Last night, a few friends painted a flaming police cruiser in the neighborhood of Hochelaga along the main boulevard, inspired by the struggle against police in St. Louis and Ferguson. Solidarity with all the rebels out on the streets learning how to fight the police together. Despite the more successful enforcement of social peace in Montreal at the moment, your acts and words resonate with the furthering of hostilities towards white supremacy, the State, and capital in our context.
Vandalised because of their business name
Our enemies – 11/6/2015
A restaurant named “La Mâle Bouffe” was the target of radical feminists who broke one of its windows and covered the neighborhood of Hochelaga in posters denouncing gentrification.
It was on June 2, ten days before the opening of his restaurant on rue Ontario, that the owner noticed that a large rock had been thrown through a window of his business.
Posters
The vandals also plastered dozens of posters throughout the neighborhood in which the logo of the restaurant, a mustached man with tattoos, is modified into an anarchist woman.
Around the design, it reads: “When gentrification and sexism get on well together. Against a neighbourhood that is ‘clean,’ expensive, and chauvinist. Against the escalation of violence against women. Reclaim our neighbourhoods and resume control of our streets.”
If the phenomenon continues, new business owners will be afraid to set up shop in Hochelaga, believes the owner.
Vandalism in Hochelaga has become a true plague while several businesses on rue Ontario are regularly targeted by vandals opposed to gentrification.
“This year, they stole flower pots from our terrace, but it’s only the beginning of the season. Last year, vandals threw bricks through the window and another time, they painted an anarchy symbol on the facade” denounced the owner of restaurant Le Valois, who prefered to not say his name.
In dozens
For the last two years, more than a dozen acts of vandalism against businesses were reported in Hochelaga.
For example, the windows of Bagatelle bistro and In Vivo as well as Le Chasseur were smashed with bricks.
A bit more than two years ago, the exterieur of William J. Walter was even covered in yellow paint after an anti-capitalist demonstration.
“Someone put paint in a fire extinguisher and sprayed the entirety of the store, it was truly exasperating. They also smashed a window.” recounted the manager of Benjamin Fallourd.
From our enemies – Global News, 01/25/2015
In a brazen attempt to vandalize several businesses at around midnight on Saturday, a group of individuals wearing ski masks broke the windows of four businesses located on Notre-Dame Street in St-Henri.
Dressed all in black, the vandals damaged storefronts as seen in a security video obtained by Global News.
The damage to Jesse Bowden’s shop, Campanelli, was just shy of $8000 in glass alone.
“We’ve never seen or witnessed a group like this, at this time, with so many witnesses, with weapons running en masse in the middle of the street, this isn’t a war zone” says the concerned business owner.
There is speculation that this is a result of growing anti-gentrification sentiment from some people in the community.
According to another local business owner, Corey Shapiro, “It’s no longer vandalism, it’s causing terror to people who live in the area.”
Two of his businesses were attacked over the weekend, businesses he says help the neighbourhood to thrive.
This is not the first time attacks like this have happened in the area.
According to a barber named Thaddeus who works at Shapiro’s barbershop, “We’ve been , and the night before, there was an incident outside Juicyyy lab, so obviously there’s a bunch of people who don’t like what were doing.”
Vandal rampage targets shops on Notre Dame in St. Henri
From our enemies – CTV, 01/25/2015
Police are investigating after at least eight stores in St-Henri were vandalized at 11:30 p.m Saturday night as a group of masked individuals wearing hoods went on a violent destructive rampage on Notre Dame St. W. near Delinelle St. in the Southwest borough.
The masked vandals came equipped to smash windows. “There were about 10 guys all dressed in black and they came with pool balls and crow bars and broke the windows and 30 minutes later everything was broken everywhere,” said Vincent Powell.
Several witnesses called 9-1-1, but when the suspects fled the scene before police arrived.
The Saturday night attacks came one night after an opening night party for a juice bar was targeted by what appeared to be the same attackers. Entrepreneur Corey Shapiro said that smoke bombs were tossed into his newly-opened juice bar Friday. When he went out to look at what was going on, he was hit in the face by pepper spray.
“I ran outside to see what the story was and I got pepper sprayed by people dressed all in black with masks, who had made a strategic attack on a crowd of a couple of hundred people,” he said. “This was an attack potentially endangering people’s lives.”
Jesse Bowden, who is a co-owner of the Campanelli boutique, was on hand Sunday evaluating the damage. He told CTV Montreal that there has been a history of such attacks on the strip.
“They came through about eight months ago spray painting the whole front of the storeface and a group then put out a manifesto on a website saying it was a politically motivated attack to stop the gentrification of this neighbourhood. These are people who are unhappy with the neighbourhood has changed, but the people that are changing it are all from this neighbourhood,” he said.
From our enemies – Montreal Gazette, 01/25/2015
Business owners in St-Henri are calling on the city of Montreal to take action to stop what some are calling an organized campaign of anti-gentrification “terrorism” in the Sud-Ouest borough neighbourhood.
For several months now, graffiti denouncing gentrification has been appearing on walls and windows of businesses along a stretch of Notre-Dame St. W., a formerly rundown area that has been attracting business catering to higher income residents in recent years.
Last Friday evening, several masked individuals dressed all in black threw a smoke bomb into a crowd celebrating the opening of a high-end juice bar on Notre-Dame St. W. near St-Philippe St. One member of the group also pepper-sprayed the owner of that business, Corey Shapiro, in the face.
And early Sunday, a similarly dressed group was seen breaking windows of several businesses along Notre-Dame St. W. with crowbars and billiard balls. The vandalism was witnessed by many, as it happened shortly after midnight, when bar and restaurant patrons were still out in numbers.
“I’m asking people to stop,” Shapiro said in an interview with the Montreal Gazette on Tuesday. “I’m asking the city to come in and to stop this. It is no longer vandalism. It is terrorism. Somebody is terrorizing the neighbourhood.”
Montreal police say it is too early to say whether the two incidents are linked, but police spokesperson Sgt. Raphaël Bergeron acknowledged there have been a number of similar incidents in that area in recent months.
New condominiums along the Lachine Canal and the opening of the nearby Glen site of the McGill University Health Centre have been attracting wealthier residents to the area in recent years, and not everyone is happy about it.
In an anonymous article posted last November in anarchistnews.org — a website that describes itself as a non-sectarian source for news about and of concern to anarchists — “some anarchists” claimed responsibility for vandalizing several new businesses along Notre-Dame St. W.
The article describes with derision the “new foodie restaurants, high-end boutiques, art galleries and ‘drinkeries’ catering to the residents of all the canal-side condos, replacing the dollar stores and flea markets.” The post goes on to say, “we decided to render some of our disgust with gentrification by vandalizing two such examples with fire extinguishers filled with paint.”
One of those businesses named as targets in the post was Shapiro’s barbershop, Notorious, and another was Campanelli, a coffee shop and clothing boutique. Both were again attacked in last weekend’s vandalism, along with other nearby businesses.
Shapiro also owns an eyewear store called Vintage Frames Company on Notre-Dame St. W. and a half-dozen modest residential properties in St-Henri. But he says he is not in the business of pushing anyone out of the neighbourhood.
He said most of the people in the neighbourhood are happy to see new businesses.
“Some people aren’t. But the people who aren’t, in most cases, are targeting their unhappiness at the wrong people. I’m not responsible for wages or income. I’m not responsible for the world’s jobs. I’m responsible for the wages, income and safety of the people I employ.”
Shapiro admits he may be a particular target for criticism from anti-gentrification activists because he wears gold chains and drives a gold BMW. He says he got the car for free in a marketing deal with BMW and the gold theme runs through his businesses, but he is “not a rich man.”
He seems frustrated when asked how he proposes that the city solve the problem. He is a businessman who deals in eyewear, juice and hair, not a politician, he says.
“I don’t have the solution because this is not my forté. I mean, if the mayor comes to me and says that to solve this problem, he needs a powerful pair of glasses, I’m your guy. Or if he feels he needs a boost in the morning, I got him on the juice. Or if he feels people don’t like him or don’t take him seriously because he has a bad haircut, I’m the guy to cut his hair. But I’m not the guy to plan or tell anybody how to fix this.”
The mayor of the Sud-Ouest borough, Benoit Dorais, said he is already working on some potential solutions. First, he condemned the vandalism publicly and asked Montreal police to increase their surveillance of the St-Henri area.
But he also acknowledged that there is some resentment of the neighbourhood’s new, middle and upper-middle class residents and the businesses that cater to them.
More than half of the Sud-Ouest borough’s residents still live on incomes that fall under the poverty line, he said, and businesses that cater to that clientele are not actually being pushed out.
From Contra-info
Note of Contra Info: We publish this communiqué as we received, hoping that the insects did not suffer retaliation
On the morning of April 24th, 2015, we released hundreds of crickets in the Macdonald Engineering Building of McGill University, with the goal that they would spread and disrupt operations in multiple labs involved in technological development for the military. The campaign Demilitarize McGill has published extensive research on these labs’ activities, which range from military-funded explosives experiments to development of algorithms for control of social networks in collaboration with North American intelligence agencies. This action was simple to pull off, requiring no special skills or resources.
The Shock Wave Physics Group, the Aerospace Mechatronics Lab, the Network Dynamics Lab and their collaborators help spread death and entrench state control around the world, concretely opposing struggles for freedom. We invite others to escalate direct action against them and other labs. We act in solidarity with Anti-Imperialist Action and everyone else engaged in the fight to demilitarize McGill University.
– anarchists
Our enemies – journal de montreal, 01/05/2015
The local employment centre of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve was vandalized, over the night of Thursday to Friday, in Montreal, when white and red paint was thrown on the buildings façade and the windows were broken.
A passerby called 911 around 5:40 am to communicate the dammages to the building on rue De Rouen. Upon arriving at the location, police also noticed the interior had been ransacked, affirms the spokesperson of the SPVM, Jean-Pierre Brabant.
The service of judicial identity of the SPVM were dispatched to try to obtain evidence. It seems that no camera surveils the location.
On April 8th, a banner reading “Solidarité avec les prisonniers en grève de la faim en Grèce. Que vive l’anarchie (Solidarity with prisoners on hunger strike in Greece. Long live anarchy)” was dropped along with flyers bearing the following text:
Solidarity from Montreal
Today, we paid homage to those prisoners in Greece who are on hunger strike since March 2nd, 2015.
The governing political party in Greece since January 2015 is the radical leftist party Syriza, a party which promotes anticapitalist and antipatriarchal ideas. However, it is clear this party’s role in reality is to recuperate all social rebellion. Many anarchist prisoners, political prisoners, and social prisoners recognize this and live the consequences each day.
A hunger strike was thus called to demand, among other things, the abolition for several fascist laws and Type C prisons. Many comrades are experiencing severe health problems for their participation in the strike. These events show the true face of the ruling Left party, which continues to repress struggle.
Here are the demands of the prisoners on strike:
• Abolition of the antiterrorist law 187A and the law against illicit organisations 187
• Abolition of the increased severity for actions committed with facial characteristics disguised (“the mask law”)
• Abolition of maximum security prisons Type C
• Abolition of laws permitting the testing of DNA traces
• Access for expert witnesses of the accused to DNA-related evidence
• Abolition of DNA analysis of evidence containing a mix of more than two people’s DNA
• The immediate liberation of Savvas Xiros so that he may receive the medical treatment he requires.
Strength and courage to those in prison and on the run!
For the destruction of the state, capitalism, and all prisons.
Long live anarchy.
More information:
contrainfo.espiv.net
hunger-strike.espivblogs.net
www.non-fides.fr
From Contra-info
In the evening hours of March 24 2015, we slashed the tires of a McGill security division SUV and attacked the James Admin. building with flying chunks of concrete, vanishing quickly thereafter into the darkness of night.
We claim responsibility for this latest attack in retaliation to the University’s profiling, surveillance and harassment of students and activists affiliated with the group Demilitarize McGill.
Recently released internal documents reveal that as early as 2013, agents of the McGill security division were given orders to monitor, photograph and follow individuals present at Demilitarize McGill activities, including after they’ve left campus.
In honor and recognition of the fact that we share a common struggle against the same system and the same authoritarian social institutions, we took action to make it clear to our enemies that Demilitarize McGill is PROTECTED. Whether it’s disciplinary charges, another police intervention on campus or evidence of surveillance and harassment by the security division; we want the Administration to understand that any further acts of repression levelled against Demilitarize McGill will be met with instant retaliation at the hands of revolutionary campus guerrillas.
Solidarity isn’t just a cute slogan. For us, it’s a dangerous six-letter word spelled: “A-T-T-A-C-K”.
The University is at war; so are we.
Anti-Imperialist Action (AIA)
From Contra-info
On Wednesday night, February 25th, we pulled the fire alarm in the Macdonald Engineering building of McGill university, disrupting the presentation of professor Andrew Higgins, a McGill weapons researcher, as a minimum gesture of sabotage and revolt against the University’s ongoing complicity in colonization and imperialist warfare.
This action was simple, required little planning and zero expertise, disrupted our enemies where it hurts and was infinitely more uplifting than any symbolic protest or SSMU general assembly we have witnessed in recent time. We believe that acts of resistance – both large and small – against those who profit from and those who facilitate the growth of the military-industrial-complex are valuable, and ought to be carried out whenever and wherever possible.
The University is at war; so are we.
Anti-Imperialist Action (AIA)
From the Mass Media
Vandals splattered black goop over the front doors of the Quebec environment minister’s riding office in Villeray—St-Michel—Parc-Extension, police said Friday.
Montreal police were called to the scene at 3750 Crémazie Blvd. E. at 6:30 a.m. Friday morning, said spokesperson Sgt. Laurent Gingras. They found the glass doors of the five-storey building covered in a black substance, which Gingras described as “a kind of paint.”
“It’s something that comes off easily, in any case,” he said.
Investigators have no suspect in the case.
In Montreal on Friday for a news conference, Environment Minister David Heurtel, who is also the MNA for Viau, said he learned of the act of vandalism that morning.
“For the moment, I have no information about who’s responsible for this deplorable act,” he said.
Heurtel has come under fire for allowing the Calgary-based oil giant TransCanada to carry out preliminary drilling and seismic tests in the St. Lawrence River off the coast of Cacouna, the site of a beluga habitat. TransCanada planned to build an oil terminal and tanker farm there as part of its proposed $12-billion Energy East pipeline, which would carry up to 1.1 million barrels of crude a day from Alberta to Quebec and New Brunswick.
After a federal committee reclassified the beluga as endangered, TransCanada said it would “stand down” from its work in Cacouna. According to recent news reports, TransCanada has abandoned its plan for Cacouna. But TransCanada spokesperson Tim Duboyce said the company won’t decide until March 31 at the latest.
Together, the Quebec and Ontario governments imposed seven conditions on the project and said it would have to undergo an environmental assessment in each province.
Heurtel’s press attaché, Guillaume Bérubé, said on Friday the assessment of the 700-kilometre Quebec portion of the project hasn’t started yet because TransCanada hasn’t replied to the environment minister’s last letter, sent three months ago, with the government’s conditions.
From Anarchist News
On the morning of February the 4th, I decided to descend from my high-perch of hate, to strike with intent against the further development of military and surveillance-state infrastructure taking place at McGill University.
As a contribution to the project set in motion by our friendly neighborhood AIA, I waited until the coast was clear and then proceeded to jam & clog several toilets on the 7th floor of the Mechanical Engineering department on the corner or University and Sherbrooke, which is where you’ll find the offices of Newmerical Technologies and the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Laboratory.
The CFD lab specializes in the research and development of a complex simulation software and anti-icing system known as FENSAP-ICE, specifically to optimize the design of UAVs, fighter jets and helicopters deployed in military campaigns to terrorize and destroy communities of color in countries around the world. FENSAP-ICE is sold through the CFD’s business partner Newmerical Tech. to corporations like General Atomics, the manufacturer of every attack drone in the arsenals of the US and Israeli militaries, respectively.
“But why?”, you might ask, “why fuck with their restroom facilities?” Because: water, plumbing and restroom facilities are poorly defended and yet they are among some of the most important lifelines involved in maintaining the smooth and uninterrupted normal functioning of an institution like McGill. Nobody wants to study, do business or work on sketchy research related to the growth of the military-industrial-surveillance complex in a building with no working toilets. The fact that it’s so easy for even one person to put several commodes out of order and get away with it leads me to surmise that this method has the potential to become a very effective pressure tactic in the multiform struggle to demilitarize McGill, especially if taken up en masse.
To effectively clog a toilet, simply saturate a large sponge (the kind used to wash cars, not dishes!) in a thick starch or sugar solution. Squeeze it into a ball and wrap it up in string as tight as you can, and then dry. Remove the string when fully dried. The sponge should be in the form of a tight, hard ball small enough to fit down a toilet. Introduce the small, stringless sponge into the pipes by flushing, though you may want to give it a little pushing with a gloved hand or some kind of simple tool. Once the sponge absorbs the water, it will gradually expand to its original size and plug the sewage system.
Of course, it should go without saying that nothing will have changed on the surface of things as a result of this or any other isolated action. However, the kernel of its strategic value lies not in the immediate economic or infrastructural damage brought to bear so much as its potential to spread like a spot of cooking oil in a frying pan. In and of itself this action means nothing, but what would happen if 5, 10, 20, or 100 of us were to suddenly start shutting down restroom facilities at McGill using hit-&-run tactics until the Administration agreed to sever its ties to the arms industry and the military in general?
In the final analysis, the ultimate impact of this simple, low-cost and repeatable act will be determined by you.
Solidarity, respect and mad props to Demilitarize McGill, SPHR, Anti-Imperialist Action and everyone fighting for the complete and final destruction of Empire worldwide.
You have friends in high places.
Love, Principal Suzanne Fortier
