From subMedia
Montreal radicals began a “week of occupations” by squatting an abandoned hospital that they hope to turn into a housing complex. When the police attacked, they barricaded themselves inside. More actions are planned through the coming week..
From subMedia
This morning, a group of autonomous environmentalists in Montreal occupied the offices of EACOM Timber, in opposition to the company’s plan to log forest in the habitat of endangered caribou in Northern Quebec. In order to facilitate the logging operation, the government of Quebec plans to displace the entire herd of caribou into a zoo, a move which has been opposed by the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador. The company is currently constructing a road into the zone that they hope to log, and the activists say the fight is far from over.
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
On the night of May 19, we decided to come together to attack the restaurant and bar Ludger, the offices of Projet Montréal, and the IGA supermarket in Saint-Henri.
If we attacked Ludger, it’s not only to denounce the over-priced meals that they serve, but to attack the way of life of young professional yuppies who invade popular neighbourhoods with their cash, and contribute to the exclusion of the poor in the neighbourhood.
If we attacked the office of Projet Montréal it’s not only for their role in the gentrification of the neighbourhood in advancing the argument of social mixity (mixité) and favoring the establishment of new businesses and condo projects. We attacked the office because it’s the entire political world that we want to attack. We refuse to be represented and directed by someone else, whether a Prime Minister or a borough councillor. We are masters of our own lives.
If we attacked the IGA it’s not only because the food is too expensive, but because we believe that eating well shouldn’t be a luxury, but something that’s free and accessible to everybody. In this neighbourhood, some people are hungry and we don’t want to be sorry observers of the situation.
We’re very aware that the targets that were attacked aren’t large capitalist institutions. However, these businesses are the reflection, at the smallest scale, of a world that always favors the wealthiest over the poorest, who are always subject to further misery. This is why we wanted to reverse the order of things for an instant, and have it understood that though shuffling through each day we can also bite. We want rich lives, not the lives of the rich.
We were happy the morning after to read in the news that other businesses had been attacked the same night in Verdun.
P.S. Hope we didn’t disturb your little Friday night dinner too much.
Des insoumi-ses (ungovernables)
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Despite a sizable turnout on a rainy day, May Day in Montreal left many feeling like the police succeeded in keeping our celebrations tame and orderly. The anti-capitalist demonstration started in two locations: a downtown contingent organized by CLAC (Convergence of Anti-Capitalist Struggles), and an anti-fascist, anti-borders contingent which would join the downtown one from the east. This was organized in part to avoid demonstrating alongside the PCR, authoritarian communists that CLAC persists in organizing with.
The downtown contingent saw clashes between the PCR and the police after a bank was vandalized with paint bombs, leading to an arrest of one of their militants. The east contingent had at least one hundred anarchists wearing masks, some of whom carried black flags. People seemed to be waiting to join the demonstration downtown before popping shit off, but unfortunately, before this could happen police flanked both sides of the demo. Once the demonstrations merged downtown, this flanking was deployed to a degree not yet seen in Montreal. Nearly 100 cops walked on each side of the crowd, so that along nearly its entire length at least one sidewalk was held by cops.
An atmosphere of vulnerability to these police tactics prevailed until the demonstration fizzled out hours later. It deterred major property destruction and attacks on police, without cops even having to crack down. At any given time, police on either side were ready to intervene, and the demonstration had neither side-banners nor enough density to be able to defend against the police attacks that would likely follow any unlawful action. Apart from a few luxury car windows being smashed, the tension never materialized into collective action.
The police have all year (and large budgets) to prepare for annual rituals of revolt that Montreal anarchists have been cultivating, such as May Day and March 15. The defeat of this year’s May Day reaffirmed that we should be experimenting with demonstrations (spread through word-of-mouth or social media) that don’t give police as much time to prepare. However, we don’t want to abandon these annual rituals either. Like December 6th in Athens, May Day in many cities, and the Day of the Combatant Youth in Chile, annual rituals of anarchist rioting can still serve us. There are many people who will only be in the streets with us on May Day when there’s no major social movement. Interacting with them, and preparing for moments of generalized social rupture when we will have to sometimes engage with a highly prepared and mobilized police force, make these traditions worthwhile.
It’s impressive how many anarchists came out on a rainy May Day, seemingly in affinity groups. Here are two proposals for how this significant potential could adapt to the recent development in policing tactics:
As anarchists donning the black mask, we need to get better at staying together as a bloc. Our default is to be scattered through the crowd in affinity groups, or even alone. Although this is likely due to the social barriers of people not knowing each other, we need to start to overcome these to form effective black blocs rather than sparse clusters throughout the demonstration.
We need our own side-banners to help delineate and defend this bloc. Without side-banners, we have nothing to prevent police from easily cutting into the crowd to make targeted arrests. Side-banners also help to obscure police vision on who is doing what. They are a mobile barricade, and we need to start prioritizing their deployment.
May Day in Berlin this year, where side-banners are used in succession to defend against police flanking.
As for where to position the bloc, we think it makes the most sense to copy the ‘Cortège de tête’ from our comrades in France, who during the Loi Travail revolts always had the combative section of the demonstration at the front. If you’re there to participate in the bloc, you know that you can always find it at the front. Although in the past, hanging back has meant that smaller groups receive less police attention and can more easily act, now that the police are lining the entirety of the demo this just leaves those smaller groups isolated.
Let’s refuse to allow ourselves to be pre-emptively kettled by police flanking us on the sidewalks. This could be accomplished by building a culture of consistently taking the sidewalks whenever we take the streets, before police can fill them. Past attempts to make this happen have always remained small and police have managed to push through. This is where reinforced banners and combative flagpoles could come in handy. If police try to take the sidewalks back from us, a team anchored by a reinforced banner could block their passage and make them vulnerable to projectiles thrown from behind the sidewalk and street banners.
Although many of us who show up for these moments don’t have organizing relationships outside of them, if we make efforts to prepare within our affinity groups in ways that will sync with the efforts of others, our rituals could take on a renewed force.
See you at the (mobile) barricades!
From Sub.media
Today the far right in Montreal was able to take the streets, with the supposed aim to protest against the Liberal government. They left out their affiliations out of their call-out, and successfully attracted a sizeable crowd, who were none the wiser about the politics of the organizers.
#monteeal riot Police form a perimeter around #fascist demo preventing #Antifa from confronting them pic.twitter.com/dvi4ymxznM
— submedia (@submedia) April 23, 2017
They also left their flags and insignias home, and favored Quebec flags, and in a bizarre instance, one person flew the indigenous unity flag, popularly known as the “warrior flag” Taking inspiration from recent events in the US, the proto-fascist elements within the the protests were ready to fight.
Some wore masks, body armor, and helmets and even brandished sticks. Their security marshals wore armbands, and they had scouts through the perimeter of the protest. Anarchist and anti-fascists were blocked by a large presence of riot cops, and comrades were not able to get close enough to the protesters. The police protected the protesters as they freely marched through downtown.
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
On March 25, 2017, approximately 200 people responded to a call to confront far-right groups planning to disrupt a day of anti-racist/anti-fascist workshops in Montreal. The call was made after a Facebook event calling to shut down the “terrorist workshop” surfaced. The event was made by the Canadian Coalition of Concerned Citizens (CCCC), the same group that called for the anti-immigrant March 4th demonstrations which occurred all across Canada. On that day, fascist group La Meute was able to take the streets of Montreal for the first time.
At around 9am, folks began to gather in front of the Hall Building of Concordia University’s downtown campus, where the workshop was to be held. The crowd was a mixture of students, anti-fascists, and anarchists, close to half of which had faces covered. It was a cold morning and drinking coffee without taking off our masks was proving more difficult than usual, but the very real threat of another far-right mobilization similar to that of March 4th kept us vigilant.
After about 45 minutes, a grey mini-van pulled up next to the crowd. From it emerged Georges Hallak, leader and seemingly the only member of CCCC. With a shit-eating grin and a Canadian flag affixed to a hockey stick (fucking Canadians…), he began to walk towards the crowd, making it just a few steps before his face met a barrage of fists. Police quickly made their way over, put Hallak in handcuffs, and stuffed him inside a cruiser.
The crowd cackled and cheered, equally excited and in disbelief of the scene that had transpired (seriously, a Canadian flag glued to a hockey stick…what the fuck?). To make matters even more ridiculous, it turned out that Hallak had actually been livestreaming on Facebook while all of this happened. The video of his swift demise lives on in our hearts and our hard-drives. The mood was thus set: it appeared that the crowd was feeling confrontational.
Ten minutes later, a lone skinhead materialized across the street. Clad in camo pants, some seriously tacky sunglasses, and “red braces”[1. Within a few racist skinhead circles, red braces have to be “earned” by some violent act such as attacking a perceived enemy of the white race. However, some skinheads wear red not because they have committed an act of violence but simply because it is part of their subculture.] (suspenders), the man waddled around, talked to cops, and hid behind a police cruiser, seemingly confused as to where the rest of his friends were. A few projectiles were thrown in his direction but the crowd did not engage with him further. Eventually a small group of masked individuals approached and pushed him to the ground (note: Doc Marten’s have terrible grip and don’t fare very well in the snow). After having gotten a few punches in, the scuffle was broken up by police, who pushed the masked individuals back into the crowd.
Amidst the excitement, we failed to notice that the driver of the mini-van had actually parked half a block from the demonstration. After confirming that this was in fact the same vehicle, the crowd approached it just a few seconds before it drove off. A volley of rocks pelted the speeding vehicle, though we were not able to catch up to it.
In Hallak’s livestream, he mentions having coordinated with Soldiers of Odin (SOO), an anti-immigrant vigilante group. SOO was formed in Finland in 2015 but has since established chapters in dozens of cities across Canada. Shortly after Hallak’s arrest, about twenty members of SOO were spotted in front of a McDonald’s a block away from the demonstration. A couple dozen people clad in masks broke off from the main crowd in an effort to confront them but police were everywhere.
Having regrouped, SOO marched towards the demonstration, making it just half-a-block before being met by an angry group of militants. Police at first prevented the two sides from clashing, but a small group used an alleyway to their advantage and was able to pelt the SOO group with eggs and chunks of ice. SOO pitifully made their way back to the McDonald’s and dispersed.
At some point during these initial confrontations, police were able to isolate one anti-fascist and beat and arrest him; he was later released with a ticket. The next couple hours saw many demonstrators head into the Hall Building to attend the morning’s workshop undisrupted, while a couple of hilarious events transpired outside.
Two SOO members were spotted eating cheeseburgers inside the McDonald’s. A small group of masked individuals entered the Golden Arches and attempted to confront them, but an incredibly awkward conversation broke out between the two groups instead. We stood around awkwardly while some people, presumably interested in the new all-day breakfast options, wondered if we were in line. The two men became increasingly cantankerous, and we decided reinforcements would be helpful. Soon, a crowd of twenty arrived from a block over and pummeled one of the SOO members with eggs and fists. When a pickup truck for them to flee in arrived on the corner, another member was beaten to the ground and the vehicle had a window broken with a well-placed rock.
Hallak’s mini-van, parked outside of the police station by his driver who was seemingly wanting to check up on him, was given a thorough redecoration (just in time for spring!). Police attempted to usher Hallak into the vehicle but were forced to stuff him back into a police cruiser when a small confrontational crowd emerged. The mini-van and cruiser drove off, not to be seen again.
After another hour and no sight of racists, demonstrators dispersed. The morning was eventful and filled with fun activities, a welcome morale boost after our failures on March 4th. However, we find it important to point out some areas that could use improvement.
Although the racists were definitely outnumbered and outmaneuvered, they were still able to assemble, even if only on the sidewalk. This itself can be seen as a victory for them. Their ability to take the streets will only serve to galvanize their ranks and provide opportunities for them to conduct outreach and recruit potential members. A no-platform approach works best if we make it absolutely impossible for them to show up in numbers.
The groups that show up to these events (CCCC, Soldiers of Odin, La Meute) have very public web presences. Online surveillance can help us glean crucial info in terms of their tactics and logistical capacity. These people’s faces and full names are all over Facebook.
These demonstrations can consist of a lot downtime. We sometimes wait for hours before any sign of the enemy arises. Let’s use this time to form informal assemblies or spokes-councils in which we can share ideas and discuss strategies in order to be more cohesive in the streets.
Last night, at around 10:30, six teenagers at the youth center in Val-Du-Lac, near Sherbrooke, decided to revolt against the authorities of the establishment. They threatened to smash everything inside and refused to collaborate with the intervention team at the center. Unsurprisingly, the institution called the cops. The six teenagers resisted their arrest, and will be charged with illegal assembly, assault on an agent, harassment, making threats, and obstruction of police work.
It’s heartwarming to see acts of resistance faced with these institutions which are put in place to break these youth, both physically and mentally, and which try to reinsert them into society.
Solidarity
-anarchists
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
On March 15, 2017, a dozen or so condo owners in Saint-Henri dug their cars out from under the biggest snowfall of the winter, only to learn that their tires had been slashed while they slept.
We carried out this simple action on the eve of the 20th annual Protest Against Police Brutality, in Hochelaga, to emphasize that the struggle against policing and the struggle against gentrification are one and the same: the creation of a world hostile to social control and all forms of domination.
It required minimal planning and could have been done at any of dozens of locations in the neigbourhood.
Through acting, we reflected on tactical choices in the targeting of individual (if random) yuppies and rich people in the context of anti-gentrification activity. Damaging luxury cars is often named as a desirable way of doing so. It was apparent that a bit under half the cars in the condo parking lots we visited were of luxury brands. We slashed tires of all the cars. Many yuppies decide to display their wealth by other means than a BMW or Mercedes. Regardless of their consumer choices, it’s worthwhile to make them feel unsafe in the neighbourhood by damaging their property. And targeting all condo owners’ or yuppies’ vehicles may make it harder for the cops to catch people in the act, as they will attempt to do if the practice continues to spread, and harder for owners to secure their vehicles, in indoor parking for instance. However, it may be warranted to focus on luxury cars for forms of vandalism that are more visible to passersby than slashed tires, in the interest of actions being intelligible to neighbors and people on the street.
Fuck the police, long live de-gentrification!
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
A couple hundred people gathered yesterday evening at Place Valois in Hochelaga for the 20th annual edition of the Demonstration Against Police Brutality, organized by the Collective Opposed to Police Brutality (COBP). It was the day after the largest snowstorm of the year in Montreal, and the mounds of snow lining the streets meant obstacles for both demonstrators and the cops. Refusing the protest framework demanding less brutal police, we carried with us the memory of March fifteenths past and their legacy of anti-police revolt. Also, rocks.
The words of a report-back from the last March 15 in Hochelaga seven years ago still ring true:
“We went to that demonstration intending to attack the police. Apart from all the weapons we brought, we carried with us a desire to no longer see a single cop walk the streets the next day; at least without a limp, a headache and a feeling of fear that no overtime pay could reconcile. We went out into the streets to hit them as if we could actually smack them the fuck out of our lives, with no guilt, remorse or shame about it. While acknowledging that we have yet to realize the depth of our desires (cops aren’t yet running for their lives), we can still move our lives and projects in that direction.”
– Measuring the Meaning of a March, in March, in Montreal
After a speech by the COBP, the crowd set off west down Ontario Street, about a third of which was masked. A dozen black flags and a couple reinforced banners could be seen near the front of the demo, in addition to a leading COBP banner. There were no police marching alongside the demo, as they kept out of projectile range from all directions, and were likely also dissuaded by snow conditions. While some police followed along parallel streets, apparently at least some of the riot squad had to take the metro, possibly due to the storm disrupting their original transport plans. Some rocks were distributed and additional projectiles sought along Ontario, though without much success, as everything was covered in snow. We rapidly and uneventfully crossed Centre-Sud and reached the eastern edge of the downtown core, a firework set off above us to announce our arrival in comfortable and well-known terrain. Individuals in the bloc asked the front banner to slow down several times; it felt like the demo was running after itself, with no good reason to be. This made it very difficult for people running late to join, or the demo to stay tight. We would like to see future demos slow down, or even stop, when there isn’t an immediate threat from police – allowing more smashing, graffing, wheatpasting, barricading, dancing!
Approaching the area around the Montreal police (SPVM) headquarters on Saint-Urbain Street, police in cruisers and on bikes ahead of the demo were attacked with mortar fireworks. As the crowd amassed around the intersection of Ontario and Saint-Urbain, more fireworks were shot at the police mobilizing to defend their headquarters, then at half a dozen police on horseback approaching from the east. “Get those animals off those horses” almost came true as the horses bucked in fear, causing the horse squad to call it quits for the night.
Rather than congregate at the police headquarters and allow the cops to move in, we continued west on Maisonneuve. A few blocks later, more fireworks were shot at cops ahead of us. A photographer tracking and filming a member of the bloc from a close distance had his camera knocked from his hand, prompting a more general confrontation with media at the front of the march. Rocks and snowballs were thrown at a mainstream media cameraperson, who was then charged with a reinforced banner and knocked to the ground, while his hired goon was beaten with flagpoles from behind the banner.
A lone police cruiser was spotted to our left, parked on Union Street. A crowd quickly swarmed and thoroughly smashed it. On the same block, heading south now, display windows of the Bay department store (one of the oldest colonial businesses of Canada) were smashed and tagged with graffiti. After about fifteen minutes of a determined energy translating into conflictual action amongst the hundred-and-fifty-strong crowd, the cops executed an effective dispersal and kettling maneuver. Riot police lines ran up both sides of the demo, while bike cops chased and closed off exits from behind. Many dispersed on side streets ahead of the cops, but a few dozen people were fed east on Sainte-Catherine into a trap at Place-des-Arts, as more riot cops emerged from Saint-Urbain and blocked off the only remaining exit route.
This never should have been allowed to happen; our strength is on small streets that give police less mobility, so of course they funneled us towards the most open space downtown. Turning west on St. Catherine against traffic, and offensively attacking the vulnerable bike police who succeeded in intimidating us towards Place-des-Arts, would have at least allowed for a better dispersal.
Instead, hearts sank as the cops quickly tightened the kettle of thirty people against a side of a Place-des-arts building. But with shouts of “On fonce!” (“Let’s push!”) and an inspiring confidence and swiftness, before secondary cop lines could form, those kettled pushed against the riot cops blocking the sidewalk from the east and broke free. More riot police tried to block off the new exit routes, but there weren’t enough of them, as people raced through snow banks and snow-covered parking lots, for the most part getting away. Unfortunately, around ten people reportedly ended up in a new kettle that formed in the parking lot outside the SPVM headquarters. They had backpacks seized and were presumably photographed, but were let go without any tickets or charges. The demo ended with no arrests.
For combatting the police’s inevitable dispersal strategy, with some planning ahead, a reinforced banner crew could have moved to one of the sidewalks to block or at least delay flanking police lines from getting in position (perhaps accompanied by fire-extinguishers that could be discharged to slow their advance). Throwing projectiles at the flanking cop lines has proven ineffective, as most of the crowd is moving too quickly to fight in cohesive units, making it difficult to throw enough rocks to have an impact on police movements. Let’s also bring the lesson into the future that mortar fireworks were somewhat successful in keeping police at a distance, especially in a terrain where more conventional projectiles were hard to scavenge.
In recent years, the prospect that the black bloc could take time and space away from the police on March 15th has felt remote, so yesterday was definitely inspiring. On one of the two days of the year (the other being May Day) that police prepare for year-round, we were still able to significantly evade police controls, and get conflictual with confidence. This speaks to how we should prepare for demos throughout the year with more confidence in what could be possible. It’s clear that we can bring conflict to the streets in a way that doesn’t signal the end of the demo, as we’ve come to expect, but rather the start of something.
We’re also left with some strategic questions in relation to demos that we’d appreciate a conversation around. When the police are intentionally and constantly keeping their distance from the demo, when and how should attempts be made to seek out confrontation with them? What other goals do we have in such situations? How can we use the space and time we have in these moments to better prepare for the eventual police attack?
A note to the independent journalists of the city: it can be hard to distinguish you from mass-media, who generate incriminating evidence that they readily hand over to police (and who we are going to attack at every chance we get). Distinguish yourself by your behaviour – only film from a distance, and don’t film the attackers themselves, only the attackers’ targets. Despite whatever good intentions you likely have, if you film people doing crime, it can and will be used to solidify evidence against them (even when wearing a mask, other clothing items or facial features are regularly used by police to identify suspects). You don’t wanna be that guy that actively endangers demonstrators by exposing them to police violence, so please take this seriously.
Two more things: never film at the starting point or in the first fifteen minutes of a demo, to allow everyone who plans to wear a mask to have an opportunity to put it on safely. And before publishing videos, always blur the bodies of people who are masked. Check out this tutorial if you’re not sure how.
We’re encouraged that Document Everything’s coverage of the demonstration uses all of these techniques; individuals in the bloc are blurred, and the targets of actions are filmed rather than the people attacking them. During the swarming of the police car, the screen cuts to black and we only hear the sounds of destruction. 99% Media’s coverage also blurred individuals smashing the cruiser, but we’d like to critique that they released High-Definition close-up footage of unblurred masked individuals shooting fireworks at cops – no-one’s bloc attire is perfect, and footage like this can put people in a jail cell.
Unfortunately, Document Everything, subMedia, and a few other independent journalists who are clearly on our side were attacked by the bloc – we’d like to see people in the bloc be less indiscriminate towards anyone with a camera. Let’s paint and smash the cameras of any mass media without hesitation, but let’s also take the time to explain to independent media what practices endanger us. Conversely, Maxime Deland (whose incriminating photos were later published by TVA Nouvelles, and who seems to be the mass media’s go-to photographer for confrontational demonstrations) went unnoticed within the bloc because he looked like independent media – here’s his face for next time.
We’re thrilled that this year the COBP decided to stop using the failed strategy of denouncing the most egregious behavior of the police, and instead called for decentralized direct actions against them, while expressing inspiration by several attacks on police and surveillance over the last year. The COBP explicitly supported the conflict with the police in their communique the day after the demo:
“We applaud all the autonomous groups that mobilized for March 15th, and that get organized all year long to build a balance of power against the SPVM and all police forces…”
“…We witnessed a proactive March 15, with diversified, offensive, and effective actions.”
“We salute the way in which militants fight the police state, and this despite the violence of its response.”
We’d like to see this taken one step further by next year’s demo being called as against police, period. This year the itinerary was chosen based on the locations of past police murders, and a symbolic acknowledgment of the struggle against gentrification in Hochelaga. Walking through the residential streets of Centre-Sud for a half hour to meet this symbolic goal of starting in Hochelaga didn’t feel worthwhile to us. We think for future years it makes more sense to prioritize routes that give us fighting advantages, because revolt is the best form of memory.
From CLAC
This morning, the Welfare offices of Parc Extension, Rosemont and Montréal Nord have been covered in posters denouncing the new welfare reform (statute 25). This reform is an attack against the most vulnerable amongst us, forcing those who actually live on a third of the low income threshold to get into employability training or get their check’s cut. This statute is particularly cruel as in increasing the work load of the government workers, it does not create any savings for the government, just even more miserable condition for the population.
The reform is also particularly vicious as it now forbids people to be out of the province for more than 7 days straight, which particularly targets migrant women whom have family outside of the province or country. In general, women are more affected by welfare cuts as they are more likely to depend on welfare to do unpaid domestic work : raise children, family support, etc.
Impoverishment in Quebec is constantly increasing. As wages stagnate, prices of food, housing and transportation keeps going up at a staggeringly fast rate. And the money goes in the pockets of the bankers that keeps on making record profits as the social net that long finished shredding is now replaced by consumer credit.
All attacks against the poorest amongst us must be denounced as they destroy the all of the other economic gain made by the population in the last years.As long as we’ll leave people in the most absolute misery, all our struggles for social justice will only give us short lived islands of temporary wealth.
