Montréal Contre-information
Montréal Contre-information
Montréal Contre-information

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Onkwehon:we take #landback at McKenzie meadows in Grand River

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Aug 092020
 

From Real People’s Media

The McKenzie Meadows development in Six Nations has been stopped, and a #landback occupation has begun.

SIX NATIONS – Despite high winds and heavy rain, a group of Onkwehon:we land stewards began reclaiming the McKenzie Meadows development in Caledonia, Ontario on Sunday, July 20th. The land, at the corner of Fuller Drive and McKenzie Road on the edges of Caledonia is across the road from Kanonhstaton – “the protected place” – the site of a 2006 land reclamation that made international headlines.

If allowed to continue, the McKenzie Meadows development would see the building of 700 homes on a 108 acre parcel of contested lands.

This multi-national reclamation is occurring hot on the heels of the Highway 6 bypass shutdown, which were held in support of Mohawk Warriors in Tyendinaga who were raided by the OPP for standing in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en.

The general sense of spirit at this site this evening speaks to the overwhelming urge to exercise the responsibility to take care of what little Onkwehon:we lands have been left undeveloped. A handful of community members were informed in April 2019 that the Six Nations Band Council (SNEC) had accepted an agreement on the previously dead deal for less than what was offered in 2013. The sum of $352,000 was funneled into the economic development trust fund and 42.85 acres are tied up in federal red tape awaiting a process to be added to the reserve land base. Those lands lie in limbo, similar to the Birch lands from 2006 and the Pines at Kanesatake from 1990.

The Six Nations Elected Band Council is a product of the Canadian government’s Indian Act and is directly accountable to the Minister of Indigenous Services Marc Miller. It was imposed on the Six Nations of the Grand River in 1924 by the RCMP. As a Federal Government entity the band council doesn’t hold any treaty rights, inherent rights, legitimate authority, over Onkwehon:we people to make decisions regarding their lands and rights.

A map showing the location of the McKenzie Meadows development.

Timeline of events

2003 – Land purchased by 2036356 Ontario INC McKenzie Meadows development. Micheal Corrado and others are listed as owners.

2006 – Hundreds of Onkwehon:we people repulsed an OPP attack on land defenders who stopped the Douglas Creek Estates development from occurring on lands that became known as Kanonhstaton or “the protected place.” An occupation lasting years began, and Kanonhstaton became the flashpoint for many ongoing protests and actions.

2013 – Six Nations Elected Council was informed by the developers of the McKenzie Meadows site that “This two-phased residential development project will consist of a minimum of 700 residential units with a maximum of 1000.  The entire land holding is approximately 107 acres, in which Phase 1 will develop 25.2 acres and 200 residential units”.  This was NOT supported through the community and therefore declined. The proposed deal was to see $1,250.00 per residential unit being paid to a dedicated purpose account for the construction of Kawenni:io/Gaweni:yo Private School. Minimum of 700 residential units up to a maximum of 1000 $1,250 X 700 = 875,000.00 OR $1,250 X 1000 = 1,250,000.00.

2019: Six Nations of the Grand River says it has accepted an accommodation deal with a developer building two new housing projects in Caledonia. Ballantry Homes has given 42.85 acres of farmland and $352,000 to the Six Nations Elected Council as part of the accommodation deal to approve two housing projects: Beatties Estates and McKenzieMeadows on the east and west sides of McKenzie Road in Caledonia. The first part of the project in McKenzie Meadows is located directly across the street from the former Douglas Creek Estates site where the land reclamation in 2006 took place. A total of nearly 1400 homes are proposed to be built between the two projects.

Solidarity with Portland Youth

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Jul 272020
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

In response to the call for a day of action in solidarity with the ongoing resistance in Portland from the PNW Youth Liberation Front on July 25th, we put up some posters made for the occasion in Montreal. Small simple solidarity with those fighting every day for a world without police and the white supremacy they uphold.

– Anarchists

A Prison Administrator’s Car Burns

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Jul 252020
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

The night of July 11th, the Volvo belonging to Vince Parente was burned in front of his home in Ste-Thérèse. Vince Parente was just recently named interim associate deputy minister at the Ministry of Public Safety. Besides this nomination, he is the assistant director-general for the Montreal region at the Bureau of Correctional Services. In clearer terms, he is the boss of the prison wardens at Bordeaux and Rivière-des-Prairies in Montreal.

Before rising through the ranks, he began his career as a probation officer and in the transport of prisoners to their appearances, then became assistant warden at Bordeaux prison, then assistant warden at Leclerc prison in Laval, then warden of the St-Jérôme prison.

This bastard has benefited since the start of his career from the confinement and degradation of thousands of people.

This blaze is a statement of solidarity with all prisoners and their families. Prison conditions were terrible to begin with, and they have worsened since the start of the pandemic. Not only do guards spread the virus to inmates, but the latter are locked up 24/7, with almost no visits and no phone privileges.

By the fault of Vince Parente among others, Robert Langevin died of negligence and lack of care inside the walls of Bordeaux prison in May. Vince Parente is a murderous, disconnected administrator like many others, and he is undoubtedly working from home these days. Maybe this fire brought him back to reality.

Arson of 7 Police Cars at SPVM Service Garage

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Jul 222020
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Cops are murderers. We burned their cars. You can too.

We used three incendiary devices: square plastic bottles filled about 3/4 of the way with a mixture of gasoline and motor oil. We used super glue to attach two individually packaged fire cubes (which you can find in camping, hardware, and grocery stores) to the side of each bottle.

At each car, we placed a bottle on its side (cubes facing up), pushed it under the tire of the car, and lit the cube.

We chose devices that would fully ignite about one minute after we placed them under the cars. We wanted to increase our chances of getting away and decrease the chances that the devices would be extinguished preemptively.

For a world without the police and the white supremacist order they defend. Solidarity with Black insurgents and everyone else who fights back.

– Anarchists

A Demonstration In Support Of Patient Attendants Turns Into A Happening For Far-Right Conspiracy Theorists

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Jul 182020
 

From Montréal Antifasciste

A demonstration by healthcare workers (« Manif des travailleurs de la santé!!!!! ») has been called for July 18th at the Parc Saint-Laurent in Repentigny. Organized by a collective of patient attendants, « Le journal des PAB », the demonstration has five demands (which are not at all easy to find of the event page…) and is inviting “all healthcare workers in Quebec” to join them. At first glance this struck us as a welcome initiative, but we changed our minds pretty quickly over the past week when we saw that several far-right figures and anti-lockdown conspiracy theorists were inviting themselves or plain out being invited to attend by some of the organizers!

For instance, Steeve « L’Artiss » Charland (the former second-in-command at La Meute, now with Storm Alliance) intends to « show up with his gang » (people who are similarly close to La Meute and Storm Alliance, two notoriously Islamophobic and anti-immigrant organizations). Jonathan « Hex » Héroux, who organized the famous Vagues bleues in Montreal and Trois-Rivières, also announced he would be attending, as did Alexis Cossette-Trudel, the new top conspiracy theorist in Quebec, a fake news pro and expert in post-factual manipulation.

Let’s be clear: these individuals and their groupies are in no way “allies of healthcare workers”. On the contrary, from the very beginning of the pandemic they have been busy claiming the danger posed by the virus is exaggerated  (in some cases even denying it exists!), while calling on people to disregard lockdown measures and not respect social distancing. In doing so they have not only been endangering healthcare workers, but also the elderly, people with specific risk factors, and the general public. What’s more, and this is not a minor detail, many of the ideas and theories promoted by these individuals stigmatize and scapegoat a significant number of people working in the healthcare sector, and specifically as PABs: namely, immigrants (whether “regular” or “irregular”) and Muslims.

These individuals, many of whom are right-wingers who have been active for years in Islamophobic and anti-immigrant organizations (not to mention having recently been indulging in panicked conspiracy theories denying the very existence of COVID!), should not be welcome anywhere, as they represent an agenda of division, xenophobia, and crass ignorance.

 

John A. Macdonald Statue in Montreal Vandalized with Paint (Again!)

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Jul 042020
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Montreal, July 2, 2020 — As part of #CancelCanadaDay actions throughout the Canadian state, the #MacdonaldMustFall group in Montreal has once again vandalized the Macdonald Monument in Montreal, this time in yellow paint.

According to Roy G. Biv of #MacdonaldMustFall in Montreal: “This statue should either remain vandalized with paint, and we can declare a truce, or better yet, it should be taken down. Taking down a statue celebrating a racist person does not erase history, it is part of the ongoing struggle to resist racism and to properly contextualize our collective past.”

The #MacdonaldMustFall group in Montreal has explained its objections to celebrating John A. Macdonald previously as follows: John A. Macdonald was a white supremacist. He directly contributed to the genocide of Indigenous peoples with the creation of the brutal residential schools system, as well as other measures meant to destroy native cultures and traditions. He was racist and hostile towards non-white minority groups in Canada, openly promoting the preservation of a so-called “Aryan” Canada. He passed laws to exclude people of Chinese origin. He was responsible for the hanging of Métis martyr Louis Riel.

The Macdonald Monument has been vandalized so much in the past three years, that all main colours of the spectrum have been used to attack the monument: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

—–

Selected photos and communiqués from previous attacks on the Macdonald Monument in Montreal:

Red: https://postimg.cc/2V0Rst1G
Orange: https://postimg.cc/BLBZS37c
Yellow: https://postimg.cc/sBYqhXSt
Green: https://postimg.cc/gnTkrHZp
Blue: https://postimg.cc/18tLwYzB
Indigo: https://postimg.cc/S2jPMsvm
Violet: https://postimg.cc/ykDj3sfv

Letter to Comrades Inside

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Jun 252020
 

From Anti-carceral Group

Some people in so-called Montreal have written this letter to comrades who are currently incarcerated. It can be printed, or edited and printed, and sent to friends inside. The letter describes #Uprisings across Turtle Island, and also includes a transcription of an article written by El Jones and incarcerated people out east. It can be hard to get information on the inside.

.pdf LINK

.docx LINK

 

June 20, 2020

Hi!

I wanted to share some news and analysis with you because I’m not sure how much information is making it behind the bars. I want to make sure you have access to different perspectives and information than what appears on TV. So I’m taking a try at writing down some things and sending them to you. I hope it can spark conversations as much as you are able.

First, what you already know: there has been an uprising sweeping across the united states since the police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. In the same week, cops killed Tony McDade (a trans Black man who lived in Florida), Breonna Taylor (a Black woman who lived in Kentucky), and Regis Korchinski-Paquet (a Black Indigenous woman who lived in Toronto and who fell from a 24 story balcony and whose family says she was pushed by the cops). In the first days of the uprising, residents of Minneapolis expressed their feelings about George Floyd’s death and about 500 years of anti-Black racism and violence by setting fires, liberating goods, and eventually, burning down a police precinct that the cops had abandoned because apparently they ran out of tear gas.

The emotions quickly spread across the country and by June 3, there had been demonstrations held in over 430 cities in the us. Many cities saw daily demonstrations, often spontaneous marches that met in obvious gathering places in cities across the country. Over 20 states called in the National Guard and many cities enacted curfews. Thousands and thousands of people have been arrested. People have lost eyes from being shot in the face with tear gas canisters and rubber bullets. People have been killed – like David McAtee, a Black restaurant owner who was killed by the National Guard while at a demonstration in Kentucky and Sean Monterrosa, a 22 year old Latino man who was shot by police while at a demonstration in California and Sarah Grossman, a 22 year old white woman who died after being tear gassed by police at a demonstration in Ohio.

This uprising has mainstreamed demands to defund the police. Some people are even calling for the abolition of the police. There was an op-ed published in the NY Times in mid June by a prominent prison abolitionist named Mariame Kaba who broke down what police abolition really means; not just defunding, full abolition. Cities all across the country are currently facing scrutiny about their police budgets and Minneapolis city councilpersons have pledged to dismantle their police department. Although it is still unclear what exactly that will mean.

In so-called Canada, the police have killed nine Indigenous people since early April: Eishia Hudson, Jason Collins, Stewart Kevin Andrews, Everett Patrick, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Abraham Natanine, Chantel Moore, and Rodney Levi. As the uprising has spread over the colonial border, people have been making lots of connections between colonialism and anti-Blackness.

People have circulated petitions and talked to the media about defunding the police in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Halifax, Ottawa, Edmonton and other cities across the country. Demonstrations have also happened in small and large cities and towns. I haven’t seen a full count of how many cities in canada have seen demonstrations, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were at least a dozen.

The situation is so widespread and fast-moving that giving a comprehensive overview is tricky. I’ll end it there and include this article from the Halifax Examiner that was written by a group of federally incarcerated Black prisoners and shared with the poet, professor, and activist El Jones.

Sincerely,
some friends on the outside

 

Black Lives Matter in prison, too
El Jones
Halifax Examiner, June 14, 2020

We have been watching the Black Lives Matters protests and the conversations about police violence. We have been taking part in our own conversations with prisoners of all races. We would like to share some of our conversations and conclusions with people outside prison.
The movement against police brutality is important, but it is also larger than that. We must also address injustice in the criminal justice system, in prisons, and at parole. At every stage of this system, Black people and Indigenous people are discriminated against. We have come to realize that all these systems are connected.

Just two days ago, on Friday, Rodney Levi was shot and killed by police a few kilometres from Miramichi, New Brunswick. Atlantic Institution, the maximum security prison for the Atlantic region, is located in Renous, close to Miramichi. In sending our condolences to Rodney Levi’s family and friends, we also reflect on how many Indigenous men and women are held in federal prisons across this country.

Prisons are built in small rural towns. Recently, in a conversation with one of the workers, she told us she was in favour of the prison being built because it would offer jobs. When she was told about the conditions and that we do not have programs or any rehabilitation, she was shocked.
We want to send a message to people who believe that building a prison in their community will stimulate the economy. Prisons are not a retirement plan or social security. Putting money into prisons is not a solution to poverty or to any social problems. We ask people living in these communities to reject spending money to put more people, especially Black and Indigenous people, into prisons.

We have also learned that crime is at some of the lowest levels since 1969, and that crime is steadily dropping. How can crime be down, but we continue to incarcerate more and more people? We know that there is no connection between crime and funding prisons. Why are we building more prisons when reserves in this country don’t even have clean water?

We have seen many videos in the last few weeks of police brutality. In these times where all the police are under the threat of being caught on video, there is no one to catch what happens to us on camera. The violence and abuse against us in prisons is still hidden. We have had guards use racial slurs. We have had guards use racial slurs to white prisoners thinking they would agree. We are pepper sprayed and restrained. We have seen and heard people beaten and even die.
When we are charged in the institution, we don’t even have the right to a lawyer. We can be put into solitary confinement, transferred across the country away from our families and communities, and denied parole. There is no justice because no one can see, and no-one is there to defend us.

But even in the courts, where we had lawyers, we have experienced how racist the criminal justice system is. We are judged in front of all-white juries, the same people that may see videos of police shootings and defend the police. There is no prosecutorial oversight, and nobody to stop racist prosecutions. Even if we are in open court, nobody holds the prosecutors accountable for their behaviour. Many more of us simply take deals because we are threatened by higher sentences. It still feels like the 1920s in the courtroom.

All of this is supposed to happen so we can be rehabilitated. But has the public ever asked what prisoners are doing on a day-to-day basis? You might think that we are getting job training, or learning to deal with addictions or mental health problems. We are not. There is nothing to do in prison, and there are hardly any programs to help people. You might ask yourself then why we are spending so much money to keep people behind bars but doing nothing to fix any of the problems.

For Black people, parole is like a unicorn. We end up serving even longer sentences because we are judged by the colour of our skin. We are accused of being gang members. We are punished for talking together. Our visitors are accused of bringing in contraband, so we tell our mothers not to come and see us. Guards antagonize us and then discipline us when we respond. There are no programs made for us. And when we go in front of an all-white parole board, they will not let us out.

Every day, we are seeing people in the streets protesting for Black and Indigenous lives. We want to thank everyone for being where we can not be, and fighting what we cannot fight for. We also know that after the protests, Black lives will still not matter in prison.

We join the calls to defund the police, and we also say it is time to defund the prison. Canadians should ask themselves why so many Black and Indigenous people are incarcerated. You should ask yourselves why your money is going to a system that doesn’t work to solve crime. You should ask why a prison is being built in your community and whether it will actually make your life better.

We hope some of the experiences we have shared have made you think about some of the assumptions you might have about us, or about the idea that people get help in prison. We hope our words show you what you cannot see on video. We have heard people say until all Black lives matter, no one’s life can matter. Until Black prisoner lives matter, can anyone be free?

Nocturnal Direct Actions: Call for Skill Sharing

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Jun 252020
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Acting in small groups to attack the institutions and infrastructures of power can destabilize our enemies, show others who want to fight that they have accomplices, and render our own capacities for resistance tangible, undeniable even, to ourselves. It’s always a good moment to attack. In the context of the pandemic, where demos, occupations, and other more massive forms of struggle involve greater risks than usual, it’s increasingly relevant to organize in small groups for actions that give strength to anti-capitalist, anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian struggles. Whether it’s to recover the momentum of #ShutDownCanada, to spread the revolt against the police and racism that has exploded in the United States, or to sabotage prisons and the border regime, attack opens up possibilities that we would be unwise to pass up.

Taking this avenue might mean changing one’s habits. For example, no longer waiting to be invited into a project involving lots of people to take action. Organizing in groups of two, three, or six in a horizontal manner implies a multiplication of sources of initiatives. To find who to act with, one can ask with whom one shares affinity on the level of how you relate to the world and to struggle, of your desires, or with whom you’d like to deepen a relationship of trust. It will probably be necessary to learn new things, whether how to do reconnaissance of an architect’s office, or how to plan a safe escape route in Westmount.

It doesn’t require any special expertise to take action, but it’s still always helpful for individuals and crews to develop our technical knowledge by sharing information and supporting one another. This callout for skill sharing around direct actions in small groups is an attempt at nourishing these exchanges. We’d like to elaborate on several subjects covered in A Recipe for Nocturnal Direct Actions (also an excellent read to begin).

We’d like to see short guides in the form of texts, videos, comic strips, etc, covering subjects like the following:

– Reconnaissance
– Division of roles
– Planning a route, entry and exit
– Clothing and disguises
– Counter-surveillance
– Communicating an action or not
– Navigating stress

We are not looking for formulas, as there aren’t any. We hope rather to provoke exchanges on a number of questions, to share guidelines, tips and things we’ve learned. Please be careful to not share publicly any information that would give the cops leads they don’t already have, that is to say specific ways of doing things that they are not already aware of and that could help them in an investigation.

This is a proposal to take a bit seriously the fact that we have developed knowledge and skills through our experiences with actions, and that it’s important to make them as accessible as possible, because it’s not always obvious.

On the Insurrection in the U.S.A: An Interview with Anarchists/Abolitionists

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Jun 242020
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

The following is an interview intended for an international and revolutionary audience. It includes questions from the Greek anarchist radio project RadioFragmata regarding the insurrection against white supremacy happening in the USA. The interview is with members of RAM (Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement) and anonymous anarchists from the USA. It is intended to help explain the circumstances and events happening in the USA.

“Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they’ve always made me glad.” – Malcolm X

What is happening in the USA right now, and how is it different from other recent uprisings that have happened in response to police violence such as Ferguson, MO in 2014? Is there a different feeling in the streets?

This uprising in the US is mainly different in its fury and its magnitude. Other moments, like Ferguson or the LA riots in 1992 were significant and laid the groundwork for this moment, but today we are seeing a movement that is radically different in a lot of ways.

The youth in the streets are very knowledgeable about abolitionist politics. The youth have dismissed patience and hope for reform, focusing only on immediate and direct action. A lot more people also seem to realize that reformism is a dead end this time around. The level of intensity is extraordinarily significant. The fact that people burned down a police precinct in Minneapolis, chased the police out running for their lives, and continued as the military was called in, is unprecedented. The other fact that the majority of the country supported burning down a police station and the plague of pacifism has lost its foothold on protest, has really reshaped the type of dialogue we are used to in the states. Support of insurrection and riot from unexpected groups and individuals is shocking at times to the say the least. Predatory fence riders are essentially being forced to come down and pick a side. Are you a racist, or are you an anti-racist?

The intensity of revolt that began this time in Minneapolis, has since spread across the country like a wild fire. The wide-spread level of generalized revolt, the intensity of the resistance, and a complete loss of faith in reform and patience in the system is unlike anything I have ever seen in my lifetime.

How are anarchists and/or anti-fascists in the states showing solidarity during this insurrection? And what suggestions do you have for anarchists and/or anti-fascists around the world to show solidarity from afar?

Anarchists and antifascists have participated from the beginning of these rebellions. The movement has explicitly focused on policing, prisons and its appendages for quite some time now. So this moment of rebellion is very special for us.

But we should be clear; this wasn’t an uprising sparked by anarchists. The rebellion is driven by black youth who are tired of being dehumanized and murdered. Anti-black violence and white supremacy is the cornerstone of US political, economic and social life. It is so entrenched that reform is impossible. We as anarchists have long held this position and have fought and organized to destroy this situation, but we are just one of many political tendencies that have been taking part in this insurrection.

Around the world the most important thing for anarchists to do is to intensify political and economic pressure on the US and contribute to local tensions and resistance against police. Target anything and everything that makes the United States function and powerful, while further generalizing and empowering the discontent that inspired the uprising to begin with; targeting local racism, the police, and other appendages of domination and exploitation. The US is incredibly weak now and the weaker it gets the better it is for us here and for people around the world in general. Additionally, any act of solidarity gives strength to those of us in the streets. Solidarity is strongest in a shared attack that knows no borders!

How is it that some people claim to support the rebellion in the USA but backtrack due to so-called “violence”?

In the US, the concept of “non-violence” as practiced by Martin Luther King Jr., a civil rights leader in the 1960’s, is held up and celebrated, in hindsight, as the perfect expression of activism. By extension, protest is seen as an expression of activism. Thus, all legitimate and supposedly “effective” protest should bare a lot of resemblance to these principles of non-violent protest which are reported in history for single-handedly achieving civil rights in America. In reality, the situation was much more complicated and frequent insurrections in major cities also played a very big role in the state passing new laws that abolished formal/legal segregation in the southern US (Jim Crow; only to eventually readapt methods of oppression). Nevertheless, the official narrative gives non-violence all the credit. Furthermore, the narrative is that every protest must be to advance a legal cause, not a revolutionary movement. Sometimes even revolutionary sounding rhetoric (Such as Killer Mike of Run the Jewels, known democrat and son of a police officer using deceptive language to denounce protesters following attacks on CNN headquarters and the police) is used when talking about changing laws or achieving other basic reforms. Any American action in the streets that is truly revolutionary or is violent is generally considered illegitimate, because of the aforementioned beliefs about what legitimate struggle looks like that is culturally very powerful. This is another reason why the events that have happened are so inspiring because they totally reject this logic and this narrative. The degree to which the uprising spread to such a diverse array of cities shows how widespread the dissatisfaction with this narrative has become. A partial explanation is that the people acted before any formal leaders had a chance to try to assert themselves as representatives of the movement. The truly organic nature of the movement has been its strength from the beginning and what has allowed it to break free from what otherwise would have been protests carefully orchestrated by professional activists and politicians.

People are conditioned from a young age to seek faith in the theater of democratic politics. Violence is the negation of such a faith. Violence is a demonstration of self-determination, it demonstrates a desire to seek a world beyond the present.

We are taught that we have rights, but rights are choices that can be taken away, as they are set by a social contract that is maintained by authority. Rights are nonsense, deceptive options that are used to instill the fear that lies at the basis of today’s social peace. You have your rights, your freedom(S), and if you behave according to the laws of the box that contain these choices, you will not go to prison. Rights are imaginary, and typically only assumed to have validity by the included and beneficiaries of a stratified society. This is a very important thing to remember when judging the voice of a proclaimed ally contesting political violence or self-defense.

Violence and physical revolt recognizes a rigged playing field. It demonstrates a will to go further, a desire that can not be controlled by a system that can at any moment take away such rights. The voices that take an issue with violence are speaking a language of faith in the justice and politics of a system responsible for inspiring revolutionary violence to begin with. These voices will encourage you to plea, to wait, and to hope.

Activists, liberals, and so-called allies supporting from the bench are quick to denounce violence because they have faith in the options the current theater of politics present for change. They want to re-appropriate the existing powers, as oppose to demolish them. In some cases they are also afraid, and instead of humbly recognizing their fear of being punished for courageous risk and resistance, they huddle like cowards behind various critiques of violence.

On the other hand you can wonder why we grow up learning about Martin Luther King and Ghandi, rather then such historical figures of the same time and place such as Malcolm X or Bhagat Singh. The right, the powerful, or the systematic and calculated methods of self-preservation by capitalist society will always denounce revolutionary violence and insurrection. This is simply because this type of resistance is what they fear, this type of resistance threatens their status, and the system that maintains it.

Violence is a neutral subject. Two people can be holding a gun, and it be a totally different situation. One person (Patrick Crusius) can hold a gun in order to murder immigrants and people of color at random in El Paso, Texas, while another person (Chrystul Kizer) can hold a gun to kill a man who raped and trafficked them.

One may say we are only discussing George Floyd because he was fortunate enough to have had his lynching caught on tape. However this is not why we are still discussing George Floyd. People are tortured and murdered across the United States every single day. And in many cases it is caught on video. But the real reason we are still talking about George Floyd after his death, is because this particular incident sparked a generalized revolt of what I would consider a positive type of violence that the police could not control.

Has the coronavirus played a role in the current insurrection?

The coronavirus definitely played a role in the rebellion. There are several main factors here. The economic fallout has left millions of people helpless. There are millions without work in the US. Having a job in the US also does not mean escaping poverty. The unemployment rate does not truly reflect the percentage of people struggling to survive; those working jobs that do not cover their day to day expenses are considered to be employed. The level of precariousness is enormous. Then you have an entire country stuck inside and restless, particularly the youth.

Black people in the US have died of the coronavirus at at a rate three times higher than white americans due to a consistent lack of access to quality healthcare. There was a huge lack of testing in poor communities, but this is intentional. People have little access to healthcare in general, and quality medical assistance is reserved for more affluent communities. People in working class communities continued working and taking public transportation during the pandemic in order to survive. This made the virus spread in more extreme ways, but particularly to marginalized communities.

Quarantine also highlighted divisions and privileges in society. The rich were able to escape dense cities and isolate in luxury. People who lost their jobs and were offered scraps by the government as huge companies and the rich received unprecedented bailouts. The richest few had their wealth increase by over half a trillion dollars, while everyone else was home wondering about the next week, the next bill, or the next meal.

Poor people, Black and brown people, native people, and the excluded demographics of the United States took a massive hit from the virus. There was no pretending anymore about whose life matters and whose didn’t as the state contained oppressed peoples inside petri-dish like virus-filled prisons and immigrant detention centers — acceptable death zones populated by capitalism’s expendables. Furthermore, the workers who were deemed essential during the pandemic to keep society functioning were among the least rewarded and most exploited in society prior (Nurses, agricultural workers, grocery store workers, and so on). This allowed people to realize the absurd logic of capitalism and begin asking questions that many Americans have never even considered. Instead of raises and protection, these workers were only greeted with patronizing praise from the rich and powerful as “heroes”, while such petty appreciation is obviously insulting when someone is risking death and the spread of the virus to their loved ones. People’s eyes were open to a point that no deception offered by the supposed american dream could distract people from the nightmare that is most american’s everyday life.

When the Trump administration also began noticing that non-white and lower class demographics were being affected by the coronavirus at much higher rates then his almost exclusively white fan base, he and his media apparatus began a blatantly racist push to re-open the economy and as Trump put it: “let the virus wash through”.

So due to these systemic, structural reasons the Black community was by far one of the most affected by the coronavirus in the country. On top of all that, when the state demanded people begin social distancing the police immediately began terrorizing Black communities for not following orders. Even as the country was in lockdown, police found a way to keep the numbers of people murdered by them as high as they were in recent years. And with people being home, many had all day to view videos of police murder and torture in the streets as they happened.

The coronavirus became a formula that helped to turn the country into a powder keg.

Is race the only issue driving this uprising?

The insurrection is predominantly about white supremacy, policing, and the prison system (13th is a quality film on this subject). Heinous murder of Black youth is the norm in the United States, and people finally had enough.

Class also plays a fundamental role in the uprising, as it does in all capitalist societies. However, this uprising was totally driven by the Black working class which has a very different character than the activist movement in the US which is often from bourgeois backgrounds and approaches politics as a hobby as opposed to indispensable struggle. Due to this reality the character of the original uprising was pretty open to whoever wanted to participate, and acted without fear of judgment by the racist morality of the status quo.

It should also come as no surprise that while the unemployment rate has skyrocketed to levels not seen since the great depression, people are now fighting back against the system. If the movement can retain this working class ferocity and fluidity the potential for revolutionary change is greater than it’s been in a lifetime.

What are some of the origins of white supremacy in the USA?

The origins of white supremacy in the US are the origins of the country itself. The US was founded as a white supremacist project explicitly. Built on the backs of the enslaved African population and the genocide of the indigenous, the US established itself as the model nation for white power. In its early laws they claimed Black people were only three fifths of a human and were viewed as property until 1865. After that the government did everything in its power to ensure the foundations of slavery remained, transferring the process from plantations to the prison industrial complex.

But this process started with early European expansion around the world. The US, in actuality, is a project built from European thought and politics. Both continents are historically entangled with extreme racial regimes and mass slaughter and genocide. Additionally, the status of economic and political power maintained on both continents come at the expense of historical colonialism that has come to define the global mapping of the 1st and 3rd worlds today.

What does it mean to be against white supremacy? Are there elements of reverse racism in this struggle?

First off, reverse-racism is not a thing. It is an oxymoron.

Racism isn’t simple prejudice but a system of oppression and because there is no racialized system of oppression that whites are subject to, they cannot be victims of racism.

“White” in American society is an established demographic that has some pre-existing advantages on its own. For example, while many white people in America suffer due to poverty, there are still inherent advantages to being white. One great example is the ability to go jogging at night without being seen as fleeing a crime.

The ruling class has determined throughout history that there is to be a calculated delegation of suffering. The notion of the savage, the inferior non-gentile /dark skinned populations of the world established by European conquest is a critical origin as to the demographics chosen to suffer in the world today. Approaches and language used by oppressing/ruling populations have been modernized and adapted, but the foundation remains the same. White means to be included, to have a better seat in the stadium without condition.

While overall Black people in the United States have a 250% higher chance of being murdered by police (that’s according to official numbers, the real number is likely higher overall, and varies by region and level of diversity), many of those murdered are also poor white people. The ruling class does not spare the excluded white population, and having a critique of white supremacy does not forfeit a recognition of white people suffering under capitalism. But it is essential that we recognize that a contempt for being white is a frustration with the race that has been chosen by this system as included and defended. White people are included and defended, at the expense of, and from, so-called inferior non-white demographics. While the oblivious or racist make claims of reverse-racism, others have recognized the same gestures of frustration against white supremacy as logical contempt.

There are some Black separatist groups* that exist, but their calls for separation stem from a desperation to escape the relentless infliction of misery that comes not from a diverse society, but a diverse society that has been stratified based on race and ethnicity. Such a desperate call for Black power through segregation comes from the experience of knowing a diverse society that has one race delegated to reign supreme.

Across the United States, as diverse as it is, and regardless of its deceptive civil rights acts, people remain brutally segregated. Whether by class or race, the United States presents some of the most intense close-proximity segregation in the world. Look at New York City for example, where you have some of the poorest parts of the country and wealthiest neighborhoods in the world existing side-by-side, separated by the beast of the police and their judicial system. Many non-white communities do not even interact with white people in daily life unless it is white police invading their neighborhoods and maintaining their poverty. In no way at all am I ignoring the plight of white working class communities, but there are volatile disparities that scream back at those claiming “all lives matter” with an acid that will seal their racist lips. Two and a half million people are in prison in the United States, many innocent, many white, and many poor. In no way do we dismiss the poor white people, but in a country roughly 13% Black, and a prison population almost 40% percent Black, the gaslighting efforts behind claims of reverse-racism or “all lives mattering” are mathematically invalid.

What is falsely deemed “reverse-racism” is actually an understandable frustration with a demographic that has power due to the suffering of another demographic. You can be white and despise what it means to be white in the world today.

There have been instances in past riots, such as the 1992 Los Angeles riots, of whites being randomly attacked for simply being white. While this was in the minority of overall inspiring events that happened, they were one unfortunate result of an explosive situation. This is not something that has been present in the current uprising. The current uprising has been remarkably diverse right from the beginning in all its expressions and despite the participation of millions, there has been no real serious examples of inter-racial violence occurring. On the contrary, at least prior to the involvement of false leaders, there has been a remarkable sense of unity, even in spite of individual disagreements on strategy and tactics and people coming from different political backgrounds. Serious objections to violence, looting, etc. have almost exclusively come from outsiders who have not been on the streets and from some of the peaceful protesters now filling the streets, following a narrative the media has handed them about what “legitimate” protest looks like. Many of those peaceful protestors are now being subject to widespread police violence, which will hopefully radicalize many of them. In this way, the system is helping make our points for us to these newer more peaceful demonstrators.

* Many Europeans appear at times to fetishize any semblance of the original Black Panther Party, especially in the form of using images of the New Black Panther Party posing with weapons to proclaim solidarity with black struggle. It is important to note that the New Black Panther Party is not the same as the old Black Panther Party or the Black Liberation Army. It has been rejected by almost all surviving members of the original Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, including those still serving time in prison for their actions. The New Black Panther Party is a viciously authoritarian, antisemitic, pro-segregation, and anti-gay organization. The guns they carry are all legally owned firearms in the USA.

How do anarchists in the states find solidarity with people who are not formally anarchist?

We do not have the numbers to function with blinders on. Additionally the sincerity of rage and passion for freedom that come from experience can outweigh the alleged enlightenment of any theoretical understanding. We also live in an intensely diverse society, and have to challenge ourselves to break out of the insular thinking of classical anarchist organizing.

In the states we must adapt to the circumstances we face, and challenge ourselves to focus on deeper elements of tension and discontent, that transcend the superficiality of political identity.

We find our solidarity standing horizontally with a discontent of experience. When the streets escalates resistance we look to board ship . Anarchists in the states seek a solidarity of shared enemy and shared frustration. Maybe those we seek to fight alongside do not have recite the same rhetoric or proclaim the same ideology, but our priority is to seek the hand of those that share our rage with this system and act accordingly.

Is looting something perceived as revolutionary? Do you support the looting politically? Do you take issue with the judgments of liberals regarding the ethics of looting?

No I don’t take issue with looting. Nor do I show any respect to the morality that lies at the foundation of capitalist society. To take issue with looting implies a non-issue with the status quo needed in order to “appropriately” purchase products.

Let me put it this way: the wealthy of New York City looted stores across the city in order to be prepared for lockdown and quarantine as the Coronavirus Pandemic loomed. Generally speaking, it was only in some small stores in very poor neighborhoods that some home essentials for quarantine could be sparsely found. Many poor people are unable to purchase in bulk, as most work paycheck to paycheck and the notion of investment of any kind, even an investment into the coming days of a quarantine, is not an option.

Stores across NYC were emptied of toilet paper, disinfectants, personal protective equipment, food, and whatever the rich could get their hands on. The rich “legally” looted the stores, and hoarded safety. They did this on their terms; the same terms that define purchasing power within capitalism. The terms that calculate and delegate suffering.

Looting is an act of defying these terms. It is an act that exposes the fragility of these terms that the police and justice system exist to maintain and enforce.

No product accounted for by global capitalism can be measured against an everyday life of suffering with origins in formal slavery. To denounce looting in the context of a social insurrection gives praise to the notion of purchasing in accordance with the terms defined by the ruling class’s putrid morality.

Looting in the context of a social uprising, in most cases threatens the reification of the ‘sacred’ purchase; essentially breaking the barriers we are conditioned to accept that exist between poverty and life. However, looting and the social violence of an insurrection is not always perfect. There have been some small businesses burned in Minneapolis for example that certainly didn’t deserve compared to other available targets. As Alfredo Bonanno has said, insurrection “is a blow of the tiger’s claws that rips and does not distinguish. Of course, an organized minority is not the insurgent people. So it distinguishes. It has to distinguish.”

As far as I’m concerned, to take issue with looting (especially if it targets big businesses and exclusive commodities) is to advocate for purchasing. It resembles a voice that comes from a position of privilege; the privilege to not feel desperate. It also stems from a position that is concerned with the judgment of the included and benefited in this society.

Looting can be beautiful and sad at the same time. I understand also the concerns regarding the materialistic elements of some types of looting, but I don’t think this outweighs the broader revolutionary implications. I am sad to see a small business owned by a struggling family be scooped up by the vacuum of rage that is a riot, but on the other hand I smile seeing poor people sporting fashion symbols of the rich and shopping at Wal-Mart without a wallet.

As an anarchist, with a limited voice in the world of politics, I refuse to even for a second, consider denouncing an uprising due to looting.

There are plenty of voices on the right and in power that believe in the sanctity of the purchase, and use such a belief to demonize, divide, and degrade an insurrection. These are well funded voices that are preserved by this society in order to support the genocidal normalcy that inspired an insurrection in the first place. If you use your voice to degrade or demean gestures of self-determination and rebellion you can not sincerely claim to be an accomplice to an uprising. Those in power protecting the status quo will use their well-funded media apparatus to demonize and divide the insurrection; the so called participants/supporters should not.

If you take moral issue with looting it may be important to look within your own claim to support an uprising against white supremacy, capitalism, and the state. Because you are asserting a logic that rewards institutional looting, domination, and exploitation, and looks to punish or be cautious of any grassroots efforts of revenge and/or self-preservation.

A very eloquent defense of looting in the context of a Black uprising was put forth by the situationists as early as 1965 and is as relevant as ever:

“The looting of the Watts district was the most direct realization of the distorted principle: ‘To each according to their false needs’ — needs determined and produced by the economic system which the very act of looting rejects. But once the vaunted abundance is taken at face value and directly seized, instead of being eternally pursued in the rat-race of alienated labor and increasing unmet social needs, real desires begin to be expressed in festive celebration, in playful self-assertion, in the potlatch of destruction.
[…]
Looting is a natural response to the unnatural and inhuman society of commodity abundance. It instantly undermines the commodity as such, and it also exposes what the commodity ultimately implies: the army, the police and the other specialized detachments of the state’s monopoly of armed violence. What is a policeman? He is the active servant of the commodity, the man in complete submission to the commodity, whose job it is to ensure that a given product of human labor remains a commodity, with the magical property of having to be paid for, instead of becoming a mere refrigerator or rifle — a passive, inanimate object, subject to anyone who comes along to make use of it. In rejecting the humiliation of being subject to police, the blacks are at the same time rejecting the humiliation of being subject to commodities.”

– Situationist International, “The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy”, 1965

Why are there so many accusations of conspiracy theories behind the protests, and also this claim of outside agitators?

The US is an odd country. The prevalence of conspiracy theories is shocking. People who are often for the status quo often believe really outlandish theories here. In many ways this is indicative of the rapid decline of the US as a power. Its population is now so tremendously misinformed they often don’t know very basic facts. For instance, there’s a growing, and sizable group of people that believe climate change is fake, antifa is funded by George Soros, and the world is flat.

Furthermore, people are so detached and so fixated on their devices they have a hard time believing anything is ever real. So whenever anything happens many people think it’s fake. However the state also understands how to leverage this. Over 150 cities/towns had protest activity. The government claims outside agitators have launched the rebellion even though it makes literally no sense. Historically the government has always said this about Black liberation movements. Part of it is racist. The state believes, or wants people to believe, that Black people are incapable of doing anything without a white hand. And on the other side, if it is “outsiders” then the state can argue the movement is illegitimate.

Following the first and second world wars, a relentless terror campaign by the FBI to eradicate the left, anarchists, and anyone challenging the status quo went into full effect. This lead to future generations of apolitical people knowing nothing more then democrat versus republican. Periods of political resurgence appear throughout history since this period (Anti-war movement in the 60s, armed struggle groups in the 70s, anti-globalization movement in the 90s, and so on), however most people in America are not taught to be political the way most are in rest of the world. Generally we are taught to be culturally liberal or conservative, and embrace political variations of the right wing. Most jump into prescribed political narratives that don’t challenge much of anything. So the appealing shock and awe of conspiracy theories is fairly understandable, and sadly these help keep people divided and distracted, fixated on trees as opposed to the forest.

In europe these kind of extended riots go hand in hand with big strikes. Are there big strong unions (maybe leftist some of them) during this period that could start a big strike?

The U.S. unions have generally been coopted by a right wing mentality and barely resemble their radical roots. Of course wildcat strikes of transportation could considerably damage the powers that be, but the country was already at a sort of surreal standstill due to the quarantine, with very few working at all, and only “essential” U.S. infrastructure being used.

Some gestures of solidarity were made by bus workers refusing to drive demonstrators to prison for example, but generally unions and wildcat strikes are very rare and equally unlikely in the USA. In a consumer economy with most industry automated, the few manual jobs are usually done by the most exploited of immigrants, and if they were done by union labor, such jobs typically end up being exported to a country where labor is cheaper. However, what did happen leading up to this was massive coordinated rent strikes due to massive unemployment, and huge networks of mutual aid being built across the country. Whether coincidence like the virus itself, or a precursor of organizing towards general revolt, any wild cat strike in the complicated economy of the USA is typically done on an organic social level as opposed to throughcoordinated union effort.

Will Trump’s declaration to recognize anarchists and anti-fascists as a terrorist organization lead to increased repression? What type of support can you anticipate being needed in the near future, or now?

Trump’s threat to label anarchists and antifa as terrorists will almost certainly increase repression here. In many ways it is a sign of political weakness and desperation. Trump, Barr and the rest of the clowns in office know perfectly well anarchists are not solely responsible for these uprisings. But they can’t say “we have been killing and destroying Black people for decades so they rightfully rose up in rebellion.” They need a scapegoat.

The state and media are desperate to recuperate and restructure the response and narrative of the demonstrations. However recuperating an insurrection that is de-centralized, spontaneous, and organic is quite hard without an imaginary boogeyman to place all the blame on. We are not surprised by this response, nor is it the first time anarchists have been considered public enemy #1 in the united states.

So the likelihood the movement will come under attack is very high. But none of us are afraid. None of us are surprised. Everyone has realized that the US is weak and can only rule by terror. Once people are no longer afraid the regime’s power substantially weakens. The greatest support we can ask for is to continuously attack the U.S. Keep attacking until this wretched empire is a thing of the past.

Over ten thousand people have been arrested that we know of. We also know that in the streets you not only have local police forces, but you have ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), the FBI, and various other agencies tracking, surveilling, and in terrogating arrested demonstrators. Already you have people facing long-term prison sentences for throwing malfunctioned molotovs under the charge of attempted murder. Even prior to all this we have a long term anarchist prisoner serving 10 plus years for throwing a non-functioning molotov cocktail at a federal building.

Trump and his “law and order” response is a call for a counter-revolutionary and state repression campaign that is as unprecedented as the insurrection that has been sweeping the streets of america.

Sadly liberal activists and media have been part of the attempt to cast out anarchists and anti-fascists. Blaming violence on so-called white provocateurs, posting information online about suspected rioters and evenliberal activists tackling demonstrators who commit property damage and turning them over to the police are among the disgusting things happening as reformist groups begin to co-opt the dialogue.

Instead of recognizing the solidarity in the actions of anarchists and anti-fascists participating horizontally in the riots, many of the middle and upper class politically-correct world, as well as liberal Black leaders pandering to the white mainstream, degrade the courageous violence against the police by dismissing it as “political opportunism by white agitators.” Regardless of this absurd claim that falls in line with other liberal conspiracy theories, we all know that anarchists and anti-fascists play a much less significant role in the severity of resistance then informally political Black, brown, and working class people simply fed up with the misery of everyday american life. As anarchists we do however dismiss the accusations of coopting Black struggles, and will forever take a stance as accomplices to an insurrection against white supremacy, as opposed to allies supporting from the safety of computers and ballot boxes.

So much is happening, so much is expected to continue happening, and information at the moment is overwhelming. However we are including with this text a list below of bail funds, anti-repression groups, and frequently updated websites regarding the on-going uprising.

Bail Funds – Huge compilation of bail funds and support groups created during and used for the current uprising.

Abolition Media Worldwide

Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (RAM)

NYC Anarchist Black Cross