Action

City Redecorated for May Day!

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May 022020

Seen at Hochelaga/Viau overpass :
“We are confined but did not forget… Anticapitalist May Day
Your batons and prisons
Your pipelines
Your healthcare cuts”

Banner drop in Rouyn-Noranda:
“The power is austere”

Seen this morning on A20 highway near L’Isle-Verte, between Trois-Pistoles and Rivière-du-Loup
“May Day: support to the underpaid workers. Despised yesterday, on the front line today !”

The IWW put together my photos of more banners on their Facebook page.

A banner that reads: Anticapitalist May Day. Confined & revolted

Action from the “No housing, no quarantine” collective for MayDay. In front of the office of the Régie du logement.

May Day communiqué from the red committee

Other actions:
CORPIQ offices flooded for May Day

Visibility action taken from the following Facebook page.

Landlord Association’s Offices Flooded for May Day

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May 012020

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

The pandemic has laid bare the hostility the Corporation des propriétaires immobiliers du Québec (CORPIQ) has for tenants. As tens of thousands of increasingly precarious people struggle to make ends meet, CORPIQ has pressured the Régie du logement to re-start eviction hearings, encouraged landlords to collect rent as usual, and tried to discredit the calls for a global rent strike. CORPIQ defends the class that profits from our basic need for shelter and ensures that many are denied a stable and safe place to live.

The hostility is mutual. On the rainy night of April 29th, in an early celebration of May Day, we paid a visit to CORPIQ’s offices in Ville Saint-Laurent. First, we disabled the security camera. Then, we broke a window and inserted one end of a garden hose into their office, attached the other end to the building’s own outdoor tap, and turned on the water causing a flood.* Good luck with your “return to normal”, assholes.

We have no demands to make to governments, but rather a proposal to other renters and exploited people: what would happen if landlords had to think twice before harassing a tenant, neglecting repairs, or making threats of eviction? What if landlords were terrified of seeing their office vandalized, their car(s) torched, or their home(s) attacked when they try to push us?

Shout out to all the rent strikers organizing to support each other and spread the strike.

Solidarity with prisoners – and everyone trapped in coercive relationships with the state and capital. The recent hunger strikers in Laval show that we can resist even in the bleakest conditions.

We dedicate this action to everyone feeling isolated, depressed, or hopeless in these circumstances. We’ll never stop fighting for a world without systems that profit from our misery.

*We encourage others trying this tactic to use a mail slot when available. There is always a risk of setting off an alarm or getting the cops called when you break a window. We took this risk and bet that any response wouldn’t come fast enough to stop us.

April 19 #FreeThemAllCaravan Reportback

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Apr 232020

From Solidarity Across Borders

On April 19th, solidarity caravans drove to prisons and migrant detention centres across the country as part of a day of action against imprisonment. The caravans made noise and held signs in solidarity with those locked up. This mobilization brought together former detainees, prison abolitionists, and migrant justice activists in a first united call, across so-called Canada, to demand the immediate release of all prisoners and status for all migrants in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We’ve included links to footage and report-backs from the different caravans below. You can also listen to a special live radio broadcast with dispatches from the caravans here. For more footage or reports from the caravans, just search #FreeThemAllCaravan on twitter.

Kingston, ON

Surrey, BC [Twitter link]

Toronto, ON [Twitter link]

Laval, QC [Facebook link]

Background:

Social distancing is impossible inside prisons and detention centres and those inside remain at high risk of contracting COVID-19. There are now over 260 confirmed cases of COVID-19 linked to Canadian carceral institutions around the country, where people are held on both criminal and migrant holds. There have also been cases confirmed in both Laval and Toronto migrant detention centres. On April 16th, the Correctional Service of Canada confirmed that an inmate at BC’s Mission Institution prison had died due to COVID-19, with over 50 other inmates testing positive for the virus.

From March 24th to April 1st, detainees at the Laval migrant prison held an eight-day hunger strike to demand their immediate liberation and decent, safe housing upon release. While many hunger-strikers have since been released, 11 people remain in detention.

Despite the mounting calls from dozens of organizations for Canada to release migrant detainees and prisoners, the Canadian government still refuses to free all prisoners. The CBSA for its part has been slowly releasing migrant detainees on a case-by-case basis through individual detention review hearings.

Released migrants often remain under threat of deportation and face precarity, with no housing, long processing times for work permits, and limited or delayed access to support programs.

This May Day, Resistance Continues Despite the Confinement!

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Apr 202020

From the CLAC

In these times of pandemic, capital kills more than ever. Workers are left without equipment in hospitals. Confinement falls upon us because our government did too little, too late. Rich landlords who brought the virus back from their latest trip are angered by a rent strike that their penniless tenants have no other choice but to partake in. The people dying right now are among the most vulnerable, from grocery store clerks, to delivery workers, prisoners, homeless folks, and undocumented migrants. All of this while the most fortunate get to work from home. Nevertheless, social distancing remains an important way to reduce transmission, and this is why WE WILL NOT MEET PHYSICALLY FOR A MAYDAY PROTEST. We will however try to make resistance as visible as possible, given the difficult context.

The Canadian economy, along with that of most countries of the G20, will present a negative fiscal balance this year due to the sanitary crisis. The economy, however, means nothing. It’s a mix of statistical indicators that have never reflected our collective well-being. These indicators are more often related negatively to the health of our relationships, children, and waterways. However, the political elite forces us to mourn the economy by blocking our access to the products of our labor. While the rich live in style on desert islands and in distant townhouses, the poor are stacked in slums, forced to produce wealth, to heal the sick, or to restock grocery store shelves. Confinement makes solidarity very difficult in a context otherwise favorable for the crumbling of the capitalist state.

Let’s take this opportunity to shift environmental questions back to an anticapitalist perspective of climate justice. At a time when the air of our cities is finally breathable, let’s avoid the return to normalcy demanded by the capitalist elite. Let’s avoid making forced isolation and mass surveillance the new normal. Because a return to normalcy would only be the second act of a single tragedy, with societies playing the same role they had in the ongoing ecocide. The system must change, we must build justice anew, a justice which respects life and ecosystems.

We want to belong to the world we inhabit. Capitalism built societies we don’t really want. It’s time to take back control of our future from the rich and powerful who have had it for far too long. It is time to build a world for all of us.

This year we will not take the streets. This is why we ask you to SHOW YOUR ANTICAPITALIST SOLIDARITY THROUGH BANNERS, ART PROJECTS, AND POSTERS. If you can take pictures, images will be presented on a Web page built for this purpose. Details will be available shortly.

We cannot lose hope. The struggle continues to be as necessary as ever.

Montreal Anarchist Bookfair: What We’re Doing in May 2020

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Apr 202020

From the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair Collective

Hello everyone,

For a variety of reasons, most of which have to do with COVID-19, the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair collective has made the tough–but in our view, responsible–decision that we are not going to organize the big two-day gathering that has taken place around parc Vinet for most of the past twenty years. Instead, though, we hope to organize a different kind of event on May 17, 2020, to sustain our connections, politics, and solidarity.

As a small collective, our capacities are constrained, and of course, we’re facing new pressures in our lives outside the collective. So we’ll absolutely need your help, just as we have always needed help in the past.

That being said, this is what we hope to do for May 17.

As we’ve always done, we want to provide artists, authors, publishers of anarchist literature, and other sorts of crews and organizations an effective space for selling or freely distributing books, zines, posters, stickers, and other items to people who want them. We envision this as a two-pronged approach: online “tables” and in-person deliveries (on Tioh:tiàke, i.e. the island of Montreal). At a time when anarchist infrastructure is having to close up shop, so to speak, we see sales as a form of solidarity, to keep our many projects alive through this latest crisis, which also makes it all that much more important to get anarchist ideas and inspiration out into the world. The collective will, to a large degree, need to rely on tablers and delivery people to make this work, but we’re definitely up for offering our resources in terms of setting up telecommunications infrastructure and other forms of technical support.

Beyond continuing to distribute books, art, and other anarchist materials, we’d also like to create a space on May 17 for real-time conversations, similar to past bookfairs. We see this as a mix of a small number of talks (which we hope to make as accessible as possible, including via live broadcast on community radio as well as over the internet), more participatory, connective small-group dialogues, and one-on-one conversations between organizers (matched up ahead of time).

Also on May 17, we would love to see an outpouring of street art and banners around Montreal, in a physically distanced art exhibit of sorts, and would encourage artists and others to not only do this but document it with photos too.

As we get closer to May 1, we’ll put out another, longer announcement with more details and probably at least a few more initiatives. By then, for instance, it may be clear whether some sort of physical, social gathering will be possible for the weekend of May 16 and 17, and we’re considering the idea of a post-bookfair zine. We also hope to have our poster, designed by Kevin Lo, ready for May 1, and would love to see it put up around Montreal.

Lastly, much thanks to everyone who wrote to us with suggestions and everyone who has already signed up for our volunteer listserv. If you have any interest in postering in or around Montreal, or could contribute to this project with respect to system administration, website design, or translation (from English to French, but also from English to other languages spoken in Montreal), please sign up by following this link:

https://noise.autistici.org/mailman/listinfo/benevoles-volunteer-salonmtl

Take care, give care, with solidarity,
Montreal Anarchist Bookfair Collective

#FreeThemAll: Email campaign to release Federal prisoners

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Apr 122020

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

SUPPORT ALL PRISONERS NOW! NO ONE SHOULD SPEND A PANDEMIC IN PRISON!

The situation facing prisoners during the COVID19 pandemic is terrifying. It is widely understood that prisoners are in a dangerous position during this pandemic due to the close living quarters, lack of health care, and lack of access to sanitary supplies. Correctional Services Canada has done little to address the risks inside, aside from cancelling all visits, temporary work releases, and trailer visits. Predictably, COVID19 has already started to spread in the federal prison system with prisoners and staff testing positive in more and more institutions.

Calls for the release of prisoners have come from many different people and groups around the world and many mainstream news publications in Canada have published articles detailing the reasoning behind releasing prisoners now. We would like to add our thoughts to this conversation.

At the federal level, there are many tools that Correctional Services Canada and the Parole Board of Canada can use to release prisoners. These include: the extension of unaccompanied temporary absences, the use of Section 81 and 84 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA), expedited hearings for suspension and revocation cases, and using section 121)1.b) of the CCRA, which states that ‘parole may be granted at any time to an offender […] whose physical or mental health is likely to suffer serious damage if the offender continues to be held in confinement.’

The use of existing provisions to release prisoners to protect their health is not unprecedented. Indeed, as Jane Philpott and Kim Pate explain in an article in Policy Options, “sections 29, 81, 84, 116, and 121 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act were specifically created to move people out of prisons to address health issues, for other personal development, for compassionate reasons or for work. Sections 81 and 84 provide for the transfer of Indigenous prisoners to Indigenous communities but could be applied to others as well” (emphasis added).

In this context, we demand immediate action to protect the health and safety of federal prisoners. Specifically, we demand the following:

1. IMMEDIATELY RELEASE ALL VULNERABLE PRISONERS: Anyone who is over 50 years old, immunocompromised, pregnant, sick, or who has a preexisting condition that makes them at high risk of dying from COVID-19.

2. RELEASE ALL OTHER PRISONERS, STARTING WITH THOSE IN MINIMUM SECURITY PRISONS AND HALFWAY HOUSES: According to Correctional Service Canada’s own logic, those in minimum security prisons and halfway houses are considered the lowest risk to public safety, so start there. Let those with homes go home, provide safe physical distancing in halfway houses where people choose to remain, widen access to Canada Emergency Response Benefit funding to include people getting out of prison, and open up vacant housing for those with no homes.

3. TAKE IMMEDIATE SANITARY AND PREVENTATIVE ACTION TO PROTECT THOSE WHO REMAIN IMPRISONED: Provide soap, hand sanitizer with proper alcohol content as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), water, bleach, cleaning supplies, and self assessment tools (like thermometers) to every prisoner at no cost, and transfer prisoners in maximum and medium security into the empty minimums to allow for proper physical distancing.

4. NO MORE PUNISHMENT. PRIORITIZE CONTINUED ACCESS TO COMMUNITY AND FAMILY FOR THOSE WHO REMAIN IMPRISONED: Provide free phone calls and video visitation, allow phone calls and video visitation for volunteers and non-family supports, access to cell phones to limit use of communal phones and so that access to the outside continues if medical isolation happens, and stop using lockdowns to inhibit access to community and family supports. The World Health Organizing, stressing the importance of communication with the outside, has said that “decisions to limit or restrict visits need to consider the particular impact on the mental well-being of prisoners … The psychological impact of these measures needs to be considered and mitigated as much as possible and basic emotional and practical support for affected people in prison should be available.”

5. MEDICAL SERVICES FOR ALL: Ensure medical services are fully funded, accessible 24/7, and extra health care practitioners are hired. Provide training, PPE, and regular testing. Waive the need for guards to accompany prisoners to the hospital. No sending prisoners to special military hospitals.

Who should you contact?

At this point you could call or email:
1. Anne Kelly – Commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada: anne.kelly@csc-scc.gc.ca, 613-995-5781
2. Angela Connidis – Deputy Commissioner for Women, Correctional Service Canada: angela.connidis@csc-scc.gc.ca, 613-991-2952
3. Jennifer Oades – Parole Board of Canada, Chairperson: jennifer.oades@pbc-clcc.gc.ca, 613-954-1154
4. Bill Blair – Minister of Public Safety: Bill.Blair@parl.gc.ca
5. Kim Pate – Senator pushing for decarceration: Kim.Pate@sen.parl.gc.ca
6. Marilou McPhedran – Senator pushing for decarceration: Marilou.McPhedran@sen.parl.gc.ca
7. Jack Harris – NDP Public Safety Critic: jack.harris@parl.gc.ca, 709-772-7171

You can use the graphics at this link (demandprisonschange.wordpress.com) on social media! Tweet at @csc_scc_en AND @csc_scc_fr with the hashtags #FreeThemAll AND #FreeThemNow.

in solidarity,
the Termite Collective

CALL TO ACTION: Hunger Strikers Released as CBSA Resists Demands to Release Remaining Detainees

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Apr 032020

From Solidarity Across Borders

#HungerStrikeLaval #FreeThemAll #StatusForAll

Migrants detained in the CBSA’s Laval Immigration Holding Centre suspended their hunger strike yesterday as two more of the hunger strikers, including their spokesperson Abdoul*, were released yesterday, and another today. Around 20 detainees remain in the main part of the centre, along with more held in the Rivière-des-Prairies jail in Montreal.

— SEE WHAT YOU CAN DO BELOW

— GALLERY OF SUPPORT

— MESSAGE FROM ABDOUL, JUST RELEASED

The migrant detainees’ courageous 8-day hunger strike provoked an outpouring of support from coast to coast, demanding the immediate release of all detainees with adequate & safe housing ensured. The CBSA is instead slowly releasing migrant detainees one by one, through individual detention review hearings.

The strikers’ demands are even more urgent now than when the strike began. Migrant detainees and prisoners are at an increasingly high risk of contracting COVID-19. At least one employee at the Toronto Immigration Holding Centre has already tested positive for the virus. Detainees, whether in Laval or in other cities, in prisons or in detention centres, must be released immediately with adequate, safe housing ensured!

This crisis has made the necessity of removing the manufactured barriers and exclusions created by hierarchies of immigration status clearer than ever. For the good of all: Status for all!

Follow the continuing campaign here and on twitter.

Read daily updates from the men in the Laval Immigration Holding Centre here.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

SOCIAL MEDIA
Use the hashtag set #FreeThemAll #StatusForAll along with #HungerStrikeLaval to show your support for the struggle on social media! We encourage you to tag Bill Blair, Marco Mendicino, Justin Trudeau, and other government officials who refuse to free the detainees.

SOLIDARITY DRAWINGS
We are calling for artists of all ages to share drawings in solidarity with the struggle to free the detainees. We encourage you to post your art to social media with the hashtag set #FreeThemAll #StatusForAll as well as #HungerStrikeLaval.

CALL IN
Continue to pressure the government for the immediate release of all detainees!
Send support statements to detenuslaval@gmail.com

Direct calls and emails to:

Federal Minister of Public Safety Bill Blair
Bill.Blair@parl.gc.ca
Telephone: 613-995-0284
Fax: 613-996-6309

Email script:

I am appalled that the government continues to flout its own public health recommendations when it comes to detention facilities, even as guards and prisoners test positive across the country. It is incredible that men detained in the Laval Immigration Holding Centre had to go on a hunger strike to pressure Public Safety Minister Bill Blair to take action.

Migrant detainees and prisoners remain at an extremely high risk of contracting COVID-19. At least one employee at the Toronto Immigration Holding Centre has already contracted the virus. Minister Blair has not responded to the widespread call for immediate, collective release. The Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) is instead slowly releasing migrant detainees through hearings. This is a wholly inadequate response to this urgent crisis.

All detainees, whether in Laval or in other cities, in prisons or in detention centres, must be released immediately with adequate, safe housing ensured.

Gallery of Support from Coast to Coast for Detainees’ Hunger Strike

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Apr 022020

From Solidarity Across Borders

The eight day long hunger strike by the migrant detainees at the Laval Immigration Holding Center gathered coast to coast support. Below is a gallery of images received over last days of the strike. The letters of support are available here.

No one is Illegal – Toronto

: Black Lives Matter – Toronto (BLM-TO)

: BC Civil Liberties Association

: Stella

: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Michi Saagiig Nishnaabe

: Desmond Cole

: Piche

: Glen Coulthard

: Solidarity

: Solidarity

: Sheena Hoszko

: Sheena Hoszko

: Dryden

Rent Day – Call for Tenant Organizing

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Apr 012020

From Grevedesloyers.info

It’s Rent Day and thousands all over Quebec can’t pay.

Montreal, April 1, 2020 — Today is Rent Day, and thousands of people all over Quebec cannot pay rent, or have to make the inhumane choice between paying rent, or having money for food, medicine and other basic needs. Tenants are scared, fearful, and anxious. While all of society is trying to manage a public health crisis, one main indicator of physical and mental health – housing – is the source of anxiety and depression.

MANY PEOPLE ARE LEFT OUT OF THE EMERGENCY RESPONSE BENEFIT (CERB)

The main argument opposed to tenants by the landlords’ associations is that the payment of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) — a $2,000 per month financial assistance for workers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, by the federal government — will help pay their rent. However, this benefit will not arrive in the pockets of recipients until mid-April. It is also important to point out that many people will be excluded and will thus remain in financial precariousness. Some of the excluded include:

Workers who left their jobs before the crisis began.
Workers who have maintained incomes, even minimal ones, in the last two weeks will not be immediately entitled to it.
People living on savings who did not have $5,000 in cash inflows last year.
Many students, especially international students who have been cut off from funding from their home country or those returning from a study abroad.
Non-status and undocumented workers.
Sex workers.
People who depended on undeclared income.
People who have not declared their income for tax purposes in the last two years.
Vulnerable people who, for health, precarity or other reasons, will not be able to complete the application.

These workers will also have absolutely no recourse if they are denied the CERB. This is why some of us will be on a forced rent strike and others will support us by going on strike and/or displaying a white sheet on the front of their homes. To provide relief to the most disadvantaged, we believe that the government must act responsibly by :

immediately cancelling rent payments in Quebec;
declaring a moratorium on all evictions related to the inability to pay rent during the COVID-19 pandemic; people who do not pay their rent during the crisis should not be evicted afterwards either;
opening as many vacant units as possible — such as empty Airbnb units, vacant condos, hotels — to house people who are homeless or currently living in unsafe, unsanitary or abusive housing conditions.

ABANDONED BY HOUSING MINISTER LAFOREST

In a press release sent on the eve of April 1 (www.newswire.ca/fr/news-releases/pandemie-de-la-covid-19-1er-avril-le-gouvernement-du-quebec-rappelle-les-mesures-en-place-888418021.html), Andrée Laforest, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, insulted Quebec’s low-income tenants. She urges tenants to contact their banks (!). This means two things: i) Laforest is completely ignorant of the reality lived by poor and working class tenants, who cannot qualify for bank loans; Laforest’s suggestion is laughable; ii) Laforest is suggesting that tenants go into debt to deal with the current crisis, debts that cannot be paid, and will only increase mental and physical anguish in the middle of a public health crisis.

TENANTS ARE GETTING ORGANIZED

The testimonials of tenants from all over Quebec express fear and worry, while demanding the cancellation of rents immediately. Those testimonials can be accessed here: https://grevedesloyers.info/en/testimonies-2/

In a building in the Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie district, precarious tenants of 10 apartments have decided to go on a rent strike in order to signify to their landlord their collective inability to pay rent:

“We are working together to ensure everyone stays safe. However, the current circumstances have put not only our physical, but also our financial health at risk,” explains Dexter Xurukulasuriya, one of the tenants. In a letter sent to their landlord, they ask for an understanding that “the inability for some to afford the rent is due to a public health crisis outside of anyone’s control, and that for the good of public safety”, they must be able to stay in their homes, “without fear of being able to pay for living expenses.”

“Of course, we realize that [our landlord] is also affected by this crisis, and are reassured to know that [landlords] have access to tools and relief measures such as mortgage deferral.” adds Xurukulasuriya.

TOOLS FOR TENANTS WHO WANT TO FIGHT BACK

Hundreds of tenants all over Montreal, and all over Quebec and Canada, are organizing collectively. When confronting injustice, fear and isolation, our best weapons are solidarity, care and support.

The Draps blancs pour une grève générale have put together a WHY & HOW about rent refusal and rent strikes for tenants and supporters; access that info here: https://grevedesloyers.info/en/howwhy/

We have also put together important LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS, so you are aware of your rights, the risks, and how to best organize concerning your rent: https://grevedesloyers.info/en/legal-considerations/

We encourage tenants who are ORGANIZING autonomously to share their updates with us at grevedesloyers@riseup.net

A Montreal-wide Autonomous TENANTS UNION is also taking shape; learn more here: https://syndicatlocatairesmtl.wordpress.com

We have also put together a PHOTO GALLERY of white sheets place in front of homes, a symbol of rent refusal, rent cancellation, and a rent strike, and solidarity between tenants: https://grevedesloyers.info/en/gallery-2/

Autonomous tenants in Montreal have launched a Quebec-specific PETITION, with three clear demands, including rent cancellation. The petition is reaching 10,000 signatures. Sign and share the petition: http://chng.it/XJctK2Tw

The Draps blancs pour une grève des loyers reminds the MEDIA of our previous press releases, with information still very much relevant today:

– March 31, 2020: https://grevedesloyers.info/en/ressources/pressreleasemarch31/

– March 30, 2020: https://grevedesloyers.info/en/ressources/pressrelease2/

– March 26, 2020: https://grevedesloyers.info/en/ressources/pressrelease

—-

The Draps blancs pour une grève générale is a Montreal-based effort, but there are rent strike efforts all over North America and all over the world.

– Here is the pan-Canadian CANCEL RENT site: www.cancelrent.ca

– USA RENT STRIKE efforts are coordinated here: https://www.rentstrike2020.org/

– For more North American and GLOBAL efforts consult: https://5demands.global/map/

Announcement Regarding the 2020 Montreal Anarchist Bookfair

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Mar 312020

From the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair

Hello friends,

We are writing to update you on the 2020 Montreal Anarchist Bookfair. As everyone is more than aware, the global pandemic has resulted in the postponement or cancellation of large gatherings, and many upcoming anarchist bookfairs worldwide (from Europe to Aotearoa and beyond) have been forced to call off their events. Our collective has yet to make a decision. It is clear to us, however, that if we organize a gathering on the weekend of May 16 and 17, it will look significantly different from what the bookfair has been for the past twenty years.

The Montreal Anarchist Bookfair, the largest on Turtle Island, has long been a moment for us to come together as anarchists to celebrate and share the multitude of ways in which we are inspired by this beautiful idea along with the practices that stem from it. Our hope, then, is to somehow still be able to mark this crucial occasion, and in a way that offers us the social and emotional connections that are threatened right now. We’d also like to see the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair, even if in a modest way, assert that anarchism and its ever-more relevant forms of freedom are still here. We see this as a moment for us to envision how to come together to educate, organize, and agitate for the world we want to see, instead of going back to “normal” after COVID-19.

That’s going to take a lot of creativity! So we’re inviting you to share imaginative ideas with us. How can we take or make, and then share, space to be together? Are there novel ways to dialogue about ideas, play, grieve, make art and music, offer care, show solidarity, dance, and so on, that remind ourselves we’re still here, we’re still strong—ways that might allow some of us to gather at a “safe” distance in person in Montreal and/or others to engage in highly participatory long-distance ways, including physically in their own locales at the same time?

Please email us your creative suggestions by or before April 10. Our deadline for making a final decision is April 15. We’re grateful for your help!

Below you’ll find two announcements related to keeping us connected.

In the meantime, take good care of yourselves, and take good care of each other.

loving, grieving, fighting, caring,
the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair Collective

email: [info AT salonanarchiste DOT ca]
tw: https://twitter.com/@BookfairAnarMTL
fb: https://www.facebook.com/SalonduLivreAnarchisteMontrealAnarchistBookfair

**** ****

Our first announcement is that the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair now has a public chatroom. We want to stay connected to people, now and into the future. We want to be able to encounter new people with other ideas and different perspectives. We absolutely don’t want to rely completely upon Facebook or Reddit for those purposes.

Chatrooms (and other “online platforms”) can be a disaster, and that’s especially true in their early days. While we intend to moderate (so as to cut down on fucked-up or annoying discourse), we hope any prospective users will be sympathetic to how challenging that undertaking can be. Fortunately, all users will be able to ignore other users if they wish, turn off notifications, and otherwise have tools that allow them to step back rather than get sucked in, yet without having to disconnect entirely.

If you are interested in being a moderator, or otherwise helping us to maintain and improve upon the chatroom, feel free to write us an email with the word “moderation” or “modération” in the subject line. We will need moderators who can speak English, French, and potentially other languages. Reach out to us, too, if you know anything about Matrix specifically, or if you think you can learn. Our system is far from polished right now, and we’d love people who can help us make it better over time with respect to information security for social movements, having something that’s easy for everyone to use, and striking a good balance between these two important but sometimes mutually exclusive objectives.

If you’d like to use a computer to connect to the chatroom, the easiest way to (though not necessarily the best) is to follow this link: https://irc.anarchyplanet.org/#salon-anar-mtl

If you’d like to use a smartphone, the easiest way to connect is probably to download the Telegram app, set up a profile, then use Telegram to open the following link: https://t.me/joinchat/PH2YmkyNkjns1N0yHAcbNA

If you feel comfortable with a larger challenge, whether or not you use a computer or a smartphone, we recommend using a Matrix application from https://riot.im and connecting to the following Matrix address: #salon-anar-mtl:riot.anarchyplanet.org (we recommend the RiotX app for Android phones)

If you have any questions on this topic (including any of the things above and/or about other ways to connect) or if you have specific accessibility needs, feel free to write us an email at [info AT salonanarchiste DOT ca]; we will do our best to answer in a way that’s helpful. If your question is about how to connect via Tor, please use either “tor english” or “tor français” in the subject line. Otherwise, please use “chatroom” or “clavardage” in the subject line.

It is important to note that what is said in this chatroom is public, even if users are anonymous. Anyone can join, including people who mean anarchists harm or are otherwise fucked up. (This is also true of the in-real-life Montreal Anarchist Bookfair. We obviously think that big public spaces are crucial despite the real issue of harm that all such spaces grapple with, and try our best at the bookfair—and will do so in this chat room—to deal with concerns as they came up.) The important thing is always to create something that is difficult to surveil effectively. Despite the conspiracy theories, there are still ways to do this sort of thing on the internet, at least well enough for our purposes.

We’re learning this stuff as we go, though. No matter where you’re at with tech stuff, perhaps you should learn along with us, share around your favourite anarchist texts that are coming out right now, and help the socially isolated feel a little more connected.

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Secondly, some weeks ago, we set up a public email listserv directed at volunteers. We haven’t sent out any emails yet, and right now there is little to be done. At some point, however, the bookfair will need volunteers, for all the things we simply can’t do on our own—even if the physical bookfair as it’s been done isn’t possible for many months from now. Such volunteering has, in the past, included postering around town, serving food, doing childcare, and translating between languages, among many other things.

We thank everyone who has signed up already, and we want to ask that others sign up too. To do so, please go to https://noise.autistici.org/mailman/listinfo/benevoles-volunteer-salonmtl and register; alternatively, email us at with the word “volunteer” or “bénévole” in the subject line.

It’s just a newsletter, so getting on the listserv isn’t signing yourself up for any work. We simply want a direct and simple means for telling people what we need help with, if they’re interested in knowing what’s up.

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