TUES JAN 7, 2020 (anniversary of RCMP-CGL raid) until SUN JAN 12, 2020
We call for solidarity actions from Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities who uphold Indigenous sovereignty and recognize the urgency of stopping resource extraction projects that threaten the lives of future generations.
Unceded and sovereign Wet’suwet’en land is under attack. On December 31, 2019, BC Supreme Court Justice Marguerite Church granted an injunction against members of the Wet’suwet’en nation who have been stewarding and protecting our traditional territories from the destruction of multiple pipelines, including Coastal GasLink’s (CGL) liquified natural gas (LNG) pipeline. Hereditary Chiefs of all five Wet’suwet’en clans have rejected Church’s decision, which criminalizes Anuk ‘nu’at’en (Wet’suwet’en law), and have issued and enforced an eviction of CGL’s workers from the territory. The last CGL contractor was escorted out by Wet’suwet’en Chiefs on Saturday, January 4, 2020.
We watched communities across Canada and worldwide rise up with us in January 2019 when the RCMP violently raided our territories and criminalized us for upholding our responsibilities towards our land. Our strength to act today comes from the knowledge that our allies across Canada and around the world will again rise up with us, as they did for Oka, Gustafsen Lake, and Elsipogtog, shutting down rail lines, ports, and industrial infrastructure and pressuring elected government officials to abide by UNDRIP. The state needs to stop violently supporting those members of the 1% who are stealing our resources and condemning our children to a world rendered uninhabitable by climate change.
Light your sacred fires and come to our aid as the RCMP prepares again to enact colonial violence against Wet’suwet’en people.
We ask that all actions taken in solidarity are conducted peacefully and according to the laws of the Indigenous nation(s) of that land.
Comments Off on January 17th – Day of Action to Stop Line 3
Jan042020
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
From the headwaters of the Mississippi River, a call reverberates across Turtle Island: Stop Line 3!
The Dakota and Anishinaabeg people have lived, died, and cared for the waters in what’s now “Minnesota” since long before the founding of the United States. Enbridge Inc. proposes to place a tar sands pipeline across the lands and waters of indigenous people in northern Minnesota—a project called ‘Line 3’. This pipeline proposes to cross 211 waterbodies, some of the richest wild rice beds in the world, and violate the treaty rights of Anishinaabeg negotiated in 1837, 1854, and 1855. The Minnesota segment of Line 3 is the final holdout of a pipeline planned to send 1M barrels per day of oil sands from Alberta to the western edge of Lake Superior. Line 3 represents a 10% increase in tar sands production.
As the state of Minnesota weighs the final water crossing permits needed to build Line 3, we invite you to join us for a day of joyful, exuberant, and playful public engagement with the possibilities for life without oil. Indigenous, settler, migrant—we all agree: a world of extraction is not the world we want!
When we take action to support the Dakota and Anishinaabeg preserve their homelands and culture, together we open possibilities for reinventing our lives beyond colonialism and capitalism. You don’t have to be part of an organization, a government, or some other structured system to want something else. We want ethical ways of relating to each other and to the earth. This is the only home we have. From January 17th – January 19th we call all beings who want something different to gather and display this desire using the hashtag #StopLine3. From banner drops to rallies to roving street parties to demonstrations to teach-ins, anything that helps spread our joy and defiance is welcome.
Comments Off on New Year’s Light Show for the Prisoners of the Quebec City Detention Center
Jan042020
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
December 31th, 2019
Around 7:00 p.m., a group of people gathered in the woods on the outskirts of the Quebec City Detention Center to display their support for those detained. The institution receives prisoners who are serving sentences of less than two years and defendants awaiting trial. The establishment can accommodate more than 710 male prisoners, it is the second largest provincial detention establishment in Quebec, after the Bordeaux Prison. The prison also has a female section which has 56 regular places. At the time of the night visit, about 15 prisoners were in the outer courtyard when fireworks and flares were lit, offering them a bright message of Happy New Year. Enthusiastic wishes and screams were exchanged on both sides before the security tried to control the situation. The action concluded without arrests.
Because we still live in a colonial and racist context where the First Peoples are incarcerated by the Canadian government in a disproportionate way compared to the rest of the population, we want to reaffirm our solidarity by denouncing the jurisdiction of “Canada” on these lands and his hand on life and determination of the people who live there.
We can no longer deny the impact of colonialism!
We salute the courage of Shanet Pilot, a native warrior, who is still incarcerated 3 hours a week in Quebec prison for defending her territory, the Nitassinan, and opposing hydro-Quebec hydroelectric development. Since 2012 that the Government made her pay her “debts” by imprisonment, when at this very moment, Hydro-Quebec only pays crumbs in return for the theft of her territory. SOLIDARITY WITH SHANET PILOT!
The practice of putting detainees in the “hole” in excessive ways is a recurrent practice, which happens here in the Quebec City detention center and which must be abolished, just like prisons. Rapper Souldia recounts his experience of the “hole” when he was 24: “I was taken to the hole for 21 days. It smells of leftover food from the day before, it smells of piss, it smells of shit. The walls are dirty. There’s dried blood, drool. In less than 10 days, you are delirious. ”
Quebec prison has also received the “E” rating from Quebec’s infrastructure society, which means it has the lowest rating and is in very poor condition.
A class action is brought against the government of Quebec to denounce the prejudices lived by the prisoners in this prison. The request, which is led by Samuel Cozak, a former detainee, reveals a measure called the “campsite” where detainees must sleep on the floor in the cell of another incarcerated person, at less than 20 centimeters from a toilet. Cozak also denounces detainees’ malnutrition, unhealthy kitchens and the interventions of officers who are tainted by intimidation, the use of fear and excessive isolation. Also deplored that only one doctor is present per week to respond to the health problems of some 800 prisoners including mental health services.
Another class action is underway in connection with the suicide of Gaétan Laurion who was incarcerated in the infirmary area of the prison under increased surveillance after several attempts to kill himself. At the time of his death, the guard had worked 45 hours in the three preceding days and was sleeping at the surveillance post. The family claims compensation for negligence.
Prisons in Quebec are generally overcrowded, it is estimated that the occupancy rate at Quebec prison is 104%. This has had a major impact on the lives of those who have been criminalized, including the large transfers of detainees, the equivalent of a whole prison displaced every day in the province.
Finally, we would like to affirm our solidarity with trans people and the LGBTQIA2 community who experience all more discrimination in the gendered prison environment and who also face humiliation when the time comes to have to comply with strip searches. A network is in place and is developing more and more to support these people in prisons through written correspondence which serves to create links and even create certain security for these prisoners. We therefore invite you to contact the Prisoner Correspondance Project for more info.
AGAIN A HAPPY NEW YEAR AND SOLIDARITY!
THE FIST IN THE AIR BECAUSE WE ARE ALL BORN TO BE FREE!
NO PRISONS! NO STATES! NO QUEBEC! NO CANADA!
The Essential Building Block of Anarchist Organization
Turbulent times are upon us. Already, blockades, demonstrations, riots, and clashes are occuring regularly. It’s past time to be organizing for the upheavals that are on the way.
But getting organized doesn’t mean joining a pre-existing institution and taking orders. It shouldn’t mean forfeiting your agency and intelligence to become a cog in a machine. From an anarchist perspective, organizational structure should maximize both freedom and voluntary coordination at every level of scale, from the smallest group up to society as a whole.
You and your friends already constitute an affinity group, the essential building block of this model. An affinity group is a circle of friends who understand themselves as an autonomous political force. The idea is that people who already know and trust each other should work together to respond immediately, intelligently, and flexibly to emerging situations.
This leaderless format has proven effective for guerrilla activities of all kinds, as well as what the RAND Corporation calls “swarming” tactics in which many unpredictable autonomous groups overwhelm a centralized adversary. You should go to every demonstration in an affinity group, with a shared sense of your goals and capabilities. If you are in an affinity group that has experience taking action together, you will be much better prepared to deal with emergencies and make the most of unexpected opportunities.
Relative to their small size, affinity groups can achieve a disproportionately powerful impact. In contrast to traditional top-down structures, they are free to adapt to any situation, they need not pass their decisions through a complicated process of ratification, and all the participants can act and react instantly without waiting for orders—yet with a clear idea of what to expect from one another. The mutual admiration and inspiration on which they are founded make them very difficult to demoralize. In stark contrast to capitalist, fascist, and socialist structures, they function without any need of hierarchy or coercion. Participating in an affinity group can be fulfilling and fun as well as effective.
Most important of all, affinity groups are motivated by shared desire and loyalty, rather than profit, duty, or any other compensation or abstraction. Small wonder whole squads of riot police have been held at bay by affinity groups armed with only the tear gas canisters shot at them.
The Affinity Group is a Flexible Model
Some affinity groups are formal and immersive: the participants live together, sharing everything in common. But an affinity group need not be a permanent arrangement. It can serve as a structure of convenience, assembled from the pool of interested and trusted people for the duration of a given project.
A particular team can act together over and over as an affinity group, but the members can also break up into smaller affinity groups, participate in other affinity groups, or act outside the affinity group structure. Freedom to associate and organize as each person sees fit is a fundamental anarchist principle; this promotes redundancy, so no one person or group is essential to the functioning of the whole, and different groups can reconfigure as needed.
The affinity group is a flexible model.
Pick the Scale That’s Right for You
An affinity group can range from two to perhaps as many as fifteen individuals, depending on your goals. However, no group should be so numerous that an informal conversation about pressing matters is impossible. You can always split up into two or more groups if need be. In actions that require driving, the easiest system is often to have one affinity group to each vehicle.
Get to Know Each Other Intimately
Learn each other’s strengths and vulnerabilities and backgrounds, so you know what you can count on each other for. Discuss your analyses of each situation you are entering and what is worth accomplishing in it—identify where they match, where they are complentary, and where they differ, so you’ll be ready to make split-second decisions.
One way to develop political intimacy is to read and discuss texts together, but nothing beats on-the-ground experience. Start out slow so you don’t overextend. Once you’ve established a common language and healthy internal dynamics, you’re ready to identify the objectives you want to accomplish, prepare a plan, and go into action.
Decide Your Appropriate Level of Security
Affinity groups are resistant to infiltration because all members share history and intimacy with each other, and no one outside the group need be informed of their plans or activities.
Once assembled, an affinity group should establish a shared set of security practices and stick to them. In some cases, you can afford to be public and transparent about your activities. in other cases, whatever goes on within the group should never be spoken of outside it, even after all its activities are long completed. In some cases, no one except the participants in the group should know that it exists at all. You and your comrades can discuss and prepare for actions without acknowledging to outsiders that you constitute an affinity group. Remember, it is easier to pass from a high security protocol to a low one than vice versa.
Make Decisions Together
Affinity groups generally operate on via consensus decision-making: decisions are made collectively according to the needs and desires of every individual involved. Democratic voting, in which the majority get their way and the minority must hold their tongues, is anathema to affinity groups—for if a group is to function smoothly and hold together under stress, every individual involved must be satisfied. Before any action, the members of a group should establish together what their personal and collective goals are, what risks they are comfortable taking, and what their expectations of each other are. These matters determined, they can formulate a plan.
Since action situations are always unpredictable and plans rarely come off as anticipated, it may help to employ a dual approach to preparing. On the one hand, you can make plans for different scenarios: If A happens, we’ll inform each other by X means and switch to plan B; if X means of communication is impossible, we’ll reconvene at site Z at Q o’clock. On the other hand, you can put structures in place that will be useful even if what happens is unlike any of the scenarios you imagined. This could mean preparing resources (such as banners, medical supplies, or offensive equipment), dividing up internal roles (for example, scouting, communications, medic, media liaison), establishing communication systems (such as burner phones or coded phrases that can be shouted out to convey information securely), preparing general strategies (for keeping sight of one another in confusing environments, for example), charting emergency escape routes, or readying legal support in case anyone is arrested.
After an action, a shrewd affinity group will meet (if necessary, in a secure location without any electronics) to discuss what went well, what could have gone better, and what comes next.
It’s safer to act in chaotic protest environments in a tight-knit affinity group.
Tact and Tactics
An affinity group answers to itself alone—this is one of its strengths. Affinity groups are not burdened by the procedural protocol of other organizations, the difficulties of reaching agreement with strangers, or the limitations of answering to a body not immediately involved in the action.
At the same time, just as the members of an affinity group strive for consensus with each other, each affinity group should strive for a similarly considerate relationship with other individuals and groups—or at least to complement others’ approaches, even if others do not recognize the value of this contribution. Ideally, most people should be glad of your affinity group’s participation or intervention in a situation, rather than resenting or fearing you. They should come to recognize the value of the affinity group model, and so to employ it themselves, after seeing it succeed and benefiting from that success.
Organize With Other Affinity Groups
An affinity group can work together with other affinity groups in what is sometimes called a cluster. The cluster formation enables a larger number of individuals to act with the same advantages a single affinity group has. If speed or security is called for, representatives of each group can meet ahead of time, rather than the entirety of all groups; if coordination is of the essence, the groups or representatives can arrange methods for communicating through the heat of the action. Over years of collaborating together, different affinity groups can come to know each other as well as they know themselves, becoming accordingly more comfortable and capable together.
When several clusters of affinity groups need to coordinate especially massive actions—before a big demonstration, for example—they can hold a spokescouncil meeting at which different affinity groups and clusters can inform one another (to whatever extent is wise) of their intentions. Spokescouncils rarely produce seamless unanimity, but they can apprise the participants of the various desires and perspectives that are at play. The independence and spontaneity that decentralization provides are usually our greatest advantages in combat with a better equipped adversary.
Bottomlining
For affinity groups and larger structures based on consensus and cooperation to function, it is essential that everyone involved be able to rely on each other to come through on commitments. When a plan is agreed upon, each individual in a group and each group in a cluster should choose one or more critical aspects of the preparation and execution of the plan and offer to bottomline them. Bottomlining the supplying of a resource or the completion of a project means guaranteeing that it will be accomplished somehow, no matter what. If you’re operating the legal hotline for your group during a demonstration, you owe it to them to handle it even if you get sick; if your group promises to provide the banners for an action, make sure they’re ready, even if that means staying up all night the night before because the rest of your affinity group couldn’t show up. Over time, you’ll learn how to handle crises and who you can count on in them—just as others will learn how much they can count on you.
Go Into Action
Stop wondering what’s going to happen, or why nothing’s happening. Get together with your friends and start deciding what will happen. Don’t go through life in passive spectator mode, waiting to be told what to do. Get in the habit of discussing what you want to see happen—and making those ideas reality.
Without a structure that encourages ideas to flow into action, without comrades with whom to brainstorm and barnstorm and build up momentum, you are likely to be paralyzed, cut off from much of your own potential; with them, your potential can be multiplied by ten, or ten thousand. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world,” Margaret Mead wrote: “it’s the only thing that ever has.” She was referring, whether she knew it or not, to affinity groups. If every individual in every action against the state and status quo participated as part of a tight-knit, dedicated affinity group, the revolution would be accomplished in a few short years.
An affinity group could be a sewing circle or a bicycle maintenance collective; it could come together for the purpose of providing a meal at an occupation or forcing a multinational corporation out of business through a carefully orchestrated program of sabotage. Affinity groups have planted and defended community gardens, built and occupied and burned down buildings, organized neighborhood childcare programs and wildcat strikes; individual affinity groups routinely initiate revolutions in the visual arts and popular music. Your favorite band was an affinity group. An affinity group invented the airplane. Another one maintains this website.
Let five people meet who are resolved to the lightning of action rather than the agony of survival—from that moment, despair ends and tactics begin.
The theme this year of the 24th International Day Against Police Brutality is “Police Everywhere, Justice Nowhere: International Solidarity!”.
Capitalism is collapsing. Neoliberalism is dying. Those in power cling to their authority as their greed pushes us towards environmental catastrophe, they wage war on solidarity and become more and more monstrous every day that passes.
As they did during the bloody colonial birth of this state and all its kind, the power-holders turn to the police, the gendarmerie, the capital watchdogs to guarantee their ill-gotten gains.
Our continents become fortresses, those who seek refuge are imprisoned, the poor work hard and die, the rich get richer, the pigs get their wages by smashing our heads in.
What they don’t know, however, is that we will win.
The fight against police brutality is about removing the fangs of a rabid beast, which walks through our communities like the scarecrows they are. Here to frighten us, to prevent us from getting angry, to keep us small. From Ferguson to Palestine, from Montreal to Rio de Janeiro. From Winnipeg to La Paz, from Port-au-Prince to Santiago.
As we struggle to build a better world, the police, in all its disgusting forms, are blocking our way.
In order for us to move forward, we must get rid of them.
As has been the case for more than 20 years, the Collective Opposed to Police Brutality (C.O.B.P.) began its conscientious work by organizing the International Day Against Police Brutality on March 15.
As we have done since our inception, we will print and distribute our annual newspaper “L’État Policier”.
This year, we are turning to our comrades, allies and colleagues who are activists against the police state for articles, comics, designs, poems, opinion pieces or any other contribution to add to our annual journal.
If you would like to submit an article to our journal, please send it to the following address: cobp@riseup.net
The texts must be a maximum of two pages long and may be written in French, English or Spanish. Authors who want their texts translated must let us know within a reasonable time so that we can find people for the translation, and we invite you to send us images to match with your text if you wish. However, the images will be part of both pages.
The final deadline for the journal’s content is February 15, 2020.
International solidarity with all those who fight, fight against the State and its armed wing, the police, and flee police action.
Comments Off on Toronto: Attack on Google Smart City Project
Dec162019
Anonymous submission toNorth Shore (1 December 2019)
Last night some anarchists visited the Sidewalk Toronto office on Parliament Street. Their cheerful paint job needed some touching up to remind everyone that for all their land acknowledgements and “consultations”, sidewalk is a sinister force in our city [tag reads “Fuck Off Sidewalk”].
There are plenty of reasons to oppose sidewalk. Indigenous elders have criticized their tokenistic consultation of First Nations (hey, why not just remediate the stolen land and give it back, anyways?) Their aggressive proposals for data collection, private police forces and cashless stores are all pretty dystopic. and we can bet that their “affordable” housing stock will be nowhere near attainable for those who need it.
Respect to the efforts of groups like Block Sidewalk for their pushback against this plan. It isn’t a done deal so let’s keep fighting! we chose this tactic to reflect our hostility toward google and all forms of exclusivity and surveillance, and hope it inspires future action!
Montréal, December 12, 2019 — Today is the fourth and final day of the trial of the recognized leader of Atalante Québec, Raphaël Lévesque (alias Raf Stomper), at the Palais de Justice in Montréal. Lévesque is charged with mischief, breaking and entering, and criminal harassment. The charges arise from a stunt Lévesque and six other Atalante militants pulled on May 23, 2018, at the Vice Québec office.
We haven’t been all that interested in the trial up to this point. All we’re seeing is a court circus out of all proportion to the action that led to the charges. We are entirely aware of the fact that our perspective on the issue will differ from that of the media (which is a party to this little affair), the “justice system,” and the generally held liberal position of Québécois society. That’s why we thought it wise to explicitly formulate out position [for additional information, media can visit https://montreal-antifasciste.info or contact us at alerta-mtl @ riseup.net]
We think that the almost political character that this trial has taken on because the media was the target plays right in to the fascists’ hands. It would have been better if, from the outset, this action had been treated as what it was (a weak example of political theatre that would be quickly forgotten), rather than turning to the criminal justice system and shining a spotlight on Lévesque, giving him the attention he craves.
Furthermore, the substance of the case is very debatable and the outcome far from certain. Whatever the verdict may be, we see the whole exercise as a losing proposition. If Lévesque wins, he comes out of it vindicated and energized, which, one would suspect, will mean that he and his band of cretins repeat this sort of action in the future. If, on the other hand, he is found guilty of criminal harassment and/or mischief, jurisprudence that further reduces the playing field for legitimate direct action is established, not just for the right but for the left as well. Put differently, the state ends up with a new tool for suppressing opposition, whatever its source.
On the other hand, if the media reports about the trial from the first few days are accurate, it’s obvious that the judge fell face first into the trap the fascists had laid for her, in spite of the mass of evidence accumulated about the true nature of Atalante: depoliticization, even “de-demonization,” which is the desired outcome of the entire ruse.
The Palais de Justice is not a favourable terrain for the antifascist struggle. We’re not proposing a dogmatic blanket refusal to ever engage on this terrain, and don’t reject the possibility of using it if specific gains are possible, although the likelihood of this is extremely limited, but we certainly don’t believe that we should count on the courts to win this war, or even any important battle. The courts only exist to ensure one thing: the liberal order, i.e., the necessary conditions for the reproduction of state and the capitalist system that supports the systemic inequalities that our movements are working to eliminate.
We believe that the anti-racist and antifascist struggles must, first and foremost, be conducted daily in our living and working environments, in our communities, and in the streets, with constant information campaigns and the promotion of the values that motivate us. However Raf Stooper’s trial ends, the struggle will continue. Montréal Antifasciste, its allies, and its sympathizers will continue to track, expose, and generally disrupt the lives of the fascists from Atalante and all those who advance political projects based on inequality and exclusion—until we win!
Comments Off on Messe des Morts: Neo-Nazi Pascal Giroux Gets a Beating
Dec132019
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
On Friday, November 28, the black metal festival La Messe des Morts took place at Théâtre Paradoxe. Three neo-Nazis were spotted on site or had announced their intention to be there on social networks. One of them, Pascal Giroux, received quite a beating upon leaving the theater.
Pascal Giroux is openly a neo-Nazi militant since the golden age of boneheads in Montreal. Recently he had joined the islamophobic group Soldiers of Odin, and he participated in all their actions, until their dissolution in 2018. In pictures, he can be seen wearing a Section Saint-Laurent shirt and an SOO hoodie, posing in front of a Black Sun flag and protecting the house of neo-Nazi Phillipe Gendron in 2018, during an anti-racist demonstration.
Antifascist and black-metal communities are vigilant and there will no longer be any safe space for Nazis. Fred, Maxime, William, Joey, you are warned.
Comments Off on Varennes: An Atalante Nazi on Rue Sainte-Anne
Dec112019
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Vincent Cyr, resident of Rue Sainte-Anne in Varennes is a dangerous neo-Nazi and member of the organization Atalante Quebec. Vincent sometimes boxes in Parc de la Commune with his Nazi friends. He regularly participates in Atalante’s activities in Montreal.
On the night of Monday, December 11, 2019, 1000 flyers were distributed on his street, in his neighborhood, at bus shelters and in front of key locations in the town. Because people like him hide and the population needs to know.
