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

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Report-back on the June 6th Riot

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Jun 162024
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

June 6, 2024 will live long in our memories.

What happened that day was more than impressive. A riot emerged spontaneously on the McGill campus in response to police violence and a convergence of forces from the student intifada.

Since the media coverage seems to gloss over the strength of youth resistance that day, it seems important to take a look back at the day’s events.

First of all, a demonstration had already been called by the forces of the Université Populaire Al-Aqsa (UQAM), which ended its occupation earlier in the day. Parallel to this, an occupation of the Mcgill administration building was organized by students from the university. It was around this occupation that the riot was organized.

Following a call for support from McGill groups, a hundred or more activists converged on McGill to support the students barricaded inside the building.

The police on the ground acted with excessive aggression in the face of the fairly strong passivity of those present. Physically forcing the students who were blocking the secondary doors towards the main gathering in front of the front door. Hundreds of police officers were then mobilized to secure the area around the building and allow the police officers inside to intervene and arrest the 13 students trapped inside.

The aggressiveness of the police and their ridiculous effort to arrest a handful of students quickly heated things up. The students on the ground began to prepare for a police dispersal operation. While a small line held the west of the area, the forces converged to the east to hold a line against the massing riot police. Aided by more experienced activists, the students then began to stand in collective defense formations. Shortly afterwards, the police attempted a first charge into the lines. Surprisingly, despite pepper spray, gas, shields and truncheons, the lines held firm. While the bulk of the force seemed to be made up of activists new to street confrontations, the lines withstood a police charge and managed to push back the riot line. Perhaps the escalation of violence that the police have been building up since April 15 has succeeded in completing the movement’s efforts at self-pacification. Whatever prompted the people gathered there to stand firm, their actions were more than commendable.

Some of those present then retreated in the face of the irritants, but many of them returned to reinforce the lines. Lines that held off a second charge (notably using fencing, ramps and other obstacles) before a third charge finally broke through the line of students. The ego-stricken police then proceeded to brutalize as many activists as they could. Instead of demobilizing the group, this violence reinforced the militant rage. They gathered in the middle of the campus.

While these clashes were taking place, UPA forces arrived in support. Taking up positions on the other side of the police force, they threatened to entangle the police with the demonstration in support of the south. The students tried to resist, but were eventually forced to retreat to the south entrance of the campus.

The forces of both groups then regrouped on the edge of Sherbrooke and, under the call of the radical forces within the demonstration, took to the streets.

Motivated to go and get their arrested comrades, enraged by the violence they had suffered and motivated by the strength of their resistance, the students then engaged in a harassment of the police line laid out around the administration building. Although the forces of resistance failed to de-arrest the comrades, they forced the police to withdraw to their position.

As night fell and tension began to mount again, the students abandoned the campus and took to the surrounding streets. The forces of the student intifada learned the language of the riot, bank windows were smashed, police officers were fired upon with pyrotechnics and rocks rained on them, and every available object to form barricades was used to block access to police vehicles as the students took control of the streets for a few hours.

We must learn from this day and ensure that the movement never goes backwards. The intifada must realize its full potential.

A first lesson is to abandon the black bloc in this kind of demonstration. By dispersing into the crowd, experienced revolutionaries were able to blend in and pass on to the people there the practices of resistance to the police. Let’s adopt the movement’s uniform: the kefffiyeh bloc is in with the times.

A second lesson is to address the crowd clearly in demonstrations, ignoring peace police of all kinds. While self-proclaimed leaders, seemingly detached from student groups, were trying to disperse and pacify the crowd, our more experienced comrades and students were out in the field explaining to people how to resist and encouraging them to hold their ground against the cops. Less experienced militants expect those who know how to resist to guide them in action. We can’t continue to act as a force separate from the rest of the demonstration, we need to see in the faces present in the demonstration as many comrades. We must counter the leadership of opportunists, pacifists and other saboteurs.

The final lesson is to seize the opportunity to escalate when it presents itself. When the police make mistakes, when they brutalize and reveal their face, revolutionaries must be among those left to hold the lines and encourage young people to follow us. We also need to put the police on the defensive, attacking them and forcing them to defend specific targets, so as to have free rein in the streets.

Immigrant Detained and Abused at CISSS de Laval

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Jun 102024
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Our friend Juba Mahiou, an immigrant to Canada, has been locked up for over six months at Centre Intégré de Santé et de Services Sociaux de Laval. After an argument where police were called, they detained him under the guise of ‘mental health treatment,’ and have been forcing him to take drugs that are destroying his mind and body.

Judge Louis Charette noted that Juba was at risk of hypoglycemia and Parkinsons from drugs he was forced to take, but just ordered the doctors to also give him Parkinsons drugs ‘if needed.’

There are no charges of wrongdoing that the court can even get to stick to Juba – but every time he goes through their processes, they simply say that he’s “just lying to get out of the hospital,” an unprovable and unbeatable charge, and they also call him psychotic for talking about xenophobia he has dealt with.

Doctor Ali Jaber is assaulting Juba with forced injections of Invega Sustenna and has the power to choose to stop and let him go at any point. Right now the only info we have for trying to contact Jaber is the general unit number. We welcome more info about Jaber anyone can find, at friendsofjuba at proton dot me.

Juba has so far gotten one disability rights group to take note of his situation and post about it – albeit in a very limited scope – at https://mindfreedom.org/front-page/jubamahiou.

Close the Office in Tel-Aviv

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Jun 082024
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

The CAQ, complicit in a genocide!

The ongoing massacre in Palestine is a crime against humanity.

40,000 people have been brutally murdered and more than 2 million have been displaced.

Meanwhile, the CAQ and its minister Martine Biron will open an office for Quebec in Tel Aviv…!

Cooperating with an apartheid regime seems urgent for the Legault government, but not for a large part of the population.

The CAQ has blood on its hands! We therefore added some color to the doors of the Ministry of International Relations.

The peoples of Quebec need not sanction the collaboration of the state with this killing. No Quebec office in Israel!

Palestine will be free!

Do not look for us, we are no one, we are everywhere. Agitate, sabotage, disrupt.

Queers, Are You Ready for the Backlash? Preparing for a Poilievre Government

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May 282024
 

Anonymous submission to North Shore Counter-Info

A zine version of this text is available.

I’ve always liked connecting with other queer people and talking politics, comparing notes on how we see society and what is affecting us. But lately, this has been feeling quite urgent. The countdown is on until we end up with a reactionary federal government — there will be a federal election no later than October 2025, and if current trends hold, there will be a Conservative landslide that brings Pierre Poilievre to power.

This is soon, but we can still do a lot in 17 months. It feels important to me that queers and their friends use this time wisely, to try to get organized and prepare for a backlash against our social gains of the last few years.

But what makes Poilievre so special? He’s been in government a long time — isn’t he just a regular politician?

Poilievre has said a couple of things that would make for a departure from typical governance in Canada, but I want to focus on two: using the notwithstanding clause to bypass charter protections and rolling back transgender inclusion policies.

The notwithstanding clause (also known as Section 33) is particular to the Canadian political system and basically acts to limit the Charter framework of individual rights (and the courts that enfore it) when a government sees this as going against the public good. It can be used to make laws immune to court challenge for five years, which guarantees there will be an election before it expires, but it can just be applied again. The idea is that governments should be more powerful than the courts, so by invoking the notwithstanding clause, a government can pass laws that they know would be successfully challenged in court based on Charter rights.

Although historically very rare, the context for using the notwithstanding clause has been built up by conservative provincial governments over the past few years. The Coalition Avenir Québec party has used it to go after anglophones and religious minorities, the Ontario Progressive Conservatives used it to force striking workers back to work and limit electoral donations by unions, and the government of Saskatchewan used it to attack trans kids. All this since 2021. Poilievre has promised to use it to bring back criminal sentencing that was struck down as cruel and unusual, but there is no reason to think he will stop there.

The use in Saskatchewan is interesting, since Saskatchewan isn’t the only province that has passed so-called “parental rights” legislation. Alberta and New Brunswick are also bringing in laws restricting the ability of young people to transition, but Saskatchewan’s was the first to be delayed by the courts. So Scott Moe reconvened the legislature in order to break out the notwithstanding clause.

This brings us to what Pierre Poilievre thinks about trans people. He loudly supports the provincial legislation restricting transitions for young people, including access to puberty blockers and even using chosen names. And, as we’ve seen in the US, governments that start out restricting trans youth tend to move on to trans adults. So naturally, Poilievre also opposes the rights of transgender adults. Just this past February, he said he believes washrooms and changerooms should be restricted based on sex at birth, although he added it’s not clear that would be in federal jurisdiction.

Whether or not it has the ability to regulate the washrooms in the public library, a reactionary federal government won’t restrain the provinces or municipalities, leaving an open path for other levels of government to go after trans rights. As a trans person, I’m aware that in two years time, it might be illegal for me to use the washroom in public spaces.

A reactionary federal government probably won’t come right out and take gender identity and expression out as a protected ground in the Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code (at least not immediately). Instead, it will allow those rights to atrophy, to get picked apart by reactionary laws passed at all levels of government that are shielded by the notwithstanding clause when necessary. We will end up with a patchwork of restrictions on our ability to live openly and authentically rather than a blanket ban.

What stands in the way of this happening?

Politicians will try to have you believe that electoralism is the only way, that the NDP or the Liberals are the only ones who can stop the Conservatives. But the fact that we are even talking about rights being rolled back shows how fragile legislative victories are. Laws come and go. They are (unfortunately) an indispensable part of political and social equality, but they are not the most important piece.

The most important piece is self-organizing. We need to get organized as queers around issues that affect us — not to lobby politicians, but to build a context in which queer liberation cannot be legislated away.

We need to continue changing the culture and building equality and inclusion in practice (and I realize these fall short of liberation). This can happen on a social level by creating more spaces where people can be out and proud. It can happen on the institutional level — remember that many spaces (social services, workplaces, schools) were trans inclusive long before the law required them to be. We can continue that work, going block by block, regardless of which way the political wind blows.

We also need to organize for collective self-defence. Fortunately, we are used to having to defend ourselves. This might occasionally mean physical defence, like at Pride in Hamilton in 2019 or the drag defence actions that happened across the country. It’s worth repeating that without the ability to be violent, the choice to be peaceful is meaningless.

But just as important is social and spiritual defence. Social defence might look like identifying reactionaries in order to undermine and isolate them. This could be local politicians, business owners, or bureaucrats just as much as far-right jerks. Spiritual defence means taking care of yourself while also looking out for those most targeted and helping them to live with strength and dignity. Because the reaction isn’t going to come for everyone at the same time, even if it will sooner or later get around to all queers if left unchecked.

The rallies about these issues have started — we all come as isolated individuals to feel strong together for an hour. But we need to stop going home alone. It is time for us to talk to our friends and set a meeting to talk about the situation, about our strengths and desires, what we can bring to the table. Once we’ve gotten talking, we can reach out to friends of friends and extend the conversation. Let’s form crews of 3-5 people and practice going demos together. Let’s get on the same page about our analysis and about what kinds of actions we are excited to take.

We still have some time to get ready before the attacks intensify, but the coming months will pass quickly. We can’t trust politicians, but I have nothing but faith in our collective strength. We will weather the coming storm as we always have and might even come out stronger for it.

Download this text as a printable zine.

Solidarity Means Attack – Fuck France, Free Kanaky

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May 192024
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

This week, an anti-colonial uprising broke out in Kanaky, an archipelago in the South Pacific. Kanaky was named “New Caledonia” by British colonizer James Cook and has been occupied by France under that name since the 19th century. The Kanaks are black indigenous peoples of the islands whose cultures face genocide from white French “immigrants” who drive them from their lands and impose capitalism. For more general information:

https://www.infolibertaire.net/?s=Kanaky

France is a member of NATO, an ally of Israel, the capital of anti-immigration racism in Europe, a nuclear-armed state, etc. By attacking France, we support not only Kanaky’s struggle for freedom but also that of many other peoples, including other French colonies in the South Pacific. and Caribbean.

If you live near a city, you probably live near a French political, cultural or diplomatic institution or a company that does business with them. You probably like under a government which maintains links with France. Targets are everywhere!

Solidarity means attack, the lessons we learned in the fight against genocide in Palestine, Sudan and Congo can be applied at the same time to those pushing for the French-led genocide of the Kanaks.

Black Power Worldwide! Death to France!

Northvolt: the poison-tree will fall

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May 152024
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Let the axe
Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall

On Sunday, May 5th, five incendiary devices were placed at the Northvolt construction site in Quebec. This action was taken to damage machinery and reduce the project’s ability to continue. Unfortunately, these devices failed to ignite. If there is one takeaway to share, when choosing materials consider how weather (high humidity or rain) might decrease the chances of a device igniting. The longer the timer, the longer the device will be exposed to environmental factors thereby decreasing the window of success.

Why choosing to attack and damage property? While Northvolt, a transnational corporation, sells themselves as the leader of the green transition, they are in fact its headstone. The electric vehicles the company plans to provide with their batteries are a false solution to the environmental destruction caused by industrial society; rather this expension of the automotive industry is only allowing the devastating impact of car infrastructure to continue. With this project, Canada’s insatiable appetite for natural resources will only grow. Lithium mining, which is essential in the process of producing Northvolt’s “green” Lithium Ion batteries, is poisoning human communities and entire ecosystems across the land. Lithium is already being extracted from unceded Indigenous territories here in “Quebec”, with many new mines planning to start operating in the next few years. With this kind of mega project, lakes, forests and wetlands will disappear under new roads and pit mines. First Nations will loose access to their traditional territories and with that loss, the ability to practice and sustain their ancestral ways of living and relating to the land. They will be surveilled and harassed by workers and security. The animals of these territories will die or will have to migrate elsewhere as their homes are destroyed.

Has anyone else noticed how quiet the land around Northvolt has become since they chopped down the trees and destroyed the wetlands? It’s eerily silent.

Capitalism and the State are in league, dumping public funds into private corporations that will only worsen the ecological crisis across the globe. This is why we must act, and more often than not, we must act beyond the laws imposed on these lands by governments. The Quebec government has already dropped regulations put in place to protect the environment and looked the other way while Northvolt violates numerous laws and codes. This is because Legault’s government (like any colonial gorvernment), is politically invested in making this project happen. However, the future remains to be written. We still have choices to make. We still can act! We must not be guided by crooked laws, but by the love and care we and others have for the collective health of all beings, the land, the water and the desire for a better world through struggle against colonial structures. Armed with our convictions, let us go into the night and choose to take the necessary risks to fight for a livable future.

Tire Fire for Palestine

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May 022024
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

In the night of the 29th of April anarchists started a tire fire on the train tracks in St-Henri. The action was done to disrupt train traffic momentarily in solidarity with Palestine and the anti-capitalist 1st of May. We hope this action inspires others to disrupt the economy and the flow of capital across the world.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

Campus Building Occupations, 2008-2010 and Today

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Apr 272024
 

From CrimethInc.

A wave of campus building occupations took place in response to austerity measures following the recession of 2008. As today’s Gaza solidarity movement begins to experiment with encampments and building occupations, it could be instructive to learn from the previous generation of student activists.

On April 22, 2024, inspired by the resilience of the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University and other demonstrators around the country, students at Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata, California occupied Siemens Hall. This represented the first confrontational building occupation of a wave of student demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine.

Police attempted to storm Siemens Hall in order to evict it; they inflicted severe injuries on some students, but failed to gain entry. The officers established a perimeter around the building, but students and university faculty gathered around them, surrounding them and chanting “De-escalate by leaving!” In the end, local media reported that the police were forced to withdraw:

10:50 pm: All law enforcement have left from in front of the building and appear to be leaving the campus. Scanner traffic appears to confirm that law enforcement has left the scene. One officer said that law enforcement is being “disbanded.” Students are currently pouring in and out of the occupied building.

“Cops go home!” the students chanted victoriously. “People power! We are stronger!”

Taking over a building and forcing the police off campus is no mean feat in the age of police militarization. Yet this is not the first time this century that student movements have employed these tactics. From December 2008 to March 2010, a wave of student building occupations helped to spark a new era of combative grassroots struggle. Starting with only a few participants, these building occupations eventually helped to inspire the Occupy movement, which catalyzed tens of thousands of people into action.

The following text chronicles the emergence of this wave of building occupations from the perspective of those who helped start it, first in New York and then in California. This article originally appeared in issue 9 of Rolling Thunder, our Anarchist Journal of Dangerous Living. It appears here with a handful of modifications reflecting the decade and a half that has passed since.

Students occupied the New School in New York City in December 2008 and again in 2009.

Coast to Coast Occupations

“The coming occupations will have no end in sight, and no means to resolve them. When that happens, we will finally be ready to abandon them.”

Preoccupied: The Logic of Occupation

This is How We Learn, This is How We Fight

By a participant in the occupations in New York City of 2008-2009.

In December 2008, the month of the Greek rebellion, the widely hated president of New York City’s New School for Social Research fired the Provost and appointed himself. He also cut the library in half, shut down a building where students gathered, and raised tuition. When the Faculty came out with a vote of no confidence in him on December 10, previously apathetic students joined those trained by summit battles to take action. Standard campus activist SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] groups wanted to wait for the right time—”the movement is not ready,” “we need more numbers.” We thought otherwise.

After two grueling meetings, on December 16 at 8 pm, thirty students and non-students took the first floor of 65 5th Avenue, in the middle of Manhattan, blocking the exits with chairs, tables, and trash cans from the cafeteria. Within hours, hundreds of people came out in support, and students who until then had only read Hegel were fighting security guards with tables and blocking the streets outside. This lasted from Wednesday night to Friday morning. Authoritarian groups issued demands while autonomous groups conspired to bring in more people and expand the occupation. At key moments, against the formal consensus of some, friends outside were broken in with spectacular actions. A Greek solidarity march came by and livened up the party with a hundred more anarchists. The president was chased down the street to his home, and conceded to some of the demands soon after. We left with no repercussions, but bitter that the university still functioned at all.

Continue reading on CrimethInc.

Tenants Raging Against Airbnb

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Apr 252024
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Tenant rage strikes again!

In view of tenants’ day, we decided to answer the call for the creation of collaborative art on Airbnbs, because we’re sick and tired of passing by housing that serves above all to enrich shitty fucking landlords rather than house our neighbors. We will never any longer ignore these new buildings destined only for short-term rentals, while we struggle to put a roof over our heads.

According to the platform, the building we redecorated belongs to the Airbnb host “Carli”, who claims to live in Vancouver and uses the same license number for 24 units. Still, beyond the legal issues, this situation sheds light on the persistent control of a minority over our housing and our (historically) popular neighborhoods, denying tenants their fundamental right to the city.

Fuck Airbnb, fuck landlords, and long live alternative decoration!

Fuck Highway 20

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Apr 182024
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Despite opposition from the local community, concerns of environmental degradation and the utter futility of such a project, the government of Quebec insists on extending a highway from Notre-Dame-des-Neiges to Saint-Simon, which involves building a bridge over the Trois Pistoles River. Ministère des Transports du Québec’s (MTQ) blind persistence to extend the tentacles of the state and industry heavily relies on contractors like EnGlobe, a multinational engineering firm with offices in Quebec. As of this writing, geotechnical surveys are being conducted on both sides of the River. The surveys involve drilling for soil samples with heavy but vulnerable equipment kept overnight in the city of Trois Pistoles.

In the night during the 2nd week of April, anarchists sabotaged the truck transporting the surveying drill and covered it with tags letting MTQ know they were unwelcome in the area.

Anarchists in Quebec and elsewhere are invited to do the same to EnGlobe equipment and property. We must reject the highway, destroy the tendrils of capitalism and colonialism to save our forests and rivers, the true arteries that sustain us.