtle Island) and Oceania, as well as the peoples of Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, the Indian subcontinent, and everywhere the British Empire committed its atrocities. Queen Victoria’s reign, which continues to be whitewashed in history books and in popular media, represented a massive expansion of the barbaric British Empire. Collectively her reign represents a criminal legacy of genocide, mass murder, torture, massacres, terror, forced famines, concentration camps, theft, cultural denigration, racism, and white supremacy. That legacy should be denounced and attacked.”
Some previous attacks on Queen Victoria statues in Montreal:
* Henri Paul was the driver of the luxury Mercedes with Lady Diana that crashed in Paris in 1997. Every member of the British monarchy deserves a drunk French driver!
There are currently at least sixty people still facing serious criminal charges from the 2019 and 2020 raids on Wet’suwet’en territory and the solidarity movement known as Shut Down Canada. Dealing with criminal charges is often an isolating and scary experience, especially when the legal system intentionally tries to make people feel alone and powerless. We think a support campaign is the best way we can fight back against these forces and show the state that we will not allow our friends and comrades to be criminalized. If we can support one another now, then we can support one another in all the struggles to come.
More than avoiding repression, what matters is how we deal with it. We need to always be finding ways to show those targeted they are not alone — this makes it easier for them to get through it with strength and integrity. As people move through the justice system, displays of solidarity and practical support make a real difference in the outcome. We need to show that those who are brave and take risks will be supported if we want to be brave together again in the future and see our movements grow.
We want to provide a space where defendants can write about their experiences with repression and criminalization, statements of solidarity, and updates about the charges, which will be posted on our Updates section.
We want to help defendants to fund raise for their legal battles, where we provide links to different defendants and communities’ GoFundMe pages.
We want to help defendants feel more supported in the incredibly isolating process of state criminalization, and are offering a PO box where letters of support, postcards, and zines can be sent, which we we then forward to defendants.
And, finally, we want to create an email campaign to pressure for charges to be dropped or for prominent figures to publicly support charges being dropped. We have created a basic sample template for a (polite) email, and a list of talking points that defendants have given us, and compiled a list of emails for it to be sent to.
Please share this campaign on your various data-mining surveilance platforms and use the hashtag #BlockadeDefense
Tonight was the 25th annual protest against police brutality. 25 years of marching, 25 years of systematic repression against it, like an annual tradition of bad taste. For this important anniversary the SPVM decided to let the march go on but with a very tight supervision; many police officers pushed people who did not follow their rules.
We marched in Parc-Extension, a working class, poor, migrant-majority neighbourhood, because it is threatened by gentrification, as are many others throughout the city. The trendy new Mile-Ex technology district and the arrival of a new University of Montreal campus are responsible for the gentrification of Parc-Ex and what comes with it: the eviction of many tenants who will not be able to afford to relocate in the neighbourhood, the explosion of prices and fancy stores, and an increase in police surveillance to protect the new wealthier residents so to bring “order” to the neighbourhood, these residents are “erased” and pushed onto the streets.
As a poor neighbourhood with a large racialized population, police harassment is part of everyday life in Parc-Extension. Although police have been promising to address racial profiling in Montreal for years, nothing concrete has been done and the repression continues. Serious police abuse is still commonplace. In Parc-Ex, what happened to Mamadi Camara recently is a good example. Demonstrating in Parc Ex is still tolerated, but as soon as our eyes turned to Town of Mount Royal the police pulled out their teeth, their batons, and their shields.
It is a sad and ironic coincidence that this 25th anniversary is being celebrated under the theme of the abolition of the police. COBP reiterates that this solution, which may seem radical if we stop at this slogan alone, is the only possible solution to curb the systemic violence of the state against vulnerable or marginalized people. The many groups and movements that have been leading the struggle with us over the past 12 months, following the abhorrent murder of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin are joining a struggle that COBP has been leading since its inception, supported by a growing number of people who are standing up and shouting out the collective frustration of their community: down with the police! We will no longer let them kill us with impunity on OUR streets!
There will never be peace without justice, and there will never be justice as long as the police institution exists to protect the status quo of the capitalist order.
Finally, we are calling for witnesses: if you have been arrested, brutalized, or if you have witnessed an arrest or a case of police brutality, please contact the COBP at cobp@riseup.net
We also remind you to be careful about what you post on social media.
Comments Off on Anarchy, Lockdown and Crypto-Eugenics: A critical response from some anarchists in Wales & England
Mar152021
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
“The Covid19 crisis has presented a challenge to anarchists and others who believe in a fully autonomous and liberated life” – so a recent submission to Montreal Counter-information declares. These words certainly resonate with our experiences. Anarchy in the UK is not just presented with a challenge; it is itself in crisis. Spycops, squatting ban, abusers, Corbynism, TERFs – the list is long, and the virus already found “the scene” in a sorry state. But Covid-19 represents something different, and on this we can agree with the analysis from Montreal. This is also where our agreement ends. In the following text we critique the analysis – we do so as its arguments are similar to those we have heard among friends and even comrades over the past months. Though the epidemic in the UK appears to be waning, its associated tendencies remain. The text calls for serious critiques, and so we offer the following in the spirit of antagonism against the present. We close with some suggested points of unity for anarchists in these times.
“Politicians”, their text begins, “lie”, and big pharma has exploited the pandemic. Maybe we can agree on a little more! In the UK, we were told that the virus was only a flu and to keep working as usual. (At the time of writing, the death count numbers over 125,000.) And we were told of Oxford’s vaccine, a people’s vaccine with no patent or borders (a mask that quickly slipped as the state reverted to vaccine nationalism). But these aren’t the lies they have in mind. Rather, they argue that politicians and the media have craftily overstated the virus’ threat, in a cunning plan to impose lockdowns and reap pharmaceutical profits. (Surely the hand-sanitiser corporations are behind this too..?) Anarchists, we are then told, have believed this powerful lie. Out of an “admirable [!] want to do well by the elderly and infirm”, the state has succeeded in “hacking our hearts and minds”.
This idea, appealing as it might be, is only a pale shadow of the reality. Covid-19’s threat is not a conspiracy, any more than Covid-19 itself. It is not the result of media hype any more than it is the product of Bill Gates’ brain or transmitted from 5G towers. It is the direct consequence of severe ecological destruction and capitalism’s toxic living conditions. Having brought it into existence, it is of course “exploited” by capital and state. As the critic notes, it is unlikely that capitalism will eradicate it, even if certain states claim this as their goal. Instead it is managed, incorporated, capitalised upon. This is at a far more fundamental level than creating profits for some pharmaceutical companies – we are seeing in the colonial core an historic restructure of work and class-composition. Our critic begins to scratch at this surface (they describe lockdowns as “classist”, as if a lack of lockdown would be classless!). Scratch a little deeper, and we see that capitalism faces a familiar contradiction: exploit workers, but ensure there are workers to be exploited tomorrow. Manage the virus, manage production. Like inflation, the death-graph must be regulated – kept just right. Everywhere this paradox is obvious: “stay at home” but “go to work”! Technocrats and managers debate the 2 metre rule just as the 19th century Factory Acts debated the relation of profits, health and cubic-feet per worker.[1]
We can call this capital’s “positive” side. Though each worker is cheap and replaceable, capital needs a body of workers. It can’t have everyone ill at once, and it can’t afford killing off too much of its working population. But it also finds and creates bodies superfluous to capitalist production: disposable bodies, bodies in the colonial margins, old bodies, less or unproductive bodies, bodies that cannot “work”. It’s here that we see capitalism’s eugenic and Malthusian tendency. This tendency, always present, has for the disabled been intensified in recent years, as the numerous lives lost due to benefit cuts demonstrate. Since the beginnings of “public health” in the 19th century, triage systems (a military invention) have ranked bodies in a hierarchy of value, rationing resources under conditions of artificial scarcity. In recent times, do-not-resuscitate notices imposed on Covid-19 patients with learning disabilities were the result of a care algorithm – tech meets “accidental” eugenics.[2] Capitalism itself could accurately be described as an algorithm of crypto-eugenics, always at risk of fascism outright. Like fascism, Covid-19 presents an existential threat to the lives of certain minorities – the proletarian disabled and the elderly in particular – and a slower death to others.[3] And like fascism, liberal democracies allow it to exist, manage it, keep their monster on the leash. At times this management fails: health-care systems collapse, production plummets. At other times, the far-right call for the monster to be set free.
Recognising the pandemic as an existential threat is where “our conversation should begin”. The critic talks of anarchists on the one hand, and the elderly and “infirm” on the other. It’s the anarchist that is agent-subject here, their freedom to act with or without them (the “vulnerable”) in mind. It erases from the beginning elderly anarchists, disability anarchism. Where are they and their freedoms in this imagined revolt? Our critic continues: as free anarchists, we also care for others, we co-operate with “consent” and without “force”. But who’s force, what consent? It’s a simple truth that your right to drink in the pub (that is, the right of the business to re-open) shits on the freedom of those at serious risk, those a few links down the chain of transmission. These chains of transmission are our chains. As anarchists we affirm the violence of liberation. Let us be clear: those that threaten the disabled cannot be consented with. We will find no freedom in frozen morgues.
The critic goes on to downplay the threat of Covid-19, a familiar refrain. Montreal Analysis come Barrington Deceleration – talk about technocrats! They cite statistics on average risks, masking the deadly risks to specific minorities (it won’t be bad for you!). They pit Covid-risks against cancer treatment (we can only afford one or the other!), despite the virus being far more deadly for those fighting cancer. Even were Covid-19 somewhat less risky (look, only 60,000 deaths!), the crypto-eugenic logic remains. In the UK, we must critically analyse recent events – particularly that certain assemblages of the state openly plotted course for “herd immunity” without a vaccine. It’s safe to assume that this Malthusian wet-dream would have led to health-system collapse and perhaps half a million deaths (“acceptable losses”).[4]
Where the critic calls on anarchists to question and critique the Covid-19 threat, we call on anarchists to reflect critically on eugenics as a logic of capital and state. We must also grapple seriously with its nasty history in the anarchist tradition, from Emma Goldman’s writings to sections of primitivist and anti-civ thought. As pandemics become more prevalent and eco-fascisms enter the mainstream, anarchists must fight to ensure nobody is “left behind”.
Finally, our friend attacks the tyranny of lockdown, claiming that as anarchists this should be our aim, and that in failing to do so we have cowardly ceded ground to the far-right. But their target is both abstract and confused. They use the terms curfew, lockdown and closures interchangeably (one of their cited articles even describes mandated mask wearing as “draconian”!) and argue that these measures must be attacked “in principle” as they are imposed without “consent”. We argue that as anarchists there is no state which can be consented to, and that the very notion of a social contract has nothing to do with anarchy. Rather than make vague statements for #freedom in the style of the Tea party right, we must locate and attack the instruments of power and control. “Lockdown” has come to mean a myriad of very contrasting measures – from asking people to stay at home to policed curfews, from enforcing meager workplace health and safety to the breaking of strikes, from closing businesses and schools to violent prison lockdowns (the term’s original meaning), from fining tourists and quarantine hotels to detaining migrants in military camps. It should be obvious which of these as anarchists we must attack, and which we can leave alone – or even fight for.
We must define our targets and recognise our enemies. Free business has nothing to do with our freedom. Simply opposing lockdown “edicts from on high” is as empty as supporting all protest. In the UK we have seen large, rowdy Covid-conspiracy demos led by celebrity anti-Semites, but we have also seen unpolitical gatherings fighting the police – as well as organised demonstrations for black lives. The US presents an even simpler dichotomy. Nothing could be clearer than the difference between the late-Spring business protests against Democratic governors and the Summer’s black uprising against the police. The first stood for the rights of small businesses and merged into the right-wing militia movement. The second exploded anger at the cops, expropriated goods and created temporary autonomous spaces. As anarchists we know where we stand.
Speculative points of unity:
Smash crypto-eugenics, of the right and of the left Obstruct Covid-conspiracy demos, recognising them as far-right mobs Resist the criminalisation of the pandemic, policing powers, curfews and intensified surveillance Target the reinforced border regime and “lifeboat fascism” Organise against the return to unsafe workplaces Fight the evictions of anarchist spaces and the mass-eviction wave Further networks of mutual aid and act with dangerous care Sabotage ecological destruction and animal exploitation, the cause of present and future pandemics Analyse the changing terrain, refuse the postponement of anarchy
Notes:
“It has been stated over and over again that the English doctors are unanimous in declaring that where the work is continuous, 500 cubic feet is the very least space that should be allowed for each person. … [but were this to happen] [t]he very root of the capitalist mode of production, i.e., the self-expansion of all capital, large or small, by means of the “free” purchase and consumption of labour-power, would be attacked. Factory legislation is therefore brought to a deadlock before these 500 cubic feet of breathing space. The sanitary officers, the industrial inquiry commissioners, the factory inspectors, all harp, over and over again, upon the necessity for those 500 cubic feet, and upon the impossibility of wringing them out of capital. They thus, in fact, declare that consumption [tuberculosis] and other lung diseases among the workpeople are necessary conditions to the existence of capital.” Karl Marx, Das Kapital (Chapter Fifteen: Machinery and Modern Industry, Section 9). If we assume a work-room height of 10 feet, 500 cubic feet would give a base of approximately 7 x 7 feet, 7 feet being a little more than 2 metres.
On the 26 June 2020, England revised its guidance from 2 meters to 1. Whilst “the evidence shows that relative risk may be 2-10 times higher”, “there are severe economic costs to maintaining 2 metre distancing. With a 2 metre rule in place, it is not financially viable for many businesses to operate.” https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-two-metre-social-distancing-guidance/review-of-two-metre-social-distancing-guidance
The linked Guardian article is from February 2021, but concerns regarding do-not-resuscitate forms were raised by medical establishment bodies at the beginning of the UK epidemic. https://www.cqc.org.uk/news/stories/joint-statement-advance-care-planning
“I just need you to recognize that this shit is killing you, too, however much more softly, you stupid motherfucker, you know?” Fred Moten on racism (interview, 2013). Vaccine nationalism is increasingly shifting this to the “postcolonial” elderly and disabled. Other groups of course include certain sections of the workforce (mostly low-paid) and people of colour, the urban poor, the incarcerated, migrants. (We would argue that the existential threat directly applies here to the elderly and disabled, whereas the Covid-regime intensifies existing threats against the latter groups.) A lot could also be said about the privatisation of Covid-risk to the household and the domestic abuse this has further enabled.
The UK’s Office for National Statistics estimates disabled people as making up 60% of all Covid-19 deaths (November 2020). Similar to “BAME” deaths, “raised risk is because disabled people are disproportionately exposed to a range of generally disadvantageous circumstances compared with non-disabled people.” https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/coronaviruscovid19relateddeathsbydisabilitystatusenglandandwales/24januaryto20november2020#main-points
The ONS estimated that approximately 15% of the population had antibodies to Covid-19 on the 18th of January 2021 (the rate was lower for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland). On this date the total UK deaths of people who had received a positive test result (a relatively low measure) was approximately 95,000. “Herd immunity” is estimated to require a threshold of at least 60% (the percentage Chief Scientific Advisor Patrick Vallance gave in his interview with Sky News on March the 13th, 2020) possibly more. That is, to reach herd immunity without a vaccine, more than four times as many people in the UK would need to have been infected than had in January 2021, making it reasonable to assume four times as many deaths (giving 380,000 as a conservative estimate). This is before considering reinfection, the lack of treatments at the beginning of the pandemic, likely health-system collapse, the higher chance of new variants etc. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveyantibodydatafortheuk/3february2021
More evidence has emerged of herd immunity without a vaccine being a pushed for strategy prior to March 23rd, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-54252272
By the Sex Work Autonomous Committee, an autonomous political organization of sex workers based in Montreal with the aim of demanding the decriminalization of sex work, and better working conditions in the sex industry more broadly.
Cari Mitchell is a former sex worker and a member of the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), a network of sex workers in the United Kingdom working both outdoors and indoors campaigning for decriminalisation and safety.1
In 2000, the ECP organized a sex workers’ strike that was part of the Global Women’s Strike on International Women’s Day. The Global Women’s Strike is an international network campaigning for recognition and payment for all caring work. A sex/work strike was organized again at that date in 2014 and 2019, on these occasions, with other sex workers’ organizations. We asked Cari Mitchell to share her experience as one of the organizers of the strike.
CATS: Your collective has existed for many years and used many political strategies to obtain rights for sex workers. How did the strike come up as a tactic to obtain decriminilization of sex work?
C.M.: Our collective which started in 1975 was founded by immigrant sex workers. From the beginning we demanded the abolition of the prostitution laws and for money in women’s hands from governments so we can get out of sex work if and when we want. It was and still is mostly women that are doing sex work, mostly mothers, mostly single mothers, doing our best to support our families. In the ECP we also fight legal cases against criminal charges such as loitering and soliciting and brothel keeping. Whatever people come to us with, we help them. We are an organisation of different nationalities, races, ages, sexualities and all genders.
We work closely with other organizations. We are part of the Global Women’s Strike and the campaign for a Care Income Now2. Like other women we want our work of giving birth and raising the next generation to be counted, valued and paid for. And as sex workers we know that if we had that money for the work we are already doing, most of us wouldn’t have gone into prostitution in the first place. We wish that those people who complain about the number of women who have to go into sex work because of poverty and lack of economic alternatives, would instead press the goverment for that money.
We are based at the Crossroads Women’s Centre in London and work closely with Women Against Rape, which is an anti racist, anti-violence against women organization. We also work with disability organizations – we have a number of women in our own network who have disabilities or who have children with disabilities, which is why they are working to get the money to cover the extra costs of dealing with a disability. Queer Strike which is part of the LGBTQ movement in the UK are also allies as is Support Not Separation which fights against children being taken from their mothers – which is happening here at frightening rates, the excuse being given that mothers are not protecting children against poverty or domestic violence. This is so outrageous. We know of sex workers who only started working to support their children and then have had them taken away by social services saying they are unfit mothers!
We have an international network so we learn from everyone’s experiences. Our sister organization in San Francisco is USPROS (The US PROStitutes Collective) and EMPOWER is our sister organisation in Thailand – who are involved at the moment in the massive struggle for justice in that country.
We campaign for decriminalisation along the lines of the law that was introduced in New Zealand in 2003 which has been shown to improve sex workers health and safety. The law removed consenting sex from the criminal law which means that the police now have to prioritise our safety rather than prosecute.
Women going on strike to demand recognition for their unwaged and low waged work has quite a long history. In 1975, all the women in Iceland went on strike and the whole country ground to a halt. It was fantastic! There are photos of thousands of women out in the streets. Newscasters had to have their children with them in the studio while they were reading the news about the women being out on strike!
People have always known that withdrawing our labour is a way of bringing attention to the issues we want to raise. On International Women’s Day in 2000, the Global Women’s Strike was organizing a women’s strike in many countries calling on governments to recognise and value all the unwaged work women are doing in the world. UN figures at the time showed that women are doing two thirds of the world’s work for just 5% of the income and 1% of the assets. We were already working with sex workers in Soho, London – one of the most well known red light areas in the country. Sex workers there had been part of our network for decades and we had fought a number of campaigns with them against the local Westminster Council trying to close down flats – trying to gentrify the area. Many of the women working in Soho are migrant women and the police targeted them in particular for raids, arrest and deportation but used as an excuse the claim that women were trafficked and needed saving. When we spoke with them, sex workers from Soho said they wanted to join the International Women’s Day strike. Women there work in walk-up flats – the clients come and knock on the door and wait. On the Strike day those doors were closed and Soho sex workers came together with others who worked in different places and ways. We all joined the Global Women’s Strike.
So that no-one could be identified, all the people on the march wore masks. No-one could tell who was a sex worker and who wasn’t, it was a fantastic success and there was a lot of publicity.
In the ECP we try to bring out the truth about sex work- about who we are and why we are doing it so people can have more of an understanding. We talk about the effects of criminalization on our safety and how we are workers just like any other workers, that most of us are supporting families both in the UK and in other countries as well. There are so many migrant sex workers sending money home to countries all over the world. These messages came across in our demands in the Strike in 2000 which was a great leap forward.
We continued to work with sex workers in Soho as Westminster Council continued to pursue them. Some flats were closed and women were driven out onto the streets. Tragically, one woman was murdered in 2000, shortly after the Strike. She was very well known within our network, we knew all about her. Her name was Lizzie and she was murdered while working on the street shortly after being forced out of a Soho flat. No sex worker has ever been murdered while working in a Soho flat. It is 10 times more dangerous to work outside than it is to work indoors with others.
The prostitution laws make it unlawful for sex workers to work together for safety, they drive the industry underground and so make us all vulnerable to violence. Under loitering and soliciting laws – just standing on the street and talking to a client, sex workers can be taken to court and convicted on the word of a single police offier. Once you have a conviction you have a criminal record under sexual offences and it’s pretty much impossible to get out and get another job. So you’re stuck. The police now often use civil orders which also force women to move out of areas they are familiar with and into darker side streets. If you work in a group for company and safety your colleagues can take your client’s car registration number when you get in the car and you can make sure he knows this. But that’s not possible if you have to work by yourself in a dark area to avoid coming to the attention of the police. Where police continue to crackdown, violence and murder of sex workers rises.
Indoors, it’s not illegal to exchange money for sexual services, but everything you have to do to work with others is against the law. More than one woman working from a premises is a brothel and arranging for people to work together, advertising, paying the rent is all unlawful under brothel keeping legislation. It is basically illegal to work safely in this country. Working together means people can look out for each other and learn from each other not only how to work more safely but also for instance to get the money first, how to deal with clients, how to do the job in the quickest time. One of the problems with continued police crackdowns is that most sex workers in this country are now having to work on their own.
Things have changed though – years ago sex workers used to be described in the press as vice girls, but that doesn’t happen anymore. The press is much more respectful and the public is much more aware of who sex workers are. They know that a lot of us are mothers, migrants, trans, women of color; they know that we are vulnerable women who have few alternatives to sex work. The strikes have been a really effective contribution towards this change. The more recent International Women’s Day strikes were organized by other sex workers organizations but we were very prominent in them, especially in the 2014 and 2019. We did a lot of organizing to get people out and we were very much out there and they were both a great success. It doesn’t always feel like it but things are moving along.
CATS: Your movement is in favor of decriminalisation and not legalisation. Can you explain why you think this model is the best option for sex workers?
C.M.: Decriminalisation which was won in New Zealand in 2003 has been a verifiable success. It was introduced under health and safety legislation and sex workers there say that they now have more legal and other rights and more protection from violence – they know they will not be prosecuted if they come forward and report violence to the police and under these circumstance violent men are more aware they will not get away with it. This makes an enormous difference to sex workers safety and is a standard we think should be everywhere.
Legalisation is completely different. It’s state-run prostitution. People have to register with the authorities to work legally and most people are unable to do that. Legalisation creates a two tier system where if you can afford to be known to be working you’re ok and you can work in the legalised areas or premises – but most of us can’t come out as sex workers. Who knows what might happen if your child’s school or a social worker or health authorities find out. It’s simply not something most people can do. In those countries where there is legalisation the prostitution stigma remains, most sex workers don’t register with the authorities and continue to work unlawfully. In the well known areas where people work outdoors, someone just walking into the area can be identified as a sex worker. Who can afford that? Internationally, sex workers are not campaigning for legalisation, we’re campaigning for decriminalisation. We want all consenting sex to be removed from the criminal law
CATS: Your strike was part of a broader women strike in the UK and internationally on International Women’s Day to bring attention to labor exploitation in all aspects of women’s lives. How do you think being a sex worker can compare to other feminised labour or unpaid work such as caregiving and cleaning?
C.M.: In lots of ways it’s similar work. Clients come to us not only because they want sex, but also because they want someone who is sympathetic to them, who will listen to them. Maybe it’s for fifteen minutes, maybe it’s for half an hour, maybe it’s an hour, maybe it’s for longer but they want the personal contact, that they are at the center of someone’s attention for that time.
In fact, one of the women in our network did sex work with a client but was also working with him as a care worker. She did both jobs with the same person and said it was much more work doing the caring work then it was doing the sex work.
In 2017, we did a survey which found there were many other jobs that women describe as exploitative and dangerous3. Sex work is one of the most dangerous jobs women do purely because violent man know that they can get away with being violent to us – they know we’re not going to report anything to the authorities because we don’t want to get prosecuted. That’s how it is.
That survey was really illuminating. We launched it in the House of Commons and it’s been very useful to show there are many other jobs that are described by women as being particularly exploitative and dangerous – that sex work is not uniquely exploitative.
In sex work, you can earn a bit more money in a bit less time and that’s very important especially if you’re a mother or you’re doing another job, maybe you’re working in a bank or working another way and you’re doing it to top up your low wages. A lot of people are doing that. Also, if you are a migrant, you don’t have access to jobs in this country in the same way at all. For instance if you’re an asylum seeker you don’t have the right to look for jobs. A lot of people are living in poverty and suffering discrimination – for instance trans people and women of color face racism and other disrimination all the time in the job market – that’s why so many people are driven into the sex industry.
CATS: How is a sex work strike organized concretely? How can you make sure everyone can participate, even the more precarious ones? The whorearchy (the hierarchisation of different types of sex work as some being more respectable such as stripping or camming then full-service sex work, particularly those who work outside) is one of the factors that affects the amount of criminalization someone will experience. Was this an issue while organizing the strike and how can you address this?
C.M.: We’ve been going for a long time and have a really big network around the country – as well as internationally. We’re in touch with people who work outdoors and indoors in many different places and we invited everyone to come to join the 2000 Strike. The organizing meetings were with people who were not only working in Soho but in other places as well. We sat down and made sure that everybody was able to put forward their suggestions. We were very careful to make sure everybody knew that they would not be public on the day, they would not be recognisable and would be able to take part without compromising their security in any way. That they were not going to be identified because everyone would be wearing masks.
People who worked in many different ways including strippers and people working online took part. We were really determined not to be divided. We are all affected by the laws in some way, however we work, but it was very important to us to make sure that people knew we start with the situation of people who work on the street who are most up against the law, are most stigmatised and therefore most vulnerable to the police and to other violence. So people knew we were not going to have any slagging off of anyone about the way they worked, that’s just not on the agenda. We are all doing it for the money because we need that money and we choose to work in different ways, whichever way fits our lives the best. I think that’s one of the reasons why we were successful in organizing the 2000 strike and the subsequent ones. Because people knew that we’re not going to be divided against each other.
CATS: Here in Montreal and Canada, most unions and mainstream feminist organizations are still in favor of the Nordic model. How was it organizing a sex work strike within a bigger feminist movement? How did you find alliance in the left and the feminist movement?
C.M.: Feminists who take a moral stand against prostitution have always been around, but back in 2000, they were not really interested in coming out against us and neither were the unions. Since then Nordic model has been more of an issue and we take every opportunity we can to address it – like going to trade union conferences, speaking out when we’re interviewed with feminists in the press. When you point out that criminalizing clients is going to increase the stigma and drive everybody underground so undermining safety, it’s obvious why we’re against it. Every country where the Nordic model has come in has shown an increase in violence against sex workers. Those women who call themselves feminists and are pressing for the Nordic model are in fact the biggest obstacle to getting decriminalization. If they would go to the government and say ‘Well, we don’t think women should be in prostitution, but we think that women should have money in their hands so they don’t have to do it’, that would be great ! But they don’t – they take a moral standpoint against prostitution and often make a career out of opposing it as politicians or journalists or academics. At the 2000 International Women’s Strike, there were thousands and thousands of women marching. There was the odd group of feminists standing on the edges with some odd placards, but they were never in a position to counter what sex workers were saying publicly.
Women’s safety is something that the government shouldn’t be able to argue about. We have here a prestigious government committee which spent a year doing an enormous piece of research into prostitution and in 2016 recommended that it be decriminalized, both outdoors and indoors. Also, crucially that prostitution records be wiped clean so that sex workers can get other jobs. It also recomended prostitution not be conflated with trafficking. But their recommendations were not taken up – the government saying it needed more research which just meant more money in academic’s hands. But even those academics who did do further research were not able to come up with the kind of counter report they had so wanted to produce.
The laws have to change and they will change. A divorcee used to be called a “scarlet woman” but not nowadays- things are changed, there has been a women’s movement and decriminalization will happen because sex workers are a key part of that international women’s movement.
CATS: The criticism of borders and the way they are almost always excluded in the trafficking discourse seems to be a big part of your campaign. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
C.M.: We have a lot of immigrant women in our network and a lot of them are seeking asylum, running from other countries and trying to survive. Under UK legislation, people making claims for asylum have to live off of 37 pounds a week4, a pittance! So in order to survive and maybe to send some money home, sex work is one of the options people have.
We also know from our experience not only in Soho but also in cities around the country that the police target migrant sex workers under the guise of saving women from traffickers. We have made it a priority to counter that. For instance, in Soho, women say ‘look we are not being forced, we are working here because we need to survive and to send money home to our family. Every penny we earn, we send it home to our family’. The only force sex workers are under is the force is not having enough money to survive without doing it.
The best research has shown that less than 6% of migrant sex workers are trafficked. So when we speak publicly we make sure that we counter the publicity that police get when they raid. And it’s clear that these raids don’t have anything to do with saving any women from trafficking but to aid the immigration agenda of the government – which is to deport as many migrant people as possible. Women who are picked up are often sent to immigration centers and deported against their will. Terrible.
CATS: Now what do you think are the next steps for the sex workers movement in the UK? How does COVID impact the way you mobilize?
C.M.: I’m sure it is the same in your country, but COVID has exacerbated everything. At first, everybody did try to stop working. People were and still are in this horrendous dilemma of either stopping working so you’re not making your family vulnerable to the virus – but then you’ve got no money to feed them. And you can’t pay your landlord if you work indoors. Or you can decide to continue working and have a bit of money but then you have to be very very careful with clients – and the police may come after you.
People who have continued working have taken very careful precautions with clients. During the lockdown, most people have basically stopped because they feared their neighbors or the police or other authorities are going to catch up with them in some way, they will get in trouble with the law and then you have another whole story to deal with.
Some sex worker organizations were doing a great job of raising money for sex workers who were unable to continue working, and we helped distribute that money around to people in our network who needed it. But we decided that as that good work was going on, we would focus on pressing the government to recognize sex workers as workers, to demand an amnesty from arrests, and to demand that sex workers are able to easily access emergency payments. But the government hasn’t done one single thing to enable sex workers to get that money. We made sure with our public campaigning that this point was very prominent and it did bring together some members of parliament. We asked everyone on our mailing list to write to their local MP and press them to raise these matters in parliament, and some MPs did do that. The government got back saying ‘Well people can access a benefit called Universal Credit’ which is a benefit that is very hard to access, takes ages to get to you, and isn’t enough to live on. People in general are much more aware about these very low benefits – so many people in this country are having to rely on them one way or another in order to survive right now.
The pandemic has clarified a lot of issues, starting with how much caring work women are doing, making sure people in communities have enough food, that they are okay. It also clarified the brutality of the government. For example in care homes, elderly people were not protected from the virus at all. They sent people who were positive with the virus from hospitals and into care homes so then of course, hundreds and thousands of elderly people died. But the government was happy – they haven’t got to pay their pension! The government recently announced that billions of pounds are going to the military, so we know that they have the money. They have had to organize a furlough system whereby people get 80% of their salaries if they are temporarily laid off. So we know that the money is there and we know that they have been lying to us when they say there is no money. It is very clear now they didn’t organize to make sure hospital and care home workers had all the protection they needed. It’s the same with sex workers, they don’t really care if we live or die. I think people have even more scepticism about the government than before.
Governments want to keep criminalisation of sex work because they want to keep us all divided, they want to divide us into good girls and bad girls. But we refuse that in the same way that we refuse to be divided as sex workers depending on the different ways we work. In New Zealand, decriminalization hasn’t resulted in an enormous increase of people doing sex work because that depends on the financial situation in the country. It’s just that you are not criminalized for earning money in that way. Governments have to contend with the international sex worker movement and based on safety and rights, we will win.
1 You can learn more about the ECP at https://prostitutescollective.net/
2 Care Income now is an international campaign led by the Global Women Strike that advocates for a care income for all those, of every gender, who care for people, the urban and rural environment, and the natural world. For more info: https://globalwomenstrike.net/open-letter-to-governments-a-care-income-now/
3 The report of the survey – What’s A Nice Girl Doing In A Job Like This: a comparison between sex work and other jobs commonly done by women, can be found on ECP’s website: https://prostitutescollective.net/
Seven inmates of the Laval migrant prison are continuing the hunger strike they began on March 1, 2021. The strikers have launched a declaration to announce their strike, denounce their situation and demand their release.
Declaration of the Inmates of the Laval Detention Centre
We are a group of migrants detained at the Laval Detention Center.
With this letter we wish to denounce the conditions in which we are being held at the Center. For some time now, the COVID virus has entered the prison. The sanitary measures taken by the immigration officers are clearly insufficient.
Some of the detainees have already contracted COVID. Others complained of pain similar to the symptoms of COVID but were given only Tylenol. We are in a lot of pain.
We had also been confined to separate rooms without receiving any psychological assistance. We are distraught and very fearful for our health.
In our opinion, using detention as an immigration policy is in all times an inhuman and unjust measure, with or without COVID.
On the other hand, we are announcing that we have started an indefinite hunger strike starting March 1st to contest the treatment we are receiving.
We are asking to be released from the Laval Detention Center because it is a place where the virus can spread, and it is only a matter of time before we are all infected.
This is a call for help. We want to be treated with dignity and above all we want to be protected in this time of pandemic like every Canadian citizen.
Signatures : Marlon, Carlos Martín, Rafael, Mehdi, Alan, Karim, Freddy
Stella, l’amie de Maimie: Fighting to end the criminalization of sex workers’ bodies since 1995
Sex working bodies are criminalized, surveilled, stigmatized, and discriminated against daily. Some people respect and revere our bodies, while others vilify and reduce us to the parts of bodies. Anti-sex work prohibitionists and law enforcement attempt to control us for using our bodies for pleasure, economic empowerment, and our advancement in society. Even though our bodies are only one of the many working tools we use in the context of our sex work, the stigma around sex work leads to social control and criminalization of our work and our lives. It results in discriminatory health, public, legal, and social services for sex workers, compromising our health and safety.
The criminalization – and ultimate prohibition of sex workers, clients, third parties, and advertising – introduced through The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (née Bill C-36) implemented in December 2014 impacts sex workers first and foremost – it displaces sex workers from habitual workplaces forcing sex workers to work in unknown areas and without safety mechanisms, it criminalizes communication necessary for consent in sex work, and fosters fear of arrest in clients whereby they do not share important information to sex workers. These “end demand” models are often described as “decriminalizing sex workers and criminalizing clients” – this is a lie. Limited understanding of “end demand” models means that their proponents are unaware of the ways in which this regime still criminalizes sex workers and put sex workers at risk.
Since 1995, sex workers in Montreal have been fighting for sex work law reform – the removal of criminal and immigration laws against sex work, as a first step to respecting sex workers’ rights. Decriminalizing sex workers, clients, and the people we live and work with is primordial to respecting sex workers Charter rights to safety and security. This echoes not only the Supreme Court decision in Bedford, but major international human rights research conducted by Amnesty International, UNAIDS, Human Rights Watch, and the World Health Organization, who all call for the total decriminalization of sex work. Decriminalization is only a first step: members of our community who occupy public space – particularly those who are Indigenous, Black, trans, who use drugs, who are living in homelessness — will continue to be harassed, surveilled, and policed. Ending unwanted and unsolicited visits from police in our lives is long overdue.
We continue our struggle to end the policing of our lives and our work, and we stand in solidarity with communities to defund police towards a police free society.
We invite sex workers working to contact us for non-judgemental advice and support, and ways to protect yourself during a time of increased surveillance, police repression, and general sentiments of prohibition.
