Montréal Contre-information
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Vlad Partout: Let the fire spread

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Feb 222021
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

“Let’s set healing fires for our dead. Let’s light up authority and domination so it burns as brightly as our friends immense heart. Let’s never forgive the world that took him from us, and never forget the ways he touched us. Ai Ferri Corti.”
– a card distributed at the funeral of our accomplice Vlad

Vlad would have turned 26 today if he was still with us. For those who weren’t fortunate enough to have met him, know that he was fucking solid. 

In an effort to feed the flames of his contributions to our shared struggles, we’d like to refocus on a text that we know was deeply inspiring to him, initially published in Avalanche: a journal of anarchist correspondence.
 
I cut through time as if with a knife. We’re hanging out in a park, watching friends play basketball. Vlad is vividly recounting how impacted he was by this text from Sweden, between fiddling with his pants and drags on a cigarette. Only a complicit grin is needed to communicate its obvious relevance to our context.

As the years pass, we invite you to contribute to a tradition of combative memory – a gift of rebellion and refusal every February 22nd, for yourself and for Vlad. Without falling into the authoritarian trappings of martyrdom, we can bring the memory of our dead into the present through attack.
 
You are alongside us in every act against authority, my friend.              

Let the fire spread

 September 2016 – Sweden

Let the fire spread, is a text written under significant circumstances, concerning the late summer and early fall unrest in Sweden and Denmark this year (2016). We, the authors, are comrades who grew up and lived most of our lives in different Scandinavian countries but who were not there as the events unfolded. As has already been shown in the text Social tension and anarchist intervention in Sweden in Avalanche issue 2, the social tensions in Scandinavia and most of all in Sweden are not something new. And sadly enough, the lack of initiative and even ability to analyse and imagine something else and new among many comrades in the Nordic countries, also is not something new. When the fires once again started to spread between cities and neighbourhoods and even countries, we all agreed that we just could not let this pass without a single anarchist attempt to intervene. This time, the most commonly used method of attack used by the rebelling individuals was to set cars ablaze, which in comparison with the rioting and group attacks of the past years, is something very easily reproducible for a small group and even for an individual, which in itself presented a good opportunity to reintroduce other perspectives and terms but most of all, an imagination of a different way of fighting than the ruling one. The ruling one being very society-friendly and humble; rude and uncompromising only when it is sanctioned by the state. In the end this text is, besides a deficient analysis and a proposal, an attempt to spread another imagination and ideas of what it means to fight authorities, to fight this society, which in its obvious absence left comrades to a defeatist retreat during recent years. We decided to translate the text from the originals in Swedish and Danish to English, on the one hand to let international comrades know that what UpprorsBladet wrote in 2014, still is an ongoing reality in Scandinavia, and on the other, to let our ideas and way of intervening be debated or criticized by comrades closer to our ideas. As this introduction text is written, beginning of November, the text has been widely spread – from hand to hand as well as online – but with the coming of colder winds and snow, this wave of unrest must be considered as over or at least cooled down. However, we hope that our text might provoke another mindset and other discussions for the next wave to come.

***


Let the fire spread – an analysis of the last months car burnings in Sweden and Denmark and a proposal for intervention

The last months, something which belongs to the everyday life of the Swedish suburbs, has sprawled like a weed in the garden of social peace and has come to take the shape of a nameless and apolitical revolt. The simple act of setting fire to a car has, precisely for the reason of its simpleness, let itself be reproduced in small towns as well as bigger cities, on both sides of the Öresund, in segregated areas as well as in central, rich and well-integrated ones. Everything from single incidents to (what seems to have been) co-ordinated actions throughout the city. From society the response came from police, fire departments, media, politicians and random experts, who made statements and promised or proposed a serious amount of actions; actions which do not only serve to stop the car burnings but more generally increase the repression against those who do not want to toe the line. With this text we aim to create a modest analysis, followed by a more determined proposal for an intervention in this conflict between anonymous individuals and society. An anarchist intervention without any place for politics or negotiation. The way we see it, all we have got to lose in this, is the comfort that kept us from burning the first car.

Chronology and the problem with media

It has been hard to keep up with these events as they have developed. As soon as one has tried to put together a chronology for a better overview, new events have unfolded – on the part of society as well as its antagonists. For us, it is also clear that the greatest source of information that we have and have had, has been official media reports, as other ways of communication have lacked. So with the words of some comrades in mind: “The millions of words and images that fill the screens and (toilet)papers are not an echo or reflection of reality, they form an integral part of the creation of that reality, of the imposition of the morals, rules and logics that permit the existence of the State,” (*1) it is not without self-critique that we use this information. This information has obviously already come in handy for politicians and good citizens, according to the quote above. So even if this information serves our enemies, we will use this information with the aim of overthrowing those who created it. We do not know what has been going on in the sphere of social media but take it for granted, that these so called tools have not been used to analyze and spread these actions, with the aim of expanding the situation to a social revolt. If it is only the case that the media would have hyped and sensationalized these events, which allegedly happen all the time, with the same intensity(*2), this does not change the fact that these actions – the car burnings as well as the numerous attacks on cops and other uniforms – in themselves carry with them revolt and the potential for social revolt. Therefore, it is hard to know where to draw the line between what belongs to this specific escalation and what belongs to a more broad and constant social tension. We do not want to hijack the actions of different individuals, just to confirm our ideas; to project our longing for an expanded revolt on individuals and actions, that carry their own reason, meaning and will. So even if it is hard not to involve events like the organized attacks on cops and other officials in Kronogården, Trollhättan, or the ones that unfolded in Södertälje or Örebro, we will stay with the car burnings. In part because of their intense sprawl during the last months and in part because they do entail a very simple and reproducible method for attacking normality. In the first two weeks of August, the news sites and magazines were filled with headlines like “16 cars were burned in 5 hours,” “Minister of Justice: ‘damned fed up’ with the hooligans,” “20 cars burned last night,” “The government calls for heavier punishment for the car burners,” followed by a daily repeated: “More car burnings last night.” In connection to this, experts in sociology, firefighters, cops and people who got their cars burned were interviewed. The cops desperately promised to and did engage with a more intensified presence in the affected neighbourhoods – without any greater success. In Ronneby, however, the cops were a bit more realistic as the chief inspector on duty made the following statement: “We are short on officers right now, it’s vacation times and all, so I cant promise any additional patrols in the area,” in connection to cars being burned three nights in a row in the small town. In reaction to this, the municipality decided to hire security guards to patrol the streets instead. Between the 1st of July and the 17th of August this year, the fire brigades in each city reported 134 car burnings in Stockholm, 108 in Malmö and 43 in Göteborg. Throughout 2016, up until the middle of August, 154 cases of car burnings were reported in Malmö alone, where in several cases it concerned more than one vehicle. In the first week of August it was estimated to have burned seven cars per night in the city area of Malmö. In the first weekend of August a cop car was set ablaze, as the patrol was responding to some reported disturbances in an apartment. With its epicentre in Malmö, according to media coverage, the car burnings spread to several other cities. In the night between the 16th and the 17th of August a car fire in Norrköping led to the complete destruction of twelve cars and additionally at least seven cars were damaged. Meanwhile there were continuous reports of car burnings in smaller cities like the aforementioned Ronneby but also in Skara, Varberg and Borås as well as in bigger cities like Stockholm, Linköping, Göteborg, Västerås and Södertälje. In the middle of August the car burnings spread to Denmark, where cars were burning several nights in a row. In the night of the 20th of August ten cars were set aflame. Since then it has continued with varying intensity, in different areas of the Danish capital like Christianshavn, Amager, Nørrebro, Valby and Vestegnen. According to media, there has been at least 50 cars burned in the area of Copenhagen, between the middle of August and the middle of September. The cops did not hide their suspicion, that the fires might have been inspired by the situation in Sweden and immediately started investigations to catch the agitators and calm down the situation. In the media they called out for witnesses and the cops went through an extensive amount of video material from CCTV in the affected areas. Pictures and description of a suspect was made public and after several anonymous tips, a person was arrested and locked up the 24th of August, suspected of having burned ten cars and of havingattempted to burn another 23. This, however, did not stop the fires, that continued in different places around the city. Also the stinking wannabe-cops, the SSP:s (a co-operation between school, social services and the cops, that has as its aim to keep an eye on and prevent kids from committing crimes), increased their activities because of the car burnings and reinforced their numbers in the streets in certain neighbourhoods, as to prevent the youth to be inspired by the fires. Every night in the first week of August, the Malmö cops engaged with a helicopter in the hunt for the car burners. The 11th of August, obviously not for the first time, this helicopter was being pointed at with a green laser and for this two youngsters were arrested later that night. The cops interrogated them, with the hope of a connection to the car burnings but the two detainees were released the next morning and apparently leaving the cops without any leads. The 15th of August, according to the press, a 21 year old person was arrested at a traffic control in Rosengård. The cops claimed the car to be full of gasoline canisters and a hammer for breaking windows. The person was released on the 18th of August, as there were no legal grounds for incarceration but the suspicions remained. The same day the cops presented a new action to be taken in their struggle against the car burnings. For the first time in Sweden, drones would now be used by cops, primarily to hunt down the car burners. The drones will, according to the cops, guide the reinforced MC-patrols and plain clothes officers on the ground. The proposal came from and will be carried out by the NOA, the cops National Operative Unit, and the equipment will be supplied by SAAB (a company whose production for the military market most likely will find additional “civil” uses, other than just drones for hunting car burners).

The response from society

To increase our understanding of the whole situation but also to see where one can find possibilities to extend these acts of revolt towards insurrection, we want to have a closer look at the circus that society kicked off as a reaction to the unrest. It is interesting at a first glance, to see how the burning of cars continues to spread in silence, while the media, politicians, cops, experts of all sorts and active citizens compete to be the loudest and most condemning one concerning these events. In the silence the actions speak for themselves and would they be left in their silence, all you hear is the fire crackling, no more explaining would be needed. But the silence is dangerous and brooding for the ruling order. The best remedy against silence is of course to make noise, talk and distract, to take over the power of definition. In Sweden they talked about failed integration and vandalism, while in Denmark they initially talked about pyromania, i.e. the burning of cars was declared as a disease. An assumption that was soon abandoned, as the “suspected pyromaniac” was detained and the car burnings still continued to spread. The discussion then went into a direction more similar to the Swedish one, with focus on juveniles. In the first case the act (of burning a car) is isolated and said to be an act limited to poor youth with a migrant background, which makes it harder for others not fitting into these categories to identify with the actions. In the other case the act is pathologized. I.e. if you identify with these actions, you ought to consider yourself sick, a pyromaniac, which, with the power of social shame, causes a distancing in most people. The same actions, the same silence, confronted with a lot of noise from society. In Sweden these discussions have had time to develop further than in Denmark and the ruling politicians have proposed harder punishments, not just for the car burners but to hit two birds with one stone, for the whole social category of juveniles. The proposal would, when carried out, mean that on-call courts are established, that the ankle monitor is allowed to be used in younger ages and that the surveillance measures in probation convictions against juveniles would be intensified. The political opposition calls for more cops and for a return to the former, recently changed, police organization. Sociologists are warning about the negative consequences of harder punishment and propose instead to increase the presence of the cops in the streets, as this allegedly was the reason for the de-escalation in the similar situation in Sweden some ten years ago. Circling around the rotting carcass of these discussions, we find the silent vultures. They who, with their businesses, profits from the car burning and foremost from the societal circus surrounding it. The drones of SAAB has already been mentioned but we also have the insurance and security companies. In several articles in for example the Swedish Radio, the public is informed about how the “traffic insurance” is not enough on its own, to cover the cost in case of a car fire but the car must be at least “half insured” to cover the damages. One does not have to have studied at a business school to understand the economic value for the insurance companies, in such a well-meant and informative article. Especially when it is followed up by articles where spokespersons from insurance companies are reassuring that the insurance for the people living in the affected neighbourhoods will not be raised or different than in less affected neighbourhoods. In places like Ronneby, where the cops left their uniforms in the closet and are chilling somewhere else, the municipality decided to hire a security company, to instead have security guards patrolling the streets.

In connection to riots or mass actions like the ones in Örebro and Södertälje

In two Södertälje suburbs, two nights in a row, youngsters were building burning barricades and attacking buses as to lure the cops to them. When the cops arrived, they attacked them with stones and fireworks. One of the nights, a stone broke the front window of a cop car, sending a cop with a damaged eye to the hospital. In the Örebro neighbourhood, a bigger amount of masked individuals gathered and moved around in the area. Setting a laundry-facility on fire, also to lure the cops to them, and then greeting the cops with molotov cocktails, rocks, fireworks and golf sticks. Extra guard patrols from different companies are called in as foot soldiers next to the cop cavalry. Security companies that, through the last years so called “refugee crisis”, has experienced a new Klondike-era for their businesses. Companies that, enriched with experiences of beating up people of colour, gladly continues with this – the Department of Migration now substituted with the cops, for the guards to step in for, and the refugees substituted with car burners, in their role as moving targets. These vultures remain vultures, only as long as they are allowed to work undisturbed, as long as they can keep a distance between themselves and the dramatic centre of these events. Just like in an ecosystem, they fulfil an important role in the maintenance of the societal system and contribute to choke the brooding revolt. In the social peace, every break means a possibility for revolt and insurrection; the break is in itself not seldom a conscious act of rebellion, however limited to one unique individual and one unique situation. The break uncovers the conflicts that the social peace otherwise covers. What we in our everyday lives choose to swallow, in terms of submission, is spit out and all the words about us living in “the best of bad worlds,” about “that’s just how it is,” etiolates in the face of the obvious discontent with the lives we are forced to live in this society. A burned out car might not feel like the starting signal for a social revolt but at the same time that is exactly what it can be. What it can become. It can at the same time be a single individuals attack on the social peace, on the social order, as it can be a sabotage of another individuals function in the maintenance of the same. This we see as factors, independent of the fact that it goes down with intention and with a wish for revolt or if it happens out of boredom, for some cash or for a personal vendetta. The social peace, where the state claims the exclusive right of mediation and population control, does nonetheless, with or without the intention of the assailant to overthrow the society, get attacked when a car is burned. In the normality that we are all expected to reproduce, there is (still…) no space for burning cars. Even less for burnings car without a clear and graspable reason, that almost freely spreads over great distances and regions. When this spreads as it has done during the past months, it is impossible, even for the people in power, to ignore the existence of a social conflict. What they instead try to do, is to isolate the conflict to belong only to a small discontent and untamed group – with whom the majority, as already mentioned, should not have something in common. It becomes a matter for the police, for the politicians and the sociologists. The state tries to make the matter intelligible and manageable in its role as mediator. It tries to make it into a matter and a conflict between the authorities, with its loyal specialists, and a group of “badly integrated youth”. Thus not what it actually is: individuals like you and me in conflict with the life we are forced to sustain under these circumstances.

From anonymous revolt to apolitical insurrection

“This crime is very hard to investigate. We don’t see any patterns and we don’t have any suspects. We need all the help we can get,” – Malmö cop Lars Forstell. We are not only interested in the car fires that are sweeping across Sweden and Denmark because they carry the spark of rebellion, but also because they offer us another way of understanding insurrection, because their apolitical character gives us a hint about a different tactic. The car fires are an uncontrollable attack on society, because they are spread all over the territory which the state controls and are not focused on specific symbolic targets. They are simple to reproduce anywhere and any time, and it is impossible for the police to be everywhere at the same time. Political movements are fixed on the idea of gathering a movement or a certain category of the exploited in front of a symbolic aim in the belief that if enough people are gathered, power will be forced to change. In reality, these methods are easy for the state to control, because it is not so difficult to gather the repressive forces in specific places with a predetermined date. Even anarchists who actually criticize this perception of struggle continue to reproduce this logic. Why all the demonstrations to symbolic targets surrounded by heavily equipped police? Why always be a step behind the state and the police? The car burners show the way to a different form of conflict with the state. Constant, uncontrollable, flexible and destructive. Here it is the police who are lagging behind. Sure, car fires will not be enough to overthrow the existent. But they do open up, in the Scandinavian context, a new way of understanding insurrection, and gives inspiration for different tactics for our struggles. They give us a springboard that we can use in our individual revolt in the leap towards a social insurrection, and that is, one must say, more than political movements have created in Scandinavia for a very long time. Speaking of political movements, the struggle around the partly occupied house Rigaer 94 during the past half a year showed how the car fires can be used as a method, but also showed their limits, which might be interesting to shortly consider. (*3) In the struggle around Rigaer 94 it was, in our opinion, the same factor which caused the rapid and intensive diffusion, that also became the reason why the conflict was not expanded beyond concerning only anarchists and autonomists. This factor was the limiting of the struggle to the house and local area. Compared to Scandinavia, Germany is full of autonomists and anarchists, of whom many joined in on the promise made by comrades to cause 10 million euro of damage – some because they identify with Rigaer and act in solidarity, others because they are constantly looking for new events to react to, and found one in this. Which leads us once again to have a conflict between a small group of easily categorized individuals (anarchists and autonomists) and the state, with the rest of society as spectators and commentators. The conflict thus came to circle around a symbolic target, which gave the state at least a hint about where to send its repressive forces, and made it easier to handle and predict. Most other people who could have an interest in burning cars or otherwise revolt against society, do not have an obvious point of reference in Rigaer, or in the subculture in which it is based. Presumably even less when people start saying that they are political, or that burning cars is a political act. As long as the point of departure is something which only a few can refer to, then it remains a duel between these few and the state.

This escalation which have taken place in Sweden and Denmark will probably die out as repression hardens and advances. It will probably reignite in a couple of months, or in a year? And then die out again. Provided that we do not attempt to expand and strengthen it with our own acts, ideas of and longing for freedom. It is neither guaranteed to succeed nor doomed to fail. Only one thing is certain, and that is that as long as we remain passive spectators or commentators, we are guaranteed the existence which we so intensely despise. If we have criticisms towards how some have acted during this escalation of car fires, then let us act in accordance with our ideas, and in that way show what we propose and what it means in practice. Especially if we wish something else from other rebels. A car belonging to a proletarian was burned and it disturbed you? What keeps you from going at a SAAB office, security cars or insurance company? If you think that one cop car was too little, see to it that more will go up in flames. It is not through passive nagging that our ideas can spread and their consequences be multiplied, but through action and consistent honesty towards ourselves. If we want to realize our ideas and dreams, then we have to take them and ourselves serious. By questioning traditions of struggle which have not moved us closer to our dreams, but rather to society. By searching for inspiration wherever we see revolt, and not just where we see people following political manuals. If we share ideas, it means a constant hostility towards this society. It means exposing oneself to uncomfortable social situations. It means risks. Such as the risk of losing the privileges granted to you by the order you claim to despise. It means embracing and being embraced by the unknown and all the fears that come with it. It means trusting yourself and your ability to meet that which awaits beyond the break with normality. What is it exactly that have kept you from burning a car or from building barricades in the streets and attacking the cops when they arrive? Whatever your answer may be, it is not a obstacle for you to find your own way to act in this conflict.

Into the Unknown

We want freedom, and the way we see it this is incompatible with this society, well, with every society that deprives the individual of its power and self-determination. Thus is the destruction of this society, with its inherent authoritarian mechanisms, essential for us to be able to usurp what we want. As our point of departure is the everlasting now – neither deadlocked in a Marxist determinism nor consumed by a capitalist future investment of our energy and our dreams – and we want to live in anarchy now, not tomorrow or in a year, but now, our ends are closely interwoven with our actions. In other words: in anarchy we do not want to negotiate with authorities of all kinds, but attack them and in the worst case defend ourselves against them. So why would we negotiate with them now? In anarchy we do not want to organize ourselves in masses and pursue politics. So why would we do this now? Especially since history taught us that this serves the survival of society rather than the struggling individuals… We want to see the revolt spread without leaders and stagnating aims. We want to spread our revolts and see them become an insurrection together with other individuals athirst for freedom. To, at all, be able to get there, an expansion of the conflict that lies before us is clearly needed. So, how can a conscious expansion of this conflict take shape? Our goal is not to be able to count as many members as possible, in some sort of organization or movement, neither is it to put forth some demands for change or to be “strong enough” to be able to negotiate with or about the power. Our goals are, as has already been stated, as easy as they are hard to realize – freedom through revolt against those who deprive us of it. Thus can neither success nor expansion be measured in the number of participants in an uprising or if “normal people” sympathize with us or not, but in the quality of our own experiences, how our lives changes and where they take us. If a million people takes to the streets but in essence are only seeking a new leadership, a new shepherd, this is in every way a defeat. But if I in the right moment attack the right object, publish the right text – where right is a relative term, which can be underpinned by clear analyses of situations – or I enter new comradeships or meet new accomplices, and thereby new possibilities open up for me and others to prolong, deepen, strengthen and enlarge the extent of the personal and the shared revolt, then I can talk about a success – with myself and my surroundings as a benchmark. So, in this case the most obvious way to enter into the conflict, is first and foremost to take to the streets ourselves. For who are we to talk about all this, without having our own practical complicity? But to broaden the space for us, for our ideas and revolts, we should also identify the most active counterinsurgents and profiteers of this situation, as well as transforming them into obvious targets. The cops are already obvious in their role but not SAAB who supply them with drones and other equipment, neither are the insurance companies, the security companies and the politicians, using the situation to strengthen their power. Depending on the area in which you live, you for sure have your local authoritarian structures to identify and fight, whether it be a group of salafists, a racist hunting team, a neighbourhood watch or democracy loving social workers. It can be worth keeping them in mind, before running into them in the heat of the moment. All of the mentioned companies have nationwide offices in every bigger urban area and do have, just like the politicians, “names and addresses”. To point these out, to attack and to, with our own words, explain why this happens, is also to point out the structures of society and their relation to our existence in submission. Which could contribute to a more libertarian character of the revolt. More or less every enemy you can imagine in this society has a car. Nazis, politicians, CEO’s, cops, judges, screws and so on. Not everyone but most have cars and as we already have said: if someone’s choice of a car to burn has disturbed you, it is not hard to reproduce this act of revolt, but with an outcome that enriches your life.

This is all just scratching the surface, a hint of the possibilities that obviously has been neglected by comrades. Nevertheless, it is here we see the possibility for ourselves and those we consider to share our ideas with, to act and to expand this conflict. We have written this text to call for, that the revolt and the own ability to act is taken seriously. The insurrection and the social landscape is filled with contradictions and there are no simple recipes to fight a successful struggle against the world of authorities; we just simply have to try. But the first step must be to realize that there are already rebels that have set the torch of revolt ablaze, that have created a social tension where we can find thousands of ways to act if we want to. Not as followers or leaders that are to show the way to the real anarchist insurrection, but as accomplices in the destruction of the existent, with our own ideas, aims and actions. In this leap into the unknown, we have no guarantees for defeat or success, but we do at least have the possibility of that, which today is impossible: a world without authorities and rulers… so let the fire spread.

“We will destroy laughing, we will set fires laughing…”

Some insurrectionaries

Notes:
(*1): Text, A few notes on media and repression, published on solidariteit.noblogs.org, on the 23rd of August 2016

(*2):https://sverigesradio.se/sida/avsnitt/786141?programid=2795 (Media was in this specific radio show criticized for having created a false picture and that the sprawl of car burn-ings should have been exaggerated and even somehow fuelled by media reports. This critique is just like the actual media reports based on statistics and full of contradictions.)

(*3): In order to not lose focus, we leave a deeper analysis for another moment, but there is plenty of information on e.g. contrainfo.espiv.net for anyone on wants to dig in.

In Defence of Religious Freedom

 Comments Off on In Defence of Religious Freedom
Feb 212021
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

(Link to video of orthodox Jewish gathering being broken up in Montreal – https://twitter.com/i/status/1352813893039648768)

At this very moment, on Wednesday Feb 17, 2021, a pastor is in jail for holding worship services. This is a milestone in Canada’s slide into authoritarianism. Canada is now jailing dissidents. Christians are now a persecuted religious minority. So are Jews. Multiple gatherings of orthodox Jews have been broken up by police in Montreal over the last month. Not only is a clear example of oppression against a historically oppressed group, it is always telling about the times that we are living in. I don’t think that most people realize what this means. It means that we don’t have rights anymore.

Religious freedom is very clearly featured in the Charter of Rights and Freedom, which is supposedly the highest law in the land. Yet, at this very moment, a Christian pastor is sitting in jail because he continued to hold worship services when the state ordered him to stop. If this doesn’t concern you, it should. If Christians don’t have the right to assemble, it means neither do you. It means you don’t have a right to go to pow wows, or punk shows, or wherever it is that you find your community. If you are not free to do what you want to do if you had the choice, it means that you are not free. And, clearly, Canada is not a free country.

The state has now made it clear that it means business. Civil disobedience, even when very clearly protected by constitutional rights, will not be tolerated. What happens next depends on how people react to this. Will people realize that our rights are being trampled upon and stand up against this injustice, or are have people been too lulled into complacency to care?

If you have a heart in your chest that beats, and lungs that breathe and blood that pulses through you, you should realize now that you’ve got do something to stand up to this insanity. The existence of a virus does not justify prohibiting basic human activities like coming together to sing, to pray, and to affirm and cultivate community bonds. Whether or not you’re a Christian, whether or not you like Christians, it should consider you deeply when people are being prevented from practicing their religion. Need I even draw the parallels to the persecution of religious minorities in every totalitarian regime?

If you are not sympathetic to Christians for political reasons, please consider the following: this past Summer there was a Sun Dance which the police tried to break up. The Sun Dance Chief refused to back down, and the police left. Then Trudeau specifically said that indigenous ceremonies would be allowed to continue. Of course, indigenous ceremonies were outlawed for much of Canada’s history as part of a deliberate campaign of cultural genocide. That is a line that should not be crossed. To do so would to make absolutely clear that the Canadian colonial project is still genocidal. If the state is jailing Christians, historically privileged in Canada, from gathering, are we to trust they won’t also jail indigenous ceremonial leaders for refusing to cancel ceremonies?

If this is happening to Christians, it can happen to other religious groups as well. Would the injustice be more obvious if it was happening to people of colour instead of white people? Well, it may not be long before it that occurs, because there are certainly devoutly religious people of colour who feel very strongly that they have the right to worship, and will continue to hold services.

We as anarchists must stand against the forceful imposition of a police state upon us. True, anarchists have often been at odds with Christians, but there is also a strong tradition of Christian anarchists, such as Leo Tolstoy, Jacques Ellul, Dorothy Day and Ammon Hennessy.

I think that we would also do well to remember the words of Amon Hennessey said: You’re born free. Then you wait for someone to take that freedom away from you. The degree to which you resist are the degree to which you are free.

It is time for us to prove exactly how free we are. We must resist, we must raise our spirits up out of this damned lethargy and express our solidarity with our fellow people. Just think; what if the shoe were on the other foot, and it was anarchists who were being jailed for their organizing activities?

One thing that the system seems to have done really well is divide people into Left and Right, terms that no longer possess the descriptive power they once did. If most liberals are now for universal restriction of movement, then the term liberal has come to mean the exact opposite of its original meaning, and the word is useless. The new political divide is really between people who are pro-totalitarianism, and people that are contra. If this is the divide, then anarchists are on the same side as the Christians and Jews who are asserting their right to gather. If we are looking to build a revolutionary movement across cultural lines, it will involve respect for the spiritual beliefs and practices of other peoples. If we want a powerful movement to emerge, we must practice solidarity with other people.

So far, most Leftists have remained silent on the matter of religious freedom. Across the country, churches have been fighting for their rights to hold worship services. Yet anarchists have remained silent on this issue. Are people not able to see this injustice?

It is important that the Left see this as what it is. It is a fundamental human right violation to jail people just for practicing their religion. I worry that many Leftists have ceased to believe in the universal principles that classical liberalism is based upon, but to those true liberals, you cannot stay true to your beliefs and tolerate this. This is persecution. Please understand that Christians deserve the same freedom to practice their cultural practices that Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and everyone else does. The pandemic is no excuse for this, and we must make a stand for what we believe in, if we are to say that we believe in basic human rights. And may we never have to lament a variation on the following:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out
—
Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out
—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out
—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Our Dignity in Quarantine: Greek Anarchists Against Lock-Down

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Feb 192021
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

(This piece is from April 22. I submit it because I think that it is some of the compelling anarchist writing that I have found that captures the feeling of the great confusion of 2020. I think that this piece has tremendous literary value and I would love to see it translated into French.)

This flyer was distributed in different neighborhoods of Athens. Published April 22 on actforfree.nostate.org

It all happened without anyone really realizing it. And now we find ourselves locked up in our houses, waiting for next day’s news which we all know will contain more and more restrictions. Society is in crisis, they say, because of a virus spreading. The government is pressing that it is of most importance that we all do exactly what it says, and that by this we take our responsibility and act in solidarity. It stresses that the state of emergency is of course temporary, but necessary to win the war against what is seriously threatening our well being.But wait a minute…

Which virus? Actually, we cannot know. All the information, numbers and statistics that are at the base of the imposed confinement are in the hands of the government and the specialists that work for them. It is not a matter of denying the actual existence of a virus going around, but to realize that the knowledge of its characteristics, how it spreads, how it can be tackled, but also the data concerning its impact, is in the hands of scientists around the globe, which often don’t agree even among themselves about how to interpret them or which practical conclusions they would entail. The conclusion of the authorities on the other hand is simple; they know, we don’t. And because of this we owe them complete obedience. The mass media is playing its classic role of servant of the system magnificently. Deciding what exists by only showing and endlessly repeating the story by the authorities, not giving a millimeter of space to deviant voices of any kind. Their job consists of fully preparing the grounds for the next even more totalitarian decisions.And isn’t a virus the perfect enemy? Invisible and possibly everywhere, with everyone not complying to whatever rule is invented becoming an accomplice of that enemy. Justified to be oppressed with fines and prison sentences. A perfect context is created in which the state can shine as the ultimate savior.

Which responsibility?

And so we cannot open a newspaper or put on television without being told we should ‘take our responsibility’. But what does this mean then?They are asking us to blindly follow the orders of some politicians. But aren’t they the same bureaucrats we were distrusting before? Didn’t they prove so many times to be greedy and corrupt because they are driven much more by personal interest than by care for others? Didn’t it show again and again that their hunger for power is bigger than any sense of justice or reason? And now again, maybe the thousands of euros making sure helicopters are in the air controlling if we are staying in our houses could better be used in mmm… health care for example? These are the kind of people that are asking us to trust them, no questions asked, and call it ‘taking our responsibility’. Would we not be doing the opposite then? What we are really asked to do is to give up any conscience, critical thought, and autonomy, to welcome extreme government control in every aspect of our lives.

Our dIgnIty In quarantIne?

The misleading spectacle continues. We should obey the extreme measures being taken out of a sense of ‘solidarity’. Isn’t it cynical to hear these words from the mouths of the representatives of a system that is based on the exact opposite of solidarity? The whole year through we should run around like chicken without heads to keep up with the constant game of competition, to be exploited, to be hunted by cops for whatever reason they feel like that day, and be robbed by statesmen which made their profession out of it, and now they come to us and dare to speak about solidarity?

They dare to act as if they care about our well-being? What about the millions of people living in poverty so people like those in the government can be rich? What about all the people dying at their crappy jobs feeding the relentless economical machine? What about those being tortured in the police stations by the uniformed executioners of the state? What about the thousands of migrants dying at the borders every year? Where is the government with its big speeches about solidarity then?

While they are trying to feed us their hypocrite tales about solidarity in reality we see that the lockdown is locking loads of people up in unbearable circumstances. Children in their homes under the uninterrupted rule of violent parents for example. Or partners, husbands and wives stuck in abusive relationships. Thousands of migrants being trapped in camps, in even worse conditions than usual. In prisons all visits stopped, as did all access of prisoners to material, food and clothes coming from the outside. Empty spaces in prisons are being used to isolate prisoners with symptoms of the corona-virus, these spaces being empty in most cases because they are in not fit to host prisoners.

One can only imagine the effect this will have on the health of the prisoners being dumped there… In the prisons in Italy massive revolts broke out after general restrictions on all levels were introduced. Probably the only way for the prisoners to save their dignity seeing the conditions they are forced in. Also in Spain and France prisoners are standing up and fighting back, as other prisoners around the world.The state doesn’t know what solidarity means and has never been concerned about our well-being. As always, it will be up to us to take care of each other, and make sure that those that need it get support. When the government uses the word solidarity, it is only to give a feeling of guilt to those who don’t obey their orders, and to push people to internalize its authority.

Which crisis?

So they tell us we are in crisis. Maybe somebody can tell us when the moment comes that we are not in crisis? From the financial crisis to the climate crisis, through the migrant crisis to the corona crisis. It seems the system has a lot of different names for what always turn out to be periods which are used to restructure its power, to enlarge and intensify its oppression. In this case, especially in this case, it will not be different. The idea of a condition of crisis has always been used to contextualize a further totalitarian evolution of power. The rhythm on which this evolution is forced is not always the same of course. The bigger and more urgent they can make the crisis look like, the bigger and faster the change can be. It goes without saying that the current ‘crisis’ is giving the government (all the governments) the perfect context in which to take giant steps in the development of their mechanisms of control and oppression.

Which exceptional state of emergency?

It is always repeated that whatever steps that are taken are ‘temporary’, but this is a lie. Many occasions in the past showed us that at least a part of the measures from ‘states of emergency’ were kept afterward and were embedded in laws never to be taken back. From big examples like 9/11 that changed forever the abilities of states to track, trace and record everyone, to more recent times in which terrorist attacks were used as a pretext to introduce many new ways to bring to court whoever disagrees with the state, to get the army (in a lot of places permanently) on the streets, to boost the general collection of data etc. And here, didn’t the new government launch a general state of emergency in the capital aimed at the total repression of the unwanted (homeless, anarchists, drug users, squatters etc.) since last year? We all know they are working non-stop on creating an image of ‘crisis’ (in this case some kind of ‘security crisis’) to justify its absolute thirst for power, implying that its fascist behavior and totalitarian policies would be of ‘necessary but temporary’ nature… And now, what is massively happening? People turn toward the internet for their needs, for all their needs.From communicating to consuming, from working to relaxing. In the blink of an eye a big part of life has deliberately been transferred to cyberspace. By this it becomes even more easy for the state to follow, register and surveil the daily activity of whoever. But especially, it is our own will and creativity to ‘solve’ a lot of the problems being caused by our mass imprisonment, that help normalizing it and finally push its acceptance. The managing of the current situation will bring forth an unimaginable set of experiences, tools and know-how that can and will continue to be used whenever estimated necessary by those in power.

Which war?

But all objections or criticisms are undesirable or even dangerous, because after all ‘we are at war’. At war against a biological event, against nature actually. Isn’t this indicative for these modern times? We forget more and more how to live with or in nature, but multiply and intensify our wars against it. Our whole way of living is built on the exploitation of nature and, if this reality is not overthrown soon, its total destruction. Maybe it is the western arrogance culturally believing we are above all things, and so always extending our ways to control them. Always looking at nature in terms of its practical value to ‘civilized’ society. And when we are confronted with something that causes discomfort everything will be put in place to tame it, to manipulate or eradicate it. So a constant war is being waged, against nature, against life and against death. It became an unimaginable thought that we would not own nature but be a part of it, and by this can be subjected to some of its conditions…Of course nobody wants to die, or see its loved ones die or suffer. We want to live! But is merely surviving at a certain point the same as living? Is it possible to live in a cage, or can we at best survive in one? Are we ready to take away all risk of living to have a better chance of survival? One could say these are philosophical questions, good to pass the time but nothing to do with real life. Well, at this very moment all life is being taken away from us because we are told that this is the only way to survive. Every day in isolation is an attack on our autonomy, on our ability to think and act for ourselves, to live, love and fight.

The quarantine has to be refused, because our dignity cannot survive in it!

The lockdown has to be broken, because our desire for freedom will not!

Berlin: Rigaer94 Calls for International Solidarity – Destruction of our Space Expected

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Feb 182021
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

After the eviction of the anarcha-queer-feminist house project Liebig34 on 9th of october 2020, the offensive of state and capital against self-organized structures in the northern area of Friedrichshain and other parts of the city did not cease. The Liebig34 is since then under the control of the owner and the presence of his gang had also an affect on the local life. The so called Dorfplatz (“village square”) lying directly in front of the house was during the last months less used by residents and visitors as a common space and saw some minor confrontations with the invaders. With having taken one of the strategic points in the area and in the same time removing a political obstacle, state and capital could focus on the Rigaer94, which lies just some meters away from the Dorfplatz and has been a constant topic in the medias over the last year.

A few days ago, cops and diggers destroyed a settlement of homeless people in Rummels Bay, a few kilometers from us. The pretext here was the extreme frost, in reality it is also there to serve the profit of investors. Also expected in the next few weeks is the eviction of the Potse Youth Center – the city is in the process of removing any rebellious site.

What started with ridiculous complaints of the parliamentary opposition about the fire-security in the house became one of the central issues of the forces of order. All those who were spending their energy for years to create a depoliticized image of Rigaer94 as a house full of brutal gangsters began to speak about their worries that the inhabitants could tragically die in a fire. Their rhetoric is very transparent because it was based mainly on the fact, that the house has several mechanisms to quickly barricade the main entrances. These barricades are in fact a central piece of the safety of the inhabitants. Not only the social media is full of fascist threats to target the house but also the cops proved over the last years that they are not only capable to launch very violent legally supported actions but also to openly coordinate with parastate forces, namely organized fascists and the mafiotic structure of the real estate industry. For example the owner of Liebig34, but other companies as well, are well known in Berlin for evicting houses by setting them on fire. The message behind the fake discussion about our safety was nothing but a direct threat and a call for parastate forces to set our building on fire. In the same time it was aiming to create a public opinion and legal base to destroy the house structure without having to get an eviction title.

The legal obstacle on the way to an eviction title came up in 2016, when the Rigaer94 repelled a three weeks long major police action. Under public pressure, a court had declared the invasion in the house as illegal and did not recognize the lawyers of the owner which is, by the way, a mailbox company in the UK. Recent developements changed this condition from scratch. In the beginning of February a court decided that the police has to support this mailbox company to guarantee the so called fire security in Rigaer94. By this decision the owner is officially recognized and will now soon try to enter the house in company of a state expert about fire security and, of course, huge police forces. In similar raids against Rigaer94, the entering special police forces and the construction workers caused heavy damage to the building. It was always their goal to make the house uninhabitable before it could be evicted and luxury renovated.

We expect that the pretext of fire security will be used not only to remove our barricades but to legally raid the entire building and to evict flats to create permanent bases for the owners gang that will start to destroy the house from inside. As planned, the fire security is used now as a tool to terrorize the rebellious structures that took hold of the house more than 30 years ago and had been involved in many different social struggles as well as the defence of the area against state and capital. Generally we think that the importance of a combative community in combination with an occupied territory can not be underestimated. The Rigaer94 with its autonomous youth club and the self-organized, uncommercial space Kadterschmiede is a place for convergence for political and neighbourhood organization, giving not only home to struggling people but also the legacy of the former squatting movement and the ongoing movement against gentrification and any form of anarchist ideas. Many demonstrations, political and cultral events took its start from the house and, not to be forgotten, numerous confrontations with the state forces in the area were backed up by the existence of this stronghold. It’s for this political idendity that the Rigaer94 and the outreaching rebellious structures and networks are traumatizing generations of cops and politicians and thus has become a main focus of their aggression against those who resist. At the very moment when the last non-commercial, self-organized places in Berlin are being evicted, when the pandemic is used to spread the virus of control, exploitation and oppression, we have to take serious the threat of a very possible try to evict us in the upcoming days or weeks and therefore, we choose to continue getting organised through collective procedures to defend our ideologies and political spaces. However, there is a political importance to continue fighting for all of our social struggles of the revolutionary movement also outside of this house and not to let those in power to intervene in our political agendas and resistance.

They might evict our house but they will not evict our ideas. To keep these ideas alive and add fuel to them we invite everybody to come to Berlin to send the city of the rich to chaos. We call for any kind of support from now on, that can help us to prevent the destruction of Rigaer94. But if we lose this place to the enemies, we are willing to create a scenario without winners.

Rigaer94

for more information check https://rigaer94.squat.net/

and follow us on https://twitter.com/rigaer94

The La Barricade Label and Misanthropic Division Vinland: An International Neo-Nazi Vehicle in Québec

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Feb 162021
 

From Montréal Antifasciste

On February 2, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network published an article detailing the links between Steve Labrecque, alias “Steve Rebel,” alias “Chtev,” who we’ve mentioned before, and the local NSBM (National Socialist black metal) label La Barricade, which for a number of years now has been one part of the scummy underbelly of Québec’s musical counterculture.

For obvious reasons we’ve been paying attention to the tiny neo-Nazi/NSBM milieu for quite a while,[i] if only because it is close to the RAC (Rock Against Communism) scene, the band Légitime Violence, and the Québec Stompers bonehead gang, the incubator for the neo-fascist groupuscule Atalante. Our previous articles about Atalante and its sympathizers have clearly established the roots of Atalante’s key militants and their entourage in the “white power” and neo-Nazi subculture in the Québec City region, the pitiful denials of the key parties notwithstanding; they, of course, prefer to present themselves as “revolutionary nationalists” or sanitized fascists of the allegedly more presentable Italian variety.

While the Canadian Anti-Hate Network article served to shed some light on the key role of Steve Labrecque in this tiny milieu, it overlooked other key people who have been responsible for the distribution of Nazi clothing and accessories in far-right subcultural circles in Québec for many years now. It also passed too quickly over Misanthropic Division, an important network whose “Vinland” section[ii] is closely tied to the La Barricade label and acts as a link between this little band of local neo-Nazis and the Ukrainian Azov Battalion, which is broadly understood to be a key element in the militant and military vanguard of the international neo-Nazi movement.

This article, which was already in the works when the Canadian Anti-Hate Network published theirs, could be thought of as a “another step” beyond what they have written, which we do encourage you to read.

Warning: this article reproduces posts from social media accounts that are explicitly racist, antisemitic, and homophobic and celebrate Adolf Hitler, the Nazi regime, and the Holocaust.

///

 

As the Canadian Anti-Hate Network article indicates, Steve Labrecque (alias “Chtev,” a member or former member of the black metal bands Hollentur, Neurasthene, and Holocauste) seems to be the most recent addition to the group Légitime Violence, joining his friend and colleague Félix Latraverse (alias “Fix”; Neurasthene and Hollentur), alongside Raphaël Lévesque and Benjamin Bastien (Québec Stompers, Atalante), and the band’s new drummer, William Tanguay-Leblanc (about whom our comrades in Québec Antifasciste posted in November 2019).

Légitime Violence, circa 2020 : (de gauche à droite) William Tanguay-Leblanc, Steve Labrecque, Rapahël Lévesque, Félex Latraverse, Benjamin Bastien.

Légitime Violence, 2020: (left to right) William Tanguay-Leblanc, Steve Labrecque, Raphaël Lévesque, Félix Latraverse, Benjamin Bastien

The direct link between La Barricade, Labrecque, and Légitime Violence is confirmed by, among other things, the release of a “tenth anniversary” Légitime Violence cassette in 2019.

Légitime Violence tenth anniversary cassette, distributed by La Barricade in 2019.

A quick look at the La Barricade[v] Instagram[iii] and Facebook[iv] accounts reveals that Hollentur[vi], Steve Labrecque’s[vii] main project, is the label’s flagship band, which suggests a hypothesis we share with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, that Labreque is the label’s main manager. Research at the registraire des entreprises indicates that in 2013 Steve Labrecque, now residing in the Beauport borough in Québec City, registered a “commercial printing” company that remains active today.

Logo of the La Barricade label on the Encyclopaedia Metallum website: NSBM, propaganda.

Profile of the La Barricade label on the Encyclopaedia Metallum website.

Profile of the band Hollentur on the Encyclopaedia Metallum website.

Steve Labrecque, alias “Chtev”; Félix Latraverse, alias “Fix”

Steve Labrecque in the La Barricade studio.

Félix Latraverse’s band Neurasthene is distributed by La Barricade.

Le motif d'un t-shirt distribué par La Barricade: "NSBM against Antifa - Misanthropic Division Vinland - La Barricade Label & Tradition"

A t-shirt designed and distributed by La Barricade: “NSBM Against Antifa—Misanthropic Division Vinland—La Barricade—Label & Tradition”

We’ve previously discussed the band Folk You!, where Steve Labrecque rubbed shoulders with Kevin Cloutier, who was formerly a member of the bonehead gang the Ste-Foy Krew and the guitarist in Dernier Guerrier.

Kevin Cloutier (left) and Steve Labrecque (right): note the “1488” tattoo on the latter’s knuckles.

La Barricade, apparently under Steve Labrecque’s tutelage, also operates a basement studio in the Québec City region, where, among other decorative touches, we find the Misanthropic Division flag bearing the slogan “Töten für Wotan” (Kill for Odin).

 

What Is “Misanthropic Division”?

A detailed FOIA Research article published in January 2019 presents the Misanthropic Division and its raison d’être as follows:

The Misanthropic Division is a world-wide neo-Nazi network, which in 2014 emerged in Ukraine, some of whose members fought as mercenaries against pro-Russian separatists in the war in Donbass. The Misanthropic division is closely linked to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, now part of Ukraine’s National Guard. It fights for the independence of Ukraine—both from Russia and the European Union—with the goal of establishing a Nazi state.

Amnesty International accuses them of serious human rights violations. The division maintains networks in Europe, USA, Canada, South America and Australia, which are also used to train and recruit fighters. (our italics)

Its members are considered racist and prone to violence. Among other things, they glorify National Socialism and the Waffen-SS. The Misanthropic Division is using a logo that is inspired by the Totenkopf (death’s head) symbol that was one of the most readily recognized symbols of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS).

. . .

According to research by Belltower News, the Misanthropic Division recruits members from the international national-socialist-black metal (NSBM) scene. Liaison persons are the neo-Nazi Hendrik Möbus, convicted of murder, Alexei Levkin, singer of the band M8l8th and organizer of the NSBM festival Åsgårdsrei, and Famine, singer of the French black metal band Peste Noire. There are further connections to the Identitarian Movement and to the extreme right-wing party Der III. Weg.

Reading this article makes clear that the local partisans of the NSBM scene connected to the La Barricade label, who circulate around Légitime Violence and Atalante, of which Steve Labrecque is a key figure, are connected by the Misanthropic Division to an international neo-Nazi network and to the Azov Battalion, a white supremacist paramilitary formation that recruits members from everywhere in the Western world, with the goal of establishing a Nazi state.

Note that “Vinland,” historically related to Newfoundland, where the Vikings landed in the eleventh century, is a term applied by Odinists and others who fetishize Viking culture to North America, or, at least, to the northeast section of Canada and the US, and, as such, to the territory of Québec.

 

Phil David, alias « Affreux Crapaud »

Another individual close to the La Barricade project, who the Canadian Anti-Hate Network does not mention in its article, is Philippe David , alias “Affreux Crapaud,” “Block_Onze” on Instagram, and “Phil Block Onze” on Twitter, one of the most uninhibited neo-Nazis of the entire Québec fachosphere! For a start, the pseudonym “Block Onze” is a direct reference to the building at the Auschwitz concentration camp where the Nazis tortured and shot thousands of detainees during World War II.

Steve Labrecque (left) and Phil David.

Phil David wearing an Azov Battalion t-shirt.

It is difficult to determine with any certainty exactly what role Philippe David plays as the La Barricade label or in the maintenance of the Misanthropic Division Vinland project[viii], but his Twitter[ix] and Instagram accounts make it clear that he has been a fervent promoter of the project since 2015, and that he has actively encouraged people to buy the crap distributed by Misanthropic Division and La Barricade, and did so until at least 2019.

 
Phil David représente Misanthropic Division Vinland.
 

Phil David promoting merchandise distributed by La Barricade and Misanthropic Division Vinland on his personal Twitter account.

Phil David promoting the Hollentur record distributed by La Barricade on his personal Instagram account.

We could, with good reason, ask why Twitter, which frequently boasts that it does not tolerate hateful discourse, has yet to ban or seriously sanction a user like Phil David, who has been using the platform to disseminate messages and images explicitly celebrating the Holocaust. In spite of its prevarications, Twitter has proven to be very tolerant of Nazis, white nationalists, and a legion of alt-right trolls, who, more or less discreetly, proliferate on the platform.

Phil David’s social network includes a fair number of known members of Québec’s neo-Nazi circles, going all the way back to the bonehead gangs the Ste-Foy Krew (Québec City; an outgrowth of the Fédération des Québécois de souche) and Strike Force (Montréal), active in the early 2000s.

Pool party on Phil David’s Instagram: (left to right) Pascal Giroux, Sébastien Moreau, Steve Labrecque, Mikaël Delauney, and Ian Alarie.

We can also see Steve Labrecque (kneeling in the back), Sébastien Moreau (centre), Ian Alarie (bottom right), Pascal Giroux (crouching on the left), and Mikaël Delauney (in the black t-shirt).

Sébastien Moreau, an old-school Nazi bonehead and member of the Ste-Foy Krew, who has caught the attention of the media more than once, has long been a person of interest on antifascist websites. He is best known for his entryist association with the Parti indépendantiste, a project that remains on the far right, with Alexandre Cormier-Denis, of Horizon Québec actuel, having been its candidate in a 2017 by-election.

Phil David with Sébastien Moreau

The Ste-Foy Krew; Sébastien Moreau stands stiff-armed at the head of the table.

Sébastien Moreau (Photo: Québec FachoWatch)

Sébastien Moreau with his friends Raymond Jr. and Kevin Cloutier, from the neo-Nazi band Dernier Guerrier (Photo: Québec FachoWatch)

Ian Alarie is a basic NSBM enthusiast found at numerous Atalante actions, and who even turned up with the Soldiers of Odin in Montréal, on May 12, 2018, wearing… a La Barricade/Misanthropic Division Vinland t-shirt.

Alarie (right), Phil David (centre, wearing a Misanthropic Division t-shirt), and Étienne Chartrand (second from the left; a former member of Strike Force, the Fraction Nationaliste, and the Ste-Foy Krew).

Ian Alarie (left) and Phil David (right).

Who’s the biggest Nazi?

Ian Alarie wearing a Misanthropic Division Vinland/La Barricade t-shirt, on May 12, 2018.

It would seem that Pascal Giroux, another NSBM enthusiast, who was also present with the Soldiers of Odin, on May 12, 2018, was involved in a scrap with antifascists, in 2019, outside of a black metal music festival in Montréal.

Pascal Giroux wearing a Misanthropic Division Vinland/La Barricade t-shirt.

Mikaël Delauney was the subject of an article in Vice, in 2018, based on his close relationship with Atalante and his role in a company specializing in “historical re-enactments” for young audiences. There is certainly room for concern about the kind of history that neo-Nazis would favour re-enacting.

Mikaël Delauney is running out of fingers he can use to show off his favourite Nazi symbols.

Mikaël Delauney training with Atalante militants (Photo: Vice)

Fred Pelletier, an extremely hotheaded individual who also never bothers to hide his neo-Nazi sympathies, is another close friend of Phil David.

Fred Pelletier with Phil David

Fred Pelletier proudly sporting a Blood & Honour t-shirt. Blood & Honour is a neo-Nazi organization listed as a terrorist organization under the Canadian Criminal Code.

Fred Pelletier wearing a Misanthropic Division t-shirt.

And here’s Phil David with Francis Hamelin, another regular around the neo-Nazi scene since the early 2000s.

Francis Hamelin and Phil David

Francis Hamelin poses in front of a rag.

A special shout-out to Sarah Miller, who recently became Jonathan Payeur of Atalante’s fiancée.

Phil David and Sarah Miller

One day, Sarah Miller had the bright idea of tattooing “1488” across her chest in three-inch letters.

Congratulations to the lovebirds.

Jonathan Payeur with Gabriel Marcon Drapeau and Fred Pelletier.

 

Gabriel Marcon Drapeau and “Vinland Striker” Distribution

Finally, let’s take a look at Gabriel Marcon Drapeau’s role, which is touched upon in the Canadian Anti-Hate Network article. This guy, who Fascist Finder comically portrays as a rabid dog, seems to have updated his Linkedin account, which until very recently indicated his employer to be the “the Barricade NSBM label.”

Gabriel Marcon Drapeau poses for his Facebook profile photo in front of a Misanthropic Division Vinland flag.

Gabriel Marcon Drapeau—Label NSBM-La Barricade (still available in the Google cache).

Gabriel Marcon Drapeau’s Linkedin page before a very recent update.

Gabriel Marcon Drapeau

Marcon Drapeau’s current Linkedin page indicates that he is now working for “Vinland Striker,” where he continues his career in sales of clothing and accessories of a Nazi character, including flags bearing the image of Adolf Hitler. See below a sample of the merchandise he promotes on his personal Facebook page and on the distributor website[x]. We have no idea why Marcon Drapeau no longer operates his distribution under the Misanthropic Division Vinland/La Barricade banner, but it seems that he has maintained his privileged relationship with the French distributor of neo-Nazi clothing 2YT4U.

November 27, 2020: Gabriel Marcon Drapeau starts working for Vinland Striker.

Gabriel Marcon Drapeau’s recently updated Linkedin account.

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A sample of the Nazi trinkets and paraphernalia sold by Gabriel Marcon Drapeau under the “Vinland Striker” banner.
 

Note in passing the curious fact that Atalante militants and sympathizers tend to wear the t-shirts Marcon Drapeau distributes.

Louis Fernandez, a key Atalante militant, who was sentenced to fifteen months in prison in December 2020 for criminal assault, sporting a Joan of Arc t-shirt distributed by Gabriel Marcon Drapeau.

Montréal-based Atalante militant “Jean Brunaldo” wearing a KKK-inspired t-shirt distributed by Gabriel Marcon Drapeau.

Atalante sympathizers Heïdy Prévost and Vivianne St-Amant wearing an ecofascist t-shirt distributed by Gabriel Marcon Drapeau.

Atalante militant Jonathan Payeur wearing a t-shirt distributed by Gabriel Marcon Drapeau.

Atalante militant Sarah Miller wearing an ecofascist-inspired t-shirt distributed by Gabriel Marcon Drapeau.

Well then… Jonathan Payeur sports ANOTHER ridiculous t-shirt distributed by Gabriel Marcon Drapeau. You certainly would be well advised to remain hidden

 

Vigilance Remains the Watchword

Nothing indicates that the Misanthropic Division Vinland project that is connected to the NSBM label La Barricade is anything more than a group of neo-Nazi buddies in the grip of romantic adventurism, but there is also nothing to indicate that this project couldn’t serve as a recruiting centre for the international neo-Nazi network or a fundraising operation for the Azov Battalion. It is evident that at a minimum these neo-Nazi music and merchandise distribution projects play a substantial role in the micro-economy of the tiny neo-Nazi milieu in Québec and in increasing the reach of this revolting subculture.

We also can’t ignore the role these projects can play in turning young fans of black metal who are susceptible to the pull of Nazi alarmism into fanatics, with the programme always completely focussed on the extermination of millions of people who fail to meet the sickening bar these losers have set as their ideal of Aryan purity.

These detestable racists will live among us, be part of our society’s collective spaces, and continue their tawdry little activities with impunity as long as we continue to allow them to do so without raising any real resistance. It falls to our communities to flush them out and neutralize their toxicity.

As with any invasive and dangerous species, to uproot it you first have to recognize it.

///

If you have any information you’d like to share about the La Barricade label, the Misanthropic Division, or any of the individuals mentioned in this article, please write us at alerta-mtl@riseup.net.

 

 


[i]              It is important that we acknowledge the work done before we existed by Anti-Racist Action Montréal, the webzine Dure Réalité, and Québec Facho-Watch.

[ii]             Note that “Vinland,” historically related to Newfoundland, where the Vikings landed in the eleventh century, is a term applied by Odinists and others who fetishize Viking culture to North America, or, at least, to the northeast section of Canada and the US, and, as such, to the territory of Québec.

[iii]              https://archive.md/JUB9G

[iv]              https://archive.vn/ohGwn

[v]               https://archive.vn/J25Xj

[vi]              https://archive.vn/gxQzx

[vii]             https://archive.vn/oqaj0

[viii]             https://archive.vn/Ag7nq

[ix]              https://archive.vn/l8PyN

[x]               https://archive.vn/9eRWP

Another Word for Settle: A Response to Rattachements and Inhabit

 Comments Off on Another Word for Settle: A Response to Rattachements and Inhabit
Feb 152021
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Black and white PDF for printing (imposed)
Colour PDF for reading

It was winter 2020 and in the aftermath of the most inspiring anti-colonial uprising of my lifetime, I read Rattachements[1] (Re-attachments in English) and Inhabit[2]. The trains had started up again across the country, and COVID-19 was starting to reorder our lives mere weeks after we had been doing our small part to help shut down Canada. In and around Tio’tia:ke (Montreal) where I live, there were many Indigenous-led initiatives, including solidarity rounddances that blocked traffic downtown, and of course the month-long blockade of the railway tracks that run through Kahnawá:ke. On and around the island, the engagement of settlers in #ShutDownCanada took a number of forms including clandestine sabotage of rail infrastructure, demos and vandalism of RCMP property, and multiple rail blockades, one of which lasted a few days.

Coming down off of these events, it was especially jarring to read the proposals in Inhabit and Rattachements. Both texts are representations of political thought coming out of communities in the US and Quebec that are heavily influenced by the writings of the Invisible Committee in France and European Autonomist movements. This political tendency is sometimes labelled tiqqunist, appelist, or autonomist. It is a political orientation that has a significant amount of sway among a segment of those who were engaged in the settler-initiated[3] portions of the organizing in Montreal last winter, and these two texts seem to be important reference points for these people. Unfortunately, the onset of COVID-19 stifled what could have been an opportunity for deeper analysis of some of the political differences between those of us who organized together that winter. I would like to clarify my disagreement with the anti-colonial strategy, or lack thereof, put forth by Inhabit and Rattachements. I hope that in future broad coalitional moments of solidarity like last winter, we might be able to better understand where our potential for collaboration could break down. I also hope that critical engagement with the analysis proposed by these texts will limit the extent to which it influences the contours of settler-initiated anti-colonial solidarity in years to come.

Rattachements

Taking issue with dominant currents of environmentalist action (on the one hand activists who ask the government to take action to save the environment, and on the other individuals changing their consumption practices to do the same) the writers of Rattachements propose a new approach to dealing with the ecological crisis and colonial capitalism. This new approach is one of building an “ecology of presence” through the construction of communes[4]. The writers see the project of reconnecting to that which “has been torn from them” as both material and spiritual. They wish to truly inhabit land from which to attack the machinery of capitalism while also building new forms of life there. Foundational to their understanding of the problem is an assertion that they did not choose to be thrown into a world bent on its own destruction, a world structured by colonial capitalism[5], wherein their “affects are captured” and their connection to the land has been severed.

The writers forward that “[d]efending the land necessarily means learning to inhabit it, truly inhabiting it necessitates defending it.” In doing so they assert that their reconnection to the land is a precursor and integral part of anti-colonial struggle. An “ecology of presence,” they write, can be found in the connections between Indigenous peoples and their territories, including the Zapatistas’ resistance against the Mexican government and the material and territorial autonomy of the Kanienʼkehá꞉ka. However, the writers are rejecting an analysis of social position from jump. They appear to not think that the position of subjects within systems of domination is relevant to their analysis or strategies of resistance to those systems. But the writers are nonetheless settlers speaking to (mostly) other settlers. The abstraction they employ is thus dangerous, as they go on to say that “it is when communities affirm that they themselves are part of the territory, of this forest, of this river, of this piece of the neighbourhood, and that they are ready to fight, that the political possibility of ecology appears clearly”. This statement can easily be seen as a call for settlers to understand themselves as belonging to the land in order to defend it, or at the very least, on a level playing field with Indigenous people when it comes to assertions of what the future of land in this place should resemble. Whether or not this is the intention, this opens the door to settler self-indigenization being understood as a decolonial strategy. In a settler colonial society like Quebec or Canada, the state exists in large part to secure settler access to land, and Indigenous people are always threats to that access. This is both the history and present of all settler societies. We need not look far to find examples where settlers relating to the land in a way that resembles Rattachements’ “ecology of presence” has already been put into practice effectively against Indigenous people.

Take, for example, the story of the white hunters in Mi’kma’ki (the Chic Choc Mountains in Gaspésie, specifically) who in 2004 had already grown frustrated about the incursion of logging in the area and who, having hunted on the land for quite some time and feeling rather connected to (even “of”) the territory, were faced with a new threat: the establishment of a “Mi’kmaq-controlled area which would offer outdoor activities for a fee” (a “pourvoirie”). This new project threatened their ability to hunt for free. In response to this, while meeting in a “communal tent” on the territory, the white hunters concocted a plan to identify as Indigenous in order to help add legitimacy to their claims of connection to the land. They founded an organization which would come to be named the Metis Nation of the Rising Sun, and successfully prevented the establishment of the pourvoirie. This story is not an outlier in our area, rather merely one example of a widespread phenomenon wherein settlers, feeling very attached to the land they are living on (and maybe even having some communal inclinations) feel moved to defend their control of it from threats that include Indigenous people who have their own pre-existing claims and relations to the same land. Often, this involves claiming an Indigenous identity, but it need not necessarily. What continues to be crucial for the advancement of settlement is the ongoing procurement of land by settlers and the entrenchment of the idea that this is our land, whether the possession is property based (I have the deed and so this is mine) or spiritual (I know the land, I feel connected to the land, and so I belong here).

Looking to other settler colonial contexts, we can see more examples of the risks of communal settlement undertaken with radical political aims. The Kibbutz movement in Palestine, for example, is a story of self-organized communes set up from the early 1900s onward, beginning with the second wave of Jewish settlers fleeing pogroms from Eastern Europe. The settlers of the first Kibbutz had anarchist ideals of egalitarianism, rejected the “exploitative socio-economic structure[6]” of the farms established by the first wave of settlement, and hoped to undermine the developing capitalist economy with their communes. They sought to establish “a cooperative community without exploiters or exploited[7]“, and did so in 1910 after gaining access to land “which had recently been bought by the Palestine Land Development Company from the Jewish National Fund.[8]” This first farm was such a success that “before long, kvutzot were being set up wherever land could be bought.[9]” These communes, while viewing themselves as a viable alternative and considerable threat to the capitalist mode of production, were also serving the Zionist settlement of Palestine. Today they are commonly understood as an important part of Israel’s national story, and approximately 270 settlements still exist (despite their internal organization and anarchist character having shifted significantly) in occupied territory. It is clear that while the anarchist and anti-capitalist ideals of such projects may be inspiring, the settler colonial context calls for attention to the impacts of settlement on Indigenous peoples, not merely the ideals or internal politics of communes[10].

Land Back vs. Back to the land

Rattachements emerges from and endorses an understanding that settlers too have been dispossessed – of connection to land, of spirituality and knowledge. It leans hard on this claim to try to get other settlers to feel moved to action. The zine, written within and circulating among social circles dominated by white settlers with varying radical politics, posits that a solution to the ecological crisis lies in these (again, primarily settler) milieus’ ability to create communes. These communes will then be able to establish material and political autonomy by rendering spaces (land, wastelands, buildings, churches, houses and parks) “liveable”[11]. In other words, they propose to settle and squat, communally, the land, whether it has already been built on by other settlers or not, asserting that this is a strategic necessity rather than merely a lifestyle choice.

I too believe that capitalism is a system which alienates us from each other and the living beings we depend upon. And yet I believe that we must be more specific: colonial capitalism has created a country wherein, by and large, settlers own land, and have the resources and relative freedom to build a variety of relationships with it. This comes at the expense of Indigenous peoples, who have been dispossessed of their land, and the languages, cultures, and spiritualities that emerge from and inform their relationships with that land. Rattachements suggests that a crucial part of the anti-capitalist/anti-colonial ecological struggle is shifting settlers’ affective and spiritual relationships with the land in a context where our material relationship with the land – one of ownership of that which has been stolen — remains unchanged and fundamentally colonial. A group of settlers buying a communal house together outside the city as part of a strategy of revolutionary ecology has little to nothing in common with Indigenous peoples reoccupying their traditional territories. The latter is a direct disruption of colonial development projects and environmental destruction and is recognizable as part of a lineage of Indigenous resistance to displacement and genocide.[12] The former misrecognizes itself as somehow sharing something with that lineage, when in fact it is possible because of, and shares much more with, generations of encroachment and expansion by settlers.

Absent from the program of ecological struggle proposed by Rattachements is an explicit call for the return of land to Indigenous communities. Instead, they call implicitly for an increased presence of their (settler) milieus on that land, in part in order to potentially support Indigenous struggles. Despite the acknowledgment that land has been stolen (and the lauding of Indigenous relationships to land as ones to look to as examples for the readers of the zine) what is missing is the proposition that “Land Back” in the literal, material sense, is an important piece of the ecological struggle, and one to prioritize leaps and bounds above settlers going back to the land. In the Land Back Red Paper released in 2019 by the Yellowhead Institute, the writers tell us that “the matter of Land Back is not merely a matter of justice, rights or ‘reconciliation’; Indigenous jurisdiction can indeed help mitigate the loss of biodiversity and climate crisis. […] Long-term stewardship of the land allows for constant reassessment, planning, and adaptation.” This leads to an efficacy of protection of biodiversity and hope against climate change thanks to the culturally specific world views passed intergenerationally through a presence with and in defense of the land.[13]

It must not be seen as a necessary precondition for decolonization that settlers develop relationships (spiritual or affective) with land that we occupy. Settlers deciding to prioritize building these new relationships with the land does not bring us closer to decolonization. Focusing on settlers’ spiritual or affective relationships to the land as an important part of anti-colonial struggles sidetracks and warps our ability to focus on the much more central problems of settler colonial Canada. The dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ lands is a partial but crucial piece of struggling against settler colonialism and climate change. Regardless of the politics of the settlers, our relationships with land are most often built through a tactic of land ownership, due to the relative ease of access to the financial means or social connections that allow for this. I am thinking, for example, about the many collective land projects that have been initiated by radical settlers in so-called Quebec, which all involve owning the land. To think of building a land-based spirituality on a foundation of land ownership does not make sense, these relationships would be colonial, not revolutionary. In other words, the relationship between settlers and land must change primarily on a material basis, not a spiritual or affective one. Indigenous peoples have articulated that “Land Back” will give them the power to rebuild knowledge, languages, culture, and autonomy. This is the substance of decolonization; it is crucial that Indigenous peoples be free to develop and regain their relationships with the land rather than settlers taking it upon ourselves to do it in their stead.

On Inhabit and settler territorial autonomy

In Inhabit, a text coming out of appelist/tiqqunist/autonomist networks in the so-called US, the desire for territory is expanded.The goal articulated in Inhabit is the extension and multiplication of the isolated communes of Rattachements. Yet unlike Rattachements, whose authors claim to be committed to their own understanding of an anti-colonial politics, Inhabit does not articulate an anti-colonial politic at all. This is not necessarily surprising, as anti-colonial politics seem to be less present in settler radical milieus in the US than in Canada, but it still matters.[14] “Our goal”, they say, “is to establish autonomous territories—expanding ungovernable zones that run from sea to shining sea. Faultlines crossing North America leading us to providence.” Like the westward expansionists of yore, the writers of Inhabit posit a better way to use the land and suggest that pockets not yet taken up in service for their revolution be transformed in their image. In other words, one can read the writers of Inhabit as promoting their vision of Manifest Destiny: the expansion of land use in their vision, faultlines moving unimpeded across a vast and unclaimed North America. Perhaps following the paths of the railroads that came before?

Inhabit’s authors seem unable or unwilling to engage with settler colonialism. With the exception of the mention of incidental interaction between settlers and Indigenous families in contexts where they are already comrades, race and colonialism are invisible in their text. The authors’ unwillingness to engage with the larger collectivities of Indigenous life and their settler colonial context betrays their colonial understanding of the land itself. In proposing territorial expansion without concern for the claims to land that cover this continent already[15], Inhabit calls to its readers with imagery of the settler state national project – from sea to shining sea: “Build the infrastructure necessary to subtract territory from the economy,” they urge. But the land has never been just territory, and settlers occupying it has more often looked like removing Indigenous peoples than subtracting it from the economy. One need only look to the southern US to see how, for example, white people squatting “vacant” land was an intended consequence of the process of allotting Indigenous people land far from their communities. The US banked on the fact that these communities would be unable to prevent squatters from setting in and taking possession. “Rent a space in the neighborhood. Build a structure in the forest. Take over an abandoned building or a vacant piece of land.” Inhabit repurposes thought and strategies from contexts highly unlike their own (squatters movements in europe, for example) and tries to implement supposedly liberatory strategies for “inhabiting” space that merely further entrench settler access to and control of land.

The flight from identity

In an October 2020 report-back called Chasse à la chasse[16] (translated as Hunting the Hunt in the English version published by Inhabit’s “Territories” newsletter), the writers (based in Quebec) give an account of their time spent supporting Anishnabe communities fighting for a moratorium on moose hunting in their territory. They conclude their summary of the situation with the following reflection: “It would be an illusion confining one to weakness to think that we cannot be and appear other than as illegitimate settlers, regardless of ‘how’ we intend to inhabit what is left of the world.”[17]

It is surprising to me that one of the most pressing takeaways from organizing in solidarity with an Indigenous community would be the possible escape from settler “identity” it uncovers. It seems to me that the fear of being seen as an “illegitimate settler” is what motivates some of their rejection of social position and in turn undermines their analysis. I don’t intend to say that the authors have nothing to contribute to anti-colonial struggle because they are settlers. Rather, I disagree with the importance being placed on not being perceived as settlers, instead of on evaluating what is the most effective contribution they could make to anti-colonial struggle. Their position as settlers in a settler society is necessarily going to be an important piece of this evaluation. This rejection of social position is visible in Inhabit in so far as race and colonialism are made invisible. In Rattachements, it is only visible as a thing from which the writers flee. “Ecstasy: bliss provoked by an exit, a departure from what has been produced as our ‘self’, our ‘social position,’ our ‘identity.’” In a hurry to reject identity politics, and in conflating “identity” with an attention to social position, the writers remove the lens that would allow them to analyze our context more fully and accurately. In doing so, they doom themselves to a flat and limited approach that says that if it is strategic and possible for Indigenous people to build territorial autonomy, it must be just as strategic, possible, and subversive, for settlers to do the same.

The St. Lambert rail blockade was a multi-day action called by and mostly attended by settlers last winter in the context of #ShutDownCanada. It was an opportunity for a proactive and explicit explanation of why we as settlers thought it important to respond to the call for solidarity actions in the way we did, and an encouragement of other settler radical milieus to do the same. This could have been very valuable in a context where some settler supporters were hesitant to propose or participate in settler-initiated actions[18]. Unfortunately, this proactive communication approach was not taken for a variety of reasons, including lack of political cohesion amongst the people organizing the action. In the end, communication coming out of the camp opted for vague language about who was there and who was being spoken to and missed an opportunity to speak as settlers to other settlers about what we could do to intervene[19]. Obfuscating our position made it easier for the mainstream media to use the fact that we were not Indigenous as a “gotcha” moment which helped them attempt to turn public opinion against us without using overtly racist tropes. Our lack of clear analysis also left space for Premier Francois Legault to separate us from the other blockades because we did not explain how we saw ourselves in relation to them. Of course the cops knew all along the demographics of those in attendance and acted accordingly. There were no tactical advantages to this approach, and we lost the opportunity to put forth clear, decisive analysis as to why other settlers should take the risks we (and many Indigenous communities) were taking at that time to shut down Canada. I worry that an avoidance of addressing head on issues of social position and the role of settlers in anti-colonial struggle may lead us to make similar choices in the future.

Inhabit and Rattachements share a desire to produce affect in their readers which inspire them to see themselves as full of power and possibility. Toward this end, they encourage readers to reject guilt or sacrifice and to understand themselves as central protagonists in struggle. For Rattachements, this looks like encouraging their readers to see themselves as “neither victims” of “nor guilty” for the ecological crisis. This aversion to self-sacrifice, to being ready to give something up, means denying that settler colonialism and some other drivers of the crisis continue to benefit us. This is the preemptive evasion of potential guilt for being a settler – we must not understand ourselves as the subjects for which the genocidal removal of Indigenous people from their land is ongoing. The impulse is tied to a rejection of identity politics, and while I do not suggest to instead embrace a demobilizing guilt in the face of the past and present horrors, I think it is both a strategic and ethical imperative to refuse to ignore the conditions that produce this guilt. When we acknowledge the kinds of lives that settler colonialism continues to produce for settlers and try to find the causes for the clear disparity, we equip ourselves with the knowledge of our context necessary to change it in effective ways. When we flee the feelings produced by this disparity by rejecting a label, we may come to believe we can think or magic our way out of real structures. It is the conditions that need to be fought, not the emotions they produce.

Where do we go from here

The authors of Inhabit and Rattachements might think that rejecting, on the basis of demographics, their respective strategies of territorial autonomy or of building material autonomy in communes on the land is essentially a refusal to build power—a concession to the demobilizing effects of ally politics. On the contrary, I think this rejection is both an ethical and a strategic choice, from which we must necessarily develop a stronger and more anti-colonial revolutionary strategy. It does not weaken our movements to turn away from building territorial autonomy for primarily settler communities if what we turn towards is a greater focus on the continued rebuilding of territorial autonomy for Indigenous peoples we seek to be in struggle with. What is required is to not see settlers as the central subject of revolutionary anti-colonial struggle, and to recognize that the positions from which we struggle differ and thus the paths we take must also differ. Any serious analysis of Canadian settler colonialism will see the hundreds of years of Indigenous struggle against capitalism and the state as relevant and in many ways determinant of the chances of these communities’ potential success at building territorial autonomy. This same analysis will note the difference between this history of struggle and that of radical settler movements in so-called Canada.

If we talk about territorial autonomy in a serious sense, we will know it is far more than “a network of hubs” we’ve rented, squatted, or built in the forest, or a constellation of communal houses in the country. Territorial autonomy, if seen as a strategy for the destruction of capitalism and the state, includes the long term work of developing zones where cops cannot go, where the means to sustain and reproduce those who live there can be found, where a large group of committed and connected people of all ages has the means and the need to defend that territory, over generations. We can look to where this work has already been done for hundreds of years to see examples: Wet’suwet’en territory, Elsipogtog, Barriere Lake, Six Nations, Tyendinaga, Kahnawá:ke, and Kanehsatà:ke. This work has by and large not been done for hundreds of years by non-Indigenous communities – we are starting from zero, and thus even if prioritizing our own territorial autonomy seemed ethical, it would not be likely to be strategic because settler communities in a settler society have much less structural conflict with the colonial system. It does not make us weaker to prioritize the fight for the territorial autonomy of communities of which we are not a part. It makes us stronger, if by doing so we build relationships that contribute to revolutionary contexts in which the goals of settler revolutionary networks converge with those of anti-colonial Indigenous groups. Toward a stronger potential for joint struggle against the colonial state.

Our environmental politics must foreground material responses to the dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ land, for the sake of the planet and as part of a broader commitment to anti-colonial politics. It is dangerous to slip towards a “back to the land” politics, as Rattachements does, because these approaches and projects at best sidetrack us, and at worst set the stage for the development of twisted settler claims to Indigenous land. These kinds of claims will shatter the relationships we should seek with anti-colonial Indigenous allies, and risk strengthening settler reactionary tendencies that we should be fighting. If we see ourselves as aiming to engage in joint struggle with Indigenous communities against the colonial state, we will know that what makes our movements stronger is when our comrades are strong, and our relationships with them are strong.

If we focus on the material realities of settler colonialism and the real ways in which it continues to structure our lives, options, and resources, we can develop more effective strategies by asking what our differing social positions allow and disallow, and how we might put these differences to work for common goals. Mike Gouldhawke explains that “people think of settler as a personal identity but it’s more about a categorical relation between a social subject and settler states”[20]. As La Paperson says, the term settler (and native, and slave) describe “relations of power with respect to land. They sound like identities, but they are not identities per se.”[21] Instead of an attempt to flee these labels, we should put our time to better use and focus on changing the conditions producing those relations of power.

Social position as the sole lens of analysis for developing revolutionary strategy is of course insufficient. It matters deeply how people, no matter what their lives are like now, want the world to look like in the future. However, we need to be able to see and understand the different material realities of those around us in order to have any hope of those realities changing in the world we want to build together. Seeing these realities for what they are, and why they are, shows us that the relationships settlers build with the land are far less important than the ones we dismantle. It is clear that supporting the resurgence of Indigenous territorial autonomy needs to be a greater priority than building a territorial autonomy of our own. The question becomes how to build and sustain formations that can offer long term support and solidarity to Indigenous people struggling against the colonial state, and how best to cultivate a politics that will continue to respond to the shifting contexts, relationships, and terrain of that joint struggle toward self-determination and an end to capitalism, colonialism, and Canada.



[1] Rattachements is available in French here: https://contrepoints.media/fr/posts/rattachements-pour-une-ecologie-de-la-presence , and in English here: https://illwilleditions.com/re-attachments/

[2] Inhabit is available here: https://inhabit.global

[3] To be clear, for myself and many others, we saw ourselves as “initiating” specific actions in response to explicit calls for such activity, in response to changing contexts that we thought demanded it, and in at least the case of the rail blockades, very clearly directly inspired by already ongoing Indigenous initiatives. I use the phrase “settler-initiated” not to take credit for the events of what was very clearly an Indigenous-led movement, but rather to note that there is a real difference between those actions seen by supporters and adversaries as taken by Indigenous communities and those recognized as settler solidarity actions.

[4] It should be noted that the communes they describe are essentially nice places to live where people share meals and daily activities and talk to each other, and not necessarily communes on a scale where they would produce meaningful reorganizations of the economy or social reproduction. It is reasonable to assume that shift in scale is desired.

[5] Which they call colonial-modernity.

[6] Page 17 of A Living Revolution: Anarchism in the Kibbutz Movement by James Horrox

[7] A Living Revolution 18

[8] A Living Revolution 18

[9] A Living Revolution 19

[10] Another example of this kind of communal settlement that I learned about during the writing of this text is the Finnish socialist settlement of Sointula, located on the territory of the ‘Namgis First Nation. The village was established in the early 1900s on so-called Malcolm Island in British Columbia.

[11] The English translation uses the word habitable rather than liveable.

[12] https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/100-years-of-land-struggle

[13] I do not wish here to forward a romanticized view of Indigenous peoples as never exploiting the land, as the Red Paper cautions against doing on page 60. Rather I wish to remind us that without Indigenous peoples’ ability to steward the land, the destruction of capitalism alone would still leave us without the intergenerational knowledge to care for it in effective ways. https://redpaper.yellowheadinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/red-paper-report-final.pdf

[14] Conversely, critiques of anti-blackness and slavery are often not well integrated into analysis coming out of settler radical networks here in Canada compared to in the US. This makes it even worse that Inhabit also makes no reference to this kind of critique or analysis either.

[15] By pre-existing claims, I am referring both to Indigenous claims to land as well as longstanding claims by groups such as the Republic of New Afrika.

New Afrikans And Native Nations ( Roots of The New Afrikan Independence Movement ) – Chokwe Lumumba

[16] Available in French here: https://contrepoints.media/posts/chasse-a-la-chasse-recentes-mises-en-acte-de-la-souverainete-anishinabee , and in English here: https://territories.substack.com/p/hunting-the-hunt

[17] It is worth noting that the English and French versions differ somewhat significantly. Whether due to large errors of translation or intentional changes in anticipation of an Anglophone American readership, the closest sentence in the English version reads: “The question of how to inhabit concerns any living being in any given place.” This is a major difference.

[18] #ShutDownCanada was a massive, broad, and heterogeneous Indigenous-led movement. A large catalyst was the militarized RCMP raid on Wet’suwet’en land defenders protecting their home from Coastal Gas Link pipeline construction last winter. In that context, a number of explicit calls for solidarity actions were put out including by Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, and specific camps on the land such as the Gidimt’en checkpoint. Despite these very clear and explicit calls to action, I think that some of the hesitancy of some sympathetic settlers to participate in settler-initiated solidarity actions came from a belief that all actions needed to either be Indigenous-led or explicitly endorsed or approved by an Indigenous person. I believe Indigenous critiques of the ways that settlers participate in anti-colonial organizing are important. I believe that it is crucial to consider how one’s actions might be perceived by or have consequences for Indigenous communities when planning solidarity actions. However, sacrificing basic security principles of “need to know” in order to obtain an Indigenous stamp of approval on a risky settler-initiated action seems like an especially egregious form of tokenism. That our organizing communities in Montreal are often majority or exclusively made up of settlers is something to be examined and addressed on a more foundational level rather than attempting to hide it by seeking an endorsement of our choices after the fact. I could be wrong, but my assumption from this winter was that some settlers sympathetic or supportive of #ShutDownCanada were worried about the risks of participating in solidarity actions and used the fact that some actions were settler initiated to avoid having to take risk and join the blockade. I think this is unfortunate and is something that must be changed in part by clearer anti-colonial analysis coming out of settler networks.

[19] Limited record exists of other speeches to the media, but this is one example. https://contrepoints.media/en/posts/declaration-du-blocage-de-saint-lambert-declaration-from-the-saint-lambert-blocade

[20] https://twitter.com/M_Gouldhawke/status/1345150065103388673

[21] https://manifold.umn.edu/read/a-third-university-is-possible/section/e33f977a-532b-4b87-b108-f106337d9e53

Thoughts? Email: anotherword@riseup.net

Support the Kanienkehaka Land Back Language Camp – Update and Call for Donations

 Comments Off on Support the Kanienkehaka Land Back Language Camp – Update and Call for Donations
Feb 122021
 

From the Kanienkehaka Land Back Language Camp (Facebook)

January 26, 2021

As we approach our 6th month at Kanienkehaka Land Back Language Camp, we’ve hunkered down for the winter season.   

We continue to build our school house, and adjust our camp as the weather changes. The Salmon River has frozen over, allowing us to enjoy the ice and the easier access it gives us to the other side of the river.   

Our young people have been busy learning the Kaniehkehaka language, with our recent theme being about hunting, trapping and conducting ceremony.   

Soon we will be focusing on the ice and the activies, hobbies and survival skills that come with all of its teachings.

Recently we have had both the Surete Du Quebec and RCMP liasons reach out to the camp, asking for a sit down and inquiring on when we plan to leave. So far, no discussions or sit downs have been agreed upon with either agency.   

Nia:wen Kowa  to everyone who has donated to our GoFundMe, raised monies and/or continue to support our efforts at Kanienkehaka Land Back Language Camp.  

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Indigenous Elders and Land Defenders Sentenced to Jail for Resisting Trans Mountain Pipeline

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Feb 062021
 
The Kwekwecnewtxw (Watch House) monitors work carried out at the nearby Burnaby Terminal, part of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project. Photo via Kwekwecnewtxw – Coast Salish Watch House/Facebook.

From Briarpatch Magazine

The handful of supporters in the sparsely-populated courtroom came there to bear witness and stand in solidarity with an Indigenous Elder who had just been tried for a second time and was now awaiting the verdict.

In December, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick found Jim Leyden guilty of criminal contempt of court for breaching an injunction originally brought by Trans Mountain Pipeline ULC (TMX) in March 2018. The injunction is the line that TMX has drawn in the sand, so as to stifle any meaningful resistance at the company’s worksites throughout the province – including TMX contractors and subcontractors – and all along the pipeline’s path.

It was Leyden’s second conviction, with more than 230 people found guilty of breaching the TMX injunction since 2018. Those in court to support Leyden on December 9, 2020, were unsurprised by the verdict, but they were nonetheless outraged. Leyden’s conviction represents a new strategy by TMX and the Crown that skirts established Crown policy on civil disobedience and ruthlessly targets Indigenous land defenders.

The injunction is the line that TMX has drawn in the sand, so as to stifle any meaningful resistance at the company’s worksites throughout the province.

Leyden, 68, was sentenced for his first conviction in October, along with his two Indigenous co-defendants – Stacy Gallagher, 58, and Tawahum Bige, 27 – all of whom were in ceremony at the time of their August 2018 arrests. Fitzpatrick all but ignored Leyden’s health conditions, which would normally mitigate his punishment, and sentenced him, along with Gallagher and Bige, to the Crown’s recommendation of 28 days in jail, one of the longest sentences imposed against land defenders for breaching the TMX injunction.

During COVID-19, these sentences amount to solitary confinement, much harsher than normal detention conditions. Leyden, who already suffers from pancreatitis and a heart condition, and has been in and out of hospitals since his 2018 arrest, spent much of the time between his release and his second trial in the hospital dealing with health and heart impacts from multiple spider bites he got while in jail at North Fraser Pretrial Centre.

Repressive precedents

On New Year’s Eve 2019, Leyden and Gallagher were served with notices from the Crown that they were being charged, yet again, with criminal contempt for apparent activity at TMX’s Burnaby Mountain facility (Burnaby Terminal) in November and December of that year. But no arrests had occurred at the scene, which left Leyden and Gallagher wondering why they were being charged.

After reviewing the disclosure, it became evident that Leyden and Gallagher were being targeted by TMX and the Crown. Affidavits and video footage taken by TMX security personnel identified Leyden and Gallagher near the gates of the Burnaby Terminal on December 2, 2019. Additional footage also showed Gallagher in the same general location on November 15 and December 18, 2019.

Notably, each video clip showed Leyden and Gallagher surrounded by several other, mostly white land defenders. But no one else was charged by the Crown.

It’s well known that Leyden and Gallagher are part of a group called the Mountain Protectors which, among other things, monitors TMX work carried out at the Burnaby Terminal. (I am also a member of the group.) The terminal is also known as the “tank farm,” because of the giant oil storage tanks spread out over the side of the mountain that can be seen from several kilometers away. With permission and direction from traditional Elders of the three host nations – Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish, and Musqueam – Leyden, Gallagher, and others have engaged in ceremony and carried out monitoring activities from an Indigenous Watch House built in March 2018, which sits adjacent to the tank farm and is explicitly excluded from the TMX injunction despite its position atop the pipeline route.

Notably, each video clip showed Leyden and Gallagher surrounded by several other, mostly white land defenders. But no one else was charged by the Crown.

According to the website of Protect the Inlet, a Watch House (“Kwekwecnewtxw” or “a place to watch from” in the henqeminem language) is “grounded in the culture and spirituality of the Coast Salish Peoples” and is a “traditional structure they have used for tens of thousands of years to watch for enemies on their territories and protect their communities from danger.”

On the same day that Leyden was accused for a second time of violating the injunction, he and others were attempting to bring light to claims that TMX was improperly transporting contaminated soil from the tank farm to an industrial park in Port Coquitlam. The Mountain Protectors issued a press release a day earlier questioning whether the company was in violation of provincial contaminated soil regulations. Leyden can be seen in his disclosure footage talking to people Fitzpatrick referred to during his trial as “media types.”

On two of the three days in 2019 for which Leyden and Gallagher were charged with criminal contempt, law enforcement was not even present. At no time were they asked by RMCP to leave the area, as defined in a “five step process” laid out in the injunction, ostensibly to avoid unnecessary arrests. In fact, a Crown Counsel Policy Manual from 2014 on Civil Disobedience and Contempt of Related Court Orders puts emphasis on the need to give protesters a “clear demand to leave” the premises, referred to in legal parlance as a “dispersal order.”

Latest trials of Indigenous land defenders engaged in ceremony

Gallagher and Leyden were scheduled to be tried together in August, but due to concerns that Leyden might have COVID-19, his trial was postponed. Gallagher’s trial, however, began as planned and lasted eight days. During the trial, Fitzpatrick’s disrespect for defence counsel was palpable and she consistently deferred to the whims of the Crown. The defence explained how Gallagher follows the Anishinaabe ways of his mother’s ancestors, his grandmothers’ teachings, and the natural laws. Gallagher testified and explained that he serves the people as a fire keeper and Opwaagan/pipe carrier, and by upholding his spiritual and ceremonial responsibilities. Gallagher told the court he was engaged in ceremony on the days in question, and pointed out that he was not asked to leave.

Fitzpatrick was dismissive of and showed contempt for the basic facts of Indigenous history. Her unexamined stereotypes and uninformed attitudes toward Indigenous Peoples, cultures, and values were on full display. These were some of the points made in a 93-page complaint against Fitzpatrick submitted to the Canadian Judicial Council on December 3, questioning her ability to be fair and impartial in these cases (a summary of the report can be found here).

Gallagher told the court he was engaged in ceremony on the days in question, and pointed out that he was not asked to leave.

Needless to say, on November 13, Fitzpatrick found Gallagher guilty of all three contempt charges. Gallagher is scheduled to be sentenced on January 25, 2021, and the Crown is recommending he serve an additional 90 days in jail.

Leyden’s second trial began on December 7 and lasted three days. He, too, testified on his own behalf. Leyden explained to the court that he comes from Six Nations territory in Ontario, was apprehended during the ’60s Scoop, and was relocated outside of his home territory for adoption. After moving to Coast Salish territory, Leyden became an Elder, senior Sundancer, and the head firekeeper for Sundance chief Robert Nahanee. Most recently, he was asked to carry out the role of watchman as a Watch House Elder, keeping an eye on the work being done at TMX and reporting misconduct to government agencies and the public.

Leyden also pointed out that no one asked him to leave. In fact, when police showed up on the scene, they took part in the ceremony led by Leyden, during which police were videotaped holding hands with those gathered near the entrance to the Burnaby Terminal and passing the pipe during that part of the ceremony. Leyden and others left the scene soon after, and none the wiser.

Before finding Leyden guilty of criminal contempt, Fitzpatrick told him the injunction provides for an “absolute prohibition” and does not require police to ask him to leave. Fitzpatrick claimed that the RCMP’s five step process in the injunction is merely discretionary, and that Leyden’s opposing arguments “fly in the face” of the terms of the injunction.

In fact, when police showed up on the scene, they took part in the ceremony led by Leyden, during which police were videotaped holding hands with those gathered near the entrance to the Burnaby Terminal and passing the pipe during that part of the ceremony.

Never mind that RCMP officers were careful to adhere to each step of the five step process when they arrested more than 230 mostly white people for symbolic civil disobedience at the gates of TMX in the spring and summer of 2018. In some cases, police pleaded with land defenders to leave so they didn’t have to arrest them. One exception occurred on March 19, 2018, when RCMP officers violently attacked several Indigenous land defenders before arresting them.

Leyden is scheduled to be sentenced on March 1, 2021, and the Crown is recommending he serve an additional 60 days in jail. “The Crown has made it clear that the increased severity of these sentences is meant to stifle resistance to the pipeline,” says Leyden. “They’re using us as an example to scare others from confronting Trans Mountain.”

Using injunction law to curb resistance and free expression

Injunctions have long been used in B.C. to stifle opposition to corporate and government agendas – limiting the effectiveness of striking workers, displacing homeless encampments, and suppressing resistance to harmful environmental projects like TMX and the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

Under the guise that breaching a court order “depreciates the authority of the court” and brings us to the brink of a lawless society, the B.C. Supreme Court uses injunctions – one of its favorite legal tools – to legitimize the repression of political resistance. In B.C., when one violates the terms of an injunction, the offence falls under the arcane English common law, which is based largely on the discretion of judges, cannot be found in Canada’s Criminal Code, and relies only on past decisions.

Under the guise that breaching a court order “depreciates the authority of the court” and brings us to the brink of a lawless society, the B.C. Supreme Court uses injunctions – one of its favorite legal tools – to legitimize the repression of political resistance.

A breach of the TMX injunction can occur in three ways: (1) obstruction of an entrance to a TMX facility, including facilities of TMX contractors and subcontractors, (2) destroying signage or fencing around TMX sites, or (3) coming within five metres of TMX property. A glaring hypocrisy of the TMX injunction is that a frequently used public trail on the south side of the Burnaby Terminal winds its way directly through the 5-metre zone, but only when land defenders or protesters dare to get too close to TMX property does the company, the RCMP, and the Crown take notice. Former B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Affleck, who granted the 2018 TMX injunction, consistently denied that the order violated anyone’s Charter rights to free expression and repeatedly made reference to the injunction’s abstract claim that people “remain at liberty to engage in peaceful, lawful and safe protest” as he found defendant after defendant guilty of contempt.

The most recent verdicts from Fitzpatrick set a chilling precedent on how the Crown can handle these contempt cases, without even the presence of police or an order to disperse. Apparently, all it takes to be charged, brought into the B.C. Supreme Court, and forced to endure a near-certain conviction (only one acquittal has occurred from more than 230 prosecutions) is for TMX to videotape people near or on company property and then request to bring criminal contempt charges.

The most recent verdicts from Fitzpatrick set a chilling precedent on how the Crown can handle these contempt cases, without even the presence of police or an order to disperse.

In case it needs to be spelled out, the B.C. government – in the robes of Crown Counsel – is working at the behest of TMX. There is no veil hiding the relationship between the Court, the Crown, and corporations like Trans Mountain, whether they’re owned by Texas-based Kinder Morgan or the Canadian government.

As if that wasn’t sufficient to stifle TMX resistance, the Crown recommended – and Fitzpatrick gladly ordered – that Leyden and Gallagher be prohibited from coming within 500 metres of TMX facilities as a bail condition for their most recent charges. Setting aside unaddressed land rights issues and the federal government’s arrogant disregard of Indigenous opposition to the pipeline, how is a one-half kilometer “stay-away zone” not a violation of one’s Charter rights to free expression, whether one is Indigenous or a settler?

“The 500-metre stay away order has greatly impacted our ability to monitor Trans Mountain work sites so that we can hold them accountable,” says Leyden. “And I believe that was their intent.”

Reasons mount to abandon troubled TMX project

While Leyden, Gallagher, and Bige were serving their jail sentences in October, several people – including a Secwepemc Hereditary Chief and his daughter – were arrested for allegedly breaching the TMX injunction near Kamloops in Secwepemc territory. The company had begun drilling under the North Thompson River during the salmon run and people were rightly outraged.

Rather than genuinely address opposition to the pipeline expansion project, the ongoing arrests are attempts by the federal and provincial governments to prosecute and jail their way out of the problem. Eight of these land defenders will have their first appearance on contempt charges in the B.C. Supreme Court on January 20.

Ever since the Canadian government bought TMX from Texas oil giant Kinder Morgan for $4.5 billion in 2018, costs associated with building the pipeline have risen steadily to more than $12 billion while oil prices have fallen precipitously. The federal government has not only fought legal challenges from the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations and the Coldwater Indian Band in order to avoid meaningful consultation and having to seek widespread Indigenous approval; Canada is also driving at top speed in the opposite direction of meeting its commitments in the Paris Climate Agreement.

“The 500-metre stay away order has greatly impacted our ability to monitor Trans Mountain work sites so that we can hold them accountable,” says Leyden. “And I believe that was their intent.”

The existing Trans Mountain pipeline is already an environmental and public health hazard with a long history of disastrous spills. As recently as June, 50 thousand gallons of crude oil spilled from a pump station located above an aquifer that supplies the Sumas First Nation with drinking water. The TMX project would impact numerous drinking water sources along the route and lead to a seven-fold increase in tanker traffic in the Burrard Inlet, threatening the endangered southern resident orcas. Because of the known seismic, fire, and chemical hazards associated with the tank farm, hundreds of thousands of residents in the “evacuation zone” will be put at grave risk, not to mention the tens of thousands of students and staff at Simon Fraser University and Burnaby Mountain Secondary School.

Even internal health and safety issues are plaguing the company. On December 15, a worker at the TMX Westridge Terminal in Burnaby was hospitalized after being seriously injured, causing TMX to suspend all construction operations in the Lower Mainland. The accident follows revelations that the Canada Energy Regulator recently found “systemic non-compliances” of COVID-19 mask rules at worksites across the Lower Mainland.

Irreparable harm?

Leyden and Gallagher are committed to appealing their convictions, but it’s unclear how far the RCMP, the Crown, and the courts are prepared to go in serving the interests of TMX.

“The treatment and experience of my client in the B.C. Supreme Court is a reflection of how much work there is still to do,” says Michelle Silongan of ST Law and the Law Union of B.C., who is representing Leyden in one of his appeals. “Reconciliation requires that the Canadian legal system affirm the laws, protocols, and traditions that Indigenous people have practiced here since time immemorial. Without recognizing and paying heed to the foremost obligations and responsibilities held by Indigenous defendants, both reconciliation and justice will remain elusive.”

“They’re using us as an example to scare others from confronting Trans Mountain.”

Antiquated colonial laws are being wielded like a stick over the heads of climate activists and Indigenous land defenders, with no clear end game. Will the Crown be able to continue targeting Indigenous land defenders with impunity? How far will the courts go to repress and punish those opposed to a pipeline expansion project that seems doomed to fail?

TMX relied on questionable evidence of “irreparable harm” in order to impose an injunction and attempt to shield itself from opposition, but the impact to Indigenous Peoples and settlers alike, and the certain environmental devastation for generations to come, is the harm we should be addressing.

“How Canada is targeting Indigenous resistance to TMX” by Kris Hermes, 19 January 2021

Day 200 – 1492 Land Back Lane Update from Skyler

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Feb 052021
 

From 1492 Land Back Lane (Twitter)

When Haudenosaunee Land Defenders are required to defy injunctions to protect our territories, we are arrested, charged, threatened and incarcerated.

It is a crime to fight for our lands, but we are still fighting. Land defense criminalization is meant to divide families, nations, and allies, in order to scare us into submission.

August 5th and October 22nd are days that loom heavy in everyone’s minds. Days where we were shot at, tasered and dragged from our lands. The resilience of so many is amazing. Theses are days in the last 200 that will not be forgotten.

The OPP have tried consistently to divide our community. To try to hinder the support in whatever way they can. You have all made it resoundingly clear that we will not play into their game any longer. This is Haudenosaunee Territory!!!

Looking back and seeing all that we’ve endured together. All the families and friends that have lifted us up in those moments. Remembering all the laughter and joy. The building of a community. The unity of nations. What a gift we’ve been given.

Roads, highways and railways that criss cross our lands will not be used to inflict more violence on our people. All of this colonial infrastructure that has been used to oppress us and exploit our lands.

We have an opportunity to move forward. But we have to do it together. All of the hurt that we’ve endured as nations. The trauma that has been inflicted on us. To give our children and grandchildren more then we had, we must stand united.

To my brothers and sisters. Folks that have given all of themselves for all of us. Risked life and limb, freedoms and careers. Given so much time and energy. People that have had to bare the weight of heavy bail and release conditions. We have so much love and gratitude for you.

There is nothing these courts and cops or racist politicians can do with their guns and jails to turn our backs on future generations. These lands are only borrowed from those generations to come. It is our obligation to hold these lands for them.