Franklin Lopez looks back on grassroots movement media and the creation of the documentary film, Yintah. In the summer of 2011, I was exhausted—physically, mentally, creatively. I’d just finished hauling my feature film, END:CIV, across North America, and when I got back to Vancouver, I didn’t even have a place to sleep. So, I did what many DIY filmmakers do: I moved into my van. ...
Excerpt from Canadian Tire Fire #65 Since Hamas’s October 7th attack, killing around 1,400 people and taking around 240 hostages, Israel has been carrying out a massive campaign of death and destruction on the Palestinian people through a brutal siege and military offensive. Thousands of Gazans have died, over 10,500 at last estimate , with thousands more estimated buried under the rubble of countless buildings collapsed by the bombings. Fuel has run out at many hospitals, worsening an already deadly crisis caused not only by the air and ground assault but also by the blocking of food, water, and fuel from entering the open-air prison. ...
Your browser does not support the audio element. On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we speak with two anarchists involved in the Punch Up Collective , a group which is currently mobilizing in Ottawa, the capitol city of so-called Canada, in the midst of an ongoing far-Right protest occupation made up of several hundred vehicles in the downtown area. During our discussion we talk about the far-Right leadership of the protests, their history of organizing similar convoys and their involvement in a variety of racist and reactionary groups, and how the public, the police, and the State are all responding to the demonstrations, as law enforcement has been giving the convoy free reign of the streets and residents report hundreds of incidents of harassment, targeted violence, and racist intimidation. Meanwhile, anger is growing not only at the convoy, but at police and the failure of the State to respond, as people begin to self-organize and take action. We also look at how the Conservative Party is coming out in support of the convoy; hoping to use it as a wedge to gain more power and influence. ...
In a video statement posted late Wednesday, Gidimt’en Checkpoint spokesperson Sleydo’ reported that Chief Dtsa’Hyl of the Likhts’amisyu and Kolin Sutherland-Wilson of the Gitxsan fireweed clan were arrested by RCMP forces, following growing tensions at the presence of Canadian authorities on Wet’suwet’en territory. Over the last few days, blockades against RCMP and Coastal Gaslink (CGL) personnel have been erected and machinery has been “decommissioned” and shut down. ...
Welcome to Canadian Tire Fire, a new weekly roundup of anarchist and anti-authoritarian news from so-called Canada. We’re excited to provide a central place for “Canadian” news on IGD. In Canadian Tire Fire, you can expect to find news on anarchist actions, Indigenous struggle, land and environmental defense, anti-fascism, borders, labour, police, prisons, and more. We aim to provide regular updates on news from across the country, from an anarchist perspective. We may also occasionally publish more in-depth analysis on ongoing struggles. ...
K’jipuktuk GMB of the IWW issues statement in solidarity with prison strike. K’jipuktuk, Unceded and Unsurrendered Mi’kmaq Territory Whereas Prisoners at Burnside Jail have begun a peaceful protest in pursuit of 10 reasonable demands, and have expressed support for and solidarity with the “National Prison Strike” in the United States, Whereas the protest organizers “call upon all people with a conscience beyond the bars” to support their statement and demands, ...
Some anarchists came together on the night of August 23rd to cover Montréal’s Vieux Port (Old Port) in posters that read in both French and English: Resisting Slavery: From Marie-Joseph Angélique 1734 to Prison Strike 2018 August 21 – September 9th More Info: twitter.com/JailLawSpeak We postered along the same streets that Angélique was paraded down moments before she was hung, and then burned. Angélique, we remember. Slavery, stolen land, and attempted genocide define the contours of the ever-forming settler states of Turtle Island (North America). In solidarity with prisoners currently fighting slavery inside all US prisons, we wanted to (re)tell the story of Marie-Joseph Angélique. Angélique was a Black woman enslaved in Montréal during the 18th Century who was sentenced to torture and death for allegedly setting fire to her slave owner’s domicile, which resulted in the majority of the city of Montréal burning. We offer Angélique’s story as a reminder that Québec and Canada were engaged in the practice of slavery for over 200 years. We chose Angélique’s story because it connects the city we live in to the ongoing story of resistance to slavery on this continent. ...
June 3rd, 2018 – Faith Goldy had called a rally at the Roxham border (U.S/ Quebec) attracting roughly 100 far-right groups and individuals from Ontario and Quebec, as well as a few stragglers from as far away as Alberta and Nova Scotia. This is the first time this sort of collusion between provincial groups has ever been observed at the border here. Faith Goldy is currently one of Canada’s most prominent far-Right internet personalities. She appeals to both populist forces concerned primarily about “illegal immigration” and “the Muslim threat,” as well as to actual fascists and neo-Nazis. Not only has she not eschewed the latter, she has made a point of pandering to them, i.e. repeating and defending the 14 words (a neo-Nazi slogan), joking with people from the Daily Stormer in Charlottesville, and being an avid defender of “identitarianism” in Canada, including promoting the Alt-Right Identity Canada group. More on Goldy here . ...
In our daily lives, in the ecosystems we live in, in the ever stranger and more violent weather patterns we are subject to, and in even the most mainstream of capitalist media, we are bombarded by increasingly dire proof of what we’ve known all along: catastrophic climate change is happening and will only amplify as more fossil fuels are extracted and burned. A host of other environmental and human crises affect us at the same time. In the face of this, we are given three official options: denial, despair, or delegation to those who “know better,” those whose “job” it is to fix these problems—through the same means that got us into them. ...
In an effort to broaden our coverage of prisons across the borders to both the North and South of us, we’ve brought in some comrades from so-called Canada to share a history of the establishment of the Canadian prison system, as well as a history of resistance in Ontario and Quebec. While we know there is always resistance that we will never hear about outside the prison walls, these folks have done their best to contextualize what resistance has looked like across decades. We’re excited to share this history! ...