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Acronyms : MRO = Mouvement Révolutionnaire Ouvrier ( Revolutionary worker movement) FFPR = Front Féministe Prolétarien Révolutionnaire ( Revolutionary proletarian feminist front) MER = Mouvement étudiant révolutionnaire ( Revolutionary student movement) MNB = Maison Normand Béthune – Bookstore and headquarters of the RCP Montréal CLAC = Convergence des Luttes Anticapitalistes ( Convergence of anti-capitalist struggles) The “status-quo” is a very common expression in Québec. Yet it’s an expression well-suited to describe the presence and the place of the RCP in the Montreal left. We think that the status-quo has lasted long enough. ...

On March 25, 2017, approximately 200 people responded to a call to confront far-right groups planning to disrupt a day of anti-racist/anti-fascist workshops in Montreal. The call was made after a Facebook event calling to shut down the “terrorist workshop” surfaced. The event was made by the Canadian Coalition of Concerned Citizens (CCCC), the same group that called for the anti-immigrant March 4th demonstrations which occurred all across Canada. On that day, fascist group La Meute was able to take the streets of Montreal for the first time. ...

On March 15, 2017, a dozen or so condo owners in Saint-Henri dug their cars out from under the biggest snowfall of the winter, only to learn that their tires had been slashed while they slept. We carried out this simple action on the eve of the 20th annual Protest Against Police Brutality, in Hochelaga, to emphasize that the struggle against policing and the struggle against gentrification are one and the same: the creation of a world hostile to social control and all forms of domination. ...

A couple hundred people gathered yesterday evening at Place Valois in Hochelaga for the 20th annual edition of the Demonstration Against Police Brutality, organized by the Collective Opposed to Police Brutality (COBP). It was the day after the largest snowstorm of the year in Montreal, and the mounds of snow lining the streets meant obstacles for both demonstrators and the cops. Refusing the protest framework demanding less brutal police, we carried with us the memory of March fifteenths past and their legacy of anti-police revolt. Also, rocks. ...

On March 4th a series of Islamophobic demonstrations had been called across Canada, by a (probably one-person) group known as the Canadian Coalition of Concerned Citizens. Ostensibly the rallies were against Bill M-103, a parliamentary private member’s motion condemning Islamophobia (in the wake of the massacre at a mosque in Quebec City earlier this year), which the CCCC framed as an attack on free speech[1. M-103 is an unremarkable standard politician’s denunciation of racism. It is a non-binding motion calling for the problem of racism and Islamophobia to be recognized and uprooted, for studies to be done and statistics collected, and for solutions to be found, but does not actually suggest anything concrete beyond this.]. So the March 4th rallies were officially “for free speech, against sharia law and against globalization,” and internal guidelines specifically told people not to bring white power or openly racist signs (which of course didn’t stop them from shouting “race traitor” at us as they arrived, or giving nazi salutes). ...

Download and Print Here We’d like to respond with our thoughts to a text Mise en Commun (Putting in Common) that has been circulated critiquing insurrectionary projects and perspectives in Montreal. We appreciate that the authors of Mise en Common want to elaborate similarities and clarify differences, and move past bad faith. We’re taking this as an occasion to respond and to clarify ideas that we’ve been reflecting on for a few years now. We’ll try to use points of difference with Mise en Commun as an opportunity to delve further into ideas and how they inform practices, rather than limiting the scope of our text to simply addressing the critiques. We recognize that the length of this text might not facilitate a simple back-and-forth with the original authors, but our goal is to contribute to a larger discussion about these questions. We hope others will feel compelled to participate in this process of clarifying ideas and directions. ...

Unexpectedly and for the first time in many years, far-right groups were able to march in Montreal. We didn’t think fascist groups could mobilize as they did, after the crushing defeats of the Pegida demos in 2015 where 4 or 5 lost aunts and uncles were countered by 500 protestors. The day started around 11am with a gathering of far-right groups at Place Émilie-Gamelin. Defending freedom of expression was their pretext for spewing their hatred of Muslims. The rally consisted of about 150 people, with numerous flags of “La Meute” [“The Pack”, as in “wolfpack”] as well as some Quebec flags. A small group of Maoists tried to block them from the start, but the cops quickly stepped in to push them away and clear the street for the fascists. ...

We’re hoping to engage in a dialogue we have until now chosen to avoid. The cliques rub shoulders with each other, but struggle sometimes to communicate and often don’t speak the same language, in either words or gestures. The present text is about making clear what we have in common and what separates us. Certain unaddressed tensions have lead to far too much shit-talking, gossip, bad faith remarks, half-reflections, and security breaches. Some people want to see in these sometimes vehement exchanges simply interpersonal conflicts, but this understanding empties all political content of the critiques thus put forward. To avoid that all this be reduced to gossip and late-night debates, we want to identify the lines of tension, to politically name the points of rupture and look for which ways we can collectively grow more powerful. Our intention here isn’t to “denounce” certain practices or to discourage friends from reproducing them, but to avoid the fetishization of smashing windows and to constantly and collectively reflect the benefits and costs of our actions. ...

Some swell friends visited the TD Bank on Chabanel during the night of March 3rd. The TD has funds in the North Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). We found it useful to remind them of their reponsability in the eviction of the Standing Rock camp which happened this week in Sioux’ territory. Banks, through their funding of resource extraction projects, participate in colonialist devastation of lands and violence against Indigenous people. ...

Anarchists hate cameras. We love games. That’s why some friends in the Sud-West took up the call to play CAMOVER . Masked up in black (obvi), we bagged a bunch of nosey CCTVs and painted over many others. No Face No Case! Shouts out to hommies in Hochelaga throwing down. Keep the good work up and the snitch cameras down. From one participant: CamOVER!? No Question. We hit the street four deep, two on the lookout, real casual, walkies and cigarettes, and got to bagging. Rope lines snaking through the air, cracks off streetlights as cams tumble down, we caught a side-eye from a citizen passerby and got back at it, like, FUCK YOU&YOUR CAMERAS. We dipped when the cops rolled up, stashed the cams alley-side, and swooped em up the next day.” ...

Rumors are circulating in the region of Lanaudière that a hydraulic excavator and a tractor were heavily sabotaged on the construction site of the new high-tension line at Ste-Émelie-de-l’Énergie. It seems that the sub-contractor of Hydro-Quebec will not be able to take his retirement as expected this year due to the costly damages to his machines. The site in this area is at the stage of preparing for the imminent deforestation of the corridor. ...

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. ...