On September 27th, we were more than 3000 students, retirees, children, and workers marching in the streets of downtown Chicoutimi to denounce government inaction on the environment and the destructive GNL Québec project (Énergie Saguenay). The latter consists of the construction of a natural gas liquifaction complex in Grande-Anse and a 750km-long gas pipeline (gazoduc). In parallel, in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, 3000 people took part in the demonstration in Alma and hundreds of individuals marched in Saint-Félicien as well as in the Saint-Coeur-de-Marie neighborhood of Alma. In Quebec City, 25,000 people took the streets and in Montreal, a historic mobilization brought together almost half a million people.
Feeling the pressure, the premier of Quebec François Legault thought it wise to reach out to the youth, while his vice-premier made calls for calm, waving strawmen. The environment sinister speaks of a “green” third link, a bridge-tunnel, for Quebec City and of his government’s favorable opinion of the gas pipeline and liquifaction plant project. In this file, the business-friendly government of François Legault takes up the promoter’s half-truths and willful omissions. He states that hypothetically (with nothing guaranteeing that coal plants would close in China, as Énergie Saguenay claims) the project will reduce greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere in the world… But like the promoters, François Legault neglects to mention that the project will produce greenhouse gases here and elsewhere in Canada. It is necessary to also take into account the fatal risk posed by the completion of this project to the threatened beluga population.
Obviously, some opportunist politicians were present at the different demonstrations. In Chicoutimi, Bloc Québécois candidate Mario Simard and municipal councillor Simon-Olivier Côté were smooth talkers, skating around questions related to the GNL project. “I see no contradiction between going to a march and being for or against big projects. I’m not in favor of or opposed to any project. What I have, is that we ensure that environmental norms and evaluations are respected.” (link) said the councillor from district 8 and ‘king‘ of the parking lots of downtown Chicoutimi.
In 1970, this kind of comment might have been preferable to the comments of the former Liberal Party of Canada candidate, now a Conservative candidate, and Saguenay city councillor, Marc Pettersen. But we are no longer here. There is a climate emergency.
“If we do not change direction by 2020, we risk[…] disastrous consequences for the people and natural systems that support us,” said Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General. Our times require, for the good of the greatest number of people, that our society abandon fossil fuels and begin a necessary economic degrowth. Our economy should be based on the satisfaction of real individual and collective needs, oriented towards sustainability and according to existing resources.
Members and friends of the anarchist Emma Goldman Collective took advantage of the occasion to distribute dozens of copies of the journal Cause Commune Express no 31 (link).
Alma, September 26th, 2019. Two banners were dropped this morning in downtown Alma near the offices of Economic Development Canada. They read: “Industrial development is killing us! We don’t want a job, we want a life!”. The government body that recently gave out $2 million in funding to the metallurgy sector was symbolically targeted. The action, signed by the living waters committee, takes place in the context of the climate strike movement and aims to denounce industrial and extractive projects in the region.
The anonymous committee denounces the Gazoduc (gas pipeline) project which would cross the regions of Abitibi, Mauricie, and Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, the GNL Québec natural gas liquifaction terminal in Saguenay, the Lac-à-Paul mine, and the deep-water port of Ariane Phosphate in Ste-Rose-du-Nord, as well as BlackRock Metals’ mine and rail transport between Chibougamau and Saguenay. According to one of the action’s instigators, “these projects are a nuisance to the environment and to all the populations of the region. The argument of well-paying jobs is worthless. The price to pay is the destruction of marine life, breathtaking landscapes, fragile ecosystems, and vulnerable species. We need to stop the extraction of ‘natural resources’ as soon as possible and understand that we’re in a relation of interdependence with the ecosystems surrounding us. We need to stop relations of domination over our environment now.”
The committee makes a call for action, in a diversity of tactics, to put an end to the environmental massacre as quickly as possible! “We must mobilize immediately against every new industrial development and invest the time, energy, and money necessary to develop sustainable local initiatives that don’t come at a cost to other species of flora and fauna.”
In conclusion, the living waters committee announces that other targeted actions are in preparation.
Comments Off on Nighttime Visit to Lemay’s Installations in Parc Frédéric-Back
Oct052019
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
As part of a series of actions targeting migrant prison profiteers, around 12 of the spherical shaped biogas-capturing wells designed by Lemay and installed in Parc Frédéric-Back were tagged with the words ‘fuck lemay’. Many of these wells also had their unique identifiers blacked-out. Some park benches and one large map of the park, also designed by lemay, were tagged with anti-lemay, anti-cop, anti-authoritarian, and antifascist slogans and symbols. These much needed modifications will no doubt add to the park’s “unique environmental layout”, enhancing the “landscape’s feeling of otherworldliness”.
Comments Off on A Report-back from Montreal’s Climate Strike
Oct052019
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
“The struggle against climate change can’t exist in a vacuum. It must also be a fight against the border system that values some lives over others. It must overthrow capitalism which always strives to produce more.”
– Call for the anti-racist and anti-capitalist contingent
“L’air, la terre et les rivières
Ont besoin de révolutionnaires”
(“The air, the land, and the rivers
need revolutionaries”)
– Chant heard in the streets
“Manif zéro-déchet : police dehors!”
(Zero-waste demo : police out!)
– Chant heard in the streets
On Friday, September 27, in Montreal, between 300,000 and 500,000 people marched in a climate demonstration, and anarchists and other radicals decided not to sit this one out. Amidst the sheer mass of citizenry and their disciplined procession from Mt. Royal Park to Old Montreal, it was difficult to meaningfully shift the tone towards active confrontation with the systems of power and institutions that are making the planet uninhabitable. Nevertheless, thousands of copies were distributed of Toward a Revolutionary Environmental Movement and Climate of Revolt, which both present arguments against reformism, with the latter linking to a map of weak points to the Canadian extractive economy. And in the anti-racist, anti-capitalist contingent, there were glimpses of a climate struggle that doesn’t content itself with pleas to the government for an imposed solution, but instead obstructs the operations of the colonial, capitalist, and white supremacist order that depends on ecocide.
Several hundred people responded to the call for this contingent that invited people to wear masks and expand the struggle in liberatory directions. We also heard that many people who were trying to join the contingent couldn’t, because the crowd was so big and dense. Early on, it was extremely difficult to move in the packed crowd, especially for a group or for people holding a banner; combined with the knowledge that you’re surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people, the feeling tended towards something apocalyptic more than empowering or liberating. After a claustrophobic hour of waiting for the demo to leave and then inching south as the massive crowd filtered into Parc Avenue, the contingent decided to start a break-off demo eastward on des Pins. Close to a thousand people followed us (the cops reportedly warned demo-goers not to join les antifas).
Setting our own pace and with black flags, green smoke bombs, and high-quality music, banners, and chants, it felt like we could breathe again. People started joyfully ripping down federal election signs, and a TD Bank was hit with green paint bombs. Around the same time in the main demo, a brave individual threw an egg at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was booed and heckled throughout the monumental absurdity of his heavily police-protected #ClimateMarch photo-op. Riot police buses appeared behind us only about twenty minutes later, keeping their distance, as we neared the corner of Ste-Catherine and St-Laurent where we rejoined the main demo.
Moving south on St-Laurent, graffiti went up reading “fuck le capitalisme” and “Miguel Peralta libertad” (calling for freedom for the Indigenous anarchist, prisoner of the Mexican state). After turning west on Boulevard René-Lévesque, the contingent took the left side of the street, with the rest of the demo on the right, separated from each other by a tall, fenced median. More paint bombs hit an HSBC branch. Soon after, people used them to redecorate the offices of Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, which were also tagged with “Migrants Welcome”, “Fuck CBSA”, and “queer and trans resistance” in gold paint. [A communiqué published the next day explained the connections between climate change and border enforcement]. The contingent crowd cheered, while those on the other side of the street seemed curious or unfazed. We’re curious what would have happened if this attack in broad daylight on an institution of border enforcement had escalated.
Instead of lingering around the main demo endpoint on Robert-Bourassa to listen to hours of speeches, the contingent diverged east towards Square Victoria, where we found people occupying the space around the statue of Queen Victoria with plenty of food to be given for free, a banner reading “Temporary Autonomous Zone” draped over the statue, and crowd-control barriers being repurposed to block the road running through the square. It felt great to be able to lie down in the grass after so many hours on our feet – a welcome departure from the end-of-demo experiences we’re used to. Over the course of the afternoon, the statue was progressively defaced with graffiti, people danced around a trustworthy sound system, and a wooden structure of some kind was built in the street. There were many cops keeping watch, but it never seemed likely that they would attack the festive gathering, considering it was a block away from where tens of thousands of people from the main demo were still congregating, and that its disruptive impact inevitably paled in comparison to the massive demo’s.
An anti-capitalist night demo had been called for 6:30pm, leaving from Square Victoria. The burning of our wooden structure in the middle of the street attempted to set the mood. Unfortunately, the overall vibe did not feel strong. Hundreds of cops mobilized for the main demo had been able to focus on the square for the past couple hours, just waiting for 6:30 by which time they could expect the larger crowds to have left. People were also masking up in ineffective ways, with a prevalence of bandanas, often pulled down around necks (bandanas aren’t a safe mask in any case and shouldn’t be encouraged). Poor masking practices, which draw risk that multiplies when the cops have had hours to set up surveillance on a static gathering place, diminish our capacity to act and act over long hours in the streets. The demo lasted about three minutes, a nice firework and a volley of rocks hit a group of bike cops, riot cops shut down a metro station by getting pepper spray in the ventilation system, and two people were arrested.
The questions of where, when and how to participate and intervene in climate strike mobilizations still demand reflection and experimentation. However, the 27th showed that anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian initiatives during a large demo, inside it and on its margins, have strong potential to bring new dimensions to the struggle. The ability to break off and rejoin the main demo in unpredictable ways jumbles the calculations of the police respective to an attack on the demo. A sizeable, clearly marked contingent allows for a separation of space between confrontational tactics and demo-goers who are looking to participate in a lower-risk way, and for people who want to act to find each other in such enormous crowds. And the sheer numbers in the streets mean that many people are being directly exposed to different ways of struggling rather than through media reports and other misrepresentations.
The following text was written by the CLAC, the IWW and Montréal Antifasciste and was distributed at the Montreal climate demonstration on September 27, 2019. It can also be downloaded to print here.
1. GOVERNMENTS WON’T SAVE US
Those who benefit from poisoning the land and exploiting people you care about won’t be reformed. They’ll make it seem like they hear your voices and occasionally put on grand spectacles to temporarily appease your anger. They’ll encourage you to channel your anxiety into pointless practices that only reinforce individualism. So while some of us compete to take shorter showers or to reduce our trash output, government officials, universities, and corporations shamelessly invest in more pipelines, host uncritical academic conferences, or fly jets to fancy meetings where empty promises are made.
The impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases on climate has been known since the late 19th century. The view that carbon dioxide affects global warming has been widespread since the 70s. Since the 80s and 90s, observations and computer models have overwhelmingly pointed to human-made activities as important factors in climate change. It’s been more than 30 years since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created to compile information and advise world governments on how to minimize the anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change that has already claimed innumerable human lives and caused the extinction of many other animal species. This same panel now says we only have 10 years left before we reach a point of no return towards the death of this planet. Our countries are consuming the bulk of the planet’s resources. Yet here we are, asking for the same colonial governments and political class that put us in this mess to ban plastic straws and increase carbon taxes. We have been begging them for decades now. It’s time we start taking power ourselves.
2. CAPITALISM AND THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Capitalism is a socioeconomic and political system under which a privileged few own what the rest of us need to survive. That means the worth of sentient beings and plants is based on their ability to generate wealth. It’s the idea that land, workplaces, trees, animals, housing, and water, are to be owned privately by individuals or corporations, which gives them power to exploit these things however they want, regardless of our concerns, needs, and well-being. This economic system is why corporations are free to build fossil fuel infrastructures on unceded Indigenous land as governments use militarized police to suppress any form of resistance.
To exist, capitalism must uphold hierarchy, power, and obedience. That’s why your acts of rebellion are framed differently than their acts of systemic violence (e.g. stealing food from Walmart vs stealing land from Indigenous peoples). Our efforts towards a better future are meaningless without a radical departure from the system that made violence and destruction the normal (and legal) state of affairs.
3. COLONIALISM, RACISM, AND DESTRUCTION
To be green is to also to oppose colonialism and racism. Both of these things have everything to do with the climate crisis.
Atmospheric pollution can’t be calculated without taking into account past and present colonial realities. Our understanding of how different countries contribute to climate change must take into account historical greenhouse gas emissions, and most importantly, who profits from the destruction. Industries and empires have been built on the labor of Black and Indigenous people and other people of color. Canadian and American companies murder land defenders for minerals in Latin America and Africa, poison air and waterways in Asia, and put our trash on boats to be dumped far from our eyes.
Repeatedly in Canadian history, ecological devastation has been used as an intentional weapon against Indigenous peoples. Overhunting of bison by settlers led to famine in the Prairies in the 19th century, which was consciously encouraged by the Canadian government under John A. Macdonald as a tool of genocide to “clear the West.” Such practices continue to this day. Grassy Narrows is an Indigenous community near Ontario’s border with Manitoba; its water was contaminated by tons of mercury dumped into its water system by an upstream paper mill. One study estimated that 90 per cent of the population suffers from some degree of mercury poisoning, which can cause everything from cognitive impairments to hearing loss and emotional changes. The heavy metal can be passed from mothers to babies they carry, making it a problem that lasts generations. This is the legacy of Canadian colonialism and genocide; for many people the ecological catastrophe is already centuries old.
In so many ways, the most oppressed always pay the price for Western lifestyles and the out-of-control growth that accompanies them. Droughts, floods, and famines, are increasingly common and displaced people need new places to call home. Thus, as we fight climate change, we must also fight the system of borders that values some lives above others. We must fight the police entering migrants’ homes in the middle of the night to take parents away. We must fight the construction of a migrant prison in Laval that has kids growing up behind bars. We must fight against oil wars that leave entire countries destroyed. We must fight white-supremacy whether it takes the form of neo-fascist militias, conservative columnists, or colonial states claiming sovereignty over Indigenous land. Ultimately, we must also confront anyone who accepts any of this is without feeling profound anger. We can’t allow the most privileged people on this planet to use terms like « overpopulation » or « migrant crisis » because they are too scared and selfish to stand up to real perpetrators of the destruction of our world.
4. RESIST SCAPEGOATING AND THE FAR RIGHT
Certain groups are taking advantage of the catastrophes taking place to put their own hateful and nightmarish ideas into practice.
Following hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans in 2005, white supremacist militias took advantage of the disaster to murder random Black people they found trying to survive the floods. More recently, in 2019 in both Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Texas, neo-nazi gunmen committed massacres, killing dozens of people of color, in attacks which they explicitly framed as being to “save the environment.” All over the world, many people in the rich nations which are creating the most ecological damage are demanding tighter border controls and restrictions on immigration, often citing the need to protect natural resources. At the same time, some racists suggest that there are too many people in the world and target racialized people and people in the Global South with coercive “population control” measures. Here in Quebec, members of far right anti-immigrant groups have sometimes found themselves welcomed in environmentalist spaces and mobilizations, while the concerns of people of color and anti-racists have been simply brushed aside.
This legacy of eco-fascism must be confronted, otherwise the movement to save the planet could very easily find itself manipulated and turned into an instrument to oppress and do violence to those already most directly harmed by the catastrophes capitalism has unleashed.
5. WHAT WE CAN DO!
Reject legality, especially when laws are made by colonial states (e.g. Canada, Quebec) unrecognized by the first inhabitants of the land.
Listen to and make space for Indigenous voices in the struggle against the colonial and capitalist destruction of ecosystems.
Recognize when our struggles are being co-opted by political parties or companies to amass sympathy and capital.
Avoid political parties, non-profits, or anyone pretending to fight domination while reproducing power hierarchies.
Learn about alternative (anarchist, communist, feminist, anticolonial) ways of organizing social life.
Attack the symbols of capitalist power: banks, mining companies and multinational corporations.
Make the fight against all forms of oppression an active part of your militancy and do your part to ensure the burden of dealing with uncomfortable realities linked to climate change don’t fall on the shoulders of those patriarchy deems responsible for the role of care.
Practice consensual decision-making and cultivate consensual relationships.
Get informed, end isolation by finding accomplices within your communities, and build networks of resistance with others who are willing to stand up to power.
Only take calculated risks and practice security culture.
Oh and obviously if we’re going to get arrested, let’s make it worth it.
This flyer was written and is distributed on unceded Indigenous land and a gathering place known to he Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) Nation as Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal).
In December 2018, Montréal Antifasciste published a dossier on the neofascist organization Atalante, tracing the group’s history as well as the trajectory of some of the individuals at the heart of the project, specifically, members of the Québec Stomper Crew gang and the band Légitime Violence. A series of follow-up articles have focused on the activities of a number of people within Atalante’s sphere of influence.
It’s September 2019, and although Atalante’s activities have slowed down a bit in recent months, the core militants show no sign of calling it a day, so we need to remind them and their entourage that we have no intention of letting up.
In order to make the social cost of being a fascist or a Nazi in our neighbourhoods and communities intolerable, the most effective tactic remains exposing the fascists to their communities, to their colleagues, employers, families, and neighbours, from whom they generally hide the real nature of their activities or use euphemisms like “nationalist,” rather than saying they are fascists. Given that they have decided to be Nazis and to persist in heading down that road, we are completely committed to seeing that they pay the consequences. History has shown us that sooner or later fascist principles always lead to violence —sometimes even genocide— targeting people from different social sectors who are already suffering more than their share of misery and oppression in so-called democratic capitalist society, and we have no intention of standing by while this history repeats itself.
By making public where various fascists from Atalante work, it is most definitely our intention to cost these fascists their jobs, because the projects they are involved in in their personal lives endanger both their immediate colleagues and the general public, most particularly racialized people, Muslims, Jews, queers, and leftists.
We think that campaigns to isolate and ostracize them and to target companies that provide them with shelter and support are necessary, both as a matter of public safety and as an act of working-class solidarity.
This is a reminder that fascists will never be welcome in the places where we live or where we work.
Roxanne Baron, the only woman in the Québec Stomper Crew, is not just some unimportant member. She is also a key figure in Atalante, having participated in almost all of its actions since the organization’s inception.
Her exact function in Atalante isn’t clear, but we know that until recently she played an important role on Instagram, sharing numerous photos of herself and her comrades carrying out actions in Québec City and Montréal, as well as, for example, at the CasaPound “mother ship” in Italy. (In fact, her carelessness on Instagram cost some of her comrades their anonymity … oops.)
A fact that is particularly staggering on a variety of levels, Baron hasn’t been shy over the months and years about repeatedly bragging about her dubious reading habits while at her place of work: the Hôpital de l’Enfant-Jésus. She claims that without her colleagues or the hospital’s patients noticing, she read works from the neofascist organization CasaPound, the Belgian Nazi Léon Degrelle, the fascist historian Robert Brasillach, the ultranationalist intellectual Charles Maurras, and the French antisemite Jacques Ploncard. She even crows about surreptitiously reading Nazi texts at work:
“Journée tranquille… Quand on croit que tu lis de petits romans comme tout le monde au travail”
[A quiet day… When they think you’re reading some innocuous novel like everyone else (LOL emoticon).]
We also know from her Instagram account that she has tattoos with an array of fascist images: a fasces, the symbol at the origin of the word“fascism”; a Celtic cross, a universally recognized “White Power” emblem; the inscription “le diable rit avec nous” [the devil laughs with us], a reference to the lyrics of the Nazi hymn SS marschiert in Feindesland; another inscription reading “presente per tutti camerati caduti,” a traditional Italian fascist greeting; and a mjölnir, the hammer of Thor, an image that is not explicitly racist, but which is now systematically sported by white supremacist Odinists. To put the star on top of the Christmas tree, something that is not without interest for opponents of “religious symbols” in the workplace, around her neck Baron wears a sonnenrad, a black sun, an occult symbol popular with contemporary neo-Nazis.
At the very least, it’s alarming to think of this person, who in her private life openly participates in a clearly racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, and homophobic political project, working in a health services institution, where she is in daily contact with the general public, including a large number of people from different social sectors designated for elimination by Nazi ideology.
Alias “Tony Stomper.”After growing up in Mont-Laurier with his younger brother Étienne (also an Atalante member), Antoine Mailhot-Bruneau began his CEGEP studies at Lionel-Groulx, participating in the student movement during the 2007 strike. After that, he moved to Québec City, where he joined the Québec Stompers, at the time a street gang gravitating toward far-right ultranationalism. Around that time, he went to Rimouski to study to become a sailor, moving on to the Université Laval, entering a program to become a history teacher, which he soon abandoned.
On a trip to Italy, he discovered Blocco Studentesco, a neofascist student organization that is for all intents and purposes the youth wing of CasaPound. Little by little, he became Atalante’s main theorist and seems to be the author of Saisir la foudre [Ride the Lightning] under the pseudonym Alexandre Peugeot, who is also the author of several articles in Le Harfang, the magazine of the Fédération des québécois de souche.
Antoine has shown a lot more discretion than his friend Raphaël Lévesque, always taking the necessary steps to keep his role in Atalante a secret, rarely appearing at the group’s public actions and blurring his face and using different pseudonyms in his rare furtive video appearances. Unfortunately for him, a 2017 interview he gave to Zentropa Serbia (a CasaPound satellite), where he used the pseudonym “Alexandre,” made it relatively easy for us to determine his central role in Atalante.
Despite all his precautions, we were also able to confirm that he is a paramedic on the South Shore of Québec City, in the Chaudière-Appalaches region, working for the Lévis-based company Dessercom.
As in the case of Roxanne Baron, as part of his professional responsibilities, Antoine Mailhot-Bruneau, a fascist militant and a member of a violent gang, inevitably comes into contact with members of the public who belong to communities targeted and victimized by fascists.
Imagine, if you will, how it would feel to be a first-generation immigrant, a Muslim woman, or a Jew having a heart attack or some other serious health problem, and to have the first responder be a fascist theorist, an inveterate racist, Islamophobe, and antisemite. Imagine that your life depended on the care you received from an individual who unreservedly believes, for example, in the need for the “remigration” of all migrants who are not Catholic French Canadians “de souche.”
We believe that this is an unacceptable situation that violates the ethical principles and professional norms upon which the paramedic profession is itself based.
Yan Barras
Yan Barras, social worker (not a member of the professional Order of social workers)
On the night of December 31, 2006—January 1, 2007, a small group of Stompers and associates, including Raphaël Lévesque and Yan Barras, burst into the café-bar L’Agitée in Québec City, a cooperative they knew to be run and frequented by antiracist activists. In less time than it took you to read this account, the boneheads trashed the bar, and Yan Barras stabbed at least six people with an X-Acto knife, before fleeing.
In spite of the sordid nature of the incident, the Stompers drew a certain pride from this brutal attack, going as far as to reference it in the lyrics of the eponymous song “Légitime Violence”:
Ces petits gauchistes efféminés,
qui se permettent de nous critiquer,
ils n’oseront jamais nous affronter,
on va tous les poignarder! »
[These little leftist sissies,
who dare to criticize us,
wouldn’t have the nerve to face us,
we will stab them all!]
After pleading guilty to assault with a weapon, Yan Barras was sentenced to two years in prison. The judge even recommended that he receive therapy while in prison to address his proclivity for senseless brutality. When he got out of prison, Barras registered in the social work program at the CEGEP de Sept-Îles, and some might have thought that it looked like he intended to change course.
But far from changing his ways, Barras had “No Remorse” tattooed on his forehead under a death’s head devouring the three arrows that represent antifascism, and he promptly rejoined the crew of racists who would later create Atalante. Not only did Barras not distance himself from Raphaël Lévesque, the Mailhot-Bruneau brothers, and company, he has often participated in Atalante activities in recent years, as well as continuing to provoke and intimidate the Quebec City left, notably by marching with other members of the Stompers into the middle of a small abortion rights demonstration in August 2015, and more recently by joining his brothers in trolling the 2019 May Day demonstration, with one of them even giving the Hitler salute.
Today, Barras works as a “liaison coordinator” for the social reintegration company Habitations Méta Transfert Inc., in Québec City. Obviously, this places him in position of authority over a vulnerable clientele, a position he can use to attempt to recruit anyone fitting his fantasy of “a master race” or to deny services to those he judges “inferior.” You can’t blame us for wondering how many other Nazis this company might employ …
Shawn Beauvais-MacDonald. The quote is form Adolph Hitler.
Shawn Beauvais-MacDonald, security guard; student at the Centre intégré de mécanique, de métallurgie et d’électricité (CIMME)
But Beauvais-MacDonald wasn’t done with the surprises! It later became clear that under the pseudonym FriendlyFash he was a very active member of the“Montreal Stormer Book Club” chat room, a small neo-Nazi social club that was attempting to organize in Montréal at the time. Beauvais-MacDonald has never bothered trying to hide his penchant for Nazism on Facebook or his other social media accounts.
As a guest on the podcast This Hour has 88 Minutes, on January 4, 2018, Beauvais-MacDonald talked about the consequences of doxxing on his daily life. He talked about how he lost one of his two jobs (as a bouncer at a bar), but that his colleagues at his other job thought it was “hilarious”:
« The other job, I work with Chinese people and they find it hilarious, so whatever. »
Despite Beauvais-MacDonald having been widely exposed and denounced in 2017, it seems that until fairly recently the company Securitas employed him as a security guard at the CIBC branch in Montréal’s Chinatown. The obvious question is whether Securitas was simply unaware of their employee’s extracurricular activities all this time (in spite of the numerous mentions in the mainstream media and on antifascist websites) or simply chose to turn a blind eye.
It is also worth asking whether his job at Securitas (a publicly listed company, we might add in passing) as a security guard has given Beauvais-MacDonald access to material or privileged information that might be useful to his neo-Nazi network.[2] What computer databases or other resources has he had access to thanks to his job with Securitas?
We’re not sure at this point if Beauvais-MacDonald still works for Securitas, however, he is currently a student at the Centre intégré de mécanique, de métallurgie et d’électricité, in LaSalle.
It remains to be seen how the school’s administration and student community feel about spending their days around this notorious Nazi.
Antoine’s little brother is another important player in Atalante and a patched-in member of the Québec Stomper Crew. Having completed a BA in animation, in 2017, at Université Laval, Étienne is Atalante’s de facto graphic artist, producing designs, logos, and posters under the pseudonym “Sam Ox.” Shortly after we released the “UnmaskingAtalante” dossier, establishing the link between him and his avatar, Étienne fell silent and deactivated all of his accounts on major professional platforms.
In spite of the “brown” stain on his CV, he seems to have found employment with Sunny Side Up Creative in Québec City.
One of the most active Atalante members in the Montréal region, Vincent has participated in numerous group activities, including most of the nighttime postering runs. Originally from Montréal’s South Shore, he kicked around the Longueuil hardcore and punk scene for quite a while before coming into contact with the bonehead milieu and radicalizing, finally embracing full-on fascism. He found himself very isolated in his milieu (he’s the son of a trade unionist!), but he seems to have found a family in Atalante.
Cyr is a butcher at Fruiterie Milano, a neighbourhood grocery store in Montreal’s Little Italy neighbourhood, where his brother also works.
The bassist for Légitime Violence, Atalante’s flagship band, Mecteau originally came out of the hardcore scene. A “first-rate” second stringer, he spends his time at cosplay, as the second fiddle in a crappy neo-Nazi band, and as a tattoo artist at his business Jhan Art.
Mecteau is one of Atalante and the Stompers’ go-to tattoo artists, which perhaps explains why, upon his return from a recent visit to Bicolline (the most important LARPing site in Québec), he found his tattoo parlour “a bit the worse for wear.”
“Svein Krampus” on Facebook. Sven Côté is a longtime bonehead from the national socialist black metal (NSBM) scene. He’s been active in Atalante since the winter of 2016, after an online radicalization that began in 2013, culminating in his embrace of fascism. A protégé of Raphael Lévesque (aka Raf Stomper), with whom he has exchanged openly antisemitic posts on social media, he has remained a loyal member of the group and has recently stopped blurring his face in Atalante’s documentation of its activities. He grew up and lives in the Basse Ville neighbourhood of Québec City. It is generally believed that Côté was among those who attacked La Page Noire bookstore in Québec City on the night of December 8–9, 2018. We have reason to believe that this attack served as a rite of passage into the Québec Stomper Crew for Côté, as he received his colours that same evening.
He is a cook at Le Fin Gourmet, a restaurant in the Saint-Sauveur neighbourhood of Québec City.
More revelations will follow…
Shutting Down the Fascists: A Task That Falls to Our Communities
Fascist militants are not just random doofuses we have some niggling differences with; they are hateful individuals who seek a new social order that involves the oppression, persecution, and elimination of millions of people. Their ideology presents a direct threat and constitutes a form of violence targeting many of us: queers, racialized people, Muslims, Jews, leftists, and numerous others.
At the same time, capitalism itself constitutes a form of violence against many of the people targeted by the far right. As anti-capitalists, we don’t recognize the authority of bosses, the state, or professional orders, and we don’t intend to leave it to them to remove the fascists from our communities and workplaces. We recognize that very often workers have to unite and take the measures necessary to force their employers to ensure their safety.
Excluding fascists and other far-right militants is a task that above all falls to the working class and to members of the public who are endangered by their presence and activities. It is in that spirit that we share this information.
Friends, it’s time we got to work.
[1] This mobilization was meant to be a show of force bringing together white supremacists, “ethnic” nationalists, identitarians, neo-Nazis, and other neofasicsts that make up the American “alt-right” current. The August 11–12, 2017, events in Charlottesville made history as a complete fiasco for the alt-right, most notably because the white supremacist James Alex Fields chose this occasion to use his car as weapon in an attack that killed the antiracist activist Heather Heyer.
[2] Just a few years ago, it was revealed that Hensel European Security Services (HESS), a security company in Germany, was providing Amazon with far-right guards to police, intimidate and abuse foreign workers in the company’s warehouses. Closer to home, in the 1980s, in Canada, William Lau Richardson, the leader of the KKK’s “Klan Intelligence Agency” was employed by the Centurion security company, a position he used to carry out operations against the left. In the 1990s, it was alleged that neo-Nazi private detective Al Overfield similarly used his access to police computer databases to provide information on antifascists to his friends in the Heritage Front, and Bryan Taylor, head of the Ku Klux Klan in British Columbia, used his position at ADT Security Systems to disseminate racist propaganda.
Do you want to do your part to defend Mother Earth from the ravages of the oil and gas industry? Do you want to support the indigenous people who have been on the front lines of the fight against pipelines for the past decade? Do you want to learn about decolonization, the sovereignty movement, and the campaign to prevent the Coastal GasLink (CG)L) pipeline from being built?
If so, you are invited to the first ever Sovereign Likhts’amisyu Action Camp. From October 1-11th, 2019, the Likhts’amisyu Clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation will be hosting its first-ever action camp on traditional territory recently reclaimed from the Canadian state.
Following the RCMP invasion of Wet’suwet’en territory this past January, the Likhts’amisyu Clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation re-occupied one of their traditional territories in so-called Northern B.C. Since May, we have been hard at work building a new village. We are now requesting that volunteers come to make a major push to get everything done before the snow flies.
If this is the first you are hearing about the Sovereign Likhts’amisyu, please visit our website at www.likhtsamisyu.com.
Who are the Likhts’amisyu? What is this all about?
The Likhts’amisyu is one of the five clans of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. For the last ten years, the Wet’suwet’en have been resisting an array of pipelines through which industry intends to ship diluted bitumen and fracked gas to the Northwest Coast for export. The focal point of these efforts have been the Unist’ot’en Camp, a long-standing territorial re-occupation which was built directly in the path of the proposed pipeline corridor. Years of resistance have caused multiple multi-billion-dollar projects to be delayed and/or cancelled. Things
came to a head this winter, when the Coastal GasLink pipeline corporation obtained a court injunction against the camp. In response, a
blockade was established on a neighbouring territory by members of another Wet’suwet’en clan, the Gidimt’en.
For three weeks, the Gidimt’en blocked pipeline workers and police from entering the territory. Then, on January 7th, 2019, militarized federal police raided the Gidimt’en camp, arresting 14 people and setting off a Canada-wide wave of protests. Two days later, the RCMP breached the gate of the Unist’ot’en Camp, and pipeline workers entered the territory, where they began destroying a vast swath of forest to make way for the pipeline right-of-way, as well as a large man camp to house pipeline workers.
It is important that people realize that this fight is far from over. Although preliminary work has begun on the pipeline, as well as on an LNG export terminal in the coastal city of Kitimat, no pipe has yet been laid. The events of December and January should be regarded as one phase in a struggle that has been going on for a decade.
Seen in this light, the Likhts’amisyu village represents a continuation and an expansion of the Wet’suwet’en people’s efforts to assert their
rights as a sovreign nation. Whereas at the beginning of December, there was one camp resisting ongoing colonialism on Wet’suwet’en territory, there are now three – the Unist’ot’en, the Gidimt’en, and the Likhts’amisyu. The three clans stand in solidarity with one another, as shown ceremonially in a recent Unification Rally (link). We encourage people who come to our action camp to also visit the other camps.
In the wake of the events of the winter, the Likhts’amisyu decided that the time was right to assert their sovereignty, and in May of this year, they began the process of building a new village on an ancient Wet’suwet’en village site. They received a donation of a significant
number of logs to use for building. As things currently stand, two log cabins have been built (both of which await the addition of a roof) and a third is well underway. The plan is to have all three cabins fully built, furnished, and move-in ready before the snow comes this Fall. In addition to this, a Summer kitchen has been built.
It will also be necessary to build several wood sheds and cut enough firewood to last the winter, so several days will be spent meeting this
need.
We encourage all people who are inspired by this project to come participate. Don’t be shy to come if you don’t have experience working construction. We will find a way for you to contribute. This is a great place to pick up some new skills.
Although we are requesting that volunteers come ready to work, this isn’t just a work camp. We are hoping that activists who are serious
about land defence and indigenous solidarity will see this as an opportunity to build and strengthen relationships, to share information, and to strategize about how best to wage a multi-faceted, multi-year campaign combining different approaches and sites of struggle. With
ecological struggle set to intensify in the near future, it is important that the people on the front lines are connected to the support of a
wider movement. Working together, as well as spending time around the fire, is a great way to build relationships rooted in mutual respect and trust. We believe that such strong-bond relationships are the stuff that resilient movements are made of.
There will also be other activities, such as tracking, hunting, fishing, foraging, berry-picking, paddle-boarding, kayaking, hiking, music,
workshops, story-telling, strategy discussions, and various kinds of skill-sharing. We will be inviting land defenders and knowledge-keepers from neighbouring nations to speak about the issues affecting their territories as well, as well share stories. If you would like to lead an activity, please email us with your idea.
We are also specifically reaching out to academics, researchers, scientists, and university faculty, inviting them to visit the camp during this time of heightened activity. We are doing this because we have plans to build a climate change research centre here. We want to connect with people working in the fields of biological, environmental science, anthropology, and archaeology.
Likhts’amisyu chief Dtsa’Hayl (a.k.a. Adam Gagnon), who is a professional contractor, has been leading the construction efforts at the village site. . We also welcome donations of goods such as building supplies, non-perishable food, and firewood. We are also currently fund-raising for building supplies, and encourage folks to check out the links below for ways to donate.
We understand that many people who might like to come do not own their own vehicles. If you are interested in coming, please email us telling us where you are located and we will do our best to find you a ride. Alternatively, you could post on the Facebook page and request a ride there. . Lastly, for people who do want to come, but who can’t come for the action camp, we encourage you to visit when you can. This is a multi-year project in an early phase. In the long run, we want to build up a strong network of people willing to support us on an ongoing basis.
So to all you beautiful freedom fighters (and future freedom fighters) out there in the world, come! The experience may well change your life…
Please share this invitation throughout your networks, and please do not hesitate to write us at likhtsamisyu@gmail.com (for the chiefs directly) or likhtsamisyu@riseup.net if you have any questions. If you leave a number, we will a call to answer any questions you have, as we realize that the dates of the camp are rapidly approaching and time is of the essence.
Please write us at likhtsamisyu@gmail.com (for the chiefs directly) or likhtsamisyu@riseup.net (for the supporter collective) if you have any questions.
We encourage folks who are traveling long distances to come to Wet’suwet’en territory to also visit and support the other camps. The Unist’ot’en Camp has also recently put out a call for volunteers for an upcoming construction camp. Details can be found here:
“During the last week of October and early November there will be a concerted push to complete the Healing Lodge. This beautiful and functional building has become the key embodiment of the Wet’suwt’en fight for sovereignty and against industrial destruction. The Healing Lodge is about 95% complete – it would be a great achievement to be able to declare this project finished this fall. Over the last several months good progress has also been made on other Village structures including a root cellar, tool shed and green house. These projects also require some additional work.”
***SECOND IMPORTANT ADDENDUM ***
We have just learned that the Gidimt’en Camp has also just announced dates for an Fall Work Camp. For details, see:
“The cold is quickly approaching at the Gidimt’en Checkpoint and Costal Gaslink is preparing for construction activities in Gidimt’en territories this fall and winter – including the construction of another man camp and clearing the right of way on Gidimt’en yintah. We are preparing for the cold, hard battle ahead – and we invite you to join us.
In an era of attempted pipeline development across co-called “North America” the capitalist and colonial processes which displace Indigenous peoples from their land destroy the planet must be stopped! Working alongside the Gidimt’en checkpoint is concrete way to support resistance to the state along with colonial and capitalist projects which are destroying our territories and the planet more broadly.
Folks with carpentry, framing, logging, cooking and camping skills are encouraged to come to camp and work, ideally folks commit to ten days of work beginning October 10th, 2019. However supporters are needed before and after camp.”
Comments Off on How to find and take action against border infrastructure anywhere in Canada
Sep282019
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Construction has begun on a new prison for migrants and refugees in Laval, QC, a suburb just outside of Montreal. As the project has advanced, the struggle to stop it has ramped up as well, with a wide variety of actions being taken to stop its construction. The prison is part of a $138 million plan called the National Immigration Detention Framework (NIDF), announced in 2016 by the governnment of Canada following a period of resistance against the imprisonment of migrants. The NIDF expands and strengthens the government’s capacity to surveil, imprison, and deport migrants, creating two new migrant prisons as well as new forms of surveillance & control such as mandatory ankle bracelets, voice biometric scans, and halfway houses for migrants.
In the midst of this it can be hard to figure out how to intervene in what’s happening, either as an individual or group. In the spirit of spreading all forms of resistance to Canada’s border and prison regimes we’ve brainstormed a list of (just some of) the ways people might contribute to this fight.
Border and detention infrastructure can be found in most cities in Canada. Read on for some ways to identify it in your context (and a few ideas for what to do with that info).
IDENTIFYING BORDER INFRASTRUCTURE IN YOUR AREA
In the US, an extended and fierce struggle againt ICE has been ongoing, with most major cities in the country showing up to shut down ICE offices, hold noise demos outside of detention centers, and take other creative measures to counter the US detention and deportation regime. The government has been feeling the heat, and, while there’s still quite a ways to go, we think it’s both possible and necessary to bring resistance to the border in so-called Canada to this level!
Check if any of the following organizations have locations in your area:
Government:
Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) – The main enforcement for the detention, surveillance and deportation of migrants in Canada. Offices, staff, and infrastructure located all over Canada.
Did you know that in 2017, an access to information request resulted in the release of the names and positions of hundreds of CBSA employees? You can read those documents at this link and figure out if there’s anyone in your area whose responsibility for the deportation and detention of migrants should be revealed. https://mtlcounterinfo.org/doxxing-the-canadian-border-services-agency/
CBSA migrant detention centres – there are currently three federal migrant prisons – one in Toronto, one in Laval, and one inside the Vancouver airport. Construction on a new one in Surrey, BC, was recently completed, and a new one is being built in Laval, QC.
Provincial jails – The CBSA pays millions of dollars to provincial governments each year, as part of deals that allow the agency to imprison migrants in provincial jails. In Ontario, most migrants detained by the CBSA are held in provincial jails.
John Howard Society – a non-profit which was awarded almost $5 million to implement the new “Community Case Management and Supervision” program, essentially a regime of programming and halfway houses for migrants that mirrors the existing parole system in Canada. Locations in all provinces across Canada, no location in Yukon or Nunavut. http://johnhoward.ca/services-across-canada/
Toronto Bail Program – A recipient of approximtely $7 million to implement the “Community Case Management and Supervision” program, located in Toronto.
The Salvation Army – A recipient of over $1 million to implement the “Community Case Management and Supervision” program, locations in most Canadian cities.
Profiteers from the construction of the new migrant prison in Laval
Lemay – Architect for the new migrant prison in Laval. Locations in Montreal, Quebec City, Edmonton, Calgary, New York. Visit this link for addresses: https://www.stopponslaprison.info/en/lemay-2/
Groupe A/Annexe U – Architect for the new migrant prison. Located in Quebec. http://www.groupea.qc.ca/
BPA/Bouthillette Parizeau – Food services and commissioning. Located in Montreal, Longueuil, Laval, Ottawa, Gatineau, Quebec City, Levis, Vancouver. http://bpa.ca/
KJA Consultants – Conveyor systems for the new prison. Locations in: Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton, Vancouver, Calgary. https://www.kja.com/offices-s13922
GardaWorld – This private security company, contracted as prison guards at the current migrant prison in Laval, and as security at the construction site for the new one, has locations all over Canada. There is no shortage of heinous projects they’re connected to. Check their website to see if they have a location in your area.
G4S – Contracted as prison guards at the migrant prison in Toronto.
Once you know the organizations and companies in your area that are profiting from border enforcement, consider trying to find out the names and locations of individuals involved. Try finding out where the executives of the company live, and put up posters in their neighbourhood, or hold a surprise demo outside of their home. You can also send them emails, faxes, and letters from an anonymous computer.
With a trusted friend or friends, take action against the companies or implicated agencies directly!
If you’re considering taking direct action against border infrastructure in your area, take a look at this “Recipe for nocturnal direct actions”, which covers a lot of useful information for planning and executing effective direct actions while keeping eachother as safe as possible in the process! https://mtlcounterinfo.org/a-recipe-for-nocturnal-direct-actions/
Still not sure whether there is border infrastructure in your area? Reach out to a nearby No-One Is Illegal chapter or other migrant justice organization and see if they can point you in the right direction. Or, get together with friends for a research night!
There are of course still things you can do even if you live in a small community without any border infrastructure:
1. Share materials and information
Check out the materials page of stopponslaprison.info. You can share and print zines, posters, flyers and stickers with those in your network.
Get a group of friends together, and put up some posters in your neighbourhood, or near a bus stop. You can find instructions on how to make wheatpaste, which makes posters hard to remove, at this link. https://mtlcounterinfo.org/how-to-wheatpaste/
Spend a couple hours putting up stickers in the transit system, in your school, workplace, or in your neighbourhood.
Do a banner drop in a visible location in your area that shares a message against borders and prisons! Here is some information on how to do a banner drop: http://destructables.org/node/56
Plan an information picket or flyering day. Print out some flyers, or make your own! Get a few friends together and hang out at the subway/metro/skytrain or bus station for a few hours, giving people information about the project.
2. Spam the companies
Send spam faxes or flood the phone lines, email accounts, and social media accounts of the companies and their employees.
It’s easy to make temporary email accounts with protonmail or guerrilamail.
You can send faxes for free online at https://www.gotfreefax.com/ or https://faxzero.com/. Sending faxes with a lot of black ink can waste all of the ink on their machine or jam up the machine, making it less possible for them to recieve real faxes.
If you’re thinking of spamming the companies online, keep in mind that you may not want to do so from your own social media account, or IP address. Take a look at the EFF guide to safer online communications, and check out tools such as Tor and TAILS to use to create your temporary anonymous email account and for sending faxes. https://ssd.eff.org/ https://www.torproject.org/ https://tails.boum.org/
3. Share this call with friends and family, and meet with them to talk about how you might organize something in your area!
Comments Off on Why Stantec and the Guy-Favreau Complex got targeted at the climate march and why the climate movement should fight the border regime
Sep282019
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Canada is a major contributor to the climate crisis, playing an active role in displacing people from their homes around the world. Canada hosts over 70% of the world’s mining companies, which sow environmental and economic devastation on a global scale. Canada creates more greenhouse gas emissions than any other G20 country, contributing to the creation of climate refugees. And within its borders, the federal government continues to push through pipeline project after pipeline project, despite sustained resistance by Indigenous communities.
As the climate crisis continues to escalate, pushed along by the extractive forces of capitalism and colonialism, this has led to an acceleration of the global migration crisis. In response, we see Canada further fortifying its borders in an attempt to prevent those it has displaced from seeking refuge.
This buildup of border infrastructure is not limited to the border itself. Over the past two decades, migrant detention has been one of the fastest growing forms of incarceration in Canada. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) has three prisons just for migrants and rents space to detain migrants in jails across the country. In 2016, the government invested an additional $138 million to strengthen and expand this system, leading to the construction of two new migrant prisons (one in Laval, QC) as well as new systems of surveilance and control such as mandatory ankle bracelets and voice biometric scans for migrants.
As Canada responds to climate change by fortressing its borders, those championing the white supremacist politics behind this decision will continue to become more mainstream. In Quebec, we’ve already seen the mainstreaming of anti-islam groups like La Meute, the success of the CAQ’s anti-immigrant election campaign, as well as the violent consequences of its Law 21. As the charade that is the federal election begins, we have already seen a further mainstreaming of white nationalism, as politicians sow fear and hatred of migrants crossing into Quebec at Roxham Road.
Borders and prisons are colonial impositions on these territories, systems fundamentally about domination and control. As Canada continues to invest billions into extraction, those feeling the brunt of the crisis here continue to be Indigenous peoples. Whether its pipelines forcibly installed across Indigenous territories, mining or logging companies operating in Indigenous territories without consent, or the envrionmental devastation caused by refineries built right next to reserves, Indigenous communities are consitently on the frontlines, experiencing the harmful effects of extractivism, as well as leading the resistance to it.
It is for these reasons and more that Stantec and the Guy-Favreau Complex were targeted by people participating in the climate march. The buildings were hit with green paintbombs and spraypainted with “Bienvenue aux migrants” (Welcome migrants). In the Guy-Favreau Complex, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada holds detention review hearings daily, often resulting in the prolongation of a migrant’s imprisonment. Stantec is an engineering consulting firm involved in the construction of the new migrant prison in Laval.
This new prison is part of Canada’s false solution to the threat posed by climate change, an attempt to further intensify its border infrastructure, to keep out those it continues to displace. The real threats to the earth and the people who live on it are capitalism, the destruction of the environment, and the politicians who, without fail, will continue to defend these systems while scapegoating those displaced by them.
We believe it is necessary to push far beyond making requests of politicians, and toward directly challenging the role Canada is playing in the global crisis. We hope that the climate struggle can broaden its tactics, deepen its analysis, and continue to build links with ongoing struggles against white supremacy, settler colonialism, and border imperialism.
