No Borders, No Prisons : New Communiqué Poster
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May 242019
What Happened to Prisoner Justice Day?
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May 202019
From End the Prison Industrial Complex
EPIC recommends this excellent new mini-series produced in Montreal called “What Happened to Prisoner Justice Day?” for anyone wanting to learn more about the history and context of the prison movement across so-called Canada since the 1970s. From the description:
This is a mini series about the history of prisons in canada focusing on differences in the prison system in the 1960s-1980s versus today. The podcast features interviews with former and current prisoners, as well as supporters on the outside. For those new to prison history, Prisoner Justice Day, also called PJD, started in 1975 on the one year anniversary of the death of Edward Nalon, an inside organizer who bled to death in a segregation cell in Millhaven Maximum Penitentiary on August 10th, 1974. Prisoners refused to eat and refused to work to commemorate Eddie’s death. In May 1976, Robert Landers, who had been actively organizing in Archambault Pen before being involuntarily transferred to Millhaven, died in a segregation cell in Millhaven after repeated calls for medical help met no response. In June 1976, prisoners in Millhaven launched a call for support for their one day hunger strike in remembrance of all prisoners who had died inside – to take place on August 10th. Word spread across the country and, in the end, thousands of prisoners participated in the one day hunger strike and supporters on the outside organized events on the outside. A lot has changed since the 70s, not just in prison, but outside of prison. While respecting PJD remains important to many on the inside and outside, the numbers of those participating are nowhere near the numbers involved in the 70s and 80s. This podcast mini-series sets out to explore why that change has occurred.
To listen, search for “What Happened to Prisoner Justice Day” in your podcast app or visit https://prisonhistoryca.libsyn.com/
Macdonald Monument & Queen Victoria Statue Vandalized Again in Montreal
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May 182019
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
As the Victoria Day weekend begins, the Macdonald Monument and the Queen Victoria Statue at McGill have once again been vandalized. Montreal May Anarchists (MMA) sprayed the Macdonald Monument in anti-colonial green, and the Queen Victoria statue in anti-imperialist red.
In the words of the #MacdonaldMustFall group: “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. Macdonald’s statue belongs in a museum, not as a monument taking up public space in Montreal”.
And, in the words of the Delhi-Dublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade: “The presence of Queen Victoria statues in Montreal are an insult to the self-determination and resistance struggles of oppressed peoples worldwide, including Indigenous nations in North America (Turtle Island) and Oceania, as well as the peoples of Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, the Indian subcontinent, and everywhere the British Empire committed its atrocities. Queen Victoria’s reign, which continues to be whitewashed in history books and in popular media, represented a massive expansion of the barbaric British Empire. Collectively her reign represents a criminal legacy of genocide, mass murder, torture, massacres, terror, forced famines, concentration camps, theft, cultural denigration, racism, and white supremacy. That legacy should be denounced and attacked.”
The Macdonald Monument and the Queen Victoria statue should be removed from public space and instead placed in archives or museums, where they belong as historical artifacts. Public space should celebrate collective struggles for justice and liberation, not white supremacy and genocide.
RCMP Vehicles Destroyed in Hamilton
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May 142019
Anonymous submission to North Shore Counter-Info
Since 1873, the Canadian government has been using the RCMP and all police services at their disposal to forcefully invade indigenous territory, helping to steal their land for resources and aid in their assimilation.
Out west on Wet’suwet‘en territory in Northern BC the RCMP continue to harass individuals travelling to and from their homes, seizing cars and leaving youth and mothers stranded in the wilderness. In addition, police continue to keep the Wet’suwet’en from freely accessing hunting and fishing grounds and – as the spring thaw continues – areas where they would gather berries and medicines for sickness and ceremony. All this on behalf and in favour of TransCanada/TC Energy.
Out East on the banks of the Sipekne’katik (Shubenacadie River) – occupied Mi’kmaq territory – we see the RCMP cater to yet another destructive energy corporation: Alton Gas. Earlier in April the RCMP trespassed, arrested and charged three Mi’kmaw grandmothers. Arrests came after two years of indigenous community impeding contruction access for a project that will devastate the delicate tidal bore ecosystem.
Colonial policing institutions continue to interfere and trespass where they are not welcome – always in favour of industry and state gains. On May 8, 2019 we even saw the OPP arrest and charge an individual from Wahta Mohawk territory for trespassing – on their own territory – after confronting state-endorsed band council government for corruption.
We see these moments and struggles for indigenous self-determination and land reclamation for what they are; brave and necessary.
We support those reclaiming what has been stolen and correcting what is wrong by doing what we can do, for now – attacking the state apparatuses that continue to harass, interfere with, and criminalize indigenous peoples.
Sometime in the evening of May 12 a group of regular everyday folks tried too, to be brave.
Targetting the RCMP building in Stoney Creek for the second time in recent history these individuals found their way in to a private RCMP car lot and took as many service vehicles out of commission as possible.
Using spray paint we gave their cars new paint jobs, applied etching cream to permanently damage glass surfaces, and put bleach into accessible gas tanks.
We like to think that, for a short time, we have made it just a bit safer around here.
A small act of gratitude for those truly honouring our mother, on this mother’s day.
Moving forward, we call on others to step up. To treat these struggles as seriously as you treat commitments to your family, your jobs, degrees, or community. We call on every single person who has ever believed themselves to be an “ally“ to begin organizing and mobilizing for the inevitable moments ahead. What are you prepared to do when the Mi’kmaw and Wet’suwet’en must once again physically defend their territories from colonial violence? How are you preparing for the moments that have been building for two years, and for ten? Indigenous communities are keeping up their 300-year fight against colonialism and state control, and settlers can (and should) be waging the second front.
Reportback from Montreal’s May Day Against Borders
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May 142019
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
On May Day 2019 in Montreal there were four different demonstrations at different times and locations across the city. The CLAC (Convergence des Luttes Anti-Capitalistes) called for their annual anti-capitalist May Day demonstration to be held in the theme of “No borders”, in the context of the rise of the xenophobic far right in Quebec and the ongoing attept to construct a new migrant prison in Laval, QC. We attended the CLAC’s No Borders May Day, which gathered at 6:30pm at Square Cabot in the west end of downtown Montreal.
Shortly after the few-hundred strong group left the square, heading south on Atwater towards St Henri, a small black bloc at the rear of the demo took shape, shielded by a rear-facing banner reading “All Bosses are Bastards”. Construction fencing, pylons, and other materials were dragged into the street, creating distance between the demo and the cops following behind. Flyers had been passed out at the departure point encouraging people to take both sides of the street and the sidewalks as an attempt to prevent cops from using the sidewalks to flank the demo. This largely worked, no side cops were able to take position.
The demo turned west on Notre-Dame and then north on Greene, heading towards the headquarters of Lemay, an architecture firm designing the proposed migrant prison. As the demo approached the building, a dumpster was lit on fire at the back of the demo and rolled backwards towards the bike cops trailing the demo, creating a bit of a buffer in the lead up to what was to come. At Lemay, people attacked the building, breaking the large windows at the front and side of the building with rocks, billiard balls, and improvised battering rams. Paint bombs covered the facade on two sides of the building as well. Flyers were distributed explaining Lemay’s role in the construction of the migrant prison.
Riot cops deployed, too late, in front of the Lemay building, and were met with rocks. They responded to the escalating situation with tear gas, and the demo turned north off of St-Jacques. Though the demo split and some people scattered due to the tear gas, minutes later two large groups met up on St-Antoine, a major artery leading to a highway on-ramp — the dispersal attempt was unsuccessful! Marching against already backed-up traffic, the raucous group dragged garbage and recycling bins into the street, lighting some on fire. Though the group continued to thin out over the next 15 minutes, a sizable demo marched east on Notre-Dame, leaving graffiti in its wake, and defending itself with fireworks shot at the cops.
This May Day was a marked improvement from last year, when a confrontation between flanking sidewalk cops and a black bloc at the front of the demo two minutes after departure isolated most of the bloc from the rest of the demo, leading the demonstration to continue but without most of the bloc. Since that confrontation, the cops have consistently kept their distance at major demos, testifying to the success of a combative demo culture. However, they are positioning themselves to go on the offensive very quickly after attacks have taken place, and we will need to continue responding to this change in strategy.
This year, the distribution of groups of anonymous and confrontational people throughout the demo appears to have prevented the isolation of the bloc from the rest of the demo. It also helped to mitigate the negative effects of dispersal attempts — having groups of people throughout the demo that are prepared to stick it out after tear gas and charges means that many others can build the confidence to do this as well. This year’s successful regroupment and the long continuation of the demo even after it had wreaked havoc on Lemay are testaments to this.
****This year, we noticed a lot of people in the demo with cameras or filming with their phones. Filming and taking pictures puts people at risk, whether or not you’re the mass media. Even if you don’t intend to hand your footage to the cops or have the intention to blur out identifying features before you post your pictures, you might get arrested with information that incriminates others. A reminder: don’t film in a demo, and don’t be surprised if you get pushed out of the demo if you do.
The success of the demo’s attack on Lemay was also an exciting development in the struggle against the migrant prison. Lemay has already been attacked multiple times in the past year (its condo projects have been attacked, and the building it is headquartered in had crickets released into it and all its locks destroyed as well), but these attacks have not been as public as this demonstration, and have presumably involved smaller groups of people. We are heartened by the strength and solidity of hundreds of people who stood and stayed together while this abhorrent architecture firm had its building fucked with in broad daylight. It’s this kind of collective strength and daring that will continue to be necessary as the fight to prevent the construction of the prison heats up in the coming months.
Long live the uncontrollable demo! Long live the struggle against the migrant prison! Against borders and against prisons!
Fuck Lemay, happy May Day!
“Blue Wave” hits a wall in Montreal : antifascists force a nationalist identitarian demonstration to hide (yet again) behind the police
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May 072019
Montréal, May 6th, 2019 –The Montreal police (SPVM) was out in force today to protect several hundred Quebec nationalist bigots who had been mobilized by a handful of identitarian groups.
As we reported last week, the “Vague bleue” (“Blue Wave”) was in fact organized by activists associated with Storm Alliance, the Front patriotique du Québec, and various far right keyboard warriors. In the end it was the crème de la crème of Quebec’s frustrated nationalists, wannabe militia members, and flea market patriots – not more than 400 people – who found themselves enveloped by two lines of riot cops in front of the TVA network’s building in Montreal, supposedly to support Bill 21
As to our side, in less than 10 days the Montreal antifascist milieu carried out a solid information campaign and managed to mobilize between 150 and 200 determined people who forced the police to deploy themselves heavily around the nationalist demonstration. A police presence that the antiracists nonetheless managed to get around not one but three times!
While it was certainly a strange day in many ways, in the end we feel it was a success. First, we had a good time circling around the bozos and making the cops run all over the place. Also, if we compare the net result of the identitarian mobilization to our own, we clearly come out ahead. A complete success would have been us physically preventing their event from happening or forcing it to be canceled, but in the context we found ourselves in, such a thing was simply not possible. In such a situation, maintaining maximum pressure becomes the best we can aim for, and that is something we clearly managed to do.
In these terms, note that after three months of intense organization, out of the 2,300 people who confirmed their participation and the 5,400 who signaled their interest on Facebook, only several hundred Catholic-secularitesmurfs answered the call on the day in question. The Catholic-secularites found themselves isolated behind police lines for several hours, without access to water, food, or toilets, where nobody could see or hear them other than the police who were deployed to protect them (and even the police seemed to find them pathetic). What’s more, the lines of cops made it difficult for people who wanted to get in to their demonstration; one needed to be vouched for by someone on the inside who needed to come and meet you as you entered. Such measures were the direct result of the pressure we managed to bring to bear, and helped to reduce the number of people in their blue puddle.
On our side, we had more counter-demonstrators on the ground than Facebook users who had signaled they would be there!
What’s more, our information campaign culminated on May 4th with our distributing 5,000 flyers in the neighbourhood, to people who live in the area, to tourists and passersby. So in some ways the blue-brown demonstration by the nationalist Catholic-secularites helped us to carry out popular education and to deepen our roots in the neighbourhood.
Tactically, we managed to get around the police three times : first on AlexandreDe Sève, a second time on Papineau (where our initial contact with the “Vague bleue” immediately degenerated when police fired tear gas at the antiracists at head level; note that one demonstrator was injured when they received a canister in their face), and a third time, 45 minutes later, when the antiracists managed to regroup, taking up space directly by the “Vague bleue” in front of TVA, at the corner of de Maisonneuve and Champlain. One consequence being that the “Vague bleue” organizers had to quickly move their sound truck, which deprived them of their sound system for the rest of the day!
The third and final chapter of the counter-demonstration took the form of a protracted standoff with the “Vague bleue”, which remained contained by police lines on de Maisonneuve between Champlain and AlexandreDeSève. Once again, the mobility of the antiracists allowed them to carry out ongoing popular education around the identitarian demonstration, engaging in dozens of conversations with people from the neighbourhood (and even with some nationalist demonstrators), and to document the presence of numerous individuals involved with the far right among the ranks of the “Vague bleue”.
Amongst those we identified were many known members of Storm Alliance, the Soldiers of Odin, the Front patriotique du Québec and its security group, La Meute, the self-styled « Gardiens du Québec », a two-bit militia called the Ragnarok Nordique Société (real secular that, by the way) whose leader goes by the moniker Rednek Breault, the antisemitic tweedle dee and tweedledum from DMS (once again, real secular, those monarchist Catholic traditionalists!), « Q Anon » true believers, and all kinds of representatives of Quebec’s brotherhood of keyboard warriors, such as Robert Proulx, Stéphane Gagné, Michel Meunier, Donald Proulx, René Blaireau, Michel Éthier, Stéphane Dufresne… and at least one lost bozo wandering around wearing an Atalante t-shirt.
Finally, it is worth underscoring the irony of this demonstration for « secularism » taking place under the very ostentatious (!) Carillon-Sacré-Cœur, an old version of the Québec flag that is promoted today by the ultra-Catholic wing of the Quebec nationalist movement, including elements of the Fédération des Québécois de souche.
At least one person on the blue side got sunstroke, and we are sorry to say that there was one injury and two arrests on the antiracist side for minor offenses.
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Overall, this long day out against the identitarian « Vague bleue » was a real success. We certainly had a lot more fun than the boxed in secularites! The neighbourhood defended itself against this passing shower, and reminded everyone that despite the reactionary noise and the intense opposition from the SPVM, Montreal is and will remain antiracist!
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Photos:
Une revue de presse sommaire :
Huffington Post :
https://quebec.huffingtonpost.ca/2019/05/04/quelques-centaines-manifestants-defilent-appui-projet-loi-21_a_23721675/
Radio Canada :
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1167921/manifestation-projet-loi-21-laicite-montreal-antiraciste-vague-bleue
Reportage de TVA :
https://www.tvanouvelles.ca/2019/05/04/face-a-face-entre-les-partisans-et-les-opposants-de-la-laicite-1
*Le Journal en ligne Le Peuple, l’un des sites les plus prolifiques de la fachosphère national-populiste, parle plutôt de 300 personnes…
Sovereign Likhts’amisyu Spring Construction Has Begun!
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May 042019
Dear Friends, Allies, Comrades, and Supporters,
We are pleased to announce that preliminary work has begun on the Likhts’amisyu Spring Construction Camp.
This project is an initiative being led by two hereditary chiefs of the Likhts’amisyu Clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. For the past ten years, the Wet’suwet’en have been fiercely resisting pipeline development on their territories. Things came to a head back in January, when the RCMP raided a resistance camp on the territory of the Gidimt’en, another Wet’suwet’en clan.
Although Spring has come to Wet’suwet’en territory, the future site of the Sovereign Likhts’amisyu camp is up in the mountains, and the snow there has yet to melt. Therefore, we must be patient and lay all the groundwork that we can while we wait for Mother Nature to do her thing. In the meantime, however, we are keeping ourselves busy, and are pre-fabricating a log cabin off-site.
We are also very much keen to recruit more helpers! Although the dates of the Likhts’amisyu Spring Construction camp were scheduled for the dates of April 28th to May 18th, the reality is that we will be requiring assistance throughout the Spring, Summer, and Fall seasons. We are planning to build a log cabin, a kitchen / mess hall, a wood shed, and a root cellar. Please consider making a trip out to Wet’suwet’en territory in the coming months to help with this grassroots, indigenous-led effort to defend Mother Earth from the threat of industrial devastation posed by the Coastal GasLink pipeline.
We are planning to move our construction crew out onto the territory on May 13th. We encourage people to come on that date, prepared to stay and to work. If you are planning on coming, or even if you’re just considering it, please do not hesitate to get in touch by emailing us at likhtsamisyu@riseup.net
Also, although we have been somewhat successful in our fund-raising efforts, we are still a long way away from our goal. We have priced out over $40 000 worth of construction materials, without including a budget for food or transportation costs. To date, we have raised only about $8000. Thankfully, this is enough for us to get started, however, it means that we must continue to fund-raise as we go. We have created a GoFundMe page, and we would highly appreciate it if folks would donate and/or share the campaign on their social media accounts.
Here are some useful links:
1. The Go Fund Me page is at: https://www.gofundme.com/manage/likhtsamisyu2019
2. The promotional video is at: https://vimeo.com/332477793
3. The Likhtsamisyu website is at: www.likhtsamisyu.com
4. The Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/likhtsamisyu/
From Embers: Anarchist Bookfair XX
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May 032019
From From Embers
The Montreal Anarchist Bookfair is the largest anarchist gathering in North America and 2019 is it’s 20th year. In this episode, I interviewed two members of this year’s bookfair collective. Topics include:
– what, if anything, does the bookfair have to do with books?
-is the bookfair for “us,” for “recruitment,” or both?
-how much should event planners try to shape a space like this? what kinds of policies are appropriate and how, if at all, should they be enforced?
-what should we expect at this year’s bookfair?
The bookfair is coming up on May 25th and 26th!
Links:
“Vague bleue”: The Racist, Islamophobic Fringe of Québec Nationalism Comes Out to Play
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Apr 282019
What Is the “Vague bleue”?
The “Vague bleue” is a gathering that will be held on Saturday, May 4, at 2:00 p.m., at the TVA building in Montréal. It was initially announced as an extension of the weekly rallies of the so-called Québec “Yellow Vests” (we’ve written about this in the past), which has held rallies at the same location every Saturday since December 2018. Initially, the main objective of the “Vague bleue” was a call for a popular civic referendum to establish a Québec “citizen’s constitution”, a reworking of one of the Yellow Vest’s demands in France. Initially, the rallies were contextualized as an expression of civic patriotism by identitarian groupuscules generally known for their online and social media activities. The one thing they all share is an obsessive and hard-line attachment to an independentist project that is openly xenophobic and proactively Islamophobic, with barely disguised racism.
The social media echo chamber created by these so-called patriots has coalesced into a “fascistic milieu” of sorts in recent years, where a mix of toxic xenophobic and racist perspectives and fake news spread like wildfire supporting a confirmation bias that affirms conspiracy theories and increasingly radical ideas about immigration, multiculturalism, and diversity, ranging from reactionary comments to full-on fascist theories that draw on information sources moderated by white supremacists and other far-right individuals.
This nebulous movement, largely confined to social media and only occasionally leaving the realm of the virtual world, has seemingly made a few minor adjustments to its usual means of mobilizing, and we may well witness a reconfiguration of the Islamophobic far right in the wake of the “Vague bleue” (the disappearance of some groups, new alliances, fusions, new groups). We will see.
In the early weeks of the organizing, the “Vague bleue” mobilization already differed from other far-right mobilizations, with several hundred people expressing an interest in the event. But the decisive moment came in April, about a month before the rally, when the organizers shifted the “Vague bleue” messaging to focus on support for Bill 21 “on secularism” (which essentially seeks to legalize discrimination by forbidding state employees from wearing religious symbols). In a matter of weeks, the Facebook event blew up: hundreds upon hundreds shared the event and signalled their interest, resulting in the callout being sent out thousands of times. One would not necessarily be remiss in thinking that the many successive mobilizations against Bill 21 in Montréal (in particular, on March 24 and April 7 and 14), some of which included thousands of people, have pushed the Islamophobes to come out of the woodwork for a mass mobilization.
As such, the tiny “Yellow Vest” mobilization has strayed from its initial objective, an eventual Québec constitution, which few people are now talking about, to reorient around a vociferous support for the CAQ’s secularism bill.
To sum up, what we have here is:
- a rally of frustrated xenophobic nationalists;
- outside the (nationalist) media empire Québécor’s television studios, which daily stoke the fires of xenophobia and Islamophobia in Québec with an army of reactionary commentators;
- in support of the anti-liberty and Islamophobic bill advanced by the CAQ, a conservative party leading a majority government!
It’s hard to even imagine something so entirely absurd!
Who’s organizing it? Who’s participating?
A number of organizations and groupuscules have supported the rally by sharing the callout. It is not a straightforward proposition to untangle which of the groups that are mobilizing are more than a “one-man show,” as is, for example, Donald Proulx’s Parti patriote. But we can identify the main groups at the heart of the mobilization, both on social media and, in the case of some of their more overexcited members, “in real life.” Keep in mind that even when these individuals are associated more intimately with one group or another, they associate and interact on Facebook with innumerable other individuals of their ilk.
The screenshots below should suffice to demonstrate that the run-of-the-mill “patriotic” militant is more marked by a rabid Islamophobia than by any genuine concern for the independence of Québec.
— Québec Libre en Action (connected to the Recours collectif contre Revenu Québec), a group formed by Jonathan Héroux (known as John Hex on Facebook) after he left the anti-immigrant group Storm Alliance, in which he used to hold an executive position. His biggest achievement to date was organizing a rally of fifteen people in Malbaie during the G7 summit in Jun 2018. Héroux/Hex appears to be the initiator and main organizer of the “Vague bleue.” He is well regarded in the Québec fascist milieu, with numerous people following the video livestreams he produces at the identitarian right’s various gatherings. Jocelyn Houle, another crank who genuinely believes “the mass media and politicians are controlled by Freemasons”, is another active member of Québec Libre en Action.
— Les Gardiens du Québec is a “security” group that offers “operational support on the ground.” LGDQ is the organization that replaced La Horde, an on-again, off-again splinter from La Meute. Jonathan Héroux designated Martine Tourigny, alias Tina Gauthier, the coordinator of the “Vague bleue.” Martine Tourigny’s partner, Stéfane “Gizmeaux” Gauthier, is another key member of the security group. Éric “Wild Wolf” Rochon is another very active member of this group.
— The Front patriotique du Québec (FPQ) and its Groupe de sécurité patriotique (GSP) led by Robert Proulx gathers together a fair number of the usual suspects found at identitarian gatherings, including Mario Dallaire, Robin Simon, Sylvain Lacroix, and Stéphane Dufresne, who was recently the subject of an article on the Montréal Antifasciste website for proposing a fake terrorist attack. Over the last two years, the FPQ was behind spring demonstrations that in a certain sense were the precursor to the “Vague bleue” (April 23, 2017; April 15, 2018). The GSP is very close to the III % Québec, an anemic imitation of the far-right patriotic militias that arose in the U.S. in 2008. Their mission is to dress up like members of the cast of a GI Joe operetta and “protect” the various Québec identitarian demonstrations against imaginary enemies. It seems that the III%, under the stewardship of its “provincial commanding officer” Éric Vachon, is currently either dormant or in a period of restructuring.
— The so-called « Gilets jaunes du Québec » [Yellow Vests] (which has an extremely tenuous if not nonexistent link to the French movement of that name) brings together a handful of members and militants of various identitarian groups, a variety of free radicals, and a number of “special” people (including the “Patriot Pirate” Michel Éthier, and the Styrofoam goof Claude Roy, among others). Michel Meunier, alias Mickey Mike, a notorious white supremacist who celebrated the massacre of fifty Muslims in Christchurch and hoped for another attack like that against the Muslim community in Québec City in 2017, volunteered to carry out the reconnaissance in the area where the “Vague bleue” is to be held, as well as coordinating the postering. Luc Desjardins, another “Yellow Vest,” is also actively mobilizing for the “Vague bleue.” A key figure in this gaggle of goofs is the super-clown Pierre Dion, whose unquenchable thirst for attention makes his presence a virtual certainty.
— Storm Alliance (SA) (and its security group, the “DFSA,” which stand for Défense fortifiée Storm Alliance [Storm Alliance Heightened Defense]) is also calling on its members to attend the rally. SA, the result of a split within the Soldiers of Odin Québec, made a name for itself by organizing a number of anti-immigrant gatherings in recent years, particularly at the U.S. border. Nadia Fradette, alias Nadia Dumont, a Storm Alliance member, is organizing the buses to the “Vague bleue.”
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Almost all identitarian groupuscules are mobilizing for this rally, the exceptions being La Meute, which, nonetheless, has authorized its members to attend without flying their colours, and hard-line fascists like Atalante or the not-so-secret Nazi Fédération des Québécois de souche.
The fact that the presence of notorious Islamophobes and racists like Michel Meunier among “Vague bleue” organizers and the mountain of evidence of the organizers’ racist intolerance has not led other militants to dissociate themselves clearly exposes the true nature of this event. It’s not a pro-Québec rally but, in fact, an anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rally.
Montréal is and will remain antiracist. The “Vague bleue” is not welcome in Montréal! It is only with the concerted action of the residents of our fine city that we can block the way for xenophobes and reaffirm the city’s welcoming and diverse character.
NO RACISTS IN OUR NEIGHBOURHOODS
Anti-racist demonstration against the xenophobic “Vague Bleue” rally
May 4th, 2019, NOON Métro Papineau
For an Earth Night (every night): 40 cars have tires slashed in the Montreal area
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Apr 232019
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Earth Day, 2019: floods spread across southern Quebec, federal police protect fossil fuel companies against indigenous land defenders from coast to coast of so-called Canada, climate refugees are held at gunpoint by right-wing gangs in Arizona, 150 species go extinct on an average day, while people in different parts of the world brace for record-setting forest fires, hurricanes, and typhoons. And a handful of environmental nonprofits and their paid activists bankrolled by elite philanthropists beholden to big corporations expect us to believe that we’ll convince governments to enact the change needed to save the planet if only we march in orderly circles enough times with enough people, handing ourselves over to the police if we temporarily disturb anyone’s daily routine.
We take the climate strikers’ proposition seriously: by refusing to go to class, without asking for permission, if only for one afternoon per week for now, they show the necessity of acting directly to interrupt the normal reproduction of this society that is killing the earth. We, too, think we need to leave the path of legality, as well as the path of civil disobedience, the one that leads from sit-ins for the cameras to nights in jail and interminable court dates, which make it quite a bit harder to stay in the struggle.
So instead of participating in Earth Day festivities, on the night of April 22, we slashed tires of 40 cars in different Montreal neighborhoods. We don’t claim to have done anything significant in itself towards defending a livable future. Nor do we wish to put personal consumer choices such as car ownership at the center of a strategy for fighting ecological devastation. We chose this small gesture to offer a glimmer of the quality of disruption that this economy and society require if future generations and our own are going to have a chance at a dignified life on this planet.
We chose neighborhoods occupied by the rich, mostly luxury cars in the driveways of million-dollar homes. We targeted those who profit off the unfathomable level of destruction incurred on the earth by capital and colonization, and who will be the most sheltered from the impacts of the climate catastrophe that is just beginning, if they have their way. The wealthy can afford to move when their houses are flooded year after year. The rich will have the largest economic buffers as the state tries to individualize responsibility for the climate crisis, and carbon taxes and other last-ditch efforts at maintaining this society place the burden on the poor.
Earth Day, 2020: climate riots in every major city. Practically no one can get to work in the morning, if their factory or tech startup hasn’t yet been decommissioned and looted by former pacifists. Indigenous land defenders and allies have fought off incursions by oil companies and are enlarging pockets of autonomy from the Canadian state. Networks of solidarity and attack considerably impede border enforcement. Carbon emissions have begun falling drastically due to the sheer drop in worldwide industrial activity brought about by the revolt. The effects of a changed climate will be felt for centuries still; people die in floods and hurricanes, in conflicts with reactionary forces and the state, and some of old age, with the knowledge that they fought, and that others will keep fighting.
We can dream (and slash tires).