In order to function, capitalism and green industry need infrastructure pretty much everywhere, and it is often easy to access. Near the end of December 2023, we set fire to a charging station for electric cars in Mile End. Because these little boxes don’t open as easily as it may seem, we used a mix of gasoline and motor oil that we poured on the rubber charging cables. Unfortunately, when we returned to check the damage a few days later, the station was still, or again, in service. Maybe our technique wasn’t the right one. In any case it was an exciting night between friends that we count as a joyful night of experimentation.
Comments Off on Sabotage on the Northvolt Site: Arming the Forest
Jan222024
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
One of Montéregie’s last natural environments is in jeopardy! The planned construction of the Northvolt battery plant in Saint-Basile-le-Grand is an ecocidal disgrace. If this project goes ahead, 1.4 square kilometers of wetlands and woodlands will be razed to the ground, serving the greenwashing strategy of our governments, and doing so with public funds.
The area is home to a diverse fauna (bats, birds, amphibians, turtles, snakes, etc.), including several species classified as “threatened” or “endangered”. There are even 142 species of birds that frequent the site! At the same time as public transport companies are undergoing a wave of budget cuts, the provincial and federal governments prefer to give $7.3 billion to the private sector to perpetuate the “car culture”. Instead of investing in more environmentally-friendly collective solutions (trains, buses, car-sharing) in the city and the regions, the governments are perpetuating our dependence on the car, hand in hand with polluting industries and the wealthy.
The Saint-Basile-le-Grand plant project is an integral part of “Projet Saint-Laurent”, an economic development strategy championed by François Legault that aims to transform the St. Lawrence Lowlands into a kind of Quebec Silicon Valley, focusing on “innovation zones”. Northvolt is therefore part of a capitalist approach to ecological transition, just like other projects such as the Littoral Est project in Quebec City, the REM or the Ray-Mont Logistiques transshipment platform that citizens in Montreal’s east end are fighting against. Under capitalism, the energy transition, i.e. the move away from hydrocarbons, means the multiplication of open-pit mines, particularly in the global South, to extract the metals used to manufacture batteries, the construction of new hydroelectric dams on First Nations lands, the establishment of mega-factories on the banks of our waterways, not to mention the ambition of many countries to increase nuclear power. Against these false solutions that threaten the ecosystems we mobilize, Northvolt is a project of capitalist capitalism.
We have taken the initiative to oppose this deforestation by inserting steel bars and nails into the trunks of trees endangered by the plant. While having minimal impact on the health of the trees, these pose a significant risk to heavy machinery.
The harvesters currently employed in the field will be severely damaged if their heads come into contact with the metal objects when cutting*.To stop Northvolt, we need to multiply our tactics and hit where it hurts: causing economic risk and uncertainty. Contrary to Minister Fitzgibbon’s claims, we didn’t come across any “three-eyed fish”, but rather were accompanied by birdsong and were able to walk the countless paths made by the animals that inhabit the woodland. We gave the forest weapons to defend itself!
Spiking is a proven method of direct action. It was used in the early 1980s by Earth First! to prevent the felling of redwoods in the US Pacific Northwest, and was popularized by the book “Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching” written by Dave Foreman, one of the founders of the environmental group (the book is available online here).The method was also used against the clear-cutting of primary forests in Clayoquot, British Columbia. This mobilization culminated in the summer of 1993 in the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, before the Fairy Creek blockades in 2021, where the method was once again used by activists. In May of this year, activists from Soulèvements de la Terre did the same to protect oak trees in the Bord forest east of Rouen in France.
Today, we are calling for a broad mobilization against the destructive Northvolt mega-plant project. We must attack this destructive machine for crushing life by targeting its weak points. Let’s sabotage the equipment, block the construction sites and harass the industry’s elected representatives. The environmental movement must redouble its efforts.
*Similarly, when cutting, if a chainsaw hits a nail, it will damage or break the chain. The chain will have to be resharpened – a waste of time – or even replaced, and the felling operation resumed at a slightly higher level to avoid hitting the nail again, in the hope of not encountering a second one. Deforestation will be all the more painful, costly and potentially dangerous.
P. S. We are in no way hostile to workers: we are against those who profit from the destruction of the living and who put profit above all else. In this sense, the working class is exploited by our economic system in the same way as the earth, animals and plants that make the land thrive. To ensure that the people hired to clear the forest are well aware of the risks involved, we’ve marked the studded trees with an aerosol-painted S sign, and added posters explaining our tactics. We hope the workers will enforce their rights and stay away from the marked trees.
Comments Off on Solidarity Against Repression – Action Against Indigo
Jan142024
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
In the early morning of January 13th, we took an action in solidarity with the arrestees of November 23rd, 2023, in Toronto. The Toronto police poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into breaking into homes, handcuffing the elderly, sacking personal belongings, and terrorizing families. Parents were handcuffed in front of their children. One person arrived home to find their door broken down and a patio chair throw into the front garden. Another family was told not to speak in their mother tongue. The arrestees had allegedly taken a normal action of postering an Indigo bookstore and splashing paint on its facade. The action targeted Indigo founder and CEO Heather Reisman, who funnels Indigo profits into the HESEG Foundation, which provides education grants to individuals who emigrate to Israel to enlist in the IDF, aiding and abetting international recruitment for the Israeli military. Reisman is a core proponent of Canadian support for Israeli settlement and military operations. To further punish the activists, to terrorize others in the Palestinian solidarity movement, and legitimate their persecution, the police encouraged a media narrative that these were antisemitic hate crimes. As the vileness of these raids illustrates, if the police were actually interested in stopping hate-motivated attacks, they would have only to simply not go into work.
The police are not able to protect the advocates and accomplices of genocide everywhere or at all times. We used a fire extinguisher filled with red paint to redecorate the interior of the Indigo store in downtown Montreal, after breaking the windows. No one was arrested.
We have taken action to show there is a movement which will not tolerate ruthless political persecution. We want to call attention to these arrestees so that they are not forgotten. Both the police and capitalists like Heather Reisman cannot be allowed to freely terrorize expressions of resistance. Clearly, the law is not our safety and we need to be agents of our own justice.
We are anarchists. We refuse to support any government or party whether it be ethnonationalist, islamist, fascist, colonial or liberal democratic. We deny that the world’s problems boil down to the fault of ethnicity or religion, be it Jewish, Arab, or Muslim. We are for the freedom and happiness of everyone. The governments, media, and capitalists of Israel, Canada, and the US see the siege on Gaza as a chance to grow their own power, wealth, and privilege, and their profiteering disregard for the value of human life, which causes so much outrage to anyone watching, becomes clearer with every slaughter in Gaza. This is clear even to the people living in Israel who have lost their rights to protest or dissent, and to the families of hostages (three of whom had loved ones waving white flags shot dead by Israeli troops), who have seen that even Jewish life is meaningless to the Israeli government’s campaign of collective punishment and land seizure. We have tuned out and ignore the media cycles and their expectations for obedient protests.
We have taken action because it is so easy to cause damage. Our goal is to undermine all acts of political persecution and to build an offensive front against government and capitalists. We hope that this action becomes popular so that others follow us. As these actions spread, whether we are hidden by the night or found in a large crowd, our ability to change the future grows radically. There is no savior waiting in the wings. And we will not wait for nothing to happen. No one asked us to do this action. This is the kind of resistance we want to see so we moved forward with it. If you are reading this, unless you are a cop or a capitalist, we encourage you to learn what our ideas are, how to dress anonymously, and how to act without a digital trace.
At the end of October 2023, in the quietest hours of the night, a small group quickly secured a blockade to the CN rail lines in “bc”, near the Hope area.
The blockade consisted of a 100-pound iron work table vice – whose jaws were tightened directly to the rail – topped with a several hundred pound pile of chain and scrap metal.
On one side of the gigantic work-table vice was painted “FREE GAZA” in red. On the other side was painted “CGL OFF THE YINTAH”. The blockade was secured to a curving stretch of rail in the forest, near no residences. CN freight trains churn through this area multiple times per hour. The blockade was fixed immediately after a train passed, to give the most time for safe work.
Only two rail lines carry the entire freight system in so-called “bc” – CN, and CP. Their routes overlap in a large area in Secwepemc territory, between hope and kamloops. referred to by officials as a ‘choke point’ for the government’s freight system – its resource extraction supply lines. If both of these lines are disrupted or shut down simultaneously, the whole rail freight system in the ‘province’ shuts down. Let us get to work.
Please dump stuff on the rails. The more trash, broken glass, and scrap litters the rails, the more gummed up the works will get.
[See this text for methods permitting to avoid causing a derailment. –MtlCI]
While we are taking the steps to send this anonymous communique – we wish to encourage tactics beyond boycotts. It is great to stop giving genocidal companies our money. Now it is time to take another step, and start taking money from these companies. The recent mass food reclamation at a Whole Foods in occupied Lenapehoking, so-called New York, is a great example.
You’ve stopped going to starbucks – now start going back to starbucks to steal and destroy their merchandise. Disrupt their profits in increasingly direct ways. Taping the edge of a small razor blade to a credit card can make the tool inconspicuous, and small hidden razors are great for cutting open coffee bags, tearing up products, while appearing to simply handle and peruse the wares.
Containers of used cooking oil are great to pour on books / paper products in stores that support genocide. Oil up your local Indigo for example – target the most expensive wares possible. Carry the oil around in a fancy looking reusable water bottle or coffee cup, or in tiny vials that fit in the palm of your hand.
Stop throwing out old food scraps, especially meat – make stink bombs instead. Put the food in firmly sealed containers and let them rot in heat. When ready, subtly dump the contents indoors in businesses you want to disrupt.
On October 21st, more than a thousand people acted on a call to counter-protest for the defence of trans youth’s rights and inclusive sex ed, called by a coalition of queer and antifascist groups including the Pink Bloc. This call was officially endorsed by more than fifty organisations, including unions, student associations, teacher associations, feminist groups, militant collectives, community sector organisations, and more.[1]
The goal of this action was to block the path of a demonstration organised by the transphobic, homophobic “Ensemble Pour Protéger Nos Enfants” (“Together to protect our children”) group in response to a canada-wide call from 1MillionMarchForChildren. The political agenda of this demonstration and its associated groups includes censorship of queer and trans subjects in schools, forcing educators to out trans youths to their parents, and the broad removal of trans healthcare for young folks. Through their statements, they claim to want to protect children, but even the most basic research will show you that these groups want to reinforce parental control on youth, and to give parents the ability to prevent their children from expressing themselves how they want, and from being themselves.
This negates the right to youth self-determination, to freedom of expression, and to safety and security.
In the weeks leading up to their demonstration, political and personal infighting broke out between the groups and individuals involved in their organising,[2] creating division and confusion in their ranks which greatly diminished their turnout.
On our end, we saw a panoply of movements, groups, and individuals join our struggle and decide to form a common front against hate and exclusion!
By 9am on October 21st, we had occupied the space outside 600 Fullum Street with canopy tents, music,[3] and food. By 10am, we had already formed a large crowd despite the rain and the cold, and occupied the whole block on Fullum Sainte-Catherine to Notre-Dame. Across police lines, towards Notre-Dame, around a hundred anti-lgbtq demonstrators had gathered by around 11am. These demonstrators were dissapointed by their low turnout and were kept far away from their planned meeting point in front of 600 Fullum.
Although the struggle is never over, we can all collectively congratulate each other for our enormous success. We succeeded in completely dispersing the demonstrators and were able to declare total victory at 1:30pm, all while ensuring a secure and festive space at the heart of our counter-protest. Our mobilisation efforts in the community and union sectors were unprecedented for this type of action. This resulted in bonds of solidarity that will be crucial in the long term, and allowed us to develop strategies and resources for counter-protestors which will be indespensable in our future mobilisations.
This was a beautiful show of solidarity by and towards our community, affirming that protecting children also means protecting trans children and teens by offering them a safe environment and defending their rights to self-determination.
Young trans folks are able to evaluate their situation, their identity, and their relationship with the world, and to make decisions to improve their lives, whether or not these decisions please their parents. We are the queer and trans youths of yesterday, who affirmed ourselves throughout the years, and who grew into adults who are comfortable in the bodies and identities that represent us. No one has the right to deprive today’s youth of this.
Going forward we will continue to develop and form solidarity bonds, notably with struggles against islamophobia, in opposition to homonationalism and pinkwashing which use lgbtq+ rights as an excuse to justify attrocities,[4] and with mobilisations for Palestinian liberation.
Congratulations to everyone who was there on the 21st, and thank you to all who supported us!
We hope to not have to organize another counter-protest for a long time, and we will see you in the streets in solidarity with Palestine!
3. In light of comments we’ve received concerning the inclusion of Disney songs in our playlist, we would like to mention that in no way do we support Disney. Playing copyrighted music is a frequently used tactic to ensure livestreams are taken down by social media platforms, and Disney is known to be particularly strict in enforcing their copyrights. Livestreams are frequently used by far-right actors to doxx our comrades. We unequivocally support the BDS movement and calls to boycott Disney for their support of Israeli apartheid, and we will be sure to select different copyrighted music next time.
4. We will soon publish an article developing this idea further
Comments Off on Report-back from the October 21st Counter-demonstration in Defense of Trans Youth
Nov272023
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Saturday, October 21 in Montreal saw a face-off between a shrinking coalition of religious conservative transphobes and a counter-protest in defense of trans youth. TL;DR: trans defenders won.
Called as a Canada-wide day of action by “1 Million March for Children”, with the group “Ensemble pour protéger nos enfants” (hereafter EPPNE; “Together to protect our children”) leading the Montreal event, it was the follow-up to the clashes on September 20th in front of McGill University. That day, an unexpectedly large crowd, mostly composed of Muslim families, with children holding signs reading “I belong to my parents” and shouting transphobic and homophobic insults, confronted an underprepared counter-protest and succeeded in marching through downtown Montreal, leaving trans defenders and their queer and antifascist comrades shaken.
EPPNE called their demonstration in front of 600 Fullum, the address of the Quebec Ministry of Education, to whom they address a series of demands concerning school curriculums that is but a pretext for seemingly limitless transphobia. We recommend checking out Montréal Antifasciste and P!nk bloc for more detailed perspectives on the developing political context, including the impact of war in the Middle East (it turns out the advocates of one genocide can be divided concerning another). This report-back will emphasize the tactical dimension of what we observed on the 21st.
The EPPNE protest was called for 11am, and the counter-protest was announced for 10, with the intention of occupying the area first. Predictably, it was barely past 8am when the dedication of a small group of early arrivals allowed us to claim the street in front of 600 Fullum and relegate the EPPNE organizers, who arrived at 8:15, to a patch of grass between the south side of the building and the bike path running alongside the highway. Dozens of police were already on site, and they cordoned off a segment of the roundabout at the bottom of Fullum with police tape to create a buffer zone between the two groups, informing counter-protesters that crossing the tape would be considered a criminal offense.
If we gathered in front of the offices housing the Ministry of Education, it was not as defenders of the education system, which, as a general rule, seeks to turn children of all genders and sexualities into docile subjects of settler-colonial capitalism, respecters of democratic authority, workers and consumers with the ability to ask questions but not too many. Rather, holding the space where the transphobes planned to be denies them the visibility they crave and demonstrates that we will stand in their way, wherever they may try to organize publicly.
Both sides arrived to a scene that had been covered in antifascist, pro-trans, and pro-Palestine graffiti the night before, with the ministry building, construction machinery and nearby walls bearing tags including “YOUTH LIBER(A)TION [&] TRANS LIBER(A)TION NOW!”, “Dykes for Palestine” and “Fuck transphobes”. Together with the rapid setup of five canopy tents directly in front of 600 Fullum, which would serve as a logistical base camp for the counter-protest and provide us occasional shelter from the rain, it could not have been more clear who controlled the space where the transphobes had intended to gather, or that our fight extends beyond the liberal defense of a tolerant social order.
Our numbers gradually then more quickly swelled as 10am approached. The arrival of a sound truck (a couple powerful speakers strapped to the bed of a pickup) helped to introduce a festive vibe. And newcomers were dispatched to one of two mobile units, color-coded pink and black (people with mobility restrictions or who just preferred to hang out around the base camp could do so).
One note concerning mass media cameras: a CTV News cameraman was spotted wandering the crowd in front of 600 Fullum, filming counter-protesters from close range. Guidelines published in the lead-up to the 21st had encouraged attendees to wear masks and watch out for mass media and livestreamers, but we’re not aware of planning around making sure journalists couldn’t freely explore our infrastructure, in areas where some people would be having private conversations or inevitably removing masks to eat or drink. Comrades took the initiative to confront the CTV crew and physically expel them after they refused a verbal request to leave. While banners and umbrellas can work well against media approaching our hard lines, we need to also be able to repel those who find their way into areas like those for welcoming newcomers. We think a team dedicated to this task is probably the best move going forward.
Around 9:30am, the pink unit moved north on Fullum to begin blocking the street at the top of the block, just south of Sainte-Catherine. They would hold this position, allowing new arrivals of our side to enter and denying entry to transphobes, for the remainder of the action. Because this intersection was the main access point for protesters who were arriving from Papineau metro or from street parking to the north, the pink unit blockade succeeded in turning away numerous anti-trans protesters, who left thinking the EPPNE protest had been cancelled or completely overwhelmed by the counter-protest.
Shortly after 11am, the black unit set off to try to make its way around the police lines protecting the anti-trans protest at the bottom of Fullum. After turning left on Ste-Catherine from Fullum, there was an altercation with a lone fascist wearing a t-shirt reading “Kill All Pedophiles”, who was knocked to the ground. About one-hundred-strong and protected by multiple side banners, the black unit moved two blocks west, then turned south on De Lorimier, before being blocked from turning east on René-Lévesque towards the EPPNE grouping by a line of riot police. For about 45 minutes, they held the intersection of De Lorimier and René-Lévesque, not able to advance closer to the transphobes, but blocking another possible access route from the metro to their gathering point, and blocking the way toward the Gay Village and downtown for any march (national 1MM4C organizers had called for marches at 1pm).
Outnumbered roughly tenfold under pouring rain, gradually being encircled by multiple groups of counter-demonstrators, and their march route to downtown blocked, the EPPNE crowd was visibly demoralized. Some vented their frustrations on their Facebook Lives, telling (and showing) viewers how much better organized our side was and reprimanding theirs for not showing up. One remarked on Whatsapp that their opponents were “only 0.33% of the population. But very smart and evil.” And we can only take that as a compliment.
Close to noon, the black unit met up with a group of reinforcements at the corner of Ste-Catherine and De Lorimier and set off again southward, with a plan. Upon reaching René-Lévesque, one contingent stopped and faced the line of riot police like before, forcing them to stay in place, while the rest of the group, about a hundred people, continued south, then cut east through the gap between two buildings. Despite these movements being slowed by some general confusion, the SPVM appeared completely on their heels for the first time that day, their plans for protecting the anti-trans protest at risk of breaking. Police vans sped around the corner, and a half-dozen riot cops moved in, shouting at the contingent to reverse course, as one made a show of loading his rubber-bullet gun and others brandished pepper spray. This intimidation succeeded in holding the crowd back for long enough that a number more riot cops and bike cops could arrive and form a proper line. Hopefully, these experiences with coordination in the streets will nourish our tactical imagination and help us prepare even better for next time.
The following map shows the final positions of the transphobes, counter-protesters and police:
Shortly thereafter, as the black unit regrouped on De Lorimier, word spread that EPPNE had called the dispersal of their protest, confirming their defeat by not even attempting to march and needing to instruct their attendees on safe routes out of the area.
There was so much going on in different places across the multiple city blocks spanned by the counter-protest on the 21st that it would be impossible to give a comprehensive account in one report-back, though we want to send a specific shout-out to everyone who ensured the delivery of food or served it and to everyone who held banners for hours on end.
While the logic of counter-protest can place us on the defensive, intuition tells us that we can move beyond a purely reactive posture — that we have something to gain — when we get organized on a basis of solidarity and put our faith in each other rather than media, law or the police.
Devil’s night is traditionally a time of mischief and subversive activity, striking fear into the forces of order. On this night, the weekend before Halloween, we took the form of mischievous creatures and decided to haunt the Upper Westmount mansion of the real estate boss Stephen Shiller. Stephen is one half of Shiller Lavy, and his son Brandon Shiller runs Hillpark Capital. These firms are responsible for renovicting and pricing out many tenants in the Montreal area in the past decade, putting hundreds of people out on the street.
The action was simple, any trickster could do it: we inserted a garden hose left outside into the mail slot of the front door and turned on the water, before disappearing into the night.
We summon others in the fight against Bill 31 to join the incantations of anti-landlord discourse with nocturnal rituals of anti-landlord action.
While we targeted Stephen Shiller for being an especially horrific landlord, we recognize authority must be washed away wherever it appears.
Comments Off on Intifada Everywhere: Direct Action at the Office of Melanie Joly
Nov012023
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
A banner was hung in front of the building where Mélanie Joly’s office is (225 Chabanel O., Montreal). Red paint was poured, and the list of the names of the Palestinians killed by Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza (produced by Palestine’s Health ministry) was left in front of the door of the building.
Statement follows.
Canada, yet again guilty of genocide
It is said by some that Gaza is the biggest prison in the world. We fully agree with such a description, although it is obviously now a euphemism, since Gaza has become an extermination camp. Blocking water, food, medicine, electricity, fuel and internet to a population wholly dependent on imports and international aid, while carpet bombing them, can only produce one outcome. You can avoid the word as much as you please, but the reality is this : the Israeli government is committing a genocide, in full view and with your full support, Mélanie Joly, Justin Trudeau and the rest of the parasitic invertebrates that supposedly represent our will and our interests.
The international network of complicity
By the time this statement is released the latest phase of the genocide will have killed more than 10,000 Palestinians. This number includes entire families, teachers, doctors, journalists, students, drivers, nurses, street vendors, artists and so on. The colonial Israeli state tests the world’s threshold on crimes against humanity with every passing day. Canada might not be the one who is dropping a thousand bombs daily in Gaza, or handing out assault rifles to settlers bent on annexation and shooting families. However, Israel wouldn’t be able to do so without the unrelenting support of the imperialist states of the “global north”. Israel wouldn’t even exist today if it wasn’t continually armed, financed, and legitimized by the imperialist powers of Europe, some of their former colonies like Canada and Australia, and the hegemonic empire of the US.
Bound together militarily by NATO, and economically through trade agreements and forums like the G7, this imperial coalition fosters its alliance with the fascist state of Israel as a way to keep a military fortress in this historically strategic region. This alliance is crucial to the destabilization strategy put forward by the US, which seeks to prevent the peoples and the states of the region that are hostile to US hegemony from uniting themselves in an anti-imperialist struggle. Israel is vital to the US empire, which is essential to Canadian power. Mainstream medias, held by capitalist conglomerates or states, work hand in hand with this coalition to legitimize the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by disseminating the dehumanizing fascist discourse of the Israeli government.
International solidarity : Act here and now!
We salute those who have marched through the streets, blocked governmental offices and weapons manufacturers, and expressed their solidarity on the walls and windows of this sad, sad, sad fucken city built on stolen lands. However, we are convinced that we are not the only ones who are disappointed and frustrated with the passivity and tardiness of our fellow comrades of the far left in taking transformative actions against the ongoing genocide. We also deplore the statements that were issued by leftist organizations like [redacted] that equalized the violence of the colonized with that of the colonizers like.
While we understand the threat of violence that activists face by the strong international Zionist forces, we draw our courage from our comrades in Palestine who are at the front line of this genocidal and colonial violence. They are calling for us to be in solidarity. Now is the time to respond to their calls for action without hesitation. Solidarity is not a slogan nor a hashtag. Solidarity materializes itself through action. To abstain from answering swiftly and with force to the calls to strike, to protest, to sabotage and to boycott coming from Palestine is to give a free pass to “our” governments in their unconditional support to Israel.
Colonial peace or liberation struggle?
Peace is not the absence of conflict; peace is the presence of justice. Justice in Palestine, just as in Canada, means decolonization. This material process implies that the colonized get their lands back, that they can enjoy the right to return and that they obtain reparations, all of which, sadly for our self-appointed liberal allies, mean that violence will inevitably be part of the process. Of course, gunning down Israeli “non-combatants” can be criticized from a humanistic and a strategic perspective. Nonetheless, we have to keep in mind that Israel is a settler colonial state in which every citizen has to go through military training and service. The “civilians” of Israel are literally born to serve an ethnic cleansing enterprise. A population subjected daily to humiliation, state and settler repression, manufactured poverty, apartheid and dispossession of land, cannot be held to a higher moral standard than that of the Israeli fascist state. A ceasefire, while immediately needed, is not in itself any kind of long-term solution for the people of Gaza or Palestine.
We stand with a liberated Palestine, from the river to the sea
As citizens of the settler colonial state of Canada, our immediate task is not to deliberate on the legitimacy of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, but rather to help the Palestinian struggle for self-determination by striking Israel’s international network of complicity. It implies overturning our own imperialist states, attacking our governments and blocking the capitalist production and exportation of goods to Israel. Weapons manufacturers supplying Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people must be blocked, trashed and shamed. You can find the ones closest to you on Worldbeyondwar.org (see their “Canada: Stop Arming Israel” campaign).
Calling for the enforcement of international or humanitarian law is an hopeless endeavor. As long as the US and it’s lackeys like “Canada” remain the dominant powers of an international order based on capitalism and imperialism, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians will go on, no matter how many millions decry it. This is not an opinion but simply a description of the actual situation. Only a popular and international uprising, employing militant means and defiant methods, has the potential to overturn the international network of complicity. That is our solidarity.
On a Friday morning in June, something like 200 fascists descended upon Broadview and Carling in suburban ottawa. By the time they’d formed up, a blockade of defenders had already taken the north side of the intersection. Over the next several hours, those two large contingents split into smaller blockades spanning several blocks, with a series of confrontations that ended in around 400 defenders completely corralling the fascists off. There we stayed until the end of the school day, leaving the fash with no one to harass or proselytise to and heading home victorious.
Through the last months of face-offs, our enemies have gotten bolder and more willing to be violent. This demo brought supporters in from all across the country, even one guy from all the way down in Florida. On top of all the regular pushing, shoving and punching, people were sexually assaulted and threatened with dogs. There was at least one credible knife sighting. Many of us were hurt, some injured in ways that lasted beyond that week.
But we’ve also witnessed some pretty goddamn beautiful collective skill-building through being in the streets together over and over after the convoy. The difference in discipline and open-ness to militance from the much-mythologised shitshow of Billings Bridge is drastic. Not that long ago, it was hard to imagine anyone just showing up in black bloc on ottawa streets – and if they did, they were immediately badjacketed by marshalls.
In contrast, on June 9, we had walls of banners multiple rows deep, at multiple heights, completely shutting out livestreamers’ cameras. As the day went on, they broke into four smaller, maneuvrable units to cover the terrain. Honourable mentions also go to black umbrellas and pole-mounted banners with text facing inwards at our own people – “WEAR A FUCKING MASK” and “STOP FILMING” – caught on camera by liberal streamers who characteristically ignored the messages. Bloc crews saw their fashion choices working just as intended. Fash tried and failed miserably at picking out individuals from the crowds, accusing anyone in black of anything and everything.
Set the tone and people will follow
The most inspiring part of that day has to be how readily people stepped up to wall off the fash – even if it meant chasing after them as they popped up out of side streets left and right. It wasn’t just the usual bloc crews and trans punks holding down those lines, it was everyone, government employees, grandparents and other Love-Not-Hate types. Even the most cynical among us hardly noticed if anyone was urging peace and non-confrontation.
It turns out civil servants will follow the lead of a vest and megaphone even if they’re calling to confront fascists head-on. It’s hard to tell how much of that is a growing familiarity and acceptance of antifascist tactics in ottawa and how much of that is just liberals’ deeply ingrained desire to follow authority – any authority, apparently.
Sometimes, liberals can also be handled by just keeping their hands busy. At the start, the crowd kept making way for clusters of cops, risking the police splitting our side down the middle and forcing us off the street. A massive horizontal pride banner, requiring about a dozen pairs of hands to hold taut, and other banners were distributed to the back. Redirection worked to prevent them from parting again though they’d never dare, or want, to knowingly stand in the cops’ way.
Trans liberation means youth liberation
There are three schools along those few blocks of Broadview: Notre Dame High School, Broadview Public School (K-8) and Nepean High School. Billboard Chris chose this specific street and these specific schools for a reason – because on October 18, 2021, students from that neighbourhood completely fucking humiliated him and ran him out of town.
As governments all around Canada go all-in on attacks on trans youth, we must understand that trans liberation requires youth liberation. It means liberation not only from right-wing legislators and parents who want to own their children but all the carceral power of the state. It means understanding schools as themselves a site of violence through police and policing by staff. It means empowering trans kids to exercise their own agency while showing them that they aren’t alone in this three-way fight. It means the end to adult supremacy and settler colonial power as a whole.
Tout le monde déteste la police
June 9th was probably the biggest police response a lot of new antifascists in ottawa have seen. Near the beginning, bike cops faced up against our frontlines and we braced ourselves, expecting them to try to bash their way through us. Instead, our numbers grew and we reinforced our lines. They seemed to give up on gaining full control of the terrain, though they got in more than their fair share of assaults against us in defence of the fash. But we held our positions even as the cops had to call for water and switch out their overheating forces.
The arrest count at the end of the day was 5 catch-and-releases, no charges. Of those 5, 4 were defenders and 1 was a brown teen on the other side. As always, the cops couldn’t be clearer about their allegiances. Though no one has to shell out for legal fees or mass-delete Signal chats this time around, that still means being identified to the state and unmasked in full view of the fash.
We also had the first uses of pepper spray against our side in a while. And some mainstream media journos – much as they’re not our friends, either – got shut out by the cops. A drone watched us throughout, now a regular feature of community defences in ottawa. All this reminds us of RCMP tactics, catch-and-releases and media exclusion zones at Fairy Creek. Is that a coincidence, or is our new chief pig bringing out the tricks he tested in his old job out west? We’re seeing shifts in police tactics now, away from their mostly hands-off approach to the left in the past couple years but different too from the police lines that would whale on our comrades pre-2020. Where that’s headed remains to be seen.
Ottawa is one of those cities where everyone leaves or burns out. It often seems like no one still around remembers that fascists rallied in ottawa long before January 2022. So as shit keeps heating up, we want to remind the folks who got into this through the pandemic or convoy about the recent history of pig violence and repression against antifascists in ottawa.
While we hope we won’t have to deal with them again so soon, we should all be reminding ourselves what to do when arrests happen. The crowd was slow to respond when people were grabbed and hauled away. Some belatedly rushed in with umbrellas to block streamers’ cameras, but far too late. When that one youth was arrested, those around him visibly turned away. (We know what the cops can do to brown kids and we know the fascists aren’t going to have his back. Opposing white supremacy means being against it even when a youth’s chosen the wrong side.) Possible witnesses for narrowly-avoided legal cases vanished with no way to get in touch. We should count ourselves lucky and make sure we’re prepared for the arduous task of supporting someone through charges if and when they stick in the future.
As always, we keep us safe
In the wake of that June demo and in the months after, we’ve seen more and more calls for government action, safe zones, pride funding for safety and security (cops-and-cops-and-more-cops). To that, we say: not in our fucking names.
When heads of corporate prides come together with their fancy press conferences to beg Daddy Trudeau for more money for their TD-sponsored festivals, we call it what it is: a fucking insult. We reject the co-optation by politicians and nonprofit who spit in our faces by making us into victims and not proud defenders.
We must remember that June 9th was an unequivocal victory. No amount of politicians wringing their hands and crying in the press can change that we fucking did that. Trans people and our comrades-in-arms corralled hundreds of violent fascists and held them in place for over two hours. We did it ourselves, despite the best efforts of the police to stop us. And we can and will do it again. In the face of resurgent fascism, neoliberal co-optation and state repression, we will win.
