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

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Beyond symbolism … for a Solidarity City!

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Feb 092017
 

From Solidarity Across Borders

This morning, the City of Montreal Executive Committee is expected to take the first steps to declare Montreal a “Sanctuary City”, similar to the hundreds of Sanctuary Cities that already exist in the United States, and more recently in Toronto, Hamilton and Vancouver.

Declaring Montreal a “Sanctuary City” is not sufficient on its own.

“The City of Montreal needs to get beyond easy symbolism, and undertake tangible measures to ensure non-cooperation with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to end deportations and ensure access without fear by undocumented migrants to all essential services, including health care, education, and housing,” says Stacey Gomez, a community organizer with Solidarity Across Borders, a migrant justice organization in Montreal active since 2004.

Inspired in part by Sanctuary Cities in the USA, but crucially motivated by the autonomous organizing of undocumented migrants who resist deportations and detentions and create and sustain networks of mutual aid and support, Solidarity Across Borders has actively campaigned since 2009 to make Montreal a “Solidarity City”.

More than sixty community organizations have signed the “Solidarity City”; they collectively agree to:
– never ask for information regarding immigration status;
– treat all information regarding other people’s immigration status as strictly confidential, and never share it with government agencies;
– not charge fees based on immigration status;
– implement a policy of non-cooperation with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), including barring them from their premises;
– work to make sure that labour and other human rights standards are applied equally to all, regardless of immigration status, in our organizations, workplaces, and communities.

For Solidarity Across Borders, the Solidarity City Declaration is the basic template for the City of Montreal’s own possible Sanctuary City. This includes non-collaboration by the Montreal police (SPVM) with the CBSA. The City of Montreal has direct authority over the SPVM, who every day arrest and hand over undocumented migrants over to the CBSA, in flagrant violation of what minimally a Sanctuary City is supposed to be.

“If more than sixty Montreal community organizations have already agreed to not cooperate with the CBSA, then a genuine Sanctuary or Solidarity City in Montreal must do the same, including barring border agents from all City premises,” says Jaggi Singh, also a community organizer with Solidarity Across Borders.

As part of its Solidarity City campaign, Solidarity Across Borders has demanded free access to primary and secondary schools, as well as hospitals, clinics, and other services for undocumented migrants. By way of example, undocumented kids are still unable to access free primary and secondary education, while undocumented migrants are fearful to access health services, or cannot afford to pay.

There are at least 50,000 undocumented migrants in Montreal, if not many more.

Beyond ensuring total and complete non-cooperation with the CBSA, Solidarity Across Borders highlights that undocumented migrants are created by exploitive and unjust economic and social policies. In particular, they re-iterate their main demands for an end to deportations, detentions and double punishment, and the implementation of an inclusive, comprehensive and ongoing regularization program for the more than 500,000 undocumented migrants living in Canada.

“Ultimately, we need to draw on the tradition of struggle and resistance from diverse working class, immigrant, and oppressed communities in Montreal and become a Rebel City that demands open borders and status for all, ” says Singh.

“Without grassroots pressure, opportunistic politicians will be content with empty symbols, gestures and photo-ops,” adds Gomez.

Background Information
– Solidarity City Declaration
– Solidarity City Declaration Demands
– Education Without Borders Collective
– Public Statement: No Border Agents in our Hospitals and Clinics / Heath Care For All! (2013)
– Past Support Work Campaigns

Cabaret and open-mic night against gentrification

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Feb 092017
 

Most humble greetings, Princesses and Princes of the so-called city of Montreal. It is time to brighten up our long, cold nights with a luxurious and decadent celebration in honor of gentrification! In Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, dangerous anarchists are trying to slow progress. But, gentrification is an inevitability of unfettered capitalism, a most desirable process and, of course, our highest ambition. Join us as we feast on salmon and caviar, martini in hand. Let us witness magnificent concrete condos rise! Let us toast to new security cameras and police presence! Only they will protect our modest businesses, our honorable citizens, and maintain order in our streets.

On the menu: circus performances, music, drag, and amusements of all kinds! As generous hosts, we are pleased to offer you the opportunity to participate as well. This is an ***OPEN MIC NIGHT***, and we welcome contributions of any kind: zine readings, personal texts or poems, songs, break-dance, pirouettes, puns, etc. Please contact the organizers or come at 8pm on the eve of the cabaret to sign up.

No sexist/racist/homophobic/transphobic/abelist/classist behaviors or comments will be tolerated.

PWYC, with suggested contribution between $5 and $10. Funds will be used to assure the survival of L’Achoppe

Disclaimer: you may suspect that this event is, in fact, about fighting gentrification in our neighborhoods. The first in a series of cabarets, you may think that we want to give different voices to a place to be heard, to overthrow the dominant discourses, and to subvert the status quo. Perhaps you believe this cabaret is created for and by people involved in this struggle. Or that our intention is to create a cathartic space where we can be vulnerable, we can take risks together and we can express our joy, our anger, our bewilderment, our euphoria…

Everybody hates racists!

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Feb 042017
 

Graffiti in Pointe-St-Charles, Montreal

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Translation: the title is a play on the chant “Tout le monde déteste la police!” (Everybody hates the police) that was popularized in the rebellion in Paris last summer.

Last Sunday night, six people from the Muslim community in Quebec city were assassinated at their mosque. This shows that racist extreme-right ideology is very much alive in supposedly egalitarian and tolerant Quebec society, which currently participates in fostering an islamophobic climate in which racists are increasingly feeling emboldened to act. This time it’s not an act that can be ignored, unlike the pigs heads left on the steps of the same mosque several months ago and which interested practically nobody, or the daily verbal and physical aggressions in the street of racialized people.

On the day of the funeral for those killed in the shooting, a mosque in the Montreal neighbourhood of Pointe-St-Charles had it’s windows broken. In response, a solidarity rally drew a hundred supporters in front of the mosque, anarchist graffiti expressing solidarity went up on advertisement paneling across the street, and anti-fascist posters were taped on the broken windows titled “Against racism, islamophobia and anti-semitism. Let’s be on the offensive”.

Many are asking themselves how is it possible that this could happen here. However, racism and hatred for the ‘other’ outside of Christianity is not something new in Canada. This country is founded on the genocide of indigenous people, and their ghettoization into reservations. Contrary to what we learn in school, the colonizers of so-called Quebec also participated in this mass genocide. Quebec society has its share of racism through the ages, whether it be with the new form of slavery of the mass incarceration of black and indigenous people, the residential schools, the exploitation of migrant works without papers, or the islamophobic Charter of Values. Of course, the rise in right-wing nationalist ideology in the last years has had a large impact on the murders that happened in Quebec, but we can’t forgot that this way of thinking existed even before someone like Trump took power in the US, or a politician like Marine Le Pen is polled to win 30% of the vote in the coming elections in France.

It’s not surprising that the xenophobic act that took place last Sunday happened in the capital of Quebec. Several racist groups have been diffusing their despicable ideology in broad-daylight for several years, with impunity. Groups like Atalante Québec or Soldats d’Odins (Soldiers of Odin) and several others can try to hide behind their false banner of “only denouncing radical Islam”, but we’re not falling for this manipulation. We know very well that these are people who act according to a racist logic. How can a group like Atalante say that it’s not racist while they organize a conference with neo-fascist Italian groups like Casapound who claim the legacy of Mussolini. Quebec City also has its share of “radio poubelles” (a term used for right-wing populist radio stations) listened to each day by thousands. The hosts of these shows can always wash their hands by saying that they don’t call for murder, but they contribute in a large way to the normalization of racism and islamophobia. Let’s be clear: these people also have blood on their hands and their discourses of hate must absolutely be confronted with all means necessary. Whether it be the pieing of people like Mathieu Bock-Côté, disrupting all their conferences, or by never allowing a racist demonstration to take the streets in peace.

The response to the extreme right must be determined and relentless, this people must be afraid to publicly poster their discourses of hate. We must not wait for any change coming from the political class that also contributes to the atmosphere of racism: through the normalization of hate towards muslims, the maintenance of inherently racist borders and policing , and the ongoing colonial violence that Canada is founded on. The struggle against the rise of fascism and the world that needs it will only come from ourselves and without the intermediary of any representatives – to fight organized fascists out of the streets at every opportunity and to attack everything that gives them legitimacy. We must make our anti-fascism radical by continuing to fight against the racist foundations of our society – colonial government and industrial civilization, nationalism, police, prisons, and borders.

US Consulate Shut Down, Call for Continued Direct Action to End Canadian Complicity in Racist Violence

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Feb 032017
 

No wall, no hate! Fuck racism (and white supremacy!) Open the borders

On Monday in Tiohtia:ke (aka Montreal in occupied Kanien’kehá:ka territory), hundreds of people outraged and sorrowed by the horrifying intensification of Islamophobic violence on both sides of the border shut down the US consulate.

Standing front of the consulate doors with banners and signs, first in silent sorrow and anger, protesters then began spontaneously chanting together- not only against Trump’s Muslim ban, but also against the racism that runs rampant across the Quebec political spectrum, against Canada’s exclusionary immigration policies, and against white supremacy. The ad-hoc group demanded the immediate opening of the US-Canadian border, an end to the safe the safe third country agreement and designated country of origin list, and an ongoing, comprehensive regularization program for undocumented people already in Canada (for more information on these demands see www.solidarityacrossborders.org).

The consulate doors were locked from the inside, and for the duration of the demonstration no one was able to enter or leave, effectively shutting down business as usual.

This action was not difficult to organize, and did not require a huge crowd to be successful. We believe it offers hope that, from our different starting points, in our different ways and capacities, many of us may be able to find ways of working with other community members to defend ourselves against and disrupt the institutions furthering racist and Islamophobic violence. We hope that such actions can be undertaken in a spirit of pushing the borders out of our city and transforming our communities into spaces of mutual aid and support- our vision of a Solidarity City. Not only is it possible, the current situation is forcing it on us.

While Canadian politicians contort themselves to avoid denouncing Trump, while the media, caught in the racist stereotypes it helps perpetuate, fumbles with the difference between a shooter and a witness, and while the same public figures who yesterday insisted that Muslims do not belong in our communities, today express disbelief at the tragedy, we should not expect and cannot wait for these same accomplices to protect out communities. This is a threat we must face head on. Many among us have no choice but to face it – having already been harmed by its violence. Those who do have a choice, have all the more responsibility to stand in solidarity and fight back, according to our different capacities and means, and in our different contexts.

After the success of today’s action, we encourage everyone to join together, be creative, try new things, and above all to take concrete action to disrupt racist violence!

For an end to repression: let’s multiply the actions!

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Feb 022017
 

FOR AN END TO THE REPRESSION: LET’S MULTIPLY THE ACTIONS!
21ST INTERNATIONAL DAY AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY!

 

For more than a decade, the COBP has denounced, through the International Day against Police Brutality, several themes of police: social cleansing, militarization, impunity, social / racial / political profiling, the slide towards more total social control, etc. We are seeing more and more that no matter what aspect of police work is denounced, there is absolutely nothing that changes. The recommendations of the Ménard commission, following the spring of 2012, sleep in an office drawer, the coroner’s inquest following the death of Alain Magloire, that is probably also sleeping in an office drawer, the 36 women’s complaint files from Val d’Or against the cops of the SQ that were rejected. In short, the more we advance in time, the more it is the same: the cops give themselves permission to do everything and get away with impunity.

The COBP underwent several changes during 2016 and decided this year to leave this core of denunciation and to move towards a unitary and constructive call for the annual demonstration against police brutality 2017. We therefore chose as theme: FOR AN END TO THE REPRESSION: LET’S MULTIPLY THE ACTIONS! Several events that occurred in 2016 motivated the choice of the theme: for the first time the demonstration of March 15, 2016 took place without seeing the urban brigade and the anti-riot police, the May 1 demonstration was tolerated more than two hours before the people of the demonstration were disgusted and attacked a police station, multiple demonstrations during 2016 that managed to take the street (let’s remember here that for two years we were starting mousetrap demonstrations), direct actions against pipelines were realized, the Montreal North riot on the day of commemoration of the death of Freddy Villanueva and Bony Jean-Pierre during which a police station was ransacked and a bank was set on fire, multiple attacks in Hochelaga and southwest of Montreal, sabotage of cameras, different occupations of land for diverse claims, and the victories in court to invalidate municipal by-laws. In short, as much as in demonstrations as in everyday life, people unite, struggle and quietly begin to find alternatives to act in all the struggles that the police that rejoice to repress: the anti-police struggle, anti-capitalist, anti-gentrification, against the prison environment, pipelines, the struggle to get the homeless off the street, the feminist, union, antifascist, indigenous, queer, and trans struggles, etc. A good fight-back is imminent and must be done not only by protests but equally by direct actions in everyday life.

2016 was marked by a “reshuffling” of police repression. Despite the pseudo mini relaxation of the repression in our protests with, for example, the end of mass arrests, ticket traps are getting worse and worse for the motorists, cyclists, subway users and the homeless. In addition, journalists are being watched by the SPVM! Naturally, the infighting of the SPVM is getting worse by the moment. We know very well that this “relaxation” is not due to the fact that we have a new chief of police but more because there have been multiple victories against tickets and invalid municipal by-laws which the cops love to use to repress us. Increasingly, more people are making the effort to contest their tickets, while others are developing, in their own way, new tactics of public disturbance.

We are young people and old people that are disgusted by this system, which feeds on prisons and its armed wing, the police. We must stop talking about the balance of power and put it into practice now! We must once and for all unite and face this repression. It is for all these reasons that the COBP invites you to the 21st annual event that will take place on March 15th at 7pm at Valois Place (corner of Ontario and Valois).

The Collective Opposed to Police Brutality

 

11 x 17″ | PDF

Emergency Demonstration against Donald Trump and the Far-Right

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Jan 262017
 

 

Open the Borders! Support Indigenous Sovereignty! No One Is Illegal!
Emergency Demonstration against Donald Trump and the Far-Right
SATURDAY, JANUARY 28, 12PM
Bethune Square, Guy & De Maisonneuve West (métro Guy-Concordia)

 

Donald Trump has announced, or is imminently planning, various executive measures that will attack refugees and migrants, increase violent and racist immigration enforcement, target sanctuary cities, and fund the extension of the Clinton-era wall at the US-Mexico border. His measures are racist, Islamophobic and violent. Earlier, Trump announced approval for the Keystone and the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), despite sustained resistance from Indigenous communities, particularly at Standing Rock, North Dakota.

This a moment to take to the streets, to denounce Trump’s actions, to show solidarity with communities under attack, and to articulate our radical alternatives, without compromise.

We will gather and march this Saturday in support of Open Borders, and for the regularization of all undocumented people. We declare: No One Is Illegal.

Solidarity Across Borders has campaigned for years to build, via our grassroots networks and communities, a Solidarity City in Montreal, inspired in part by sanctuary cities in the USA. Let’s defend and build the vision of cities and communities that are welcome and open to all seeking justice and dignity. Let’s build from Solidarity Cities into Rebel Cities. We need more defiance, disobedience and rebellion, in the streets and in our communities.

While we resist Trump’s wall extension, we should organize to support all those who will tear down the existing walls and fences. We should take direct action ourselves, to make the more than thousand-mile borders between Canada and the USA, and Mexico and the USA, effectively open to migrants.

While we defend open borders, and support efforts to disobey border imperialism and to support people migrating, we also demand the immediate cancellation by Canada of the “Safe third country agreement” with the USA. Trump’s recent measures make it clear that the USA is not a “safe third country” and migrants should be allowed to pass into Canada without impediment.

The actions of seemingly more “progressive” politicians needs to be denounced. The Trudeau government supports the Keystone Pipeline, and still refuses to regularize the close to 1 million undocumented migrants living on this side of the Canada-US border. Trump’s US-Mexico border wall is a continuation of sections of wall already built during the Clinton-era.

Let’s build our alternatives beyond the narrow scope of hypocritical politicians whose real allegiance is to the ruling class. Let’s root our resistance in support of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.
—–

We will gather at Bethune Square in downtown Montreal to hear speeches and music; we will then march in downtown Montreal. We encourage wide participation, including parents and kids. Bring placards, banners and noisemakers.

Initiated by Solidarity Across Borders. Supported by the Montreal Resist Trump & the Far-Right Network

Info:
solidaritesansfrontieres@gmail.com
www.solidarityacrossborders.org
www.facebook.com/CiteSansFrontieres
438-933-7654

Montreal Throws Down Against Trump

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Jan 252017
 

From subMedia.tv

Montreal’s activists came out in force to #DisruptJ20, burning a Trump effigy in front of the American consulate, taking over an upscale shopping mall, and smashing up the city’s main commercial drive.

If you love these reports support us! submedia.tv/donate

People are already organizing an un-welcoming committee for Trump’s upcoming visit to Canada. For more info go to trumpunwelcoming.org

Demonstration of solidarity in front of the prisons in Laval for the New Year and return on the situation in Leclerc’s prison

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Jan 242017
 
 

 

From Toute détention est politique

For the fifth consecutive year, a noise demo was held in front of the detention centers in Laval to wish prisoners a happy new year and show them our solidarity.

The group of about 60 people accompanied by musical instruments and fireworks gathered in front of Leclerc penitentiary, the Immigration Center, the transitional residences B16 and the Federal Training Center (FTC). The rally was also an opportunity to remember Arash Aslani, a former detainee at the Immigration Detention Center who died this year. He began a hunger strike in 2005, which led to his release after almost a month. He since continued to be involved in struggles for migrants (To know more, click here). The migrants’ detention conditions in Canada are particularly alarming, often being held for indefinite periods without charges or trials. It should also be mentioned that at least two migrants died during their detention in these centers this year.

About Leclerc’s transfer – One year later

The women’s transfer from Tanguay’s Prison to Leclerc last February brought many problems and violence against prisoners, already in a position of vulnerability imposed by a sexist, racist and capacitist prison system. The transfer carried out in a completely disorganized way created tensions related to the mixity in the prison among others in the case of strip search. The absurd time limit for the provision of basic services, the inaccess to personal effects and failure to respect the health conditions of women prisoners are serious violations that the State allows itself to perpetrate with impunity.

It should also be mentioned that the correctional officers in the prison are mostly men and that the only effort made in this direction is a simple 4 hours training on the women’s reality in prison. The League of Rights and Freedoms and the Fédération des Femmes du Québec (FFQ) asked for an observation mission to the prison in May, which was rejected by the government and the FFQ subsidies were cut due to Austerity measures. In result, half of the team was laid off, letting them unable to continue the pressures.

Currently, the Minister of Public Safety says that the opening of three new prisons in Amos, Sept-Îles and Sorel-Tracy will help transfering the 84 male prisoners of Leclerc by June 2017. He also suggested in October that he was considering the construction of a new prison adapted for women in western Quebec. This general approach of the government doesn’t seek to tackle the core of the problem and is part of a general idea of strengthening the prison system. Creating more prison isn’t a solution, it’s necessary to reduce the number of people in prison. The least would be to revise sentences for minor offenses and to explore other solutions, especially in indigenous communities who are the most affected. The actual situation creates the fragmentation of their communities, remoteness and subjects them to colonial institutions which are not recognized in their traditions (alternative justice, spiritual justice, etc.).

WE DON’T WANT BETTER PRISONS, WE WANT THE END OF PRISONS!

TRUMP, YOU’RE NOT WELCOME! A Call to Resist & Disrupt Trump’s State Visit to Canada

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Jan 242017
 

From Trump Unwelcoming Committee

This is a callout for anti-capitalist and anti-colonial resistance, rooted in a spirit of solidarity and mutual support, respecting a diversity of tactics.

Canada is usually the first foreign visit of a newly-elected US President and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has invited US President-elect Donald Trump to visit Canada “at the earliest opportunity,” probably in early 2017.

We won’t wait for the details. In solidarity with the ongoing, massive anti-Trump protests in the USA, we’re calling for resistance and disruption of Trump’s visit to Canada, in Ottawa and elsewhere. Wherever and whenever Trump arrives in Canada, we’re organizing now to resist and disrupt his racist, sexist, far-right, xenophobic and anti-immigrant politics.

We also reject the attempts to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Canadian colonialism by a government that continues to negotiate devastating corporate trade agreements, clears the way for pipelines, and refuses to regularize the status of the more than 500,000 undocumented people living in Canada.

Both Trump and Trudeau are products of a system that continues to devastate and attack human beings and the Earth. We are not putting any hope into politicians or political parties, but rather using and building the collective, autonomous power of our grassroots networks and movements. We resist deportations and Muslim bans, call for open borders and cross-border alliances, and support peoples’ struggles, from the water defenders at Standing Rock to the Black Lives Matter movement.

We are calling for large-scale, decentralized actions to take place, no matter where you are in the country. We can create spaces for people to act and demonstrate with fewer relative risks, but we also support spaces where people can actively confront and disrupt the Trump-Trudeau meeting. We reject collaboration with the police and anyone else who seeks to divide us.

A “Donald Trump Unwelcoming Committee” has formed in Ottawa. If your organization agrees with this callout, and intends to mobilize in whatever way you can, contact blocktrump@gmail.com to endorse this callout, and also share this callout widely in your networks.

Endorsing organizations (updated November 20, 2016):
– Donald Trump Unwelcoming Committee (Ottawa)
– Solidarity Across Borders / Solidarité sans frontières / Solidaridad sin fronteras (Montréal)

Fuck Trump, Fuck Toute

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Jan 202017
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

In Montréal, a night demo turned into a clash with police. 200 protesters first gathered at Square Phillips, one block from the US consulate. When they started marching, they did not make it to the consulate building, but rather marched against traffic on the main street, Rue Sainte-Catherine, mostly beautifying the city by putting up graffiti against patriarchy and calling for the city to burn.

There was a black bloc presence as well, carrying a banner reading “Fuck Trump” that was soon altered to read “Fuck Toute” (Fuck Everything).

As they reached the downtown west police station the demonstrators clashed with cops, who were pelted with plenty of rocks. Cops threw rocks back at the crowd which finally dispersed them all around the city. But they did not leave before the police station’s window got properly smashed.”
– Crimethinc J20 Live Updates

We’d like to add a few words to the above report-back, fully inspired by the days events – from the ongoing clashes in Washington to our experience in Montreal hours ago.

Props on how across milieus, many people came together in the streets, wore masks, and had each other’s backs. How every time people went on the sidewalk to put up graff or smash windows, there were double the amount of comrades pushing (and in the case of corporate media, punching) cameras down and keeping us safe. How when the bike police tried to get close on the sidewalk, stones were lobbed at them until they backed off. And how, reminiscent of last May Day, when the demonstration passed the downtown west police station, people didn’t miss the opportunity to offensively attack the station and the police guarding it, without ‘provocation’.

Because we don’t have to wait for them to snatch or pepper spray us to know that our favorite way to interact with police is in the language of projectiles. When police can’t come close to our demos without risking bodily harm, it makes the whole demo safer and opens up otherwise unrealizable possibilities.

Whether faced with blatant Trump-style domination, or the normalized genocidal project of Canada, let’s continue to combine our creative and destructive capacities to act against democracy, the capitalist economy, and its police!

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