Action

A Prison Administrator’s Car Burns

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Jul 252020

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

The night of July 11th, the Volvo belonging to Vince Parente was burned in front of his home in Ste-Thérèse. Vince Parente was just recently named interim associate deputy minister at the Ministry of Public Safety. Besides this nomination, he is the assistant director-general for the Montreal region at the Bureau of Correctional Services. In clearer terms, he is the boss of the prison wardens at Bordeaux and Rivière-des-Prairies in Montreal.

Before rising through the ranks, he began his career as a probation officer and in the transport of prisoners to their appearances, then became assistant warden at Bordeaux prison, then assistant warden at Leclerc prison in Laval, then warden of the St-Jérôme prison.

This bastard has benefited since the start of his career from the confinement and degradation of thousands of people.

This blaze is a statement of solidarity with all prisoners and their families. Prison conditions were terrible to begin with, and they have worsened since the start of the pandemic. Not only do guards spread the virus to inmates, but the latter are locked up 24/7, with almost no visits and no phone privileges.

By the fault of Vince Parente among others, Robert Langevin died of negligence and lack of care inside the walls of Bordeaux prison in May. Vince Parente is a murderous, disconnected administrator like many others, and he is undoubtedly working from home these days. Maybe this fire brought him back to reality.

Arson of 7 Police Cars at SPVM Service Garage

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Jul 222020

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Cops are murderers. We burned their cars. You can too.

We used three incendiary devices: square plastic bottles filled about 3/4 of the way with a mixture of gasoline and motor oil. We used super glue to attach two individually packaged fire cubes (which you can find in camping, hardware, and grocery stores) to the side of each bottle.

At each car, we placed a bottle on its side (cubes facing up), pushed it under the tire of the car, and lit the cube.

We chose devices that would fully ignite about one minute after we placed them under the cars. We wanted to increase our chances of getting away and decrease the chances that the devices would be extinguished preemptively.

For a world without the police and the white supremacist order they defend. Solidarity with Black insurgents and everyone else who fights back.

– Anarchists

John A. Macdonald Statue in Montreal Vandalized with Paint (Again!)

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Jul 042020

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Montreal, July 2, 2020 — As part of #CancelCanadaDay actions throughout the Canadian state, the #MacdonaldMustFall group in Montreal has once again vandalized the Macdonald Monument in Montreal, this time in yellow paint.

According to Roy G. Biv of #MacdonaldMustFall in Montreal: “This statue should either remain vandalized with paint, and we can declare a truce, or better yet, it should be taken down. Taking down a statue celebrating a racist person does not erase history, it is part of the ongoing struggle to resist racism and to properly contextualize our collective past.”

The #MacdonaldMustFall group in Montreal has explained its objections to celebrating John A. Macdonald previously as follows: 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.

The Macdonald Monument has been vandalized so much in the past three years, that all main colours of the spectrum have been used to attack the monument: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

—–

Selected photos and communiqués from previous attacks on the Macdonald Monument in Montreal:

Red: https://postimg.cc/2V0Rst1G
Orange: https://postimg.cc/BLBZS37c
Yellow: https://postimg.cc/sBYqhXSt
Green: https://postimg.cc/gnTkrHZp
Blue: https://postimg.cc/18tLwYzB
Indigo: https://postimg.cc/S2jPMsvm
Violet: https://postimg.cc/ykDj3sfv

Letter to Comrades Inside

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Jun 252020

From Anti-carceral Group

Some people in so-called Montreal have written this letter to comrades who are currently incarcerated. It can be printed, or edited and printed, and sent to friends inside. The letter describes #Uprisings across Turtle Island, and also includes a transcription of an article written by El Jones and incarcerated people out east. It can be hard to get information on the inside.

.pdf LINK

.docx LINK

June 20, 2020

Hi!

I wanted to share some news and analysis with you because I’m not sure how much information is making it behind the bars. I want to make sure you have access to different perspectives and information than what appears on TV. So I’m taking a try at writing down some things and sending them to you. I hope it can spark conversations as much as you are able.

First, what you already know: there has been an uprising sweeping across the united states since the police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. In the same week, cops killed Tony McDade (a trans Black man who lived in Florida), Breonna Taylor (a Black woman who lived in Kentucky), and Regis Korchinski-Paquet (a Black Indigenous woman who lived in Toronto and who fell from a 24 story balcony and whose family says she was pushed by the cops). In the first days of the uprising, residents of Minneapolis expressed their feelings about George Floyd’s death and about 500 years of anti-Black racism and violence by setting fires, liberating goods, and eventually, burning down a police precinct that the cops had abandoned because apparently they ran out of tear gas.

The emotions quickly spread across the country and by June 3, there had been demonstrations held in over 430 cities in the us. Many cities saw daily demonstrations, often spontaneous marches that met in obvious gathering places in cities across the country. Over 20 states called in the National Guard and many cities enacted curfews. Thousands and thousands of people have been arrested. People have lost eyes from being shot in the face with tear gas canisters and rubber bullets. People have been killed – like David McAtee, a Black restaurant owner who was killed by the National Guard while at a demonstration in Kentucky and Sean Monterrosa, a 22 year old Latino man who was shot by police while at a demonstration in California and Sarah Grossman, a 22 year old white woman who died after being tear gassed by police at a demonstration in Ohio.

This uprising has mainstreamed demands to defund the police. Some people are even calling for the abolition of the police. There was an op-ed published in the NY Times in mid June by a prominent prison abolitionist named Mariame Kaba who broke down what police abolition really means; not just defunding, full abolition. Cities all across the country are currently facing scrutiny about their police budgets and Minneapolis city councilpersons have pledged to dismantle their police department. Although it is still unclear what exactly that will mean.

In so-called Canada, the police have killed nine Indigenous people since early April: Eishia Hudson, Jason Collins, Stewart Kevin Andrews, Everett Patrick, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Abraham Natanine, Chantel Moore, and Rodney Levi. As the uprising has spread over the colonial border, people have been making lots of connections between colonialism and anti-Blackness.

People have circulated petitions and talked to the media about defunding the police in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Halifax, Ottawa, Edmonton and other cities across the country. Demonstrations have also happened in small and large cities and towns. I haven’t seen a full count of how many cities in canada have seen demonstrations, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were at least a dozen.

The situation is so widespread and fast-moving that giving a comprehensive overview is tricky. I’ll end it there and include this article from the Halifax Examiner that was written by a group of federally incarcerated Black prisoners and shared with the poet, professor, and activist El Jones.

Sincerely,
some friends on the outside

Black Lives Matter in prison, too
El Jones
Halifax Examiner, June 14, 2020

We have been watching the Black Lives Matters protests and the conversations about police violence. We have been taking part in our own conversations with prisoners of all races. We would like to share some of our conversations and conclusions with people outside prison.
The movement against police brutality is important, but it is also larger than that. We must also address injustice in the criminal justice system, in prisons, and at parole. At every stage of this system, Black people and Indigenous people are discriminated against. We have come to realize that all these systems are connected.

Just two days ago, on Friday, Rodney Levi was shot and killed by police a few kilometres from Miramichi, New Brunswick. Atlantic Institution, the maximum security prison for the Atlantic region, is located in Renous, close to Miramichi. In sending our condolences to Rodney Levi’s family and friends, we also reflect on how many Indigenous men and women are held in federal prisons across this country.

Prisons are built in small rural towns. Recently, in a conversation with one of the workers, she told us she was in favour of the prison being built because it would offer jobs. When she was told about the conditions and that we do not have programs or any rehabilitation, she was shocked.
We want to send a message to people who believe that building a prison in their community will stimulate the economy. Prisons are not a retirement plan or social security. Putting money into prisons is not a solution to poverty or to any social problems. We ask people living in these communities to reject spending money to put more people, especially Black and Indigenous people, into prisons.

We have also learned that crime is at some of the lowest levels since 1969, and that crime is steadily dropping. How can crime be down, but we continue to incarcerate more and more people? We know that there is no connection between crime and funding prisons. Why are we building more prisons when reserves in this country don’t even have clean water?

We have seen many videos in the last few weeks of police brutality. In these times where all the police are under the threat of being caught on video, there is no one to catch what happens to us on camera. The violence and abuse against us in prisons is still hidden. We have had guards use racial slurs. We have had guards use racial slurs to white prisoners thinking they would agree. We are pepper sprayed and restrained. We have seen and heard people beaten and even die.
When we are charged in the institution, we don’t even have the right to a lawyer. We can be put into solitary confinement, transferred across the country away from our families and communities, and denied parole. There is no justice because no one can see, and no-one is there to defend us.

But even in the courts, where we had lawyers, we have experienced how racist the criminal justice system is. We are judged in front of all-white juries, the same people that may see videos of police shootings and defend the police. There is no prosecutorial oversight, and nobody to stop racist prosecutions. Even if we are in open court, nobody holds the prosecutors accountable for their behaviour. Many more of us simply take deals because we are threatened by higher sentences. It still feels like the 1920s in the courtroom.

All of this is supposed to happen so we can be rehabilitated. But has the public ever asked what prisoners are doing on a day-to-day basis? You might think that we are getting job training, or learning to deal with addictions or mental health problems. We are not. There is nothing to do in prison, and there are hardly any programs to help people. You might ask yourself then why we are spending so much money to keep people behind bars but doing nothing to fix any of the problems.

For Black people, parole is like a unicorn. We end up serving even longer sentences because we are judged by the colour of our skin. We are accused of being gang members. We are punished for talking together. Our visitors are accused of bringing in contraband, so we tell our mothers not to come and see us. Guards antagonize us and then discipline us when we respond. There are no programs made for us. And when we go in front of an all-white parole board, they will not let us out.

Every day, we are seeing people in the streets protesting for Black and Indigenous lives. We want to thank everyone for being where we can not be, and fighting what we cannot fight for. We also know that after the protests, Black lives will still not matter in prison.

We join the calls to defund the police, and we also say it is time to defund the prison. Canadians should ask themselves why so many Black and Indigenous people are incarcerated. You should ask yourselves why your money is going to a system that doesn’t work to solve crime. You should ask why a prison is being built in your community and whether it will actually make your life better.

We hope some of the experiences we have shared have made you think about some of the assumptions you might have about us, or about the idea that people get help in prison. We hope our words show you what you cannot see on video. We have heard people say until all Black lives matter, no one’s life can matter. Until Black prisoner lives matter, can anyone be free?

Nocturnal Direct Actions: Call for Skill Sharing

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Jun 252020

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Acting in small groups to attack the institutions and infrastructures of power can destabilize our enemies, show others who want to fight that they have accomplices, and render our own capacities for resistance tangible, undeniable even, to ourselves. It’s always a good moment to attack. In the context of the pandemic, where demos, occupations, and other more massive forms of struggle involve greater risks than usual, it’s increasingly relevant to organize in small groups for actions that give strength to anti-capitalist, anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian struggles. Whether it’s to recover the momentum of #ShutDownCanada, to spread the revolt against the police and racism that has exploded in the United States, or to sabotage prisons and the border regime, attack opens up possibilities that we would be unwise to pass up.

Taking this avenue might mean changing one’s habits. For example, no longer waiting to be invited into a project involving lots of people to take action. Organizing in groups of two, three, or six in a horizontal manner implies a multiplication of sources of initiatives. To find who to act with, one can ask with whom one shares affinity on the level of how you relate to the world and to struggle, of your desires, or with whom you’d like to deepen a relationship of trust. It will probably be necessary to learn new things, whether how to do reconnaissance of an architect’s office, or how to plan a safe escape route in Westmount.

It doesn’t require any special expertise to take action, but it’s still always helpful for individuals and crews to develop our technical knowledge by sharing information and supporting one another. This callout for skill sharing around direct actions in small groups is an attempt at nourishing these exchanges. We’d like to elaborate on several subjects covered in A Recipe for Nocturnal Direct Actions (also an excellent read to begin).

We’d like to see short guides in the form of texts, videos, comic strips, etc, covering subjects like the following:

– Reconnaissance
– Division of roles
– Planning a route, entry and exit
– Clothing and disguises
– Counter-surveillance
– Communicating an action or not
– Navigating stress

We are not looking for formulas, as there aren’t any. We hope rather to provoke exchanges on a number of questions, to share guidelines, tips and things we’ve learned. Please be careful to not share publicly any information that would give the cops leads they don’t already have, that is to say specific ways of doing things that they are not already aware of and that could help them in an investigation.

This is a proposal to take a bit seriously the fact that we have developed knowledge and skills through our experiences with actions, and that it’s important to make them as accessible as possible, because it’s not always obvious.

Racist John A. Macdonald Monument vandalized with paint

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Jun 172020

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Montreal, June 15, 2020 — Last night — in a post-Victoria Day / pre-Canada Day action — the Macdonald Monument at Place du Canada was sprayed in purple paint by local anti-colonial vandals.

-> Photos of the vandalized statue are available here: https://postimg.cc/gallery/XY4WtR4

The anti-colonial statue vandals practiced physical distancing, wore masks, and washed their hands before and after the action.

According to Seamus Grewal, one of the statue vandals: “The Macdonald Monument is the Canadian equivalent of a racist, Confederate statue in the United States; it stands as a symbol of colonialism and the subjugation of Indigenous peoples. The Macdonald Monument celebrates an individual whose policies are directly responsible for the genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada, and the celebration of white supremacy.”

Grewal adds: “The Macdonald Monument must be taken down immediately and put into a museum with proper historical context about racism and colonialism, and not remain celebrated in a major Montreal public space.”

Last night’s attack on the Macdonald Monument (1895) is, at least, the 15th paint attack on the statue in the past three years. This most recent action occurs as colonial and racist statues are being targeted for vandalism and removal worldwide. Racist and colonial statues have been toppled, beheaded, and otherwise attacked in the past two weeks all over the United States and beyond. Beyond the inspiring direct actions, even elected officials are pro-actively ordering the removal of racist statues.

Meanwhile, in Montreal, Mayor Valerie Plante publicly refused to remove the racist Macdonald statue in her response to a recent petition with more than 15,000 signatures demanding removal.

In response to Mayor Plante, Siobhan Dosanjh, another statue vandal,replies: “Relative to other public officials across North America, Mayor Plante is consistently indecisive in the face of racism and colonialism. She is a fake anti-racist, who continually delays or uses empty words when faced with demands for meaningful, structural change in response to racism.” Dosanjh adds: “From refusing to pro-actively defund the police, to her weak responses to Islamophobia, to her recent comments refusing to support the removal of a statue that is offensive both to Indigenous peoples as well as non-white Montrealers, Mayor Plante never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity to meaningfully confront racism.”

Mayor Plante did propose the idea of a plaque to contextualize the Macdonald Monument. The #MacdonaldMustFall group in Montreal suggests the following wording: “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.”

Seamus Grewal of #MacdonaldMustFall states: “Nothing is stopping Mayor Plante and the City of Montreal from erecting a contextual plaque,something they could have done years ago. But mentioning a plaque now just serves as a distraction from the inspiring anti-racist momentum targeting symbols of racism and colonialism for removal. In the meantime, the paint we sprayed today should not be removed, because if it is, the statue will almost certainly be attacked again.”

P.S. Respect to the other anti-colonial vandals who recently spray painted “RCMP kill native women and men” on the Macdonald Monument.

Source: #MacdonaldMustFall Montreal

Contact: MacdonaldMustFall@riseup.net

Montrealers call for defunding the police, decarcerating prisons

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Jun 152020

From the Anti-Carceral Group

June 13, 2020 — Montreal – At 12pm today, one hundred Montrealers gathered in front of the Bordeaux prison to call for defunding the police and decarcerating prisons. Black activists told the crowd about the violence inflicted upon their communities by prisons and the police. The crowd held banners with slogans such as “Prisons Kill,” “Black Lives Matter,” and “Defund the Police,” and made noise to show solidarity with prisoners inside Bordeaux.

The uprising sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has brought new attention to police violence south of the colonial border (in the United States). But US activists have also called attention to the killing of Black people in prisons, including Jamel Floyd, a 35 year-old Black man who died after being pepper sprayed in his cell in a federal prison in Brooklyn.

In Canada, mass protests in Toronto, Halifax, Montreal, and other cities have brought these issues closer to home, highlighting a long history of violent and racist policing. This local history was a key theme of the Bordeaux protest. Amanda Thompson, a Black co-organizer of the protest, explained: “There a long history of anti-Black policing in Montreal, including a long series of police killings of Black people, as well as everyday surveillance, harassment, and abuse in our communities.”

The Montreal police have been criticized for racial profiling and violence for decades. A string of police killings between 1987 and 1993 brought widespread calls for police accountability, but little change in the operation of police. In the fall of 2019, a report showed that Black and Indigenous Montrealers are four times more likely to be stopped by police than white people. Between 2014 and 2018, moreover, the police killed five Black men: Alain Magloire, René Gallant, Bony Jean-Pierre, Pierre Coriolan, and Nicholas Gibbs.

Police racism is part of the reason for the disproportionate incarceration of Black people in Canada. While Black people represent just 3.5% of the Canadian population, they represent 7.5% of federal prisoners. In Quebec, data on the racial background of provincial prisoners is kept secret, but prisoners at Bordeaux estimate that 20% of prisoners are Black.

The same violence that Black people experience on Montreal streets, moreover, is mirrored behind prison walls. Kiyha Schrouder, a co-organizer of the event, explained: “There are no rules inside prison. Guards can abuse prisoners, throw them in solitary for weeks, and there are no consequences, especially when it comes to Black prisoners. This violence has grave and long-term effects on people’s mental health. This has got to stop today.”

As the global uprising against the police continues, a variety of police reforms have been discussed, such as better police training and police body cams. The message of today’s protest, however, is that prisons and police are fundamentally racist and violence and no piecemeal reform will change that. As Amanda Thompson explained: “When the police kill a Black person, that’s not a mistake; that’s the system working as it was designed. We don’t want small changes to a racist institution, we’re calling for the defunding of the police, the decarceration of prisons, and a reinvestment of that money in communities.”

The noise made by protesters was clearly heard by prisoners inside Bordeaux. At one point in the event, protesters and prisoners chanted slogans back and forth, and both groups made any noise they could. Respecting public health protocols, all protesters wore facemasks, with the event organizers provided masks, food, and water to anyone who needed them.

Photos from the event are available at https://bit.ly/30G467C

Bring the Uprising Home

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Jun 022020

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Supporting the uprising spreading across America over the police murder of George Floyd means bringing it home. We got a sustained glimpse of exactly that Sunday in Montreal, as for the first time in years, the police lost control of downtown for an extended period of time.

After the end of the organized march, a young and multi-racial crowd fought the police outside SPVM headquarters, responding to tear gas with rocks and bottles. People erected barricades and set fires to slow police movements. Over the following hours, hundreds of demonstrators continued to hold space in the street, as storefronts were smashed and goods expropriated up and down Ste-Catherine, the main shopping artery, including at Birks, a high-end jewelry store, which was also attacked with a molotov.

We’ll leave out a play-by-play of the night, to respond to a dynamic that we think could limit our capacity to resist, going forward. While Sunday proved that a wide of array of people are ready to fight back against a system that is rooted in genocide and the ongoing violence of racialized domination, some of the loudest voices during and after the action in the streets have been those clinging to “peaceful protest” as the only acceptable form of resistance.

Relying on rumors and false information, the narrative of white “outside agitators” borrows from white supremacist propaganda and erases the agency of Black people courageously resisting oppression by any means necessary. It’s a narrative aimed at dividing movements and delegitimizing our shared anger and resolve. As anarchist people of color in the United States wrote recently:

Self-pronounced leaders have tried to insinuate that anyone who desires conflict with the police after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis are “White people [who] DON’T get to use Black pain to justify living out riot fantasies.” As if the real white fantasy isn’t people of color policing their own behavior in order to save the white supremacist society from being destroyed. This is an old trick that is worth being exposed, again.

Against these narratives which make it easier for the police to maintain control and keep killing, let’s not hesitate to say clearly that the standard by which we choose how to fight will not be legality or civil-society respectability.

Countless slave revolts were put down and betrayed by people saying radical, rebel slaves were going to get everyone killed or in trouble. Black movements are always infiltrated and disrupted by people sowing discord using manipulative tactics like this too.

— William C. (@williamcson) June 1, 2020

It’s legitimate to attack the police, an institution designed and dedicated to violently suppressing Black people’s freedom, enforcing the theft of native land, and defending those who get rich by exploiting us. By doing so, and by gaining the confidence and tactical capacity to win space and time, we show that we don’t need to accept their hold over our lives.

It’s legitimate to barricade the streets and set fires – to transform an urban environment built for policing into something that might give us a chance of success.

It’s legitimate to loot stores, because everyone should have nice things, and a world that values commercial property over Black lives continues to put people like George Floyd and Regis Korchinski-Paquet in grave danger of premature death.

These should form the starting point for all conversations about how to engage in a diversity of tactics in the streets, conversations which must also address the effects of our actions on those we’re sharing the streets with, how to keep each other safe, and the goal of developing a capacity for conflict with an understanding that we don’t all face the same level of risk.

Many of those policing other demonstrators’ actions go as far as to photograph or film them attacking the police or property, afterwards posting this information on the internet in an attempt to identify and put more people in the hands of the police. To resist this trend, we want to remind everyone present to intervene directly if you see people filming during riots; tell them to stop and if necessary make them stop. And to the brave people breaking glass and starting fires, remind one another to keep your faces covered.

A genuine insurrection is underway south of the border. While the uniquely bloody legacy of racism in the United States gives the rage boiling there a certain anchoring in geography, antagonism toward the police is undeniably universal, and anti-Black racism is deeply engrained in the history of Quebec and Canada. Will we face up to this history-bending moment and find meaningful ways to engage, to extend the revolt, or shrink into scripted, activist displays of superficial “solidarity”? The time is now to bring the uprising home.

Montrealers Create Memorial for Deceased Prisoner, Call for Action

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May 252020

From the Anti-Carceral Group

24 May, Montreal – At 2pm today, a caravan of over 30 vehicles visited the Bordeaux jail in Montreal, creating a memorial for the deceased prisoner, Robert Langevin, and calling for immediate and significant actions to keep prisoners and communities safe. The memorial included a message from Mr. Langevin’s sisters, while the vehicles, decorated with slogans such as “Prisons Kill” and “Free All Prisoners,” honked their horns, made noise, and held banners in solidarity with those inside.

Robert Langevin, a 72 year-old prisoner at Bordeaux, died of COVID-19 on the night of May 19 to 20. Deeply ill, Mr. Langevin had repeatedly asked for help from prison staff and filed a complaint with the provincial ombudsperson on March 27th. His sisters, Therèse and Pierette Langevin, sent a message to the participants, which was written on posters and attached to the fence surrounding the Bordeaux prison.

“Dear Robert,” the message said, “It’s with a heavy heart that we say to you: goodbye my brother, you were always a fighter, always there for the world. Today, it’s the world that is there for you. They heard you cry. They want to tell you they’re there for you and to denounce the present injustice across the prison walls. You aren’t alone. We’re here. We love you.”

While honoring Mr. Langevin, the participants also called on the Quebec government to take immediate and significant steps to keep prisoners and communities safe. Jean-Louis Nguyen was one of five participants who have loved ones in Bordeaux. “At the same time that we honour the life of Mr. Langevin, we are here to remind the public that there are still prisoners in difficulty, isolated, sick, without health care and cut off from their family,” said Nguyen. “We need at all costs to prevent another tragedy like the one that took away Mr. Langevin.”

Ted Rutland, a member of the Anti-Carceral Group, said the Quebec Ministry of Public Security needs to release prisoners to enable social distancing. “Quebec’s major response to the COVID-19 crisis in its prisons has been to lock prisoners in their cells 24 hours a day. There are prisoners at Bordeaux who have been locked in their cells for 30 days now, with little contact with the outside. This is literally torture,” said Rutland.

Rutland noted that provinces such as Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Albert, and Nova Scotia have released 25-45% of their prison population to protect prisoners and communities from COVID-19. Quebec, in contrast, has identified only a small category of prisons for potential release. The latest figures suggest that only 29 provincial prisoners have been released through this measure, and lawyers say that prisoners who fit the category continue to be denied early release.

Participants also highlighted the mistreatment of prisoners at Bordeaux. One woman whose husband is incarcerated has not been able to contact him for two weeks, and she worries for his safety. The woman, who prefers not to be named, led participants in chants of “Solidarity” and “You are not forgotten.” Prisoners inside yelled back, and a back and forth continued for half an hour.

Catherine Lizotte, who tried to help Robert Langevin, believes the event achieved its objective. “I want people to know that we’re thinking about them, that we love them,” she said. “And we will continue to fight for their release.”

The crowd left after an hour, just as four SPVM cars arrived to observe. One police car, in violation of the SPVM’s disciplinary code, played the Akon song “Locked Up” on the car’s loudspeaker.

Photos from the event are available at https://bit.ly/2TBMTaV

For more information, contact:

Anti-Carceral Group
anticarceralgroup@riseup.net

Art & Anarchy 2020

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May 252020

From the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair

➝ Anarkism.info

Call for “Art and Anarchy” across Distance

The twenty-first edition of the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair has to look radically different this year, but we’re striving for as much connection across distance as we can during our daylong gathering on Sunday, May 17, 2020. To that end, rather than our usual Art and Anarchy exhibit in the physical bookfair space, we’re calling on people to physically share anarchistic art and banners on the streets of cities across the globe. It’s a way of embodying our love and solidarity for each other, and also illustrating quite literally that we’re still here, that anarchism is still alive and well.

The idea is simple. On or before May 17:

Put up street art and/or a banner—your own and/or others’ creations
Take photos, or get a friend to do so
Post the photo(s) on social media, or get friends to do it, with the hashtag #ArtAndAnarchy. Include the location, as general or specific as you want
Share it with us at (info [at] anarchistbookfair [dot] ca), so we can then post it on our website and potentially use it, with your permission, in a post-bookfair zine

Please spread the word far and wide. It would be so beautiful to see art and anarchism spread across borders and walls around the world, bringing us closer together.

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