Montréal Contre-information
Montréal Contre-information
Montréal Contre-information

Preparing the Soil: Grassroots Environmentalism in Gaspesie, Canada (with August 2017 Update)

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Aug 102017
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

On August 7, militant ecologists established a hard blockade at the entrance to the Galt Site on Mi’kmaq territory near Gaspé. This is a highly strategic action, timed several weeks before Junex is slated to begin unconventional horizontal drilling, and just after it was announced that their government cronies will be hooking their pals at Junex up with a cool 8.4 million taxpayer dollars. Because of widespread opposition to fracking in so-called Quebec and the Maritimes, and the fact that Junex is a junior company propped up by government hand-outs, we believe that this is a highly winnable fight.

This is a hard blockade which the militants are prepared to forcibly defend and as such represents a stark escalation in ecological resistance in our bioregion. What happens in the next two weeks is critical. It is imperative that we stop the industry from getting a hold in Gaspesie, and now is the time to do it.

The following article was published in the Earth First! Journal in the Litha/Summer, 2016 issue, and is reposted here to provide context to anglophones about the years-long struggle against the fledgling oil and gas industry in Northern Mikmaki, a struggle that has garnered little attention outside of so-called Quebec.

Stayed tuned for more information, and if it makes sense for you, start making plans to get yer asses to the front-lines!

Preparing the Soil: Grassroots Environmentalism in Gaspesie

When I first traveled to Gaspé—a city at the tip of the Gaspé Peninsula in eastern Quebec—I was deeply taken with the magnificence of the terrain. It’s a land where the elemental power of nature makes its presence felt. If you’ve been to Gaspé, you likely know what I mean. If you haven’t, but have only heard of it from people who have been, chances are you’ve felt the enchantment of this place even then, because those who describe their experiences of Gaspé easily fall into a tone of voice and manner of speaking reminiscent of someone recalling a beautiful dream.

For the past few years, folks in eastern Quebec have been doggedly organizing against a slew of major industrial projects that have largely escaped the notice of the non-francophone environmentalist movement. For this reason, I decided to go to Gaspé to investigate the plans for industrialization, as well as the resistance to it.

For decades, there has been exploration for oil and gas in Quebec. The province has somewhat of a unique relationship to oil and gas resources, because separatists there have always wanted to keep control over natural resources for their imagined future nation-state. Nationalists in Quebec up until the present continue to tout “energy independence” as a reason to exploit oil and gas resources.

Oil and gas used to be provincially managed, but there was a big boom of selling leases in 2007, and that’s when a lot of the current players got in the game. The two biggest companies are Petrolia and Junex, which were formed with the help of people who had previously worked for the province.

Petrolia and Junex have now completed test drilling, and both are ready to go into production. They say that they are going to do conventional drilling; activists say that they’re going to have to frack in order for it to be profitable.

A few years ago, the anti-shale gas movement in Quebec was huge. At the height of it, there were over 100,000 people in the streets of Montreal. This paved the way for other mobilizations related to environmental issues. The movement evolved into hundreds of citizen committees organized in regional networks, and then in a provincial network, called Reseau Vigilance Hydrocarbure Quebec.

When the Parti Québécois government of Pauline Marois came to power, all permits to frack were suspended and a moratorium was announced, though never actually made legally binding. Eight days before the Marois government lost the election, the Province of Quebec signed a massive deal with Petrolia.

Last year, Quebec received $10 billion in federal transfer payments, which largely came from Alberta oil money. When the 2017 budget gets made, all that money will be gone, and all of a sudden politicians from coast to coast are going to be rushing to do what Canada has always done to make money, and that’s pillage the land.

In addition to the plans to drill for oil in Gaspé, there have also been a flurry of announcements pertaining to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) in Quebec. This is probably because the process of liquefaction involves super-chilling gas to extremely low temperatures, requiring massive amounts of electricity, which is significantly cheaper in Quebec than elsewhere.

Currently, a company called Tugliq is evaluating different possible routes for a gas pipeline to connect the Bourque gas well in Murdochville to Gaspé, a distance of 58 kilometers (36 miles). This gas liquefaction plant would be located in a barge anchored in the Gaspé harbour. The plan is to then use smaller vessels to transport the LNG to the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, where it would be used as a replacement fuel for diesel. Because natural gas is cleaner-burning than diesel, the government is presenting this as a green energy “transition” fuel.

Tache D’huile

When I came to Gaspesie to research this story, one of the things that I was most curious about was Tache d’Huile (oil stain.) The group was started about three years ago to combat proposed oil and gas drilling. They put out an impressive amount of super high quality media, such as short films, and they have a well-produced regular news video-cast (called “La Breche”) that compiles news about environmental issues with a focus on eastern Quebec.

I spent a week living and working with Maude. Maude is an anarchist from Montréal who has been organizing for over 20 years. We both got involved in activism through punk rock. A few years ago, Maude moved to Gaspé, soon to discover that over 80 percent of the peninsula had been leased to oil and gas companies. She now spends the better part of her waking hours working at her desk in the war room of Tache d’Huile, an insulated attic of a barn on top of a mountain in Gaspé.

Maude is one of the founders of Tache d’Huile and is its most active member. She is paid next to nothing—just expenses, sometimes a bit more. She lives in a trailer with a small stove which requires constant stoking through the long and cold winter. To save on fuel, she cooked the next day’s supper on the wood stove while we talked about our dreams, ambitions, and frustrations.

Anon: Why does Tache d’Huile exist? What is your purpose?

Maude: The common core was about drinking water. In Gaspé you can still drink water out of most of the rivers. It’s not an area that’s very industrialized. Hunting and fishing and these kinds of activities are really central to the culture here. And because of different economic situations, there are less people living here than there used to be. No one really comes to Gaspé and says, “Hey, I’m going to make a bunch of money here.” People who choose to stay and live here appreciate the quality of its environment.

We have a specific concern for Mi’kmaq concerns, because this is Mi’kmaq land. We’ve been working towards creating relationships which didn’t really exist very much before.

[Tache d’Huile] was also organized on the peninsula-level, because Gaspé is Crown land. It’s called “non-organized territory,” which means it’s in no one’s backyard.

We have a big stance against fracking. They say that it’s going to be conventional drilling, but sometimes they admit that they might frack. Basically, after the movement against fracking succeeded, they said, “Well if you won’t let us frack down there, then you at least gotta let us drill in the woods!”

A: Could you tell me about Gaspé?

M: Fishing has been the main industry, and the fishermen had huge families. The relationship between the bosses and the workers and their families could best be described as slavery… There’s been quite a few revolts—with people looting the company store—which were calmed down by the Canadian army. Gaspé was highly affected by the collapse of cod stocks, but fishing is still very much present here.

There has been some forest industry, and some mines, following a boom-and-bust cycle. The whole region is pretty dependent on tourism because it’s beautiful. There’s huge unemployment, high rates of illiteracy, really strong culture, strong accents, and lots of autonomous cultural activities. There are lots of Acadians, and you can see it in the flags, you can hear it in the language, poetry, stories, and songs.

Historically, there has been a big pressure to avoid alliances between Mi’kmaq and Acadian and French people, because the English Empire feared the power of this alliance. So it was actually forbidden for people to hang out. The Mi’kmaq people in Gaspé are trained in English, as part of a deliberate historical effort to separate them culturally from their neighbors, and that gulf still exists.

There are three Mi’kmaq communities, two of which are reserves—Gesgapegiag and Listikuj—so about 5,000 or 6,000 of Gaspé‘s population of 80,000 are Mi’kmaq. They’re really involved in salmon fishing, which they had to really fight for.

A: Could you tell me a bit more about the back to the land movement in Gaspé?

M: There are a few intentional communities already on the peninsula and also some really interesting community projects. There’s a lot of intentionality here because there’s no incentive to inhabit here other than the intention to live closer to nature.

There used to be an impression that we couldn’t do agriculture here, but that’s turned out to not really be true. There are some things that won’t grow here, but there’s been a lot of innovation.

It’s trying to figure itself out. It’s more of an intuition, a call. It’s not super-articulated. But the notion of the territory, the beauty, the cleanliness, is really something that we hear from people. Quite a few people who grew up here left and are coming back because they just need to breathe the ocean, they just need to breathe the bay, the salty air, the mountain…

A: What are the goals of Tache d’Huile? What strategies and tactics do you use to achieve these goals?

M: The goal is the integrity and health of the peninsula’s ecosystems and communities. That’s the goal. The main focus is hydrocarbons and the water. A lot of what we do is communication. People are spread out… The issue really wasn’t getting much attention before we began. What’s going on deep in the woods, no one really talks about. Unless we do something about it, it’s just going to go through. So we do research, hold public assemblies, produce educational materials, release press releases, and talk to the media.

We also do actions to try to get consultations and environmental assessments. This isn’t a panacea but forces the company to give a lot of information. It’s not super exciting work, but it seemed necessary to do before we could get anywhere else.

Then there were a few attempts to be more disruptive, to intervene at the offices of the companies themselves. In December 2014, Tache d’Huile supported the initiative of a camp in Gaspé, and turned out to blockade the road leading to the drilling. That was a really interesting experience. Lots of people were excited. It was hard because it was 40 degrees (Celsius) below [zero]. That’s one thing—winter is really long, and that’s one thing that we have to adapt to and figure out how to act in that context. Lots of the drilling happens in the winter.

A: What are your group’s politics?

M: People are anti-capitalist, whether or not they’d identify as such. They’re all people who are involved in alternative projects. They’re very creative… very aware of the creation of autonomy through other means. But they wouldn’t necessarily frame it in activist terms.

The transition is something that comes up a lot. The necessity for transition, not only energetic transition but also food sovereignty. Gaspé is a remote area, so we’re very vulnerable to the petroleum economy for food.

In our basis of unity, there is also an important sentence about solidarity with other struggles. We’re doing our share here as part of a global movement. We’re saying, “It’s not a good idea here, it’s not a good idea anywhere.”

A: Do you think that there exists a will in Gaspé to create a more bioregional autonomy?

Yes, this I believe in. There is a will. There is a lot of mistrust of the state, the provincial state especially because of an operation in the ’70s where they wanted to shut down a lot of villages, and a lot of people resisted. That stayed in the memories of people, that they wanted to shut them down. There is still an impression that Gaspé is disposable in the eyes of the important people of the capital.

Regional autonomy is something that has been talked about in the past. In 1997, 17,000 people gathered in an arena to decide what to do as a region. I think the spirit of the assembly was to say, “Fuck this, we’re not going to be governed by this Quebec- or Ottawa-centralized shit.” There’s water, there’s land, there’s everything to maintain healthy communities here. It’s definitely something that’s physically plausible. It’s present in the culture, it’s present in the poetry. Even though I didn’t come here to fight oil companies, and no one did, my hope is that through fighting them we’re building relationships and capacity that will help us in building autonomy.

It’s a strong intention, and it takes time, patience, and consistency. What we do doesn’t always come out as super rad, but hopefully, slowly and surely, we’ll be more people moving forward together.

A: What issues have you focused on?

M: First off, there’s oil-by-rail. In our area, the rail line goes through the Matapedia Valley, and passes on the southern shore of the Baie des Chaleurs on the New Brunswick side. So, although it’s very close to us as the crow flies, it’s in another province. It terminates at the port of Belledune, which they want to expand, which would allow the increase of the oil-by-rail traffic to a few hundred tanker cars per day.

Belledune is an area that’s already quite contaminated. A few years back, a company tried to build a toxic waste incinerator, which would have been mostly used by the US Military to get rid of toxic waste. That was fought hard by people and it sparked alliances on both sides of the Baie des Chaleurs. That campaign involved civil disobedience.

With the Megantic tragedy [when a freight train full of crude oil rolled down a hill, resulting in an explosion and fire that killed 42], people are way more sensitive to the issue of oil-by-rail, and there are different fights against it all throughout Quebec. We know that the company doesn’t have enough investors or clients to proceed. We’re pretty confident that we’re winning this fight.

For one thing, it’s Mi’kmaq territory, and the Mi’kmaq were not at all properly consulted. The Mi’kmaq on the Quebec side were not consulted at all. We didn’t know if they knew about the project or not. So we showed up at a pow-wow and asked if we could put up a table and share information. We had a big map, and we had the information about which companies had which claims on which lands… People were really curious. We did our best in English and produced some stuff in English. We met some key people. Someone invited us to a meeting of the band council, where they seemed pretty unaware of the project. Not long after that, they sued Chaleur Terminals Inc. and the province of New Brunswick.

A: When I was doing my research about industrialization in Gaspé, I was pretty astounded by the circumstances surrounding the cement plant at Port Daniel. Could you talk about that?

M: Well it’s really fucking big… It’s in a beautiful area. The people there don’t like visitors, I can tell you that much. They’ve been saying that this cement plant is a green project because it’s supposedly much more energy-efficient than other cement plants. Equiterre (the notorious Quebec NGO that got caught cutting backroom deals with tar sands tycoon Murray Edwards) has said that it’s a green project. All this despite that fact that there were no environmental hearings. There was some talk about using petroleum coke (toxic waste produced by tar sands) as fuel, as well as byproducts from the forestry industry. At the present moment it’s not clear what fuel source they’re going to be using.

The whole project required about a billion dollars of investment. Six hundred million came from the Province of Quebec, 200 million was federal, and the rest was private. It’s a really economically vulnerable area, and it’ll create a few hundred jobs.

This is Quebec—there’s a lot of corruption in government awarding construction contracts, and this is a good example of that. In the name of creating jobs, they’ve taken $800 million of taxpayer money and given it to a private corporation to build something totally unnecessary.

Actually, the company’s getting sued right now by the unions from the other cement plants, because they’re all operating below their capacity right now. They’re super pissed that this one cement plant is getting $800 million of public money and they’re getting squat.

It’s under construction now. We gave up fighting against it. We’ll still say that we think that it’s shit, but we were making too many enemies. We decided that it would be best to focus on fighting the petrol industry, which is our reason for existing.

There are 80,000 people in Gaspé. That means, if you divvied up the $800 million the government gave for this cement plant, each child, woman, and man would get ten thousand dollars. So this is the kind of bullshit that makes people resent Quebec (and Ottawa). Can you imagine if they put that money into actually useful community projects, like sustainable agriculture? The economy here would look really different really fast.

A: Some people believe that these proposed oil and gas projects (in Quebec) have more to do with corrupt politicians awarding contracts to cronies than actual plans for commercial oil and gas production. What’s your take on that theory?

M: Quite a few people believe that it’s all a sham. The most obvious argument is that it’s all government money. There’s not a lot of private investment. The state gives them money to explore, and as long as the state gives them money, they’re happy. There’s been so much exploration for decades. If there was something interesting, we’d know already. And if things are suddenly really interesting, it’s because of new technology, which is to say that they plan to frack.

The sham theory is a slippery thing. It brings us into an area where we are not experts at all. We don’t have engineers on staff. If we treat this issue as a sham, people might think “well then, we don’t have to do anything about it.” So we focus on the ecological impacts of drilling and human rights, the fact that people aren’t being given a voice in what happens in the territory that they inhabit.

A: How do you hope that Tache d’Huile develops?

M: I hope that it develops into a network of people willing to do what’s necessary for a viable future, for example, by exchanging DIY technologies and building a resilience that is rooted in the reality of the territory we inhabit. We can generate an abundance here. We can inhabit the heart of the peninsula. There’s water here, there’s everything that we need for a good life.

 

6 Reasons I Support Arson (As a Tool for Social Justice)

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Jul 182017
 

From Stones and Sticks and Words

May 18 is an important day for me. On May 18 the FFFC[1. Don’t ask me what FFFC stands for, because I don’t know.] firebombed a Royal Bank of Canada branch in a wealthy ottawa neighbourhood. One month later, on June 18, I was arrested, along with Roger Clement and one other person.

It was alleged that I had thrown the firebomb that started the fire at the RBC, and I was charged with three counts of arson to property. The charges were ultimately dropped due to a lack of evidence against me.

Roger plead guilty and was sentenced to four years for his role in the arson of the RBC and his role in a previous action against a different RBC branch.

The third person was never charged with any crime related to the arson or any attack on any RBC.

I think that the timing of the arrests was picked to coincide with the opening of the The People’s Summit, which was part of the anti-globalization protests happening in Toronto. The police and whoever else was part of the decision-making process that resulted in our arrest that day wanted the news cycle to be full of stories about the arrest, rather than about The People’s Summit.

Nothing I write here is an admission of guilt to any so-called crime.

1. It is non-violent.

I’m not an advocate of non-violence, but i support “forms of resistance which maximize respect for life and oppressed peoples’ rights[2. The quote is part of the 4th Peoples’ Global Action Hallmark]”. I’m not an advocate of non-violence, but like any right-thinking person I believe that violence should only be used as a last resort. Arson of property is not violence, as violence is only and exclusively directed towards living beings: humans, animals and plants. Arson is a non-violent option open to reasonable people who want governments and corporations to stop killing people, animals and the planet.

2. I support direct action

Direct action builds individuals’ and groups’ power and consciousness to take action to change the world themselves without leaving it to intermediaries or representatives to do for them. It nurtures people’s individual and collective ability to be determine their own lives. Direct action builds peoples’ power and their capacity to govern themselves. And direct action works. Every successful movement for real social change has used direct action as part of its strategic and tactical toolkit.

3. Building capacity and skills for resistance

Fighting the capitalist and colonial state and economic system with the goal of winning for now and forever will require learning how to break the law and get away with it. Arson, and any type of highly illegal direct action, requires that activists learn to avoid surveillance, police scrutiny, political repression, etc.

In planning and doing these actions activists will learn the skills they need in order to do them effectively and successfully, in ways that contribute to specific campaigns, and help to build movements for social justice. For example, it is essential to find a secure method for publicizing illegal actions, and a secure method to talk about them given the context of police surveillance.

4. Using up State and corporate resources

This is good for 2 reasons:

a) It forces “our” governments to spend resources targeting us rather than targeting resistance abroad. We want them to be worrying about “their” population, not helping to plunder the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.

b) We want them to react to us, and we want to hurt their bottom line, both through militant direct action, and their reactions to our actions.

5. Advancing the debate

Arson and other militant direct action provide an opportunity to dialogue and debate about strategies for system change, as well as about the specific action in question. Proponents can reach out to people who aren’t certain about the necessity, utility and/or desirability of an action, and/or of militant direct action, and ought to listen carefully to their concerns.

It is also an opportunity to identify individuals and organizations opposed to militant direct action.

Finally it is also a good time to criticize those who are opposed to the use of militant direct action.

It is key to remember that dialogue, debate and even criticism is not about being self-righteous, dogmatic or rigid – remember that people’s opinions change over time, and give them the time to change their opinions.

6. I support economic disruption

Economic disruption is a tried and true method for causing corporations and governments to change their behaviour.

Infiltrated! How to prevent political police from undermining grassroots solidarity

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Jul 142017
 

From Stones and Sticks and Words

Editorial note: We republish this text because these lessons remain very relevant, especially given that the Canadian State will likely attempt to infiltrate radical communities in the lead up to the G7 in Charlevoix, QC next summer. For more resources on combating infiltration, check out Stop Hunting Sheep: A Guide to Creating Safer Networks and Stay Calm: Some tips for keeping safe in times of state repression.

On June 25, 2010, activists in Ottawa discovered that the man they knew as François Leclerc was in fact an undercover Ontario Provincial Police officer named Denis Leduc.

Leduc’s identity was revealed during the bail hearings of two people alleged to have firebombed a branch of the Royal Bank of Canada on May 18, 2010.

“The first time I met ‘François Leclerc’ … he gave the story he was there from the north,” says Jeff, a member of EXILE Infoshop, an anarchist hub for anti-capitalist organizing in Ottawa. “He was interested in Indigenous issues. He took out a book, Ward Churchill’s A Little Matter of Genocide, and he wanted to sign up for [the protest against] CANSEC,” an annual arms trade show held in Ottawa.

“He did most of the talking in our relationship […] He told very elaborate stories of whale hunting and seal hunting,” notes Jeff.

I met Leduc for the first time in 2009, when he participated as a street medic in the protest against CANSEC. He was introduced to me by two friends and members of the Indigenous Peoples’ Solidarity Movement of Ottawa (IPSMO). A short, stocky man with shoulder-length red hair, a trim beard, and an eyebrow ring, he had a thick francophone accent and dressed casually.

He was soon invited to an IPSMO organizing meeting. At the time, IPSMO was comprised of student and community activists, and it was most involved in supporting the Algonquins of Barriere Lake (ABL), who were fighting Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada to stop interfering in their governance. Leduc organized with IPSMO for over a year: he regularly attended meetings, took minutes, transported people and equipment in his van, administered the email list, helped set up and take down events, and provided legal support – mostly mundane, routine tasks.

Leduc began to befriend local activists, attend parties, and have drinks after organizing meetings. He told activists that he was married to an Inuit woman and that he was attending university. He said he had family in Montreal; he also mentioned working as a tree planter, and he frequently left Ottawa for weeks or a month at a time, supposedly to visit family or for work.

Organizing, solidarity, and the G20 summit

The ABL have been in conflict with the Quebec and federal governments for the past 25 years. Since 1991, the First Nation has demanded that both levels of government implement the Trilateral Agreement, which establishes revenue sharing and co-management of the territory. Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC), the Sûreté du Québec, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) have all attempted to undermine the ABL’s self-determination, including in 2008, when INAC exploited a division in the ABL by imposing an election that brought to power a small faction of the community, bypassing the traditional leadership that had earned majority support. The IPSMO had supported the community, including by participating in two ABL-led blockades of Highway 117, the only highway in the area and a major artery.

IPSMO also supported Indigenous activists in opposition to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and the G20 summit in Toronto. IPSMO was, and remains, a small grassroots collective of activists who combine Indigenous solidarity organizing with anti-capitalist and anti-oppressive politics.

In 2010, the G20 Joint Intelligence Group listed IPSMO, along with 21 other organizations, such as Defenders of the Land and the Council of Canadians, as “domestic groups of concern.” As part of the G20 Integrated Security Unit (a coalition of municipal, regional, and provincial police forces, RCMP, and Canadian Forces), police infiltrated Greenpeace, No One Is Illegal chapters, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, and the Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance, among others.

In that charged political time, Leduc and another undercover officer were also core members of the Collectif du Chat Noir, the anti-authoritarian collective mobilized around the Toronto G20 summit.

Undermine and overreact

From the time he joined IPSMO until the May 18 arson, Leduc avoided encouraging violence or provoking conflict within the group.

“I don’t remember him ever suggesting, like, anything really, like any sort of violent action,” says Krishna Bera, a former IPSMO and EXILE Infoshop member.

But in retrospect, IPSMO activists recalled three incidents where he had undermined the group’s organizing.

The first was when the Olympic torch passed through Ottawa on its way to Vancouver. IPSMO activists had planned to drop a 30-foot-by-50-foot banner that read, “NO OLYMPICS ON STOLEN NATIVE LAND” off a nearby bridge. Activists had made the banner in the parking garage of Leduc’s apartment building, though Leduc himself wasn’t otherwise involved in making it, claiming that day that he had a cold. However, he did drive the activists to the bridge where they dropped the banner.

“I was doing the lookout for cops, and I spotted these two undercovers that were right at the spot that we were at. In my mind, looking back, they … had been tipped off,” says former IPSMO member Louisa Worrell. It appears that Leduc had forewarned the police, who placed undercover officers at the drop site to quickly remove the banner; they didn’t, however, arrest anyone.

In the other two instances of undermining IPSMO solidarity, Leduc had at the last minute cancelled his offers to drive people to do court support in Maniwaki and to drive to Akwesasne to meet Mohawk activists. This impeded efforts to support Indigenous and settler activists arrested during the blockade of Highway 117, and to develop relationships between IPSMO activists and the Mohawk activists in Akwesasne.

Leduc’s strategies revealed the nature of undermining solidarity work: over a longer period, he was careful to preserve his cover while he tried to exercise control over what IPSMO activists did, and he sabotaged efforts to build trust between IPSMO and the Indigenous communities of ABL and Akwesasne.

After the firebombing of the RBC, Leduc’s rhetoric escalated.

“My radar went up immediately […] He mentioned something to me to the effect of, ‘[the firebombing] was just small potatoes and you know these companies deserve a much bigger response than this. That struck me as an odd thing to say, especially to somebody that you’d just met,” says Dave Bleakney, a Canadian Union of Postal Workers activist who met Leduc once, soon after the arson.

Political policing

Since its formation in 1984, CSIS has been responsible for political policing, but all large police forces in Canada, especially the RCMP, engage in it. Indigenous people, and to a lesser extent Indigenous solidarity activists, continue to be among the top targets of this practice in Canada.

In their essay “Surveillance: Fiction or Higher Policing?” Jean-Paul Brodeur and Stéphane Leman-Langlois explain that high policing – the surveillance of political involvement – is “entirely devoted to the preservation of the political regime” as opposed to the supposed “protection of society.”

The purpose of political policing is to identify, surveil, disrupt, and control real or perceived threats to political and economic elites. Political policing is fundamentally different from “law and order” policing, which focuses on arrest and incarceration. It emphasizes intelligence gathering using both technological surveillance and infiltration. The intelligence is intended to be used only when necessary in efforts to control people and organizations considered to be a threat.

The activists I interviewed had all been surprised that Leduc was an undercover officer, either because they didn’t expect to be surveilled in the first place or because Leduc’s behaviour did not fit their expectations of an infiltrator.

This surprise likely stems from the misconception that all infiltrators act as agents provocateurs who try to manipulate activists into taking illegal, violent, unpopular, and ineffective actions. But as Gary T. Marx points out in his theory of social movement infiltration, social movements are damaged by “opposing organizational, tactical, and resource mobilization tasks.” In other words, infiltrators suppress social movements by fomenting divisions and internal conflicts, diverting energies toward defending the movement rather than pursuing broader social goals, sowing misinformation or damaging reputations, obstructing the supply of resources (money, transport, meeting spaces), or sabotaging planned actions. Many infiltrators are thus better described as agents suppressants, who are there to gather intelligence and channel groups away from militant action.

David Gilbert describes in Love and Struggle the agents suppressants in the Weather Underground Organization “who tried to put a damper on evolving movement militancy.”

“Provocateurs,” he says, “are more dramatic and damaging, but much of the Left has an anti-militant bias in not discussing the problem of suppressants at all. There is no simple litmus test to differentiate sincere militancy from provocation or honest caution from suppression.”

Incidents of provocation can be high-profile and sensational, such as undercover police posing as members of the black bloc at Montebello. This can lead activists to paint all militant action as the work of agents provocateurs, even if there is no evidence that this is true. Conversely, because of the low-profile of most agents suppressants, activists are often unaware of their role and impact in pacifying and controlling social movements.

A chilling effect

Seven years after the OPP revealed that Leduc was an infiltrator, there appear to be fewer groups and events organized around openly anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist politics.

However, IPSMO continues to organize in support of the ABL. It took a lead role in organizing the Indigenous Solidarity Assembly at the 2014 Peoples’ Social Forum, and has supported efforts to protect the sacred Chaudière Falls and its islands from the Windmill Development Group and Dream Unlimited Corp.’s colonial and gentrifying plans to build condominiums on stolen Algonquin land.

But the fallout of the infiltration was significant. The five Ottawa activists I interviewed all said that they are now less likely to trust other activists. They described feeling paranoid, suspicious, and demoralized, but also afraid and violated, knowing that private social moments had been surveilled.

“There’s definitely a sense of invasion, especially knowing that he’d been at my house,” says one member of IPSMO.

The IPSMO activists also emphasized that distrust and paranoia are a bigger problem than infiltration. The longer-term consequences – the sense of destruction and harmed relationships with communities that we are in solidarity with – are much more difficult to bounce back from than the direct effects of the infiltration. Indeed, it seems likely that the choice to out the infiltrator was an intentional effort by the police to create a chilling effect on activism in Ottawa.

“It did sort of dampen enthusiasm in a way. People immediately started to question anybody … who’s not almost mainstream in their activism,” said Bera.

Know your enemy

The infiltration of anarchist, Indigenous solidarity, and anti-Summit organizing from 2009–2010 was part of a long-term effort by the political police to undermine anti-capitalist, Indigenous, and Indigenous solidarity organizing, with specific interest in anti-Olympic and anti-Summit organizing.

Nuanced, strategic organizing should not be hampered by these accounts. Activists can reduce the damage done by infiltrators by being principled in their actions, respectful and accountable in how they organize with others, and by keeping in mind that distrust is usually more harmful than infiltration.

Some of Leduc’s behaviour that was suspicious included his regular absences from Ottawa, his access to a vehicle, his silence about politics, and his sudden militancy after the arson. Marx, in his essay “Thoughts on a Neglected Category of Social Movement Participant: The Agent Provocateur and the Informant,” writes that other indications of infiltrators include “difficulty in reaching the person directly by phone, reluctance to discuss one’s personal past, discrepancies in biographical information, [and] extensive knowledge of weapons and self-defense.”

Police and spy agencies continue to gather intelligence and control activist groups across Canada, and officers and paid informants continue to infiltrate activist groups. They drive activists to events, take minutes, and listen attentively to plans, ideas, dreams, and conflicts. Groups that have been infiltrated have noted that there is no uniform or tidy response to the threat. Activists should understand that the political police closely monitor and even moderate political activities with the intention of gathering intelligence on so-called “subversives.” To stay safe, activists must stay informed of police literature and legislation that upholds the conditions for infiltration, and cultivate knowledge of broad organizing methods to limit the harm caused by surveillance. It’s also vital to keep in mind that one of the purposes of surveillance is to promote distrust, and that paranoia is more corrosive to organizing than infiltration. Strategies are neither neat nor foolproof, and political policing tactics are ever changing. Activists should retain their commitment to nurturing relationships with one another and between oppressed communities, but the hard truth is that they must be savvy about their collective safety.

Policing isn’t broken; it’s working for capitalist and colonial interests

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Jul 142017
 

From Stones and Sticks and Words

On July 24, 2016, Somalian refugee Abdirahman Abdi was brutally beaten to death by two Ottawa police officers.

His death caused outrage, and drew attention to the issue of police brutality towards Black people in Ottawa. Anti-Black racism, and police violence towards Black people has been one of the central political issues of the past two years. This is a short essay that analyzes policing, and some thoughts about what to do to end the violence of policing.

First, I want to acknowledge and affirm that Ottawa, and the entire Ottawa river watershed, is the stolen land of the Algonquin nation. The colonization of Ottawa, and Canada, is the backdrop of the present day fight against the violence of policing. Two hundred years ago, the Algonquin controlled the area, there was no modern police force, and everyone lived according to Algonquin law. It’s the theft of Algonquin land and the genocide of Algonquin people that makes the existence of the City of Ottawa, and the Ottawa Police Service (OPS), possible.

Settler activists in Ottawa have to ask themselves what it means to work for police accountability and transparency, as well as ending all of the violence connected to policing and prisons, when the OPS is a settler police force that enforces the settler laws of a nation and city that exist on stolen Algonquin land. More broadly, activists working to end the violence of policing have to take this colonial context into account in their organizing no matter where in Canada they are.

Law and Order Policing

Law and order policing is what most people tend to think of as “the police”. Law and order policing in principle focuses on enforcing Canadian law, although, in fact, most police officer’s time is not spent enforcing the law, preventing crime or catching criminals.

Police don’t impartially enforce Canadian law, and Canadian law is not impartial: Canadian police officers, police forces and Canadian law privilege certain groups, and oppress others. Groups that are targeted (criminalized) experience higher levels of violence, arrest and incarceration. Many different groups are targeted, including Black people, people of colour and Indigenous people, migrants, poor and working-class people, especially homeless people, street-based sex workers and drug users, people with mental health problems, as well as queer and trans people. Individuals who are members of more than one of these groups are more likely to be attacked, or arrested, or both, by the police.

There have been more than 15 reports written about anti-Black racism in Canadian police forces since the 1970s. In brief, these studies concluded that systemic anti-Black racism exists within Canadian police forces. The reports have also made many suggestions about what could be done to eliminate or mitigate the effects of anti-Black racism in Canadian police forces, but for the most part police forces have refused to implement these suggestions.

As few of the recommendations are implemented, it is only a matter of time before there is another incident of police racism and brutality, such as the murder of Abdirahman Abdi by Const. Daniel Montsion and Const. Dave Weir of the OPS.

There’s a reason that the recommendations from the reports on anti-Black racism in the criminal injustice system haven’t been implemented. Many reasons, really, but at the end of the day it’s because policing isn’t broken; it’s working for capitalist and colonial interests. The police, and the governments they work for, have been reluctant to implement reforms because police doing violence to oppressed people is, sadly, part of what the job is really about.

Political Policing

Political policing focuses on people and organizations that the Canadian state and the political police consider to be subversive and harmful to so-called national security.

Political policing prioritizes intelligence gathering, rather than arrests and incarceration, and the goal of the intelligence gathering is to be able to undermine, disrupt and control the people and organizations they target.

Political policing exists to protect political and economic elites and it attacks people, groups and organizations that these elites consider a threat. For much of Canada’s history this has meant Communists, but more recently the political police have targeted Black nationalists, migrants, and Quebec sovereigntists. Today, Muslim, Indigenous and environmental activists are particularly targeted, while the political police still continue to attack socialists, communists and anarchists.

A recent example of political policing is the RCMP’s Project SITKA. Project SITKA aims to identify members of the leadership of Indigenous resistance movements, especially those who are willing to use “tactics…outside the spectrum of peaceful and lawful demonstration”. The purpose of identifying them is, of course, to neutralize them and reduce or end their effectiveness as activists and leaders. While Project SITKA only identifies 89 individuals, hundreds, maybe thousands, of (primarily Indigenous) people were investigated.

As stated above, political policing emphasizes intelligence gathering in order to control targeted groups. An excellent example of this comes from the Project SITKA report, where the RCMP says, ““In order to be intelligence-led, the National Intelligence Coordination Centre strives to collect all available intelligence and information related to known or anticipated threats. This information is to be acquired through a wide variety of sources, including open source information, a review of police occurrence reports, and other investigative techniques.”

Organizing to End the Violence of Policing

To be effective, organizing for police accountability and an end to police brutality has to make sure not to inadvertently increase the strength of the police. For example, in the US, the police and the Prison-Industrial Complex have been greatly strengthened by liberal reforms that were in principle implemented to reduce police misconduct. More regulation and oversight of the police, rather than reducing police violence, has, in fact, aggravated the problems that liberals said it was intended to resolve.

Activists interested in ending the violence of policing have to pursue reforms that reduce and limit police power while working for strong, healthy and safe communities. They must also refuse to work with the political police in their efforts to gather intelligence on, undermine and control our communities and movements.

Ending the violence of policing is a part of broader struggles: struggles for racial and gender equity in the workplace, for accessible, quality and relevant education for all, for decent, and affordable housing for all, higher welfare rates, a living wage, good quality and culturally appropriate support for people with mental health problems, and much more.

For more information:

The Justice For Abdirahman Abdi Coalition

Naomi Murakawa & #BlackLivesMatter: Liberals, Guns and the Roots of the U.S. Prison Explosion

Gary T. Marx, Thoughts on a Neglected Category of Social Movement Participant

Jean-Paul Brodeur, High Policing and Low Policing: Remarks about the Policing of Political Activities

Jean-Paul Brodeur and Stephane Leman-Langois, Surveillance-Fiction or Higher Policing?

Jean-Paul Brodeu, The Policing Web

Steve Hewitt, Spying 101

Steve Hewitt, Snitch

Gary Kinsman (Author), Dieter K. Buse (Editor), Mercedes Steedman (Editor),  Whose National Security?

Gary Kinsman and Patrizia Gentile, The Canadian War on Queers

Tim Groves, Living among us: Activists speak out on police infiltration

Anti-Black Racism in Ottawa

POLICE OVERSIGHT REVIEW: REFORM RECOMMENDATIONS

SUBMISSION TO THE ANTI-RACISM DIRECTORATE

The RCMP’s Project SITKA

Islamophobic Panic Surrounding “Safarigate”: A Fake Scandal Made Up by Notorious Racists!

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Jul 062017
 

From Montreal-antifasciste.info

The media has begun commenting on a short racist youtube video, shot at Parc Safari (a zoo 45 minutes outside of Montreal) on July 2nd[i]. The video, seemingly shot by a woman who just happened to be innocently visiting the zoo that day, is in fact not easy to make out – one sees a crowd of people milling around of the grass, a woman in a headscarf walking by, and one hears something difficult to make out coming through a sound system. Nothing in fact out of the ordinary to anyone who spends any amount of time out in public in most big cities in North America.

Nonetheless, this anodyne 47 second video clip (linked to by several media websites now) has apparently provoked a storm of controversy, as it shows Muslims praying in public, and not only that but saying their prayers through a sound system. The number of angry complaints and demands for clarification, elicited an official response from the zoo[ii], which explains that the Muslim Association of Canada had organized a group visit to the zoo that day, that they had brought their own portable sound system, and that they had followed all of the zoo’s rules. As Parc Safari explains, their zoo is open to everyone, regardless of nationality, religion, race, culture, language or sexual orientation, and that it is too bad that freedom of religion has offended so many people.

So far, all seems clear, if depressingly so: just another day in this Islamophobic society, just more of the media stirring up fake scandals about “reasonable accommodations.” If anything, we are pleasantly surprised that the zoo issues such a good response.

Scratching a bit beneath the surface, though, there are other facts that should be brought to light.

First, who uploaded this video? On youtube, the video was uploaded by “guindon87” [iii]; this account specializes in uploading anti-Muslim videos, including footage shot by members of far right groups in Quebec. For instance, one recent upload is a video shot by Sylvain Gallant in 2016 in Drummondville[iv], in which he drives by a local mosque asking “Are we going to allow this in Drummondville, a mosque? Me I don’t want any here … we are being invaded by mosques here, there are three, and I am completely fed up!” This video is part of the evidence that was used against Mr Gallant earlier this year, for inciting hatred, getting him 200 hours of community service and a condition of not going on social media for three years[v]. Within the far right, Gallant is seen as a hero being persecuted for free speech. Other videos uploaded by “guindon87” defend the recent St-Jean parade against accusations of racism; include two videos devoted to a local activist, in which he is subjected to racist slurs[vi]; and more in a similar vein, including one in which she calls for the murder of anti-fascists militants[vii]. It is unclear whether guindon87 shot the video in question (which first circulated on facebook), or whether they are simply the one who uploaded it to youtube.

The timing is also curious. The day before this video was shot, the small town of Hemmingford was invaded by members of the Quebec far right, as sixty or so people from groups like the “templar knights” and La Meute heeded a call by the anti-immigrant Storm Alliance to gather at the border to bear witness to irregular crossings by refugees, and to intimidate the latter for good measure. Their anti-immigrant protest was met with a boisterous counterprotest organized by the Montreal group Solidarity Across Borders[viii]. This was all ten minutes away from Parc Safari, which is actually where the Storm Alliance parked their bus. So that weekend, far-rightists from throughout Quebec had gathered in the area.

A further element to consider is that once this video was uploaded to facebook by Audrey Tremblay, it went viral, as of Wednesday having over 1500 shares and 500 comments. In the comments, one can read not only the most vile racism, but also links posted to far right groups such as La Meute. Indeed, the video has been avidly promoted by members of La Meute over the past three days. “Sue Elle” (real name: Sue Charbonneau), a La Meute member from Montreal, posted the video to the Mouvement républicain du Québec and Front Patriotique du Québec web pages, along with a model protest letter to send to the zoo, encouraging people to protest the fact that Muslims had been allowed to pray in public. At the same time, André Pitre (aka “Stu Pitt”) used his youtube channel to promote the issue, tying the Muslims who were at the zoo that day to the Muslim Brotherhood and explaining that they want to set up a global caliphate, and that a key part of “conquest” by Muslims is to humiliate subject populations. According to Pitre, who claims to be nothing more than an ardent free speech advocate, this is what was being done when they broadcast a prayer on their sound system: it was all a matter of “invaders” humiliating their “victims”!

Muslims praying in public should of course not be cause for concern, and certainly should not be considered so controversial as to be newsworthy, any more than Christians saying grace at a restaurant, or people meditating at a park, or any of the other things people do to live their beliefs in a multicultural society. However, we live in a context where previous, equally innocuous, examples of minority groups daring to live in public and claim their place, have become hot-button issues, galvanizing broad racist opposition. Most famously, this racist potential has been harnessed by politicians of both right and “left” during the “reasonable accommodation” and “charter of Quebec Values” “debates”.

Since earlier of this year, following the massacre by a far rightist in a Quebec City mosque, a national populist movement has been on the march. The July 1st demonstration in Hemmingford is just the last in a series of public displays against immigrants and Muslims. La Meute (who were present in large numbers on the 1st, providing most of the boots on the ground) is very much at the center of this racist wave, so far.

This is the context in which a simply trip to the zoo can become a flashpoint for racist organizing.

 

[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAY9FoHHjYY

[ii] https://www.facebook.com/ParcSafari/posts/1555486877824473

[iii] https://www.youtube.com/user/guindon87/videos

[iv] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_ksRxGtzn0

[v] http://www.journalexpress.ca/faits-divers/justice/2017/6/29/des-videos-hargneuses-contre-l-islam-le-mene-devant-le-tribunal.html

[vi] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar3SiS37iVw

[vii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDbbv9d4FDY

[viii] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-aslyum-seekers-crossing-roxham-road-canada-day-1.4187469

Who is fuelling populist racism in Quebec?

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Jun 292017
 

According to Groupe de recherché sur l’extrême droite et ses allié-e-s (GREDA) , there are currently about 60 active Quebecois far right groups, and if you count those which are connected with the rest of Canada, there are about 100. However, once one starts looking at the activities of the groups, there is a lot of collaboration and cross-membership. Provided below is a list of the larger organizations operating in Quebec.

Registered Parties

l’Alliance nationale réformiste du Québec (formerly Front National du Quebec)

Registered with elections Quebec in October 2016, the founder of the party is Daniel Boucher. They aim to field candidates in the 2018 Quebec elections. Among their stated aims are to declare full independence, end reasonable accommodation, end the practice of Islam and destroy every mosque in the province. Boucher claims to have been inspired by meeting Marine Le Pen in March 2016.

Citoyens au pouvoir du Québec

Registered as a party in 2012, the current leader of the party is Bernard Gauthier. Citoyens au pouvoir is a populist party. They were at a colloquium of far-right organizations in the suburbs on June 17, and say that they were impressed by La Meute and by some of the organizing.

Parti Indépendantiste

Founded in 2008, Parti Indépendatiste was led by Éric Tremblay from 2008 to 2011, when Michel Lepage took over. According to the Chief Electoral Officer of Quebec, donations were sixth highest of the provincial parties in Quebec at $5,3350.00. The Parti indépendantiste has been criticised for having links with neo-Nazis. A neo-Nazi, Sebastien Moreau, was the president of the executive committee for the region of Quebec and Marc-Étienne Maurice, a member of the neo-Nazi group Blood & Honour, was a local treasurer.

In May 2017, Alexandre Cormier-Denis, ran for the Parti indépendantiste in the Gouin riding. Cormier-Denis won less than 100 votes — but caused controversy due to racist statements and posters. While most of the media stories about Cormier-Denis were the result of these stunts, his more important ties are to Horizon Quebec Actuel (see below). Despite being promoted by open racists, Cormier-Denis remains a member in good-standing of the Parti Québécois.

Parti unité nationale (formerly the Parti démocratie chrétienne du Québec)

Parti unité nationale was founded in 2000. The founding leader of the party was Gilles Noël and he was re-appointed the leader of the party in 2017. Elections Quebec authorized $16,055 for contributions to the party in 2017 according to the P.U.N. 2016 financial reports.

On June 18, 2017 Gilles Noël was one of the featured speakers at the Rassemblement pour le bien commun et l’intérêt supérieur du Québec (the assembly for the common good and superior interest of Quebec) organized by the Movement Republicain de Quebec and guarded by La Meute.

Large Quebec-based organizations

Fédération des Québécois de Souche (le FQS)

Founded in 2007 by a former skinhead named Maxime Fiset as Quebecers debated reasonable accommodation. The FQS now calls itself a political unifier of “real Quebecers.” Maxime Fiset, who now works against racists to help de-radicalize people, has recently been speaking out in French and English press about his role in founding FQS and in being one of the early adopters of Islamophobic organizing.

The group’s magazine Le Harfang is run by Remi Tremblay and focuses on publishing and disseminating information from the French far right. On May 6, 2017, the FSQ hosted Steven Bissuel of the Group Union Defense (GUD), a militant nationalist student group from France. Atalante (below) was also a sponsor. Founded in the 1960s, GUD has always been unabashedly far right, “nationalist,” and militant. Bissuel has been imprisoned for violent attacks against other students and is also credited with rejuvenating the GUD in Lyon. They were also heavily promoting the June 18 event organized by Mouvement républicain du Québec.

Mouvement républicain du Québec 

Founded in March 2017 by Guy Boulianne, author, editor and cultural promoter. On June 18, 2017, Mouvement républicain du Québec helped organize le Rassemblement pour le bien commun et l’intérêt supérieur du Québec (the assembly for the common good and superior interest of Quebec) originally planned at the CEGEP College de Maisonneuve and later moved to the suburb of Vaudreuil-Dorion. The conference featured a host of well-known far-right speakers. La Meute was providing security for the event. Here is an account in French by GREDA of who was there and what happened.

Atalante

Founded in 2016, it is known for taking more racist positions than the other organizations in this list. Some of their slogans include “Terrorists to the death! Islam Out!” It does co-sponsor events with the FQS and some members of Atalante are also members of FQS.

In August, 2016 Atalante and FQS co-hosted a lecture in Quebec City by Gabriele Adinolfi, a prominent intellectual of the Italian neo-fascist movement. Atalante also engages in social activism, modeled after CasaPound, the best-known exponent of Italian neo-fascism. Atalante, like CasaPound, are committed to welfare programs and direct action, and Atalante hands out food in Quebec City’s underprivileged neighbourhoods, but according to their site, only to people of “Neo-French origin.”

Horizon Quebec Actuel

An NGO, founded in 2016, with Alexandre Cormier Denis as President. It is a new organization which aims to educate about French and Quebecois history. When it was founded, the Front National and the COMEF (le Collectif Mer et Francophonie), a global sovereigntist organization of which FN is an important part, celebrated the formation of this organization, which is a Quebec affiliate.

La Meute (the Wolfpack)

The following is pulled from a post by Itsgoingdown.org. Founded in 2015 by two ex-soldiers, Éric Venne (alias Eric Corvus, who since left the group) and Patrick Beaudry, the first major action of La Meute was on May 21, 2016. According to their Facebook page they have a little more than 42,000 members — but likes have never been an accurate way to guage membership.

The group’s most vocal position is against “radical Islam.” According to GREDA and the experience of protestors in Quebec, La Meute is a paramilitary organization. La Meute members come to rallies well-equipped with weaponry which they are allowed to carry. Since March 2017, they have been coming out in force to numerous anti-Muslim demonstrations across Quebec.

On May 15, 2017 on André Pitre’s YouTube show, La Meute announced that it would be making itself available anywhere in Quebec to stand up against “threats to freedom of speech.” Pitre and La Meute made it clear that what was meant by this, was any intervention by antifascists, feminists, or anti-racists to protest or disrupt racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic events. It was also made clear in Pitre’s show, that this announcement was the result of Pitre himself reaching out to La Meute and requesting that they play such a role (the declaration was filmed in his living room).

Canadian Coalition of Concerned Canadians (CCCC)

Founded in 2017 by Georges Hallak, CCCC is known as a one-man show. A list of its founding principles can be found here. This group burst onto the scene on March 4, 2017, when along with other far-right groups, CCCC called for demonstrations in 63 cities across Canada. This call was supported by Guy Boulianne’s MRQ and others. The CCCC is now losing steam in Quebec. According to GREDA, Hallak is a federalist.

Global groups

PEGIDA Quebec

Founded in 2015, this group is affiliated with the German group called Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West. The current president is Stéphane Asselin, and this article from Vice provides an interview with him. According to the December 2016 interview, Asselin helps run a secret page that allies the leaders of most of the province’s far right-wing groups — roughly 50 of them — who are working to get political.

Soldiers of Odin Quebec

Founded in Finland, the group started growing in Canada and Quebec in 2016. By December 2016, they claimed to have 3500 members in Canada and 400 in Quebec. The current head of the Quebec chapter of Soldiers of Odin is Katy Latulippe. Soldiers of Odin have been patrolling neighbourhoods where Muslims live and have also joined Atalante for its food drives.

In the past months, the Soldiers of Odin began splintering in Canada over whether to remain aligned with their racist namesake in northern Europe. The president of Soldiers of Odin Canada, Bill Daniels, denounced the “racist agenda” of Soldiers of Odin leaders in Finland and said his branch was no longer associated with them. However, Katy Latulippe has said that Quebec will dissociate with Soldiers of Odin Canada and, presumably, retain the affiliation with Finland.

While the Canadian chapters have emphasized their community volunteerism, organizing events such as food drives, they have also clashed with anti-racism demonstrators, and posted blatantly anti-Muslim rhetoric on social media.

The politics of the Finland group were previously cited as the rationale for the split within the Quebec Soldiers of Odin where Katy La Tulippe took over and Martin Tregget left the group to form the Storm Alliance. The Storm Alliance is working with La Meute.

 

Radio

Garbage talk radio (Radio Poubelle) is big business in Quebec as in other parts of North America. Recently two of the prominent commentators Andre Arthur and Jeff Fillon were fired or let go. However, Eric Duhaime, who works with Rebel Media and FM 93, continues to broadcast Islamophobic tirades and others will be there to take their place. An online radio site which often broadcasts Garbage talk radio is Radio InfoCité.

 

Online

Online sites keep growing. This list is just a smattering. Three popular sites are Vigile.net, the Council of European Canadians, and Novopress, the press outlet of the bloc identitaire. One of the currently active Facebook pages is Justiciers du Peuple: Christian Desrochers and Alain Parent.

Trudeau, Nationalism, Indigenous Resistance, & Social Peace

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Jun 292017
 

From NoCanada.info

Like most people, I don’t pay much attention to Canadian politics. This is true even of those of us who live in the territory it controls. Especially these days, with an evil clown in charge of the United States government, the eyes of people in Canada are pretty fixed on the other side of the border. When people do bother to think about Canada, it’s usually to praise a political icon who has become an object of envy for progressives around the world — Justin Trudeau.

We take short breaks from watching the Trump circus to be vaguely relieved to see a handsome young man marching in the Pride parade, or being friends with refugees, or having his cabinet be half women.

But what the heck is Justin Trudeau? What role does he play in the ongoing capitalist, colonial project that is Canada? How does he relate to the ten years of conservative government that preceded him? And what does it mean to resist a state lead by a political figure like him?

Like I said, I don’t pay attention to Canada. But the way I see it, Canadian politics are defined by three factors: favourable comparison to the United States, resource extraction (aka colonial expansion), and the provincial/federal relationship. Let’s start by looking at the past couple of governments through this lens.

Trudeau’s Predecessors

To briefly consider the last two or three Canadian governments, for twelve years the Chretien/Martin Liberal party was built around neoliberal free trade policies. These deals opened up faster extraction of resources in Canada for a global market and unleashed Canadian extractive companies into every corner of the world. They balanced the federal budget while cutting social programs less that the Clinton government did during the same period and also avoided the Iraq war: this meant, to all of us with our eyes permanently fixed on the American spectacle, that Chretien didn’t seem that bad (even as folks threw down in the streets of Quebec city against the Free Trade Area of the Americas in 2001).

The Harper Conservative government was pushed to power by the same extractive industries that the Liberals had unleashed, notably the oil industry in Alberta’s Tar Sands, following a merger of the two right-leaning parties and the victory of their most conservative elements. He redefined the relationship between provinces and the federal government, reducing federal programs that were often then covered by provinces or replaced by tax cuts or payments. Harper largely reigned during the Obama years, which meant he didn’t have the important favourable comparison to the US working in his favour (though Canada did largely avoid the 2008 financial crisis, for which the Harper government took credit).

During Harper’s ten year reign, there arose an increasingly powerful and well-organized resistance against him, led by indigenous nations across the country who organized on an impressive scale. This resistance was also characterized by increasing links between indigenous militants, who had built their skills with a string of land reclamations and the assertion of territorial autonomy during the previous decades, and settler anarchists and others on the anti-capitalist left.

Notably, this resistance prevented Tar Sands oil from reaching a port by pipeline – this was a major strategic win for the resistance and a serious blow to the credibility of the Harper government. The Canadian national identity as it has existed since the seventies is essentially opposed to Harper’s antagonistic politics, his stands on social issues, his militarism, nationalism, and racism — people were willing to ignore it for a while in the name of economic necessity, but it increasingly galvanized resistance as Harper pursued a more socially conservative agenda in his later years. Several provincial governments also shifted left during this time, notably BC, Alberta, and Ontario (slightly), partly in response to Harper’s downloading of programs, but also to recuperate popular anger.

Social Peace, for the Economy

Looking at these two recent governments helps us understand Trudeau’s mandate. The Harper government wasn’t able to take the expansion of resource extraction projects as far as it wanted to, because he wasn’t able to maintain the other two legs of the Canadian political stool: the pressure on the provinces from the retreat of the federal government and the appearance of being socially regressive relative to the US provoked too much opposition. At its base, Trudeau’s mandate then is to produce enough social peace for infrastructure expansion to become possible. It’s especially important for him to build this peace with indigenous nations, where resistance tends to be more committed, experienced, and able to act in critical areas far from cities (because Canada’s really big and me and most other anarchists live in a handful of large urban areas close to the border, far from these all-important extractive industries).

In spite of Harper’s token gestures of apologizing for residential schools and launching an inquiry, the spectre of an indigenous insurrection emerged during the Harper years. This is probably the largest threat to the Canadian state and it makes further investment in infrastructure look risky if the state can’t guarantee it can push projects through. Trudeau’s role is essentially counter-insurgency — divide, pacify, and undermine solidarity to isolate the elements of the resistance that will refuse to compromise, but who (he hopes) can be defeated.

It’s hard to exaggerate the level of goodwill Trudeau has enjoyed in Canada this past year as he put his program into effect. Above, I mentioned a Canadian national identity that was defined during the 1970s — well, this was largely done by Justin’s father, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, one of Canada’s most influential prime ministers. Justin Trudeau is attempting to recreate this positive Canadian cultural identity to, on the one hand, pacify resistance to critical projects, and on the other, to to anchor a certain form of liberal (Liberal) politics among the inhabitants of the Canadian territory, especially those who arrived in the country more recently.

The Invention of Canadian Identity

All nationalism is based on lies and imaginary narratives, but Canada’s is more transparent than most. Essentially, the Canadian national identity was created from nothing in the sixties and seventies. Canada didn’t have a flag before 1965, people sang God Save the Queen instead of Oh Canada up until 1980, there was no Canadian literature or music to speak of (there were regional musical forms, but the literary and cultural identity was mostly that of the British Commonwealth). Canada had fought unremarkably alongside England during the world wars, but didn’t have an independent foreign policy. And there’s no Canadian cuisine apart from a few things stolen from indigenous nations (maple syrup) and a few poverty dishes from Quebec (poutine).

“Canada” is an emptiness, an erasure. All the word “Canada” meant up until the mid sixties was a slow, methodical genocide against indigenous peoples and cultures and the exportation of resources. The project of Canada was nothing but that — and it still is nothing but that, though Pierre Trudeau and his immediate predecessor Lester B Pearson, also of the Liberal Party, made some efforts to pretty it up.

Prime Minister from 1968-1979, Trudeau 1 pumped lots of money into arts and culture, producing a generation of writers, musicians, and artists who, spread by an expanded state media apparatus, created an idea of what it meant to be Canadian. In this, he was able to rely on institutions like the National Film Board of Canada (which greatly expanded its operations in the late 60’s, extending the reach of official culture out from Canada’s centre) and the Canada Council For the Arts (which provided a huge boost in funding for artists producing Canada-themed content throughout the Trudeau years). The production of the new Canadian identity was still deeply tied to natural resources (think Gordon Lightfoot singing whistfully about the empty wild being opened up by the rail line), but framed as an appreciation of untouched natural beauty (canonization of the Group of Seven and Emily Carr).

At the time, these investments in culture were aimed at reducing regional discontent with a seemingly out-of-touch Ontario anglophone elite. The Official Languages Act of 1969 was the legislative cornerstone of a national identity based on two peoples, the French and the English, which sought to better integrate francophones, especially in Quebec, into the Canadian identity as the Quiet Revolution reached its peak. This was the carrot, while Trudeau also quickly showed he was also willing to use a stick, as the War Measures Act of 1970 aimed at Quebecois nationalists and communists shows, in the largest mass arrests in Canadian history until the 2010 G20 summit. At the same time, Trudeau 1 attempted to frame the Canadian identity he was producing as somehow “progressive” through his opposition to the Vietnam War, welcoming in thousands of US war resistors, building on Pearson’s rebranding of the Canadian military as a peacekeeper force, and also by pushing for a shift on ideas of race and immigration.

These were also the years when universal health care was established (introduced by Pearson, put into practice by Trudeau) and Employment Insurance (EI) and welfare income supports were massively expanded, all administered by the provinces with money from the federal government. These kinds of redistributive social policies are thus a big part of this version of the Canadian national identity, which means Harper’s challenges to universal health care (opening the door to private insurance) and the major cuts and underfunding to EI and income supports under the Chretien/Martin and Harper governments means there is an opportunity for Justin to be their champion.

This period in Quebec looked a little different and deserves its own analysis, which I won’t try to do here. The francophone cultural revival of this period emphasized a distinctly Quebecois identity, but it played on many of the same themes and values as in anglophone Canada and served a remarkbly similar function in building a sense of unity around colonial expansion.

And what about (im)migration?

In 1971, Pierre Trudeau also declared that Canada would adopt a multicultural policy, making it official that a part of the Canadian identity was to welcome other cultural practices in the territory without asking for assimilation to the reigning norm (though the Multiculturalism Act was not passed until 1988, many of its key policies were developed under Trudeau). Bilingualism and tolerance, both legally defined, remain important pieces of how Canada seeks to portray itself. During this period, Canada removed its ban on non-European immigration (late sixties) and by 1971 non-Europeans represented the majority of immigrants settling in Canada. However, they replaced the openly racist immigration policy with one more geared towards class – the point system. Canada’s geography gives it unique control over its borders and allows it to be very selective in its immigration. Canada, perhaps more than any other country, is built on courting the world’s upper classes to immigrate (a notable example being the billions of dollars brought by immigrants from Hong Kong in advance of the island’s reunification with China).

People considered less desirable are sometimes able to enter, but are often kept in long-term precarity through migrant worker and visa programs and purges (such as one against Roma people around 2012) are frequent. In 1978, the Trudeau government formally included acceptance of refugees in Canada’s immigration policy, and the image of Canada as a safe haven is another important piece of the positive Canadian identity. But this reputation as a refuge is greatly exaggerated – more than half of migrants are admitted on economic grounds, with then about another quarter being for family reunification. Only a slim section of Canada’s immigration allowance is for refugees, who are almost all carefully selected outside the country.

This selectiveness and the policy of multiculturalism have been invoked as reasons why Canada’s relationship to immigration is less conflictual than in countries like France and the US. But in a context like Toronto’s, where more than half of people are born outside the country, the state clearly also has an interest in integrating new arrivals and the communities they form into this dominant Canadian identity. In the past ten years, recent migrants, often new home owners in rapidly growing urban areas, have tended to vote against taxes and for conservative politicians, leading to phenomenons like Rob Ford and like the Federal Conservative Party carrying a majority of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in 2011. Harper was content to draw on their support while also stigmatizing migrants to get support from reactionaries.

Justin Trudeau has an interest then in re-asserting the positive, multi-cultural vision of Canada for reasons of party politics, but also to reduce the risk of regional tensions (GTA vs the rest of Southern Ontario; upsetting the linguistic power balance between French and English; etc) and to avoid an anti-immigrant movement that would threaten access to skilled workers and new capital coming from abroad. For all Pierre Trudeau’s rhetoric about how “uniformity is neither desirable nor possible,” the Canadian multicultural identity is simply a way for people to participate in their own way in the single-mindedly destructive capitalist and colonial project known as Canada. As Canada represents nothing but pillage, no cultural practice other than anti-authoritarian revolt can truly threaten it, so all governments since the 70s have continued Pierre Trudeau’s practice of funding and supporting “cultural” events in the name of the Canadian identity.

A Wave of Nostalgia

A major part of Trudeau’s charm comes from nostalgia for the kind of Canada he is selling: a return to peace-keeping (rather than the more bellicose posture of the Harper years); proud multiculturalism (after Harper’s “barbaric cultural practices” nonsense); socially progressive policies (especially relative to Trump); all trumpeted by made-in-Canada arts and culture that can stand up to the American cultural machine. This is the image of Canada that a large part of the generation that grew up in the 70’s still wants to be proud of.

It makes sense that people love health care, want to welcome immigrants, and are encouraged by progressive stands on social issues. These things aren’t the problem. The problem is that they are bundled together into a nationalistic project that causes us to see the Canadian state and economy as somehow benevolent and to let our guard down against their attacks.

By promoting a form of Canadian nationalism most developed by his father, Justin Trudeau is hoping to paper over the colonial nature of the Canadian project and the daily economic violence of capitalism. No less than Donald Trump, Trudeau is harkening back to a semi-imaginary past moment when there was less social conflict and nationalism could make us feel good. This form of nationalism is what allows Trudeau to assemble the three elements of Canadian politics: reducing popular anger allows resource extraction to proceed; progressive stands on social issues make Canada look good relative to the US; and reinvestment in social programs and infrastructure by a less debt-averse federal government reduces the burden on the provinces, which reduces conflict and makes it easier for the federal government to implement its agenda.

I’m not even in Canada, but it makes me sick to think about how Trudeau is making it ok to be proudly Canadian again. I don’t want to feel good about Canada. I don’t want to be either a pawn in its fuzzy colonial project or an excluded, banished from its gentrifying cities and productive workforce – I want to make the immense violence of the Canadian state and economy visible. I don’t want to fill the void that is Canada with flimsy little myths about how health care and multiculturalism mean we have nothing to be angry about – I want to look at the situation honestly and choose sides in the conflict. I don’t want the social peace Justin Trudeau offers, because social peace means business as usual — I want to fight for my autonomy and the autonomy of others on healthy land and water.

Rather than paint a maple leaf on your cheek for Canada 150, let’s take the opportunity to look the beast in the face. The sense of pride offered by nationalism is a false one and interferes with the real strength we can build together when we clearly identify our enemies and prepare to go on the offensive.

Finding ways to resist: learning from anti-gentrification actions in Montreal

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Jun 222017
 

From The Cannon Street Bellows

As rising housing prices push more of us into difficult situations here in Hamilton, it can be hard to find inspiration for how to fight back against gentrification. But just down the 401, anarchists in Montreal have been developing a practice of direct action against businesses involved in gentrifying their neighbourhoods over the past several years. Focused on Hochelaga in the east and Saint-Henri in the south-west, a variety of strategies have emerged that share a common goal of making the territory inhospitable for businesses that try to attract a rich clientele to working-class areas.

Starting in 2010, there have been a steady stream of attacks against surveillance cameras. By destroying the cameras, anarchists challenge the logic of surveillance – who does it actually make safer – and also make it easier to attack other targets in the neighbourhood. The early attacks in Montreal used a fire extinguisher filled with paint and a communique that circulated in December 2016 showed a masked up person wearing a string of destroyed cameras as a necklace.

In Saint-Henri in May 2015, the grand opening of a juice bar was interrupted by a masked crowd that threw a smoke bomb into the venue and then attacked the owner with pepper spray when he attempted to intervene. This tactic of mass, open attacks against prominent gentrifiers shows clearly that the rich are vulnerable and the police can’t stop a determined group from attacking them. Still in Saint-Henri, in May 2016, a de-gentrification action collectively pillaged a fancy food store in the area and redistributed the food to local residents. Back in Hochelaga, a march on Halloween 2016 distributed candy to people in the neighbourhood, while also painting dozens of tags against gentrification and the police, who, when they arrived, were driven back with rocks. Mass resistance breaks the spell of peaceful acceptance of development and gentrification, and helps us shake off the fatalism and despair that they inflict on us.

There have been some attempts at similar actions in Hamilton: last June, a group of about thirty people confronted a tour of real estate investors called Try Hamilton. Using chants and a barrage of gross stuff, they showed that there will always be resistance to those who try to get rich by pushing people from their homes. Their commitment to self-defense against the police meant that, like in the Montreal actions above, no one was arrested.

There have also been a large number of clandestine attacks against high-end and pro-gentrification businesses in Saint-Henri and Hochelaga. These actions have featured many broken windows and much graffiti, with a preferred tactic being the use of paint-filled fire extinguishers. In November 2016, a communique circulated calling to go beyond attacking the exterior of these shops: the windows of three stores in Hochelaga were broken and then a fire extinguisher was used to coat the interior with paint. The communique read, “By destroying these windows and ruining this merchandise with paint, we engage in an act of war. We will not let these boutiques install themselves here peacefully. This facade of peace is nothing more than an attempt to make invisible the war in progress against poor and marginalized people.” A similar action against a clothing store in Saint-Henri in 2015 was claimed as part of Black December, a call by international anarchist prisoners to attack symbols of domination that was also answered in Hamilton by graffiti on the Barton Jail.

Throughout, there has also been a consistent effort to publicize anti-gentrification actions and circulate counter-narratives about development. Following a June 2015 attack on a restaurant in Hochelaga that is themed around macho imagery, a poster circulated queering and parodying the restaurant’s logo and explaining why expensive restaurants are not welcome in the area. In December 2016, a poster went up in Saint-Henri about local historical figure Louis Cyr, whose image has been commercialized by an expensive restaurant in the neighbourhood that had been attacked several times in the preceding two years. Parasitic entrepreneurs will try to commodify aspects of local culture and history in advertising campaigns to sell the neighbourhood to outsiders. What does this look like? Think all the discourse about steel or industry by gentrifiers in Hamilton, like the Cotton Factory or Seed Works. These redeveloped industrial spaces brand themselves using elements of local labour and popular culture to attract yuppy offices and events.

This is only a small sample of the actions that have occurred, but they show that with determination, we can find the means to resist. Although it can seem hopeless,, in an interview with Submedia in December 2016, two anarchists who participated in some of the above Montreal actions said:

“[Gentrification] can seem inevitable, and maybe it is, but it’s still worth the effort to struggle against it and not just roll over. In the unbearable world we live in, I feel that my life can find a sort of meaning if I fight back.”

For more information about actions in Montreal: Montreal Counter-information

Want to know more about what gentrification is and it’s history in Hamilton? Check out the text “Now that it’s Undeniable: Gentrification in Hamilton”.

June 11th: Communication As a Weapon

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May 242017
 

By now it is a platitude to speak of the isolation and silence that prisons strive to impose. Every week another one of our imprisoned friends tells us that their mail is getting fucked with, the phones on their unit are “broken,” or that our publications are being rejected with no recourse.

For us, one of the most exciting elements of June 11, 2016 was the proliferation of words and ideas shared between and from anarchist prisoners.  Along with spreading material solidarity internationally and keeping the names of our comrades on our lips, our contribution to facilitating that communication is one of our most important tasks. While the starting point of our project was support for Marius Mason and Eric McDavid (the first of whom remains imprisoned in an extremely restrictive unit, while the latter has been freed!), it has been through a spreading web of communications that we have expanded the scope of our project to solidarity with long-term anarchist prisoners around the world.  This year, we are seeking to emphasize this communication.

Maintaining communication is a lifeline for those caught in the snares of state repression or locked in its dungeons. Prisons function to isolate those held within these dungeons, to remove them from human community, and to break their will. Receiving letters and publications, being able to connect with individuals outside of the walls, and being able to call upon the solidarity of comrades on the outside are all vitally important to retaining dignity in dehumanizing conditions. When Chelsea Manning attempted suicide, communication enabled her and those close to her to mobilize and act. For prisoners who seem to live under a microscope due to their rebellious activities, a constant stream of letters shows their tormentors that they have friends on the outside and that there will be consequences for any action taken against them. Throughout the September 9th US prison strike, the relationships built over years made it possible to know of work strikes and rebellions happening in prisons all over the country, allowing supporters to organize counter-repressive action.

We must not, however, confuse actual communication with the absentminded chatter of liberal democracy. In totalitarian societies, speaking out can be subversive to systems of power; in liberal democracies it strengthens them. History textbooks teach us to speak truth to power, allowing power to better understand our frustrations so it can then maneuver to undermine us – either by regurgitating and disfiguring our criticisms as popular appeals or otherwise attempting to sell them back to us through edgy marketing campaigns. The more we tell power what we’re mad about, the better the chance they can manipulate us. Ranting on the internet is a microcosm of the pressure valve function of free speech in neutralizing social unrest. We are encouraged to say whatever we want, as long as we don’t actually do anything about it. Free speech becomes a fetish. For people who have never experienced a moment of freedom in their entire lives, freedom of speech is taken for freedom itself.

When direct action actually does take place, it either is castigated as coming from “outsiders,” or framed to fit into democratic rhetoric around speech. After the uprising against police in Ferguson, Missouri, Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote that “riots are the language of the unheard” went viral because it was a way to frame the uprising as revolving around freedom of speech, as if the silencing of Ferguson residents’ voices is what caused the riots, or that their rioting was intended only to amplify their voices.

When we speak of communication, we are not talking about “freedom of information” – media attention and generalized knowledge of the horrific practices and conditions inside prisons will never result in public outrage, nor will they cause a wave of shame that will wash over the authorities and affect them to the point where they’ll change what they’re doing. While trying to bring attention to issues sometimes has it place, we don’t expect anything from the authorities (or the “public”) and we know all too well that, especially in democracies, public opinion usually does very little to affect the policies or practices of the state. We’re talking about something different: that finding and speaking with our comrades is vital to attacking power and living full lives.

Within liberal democracies, prison functions to isolate those who do not take the bait of the democratic illusion.  We amplify the stories of those anarchists serving time in prison who have chosen active revolt against any regime of power rather than played into democracy’s games.  In February 2017, Eric King received sanctions – including loss of phone, visits, and commissary; increase in security level; and loss of “good time” – for writing poems and drawing cartoons depicting violence towards the Bureau of Prisons and the government in general. In early 2017, Sean Swain went on a successful 50-day hunger strike demanding the restoration of his email and phone communications, which had been cut off years ago due to his alleged threats of outside direct action against prison officials. In 2014, Bill Dunne received a 15-year “hit” to his parole, with the parole commission citing his “continued association and affiliation with anarchist organizations” as evidence he “still harbor[ed] anti-authoritarian views that are not compatible with the welfare of society.” Marius Mason is currently being held in the intensely-restrictive federal prison in Carswell, Texas, which surveils and controls his communication with the outside world and imposes harsh limits to his ability to connect with struggles on the outside. The comrades arrested in Italy under Operation Scripta Manent have seen their mail restricted, including a permanent seizure of all material from Croce Nera Anarchica [Anarchist Black Cross].

Despite the state’s best attempts to fetter our comrades’ tongues, imprisoned anarchists continue to contribute to struggles inside and outside of prison. Sean Swain’s Final Straw segments, Marius’ art and poetry, Jeremy Hammond’s incendiary tweets, and prison writings crossing borders and oceans show the innumerable and diverse forms communication can take in the belly of the beast.

That said, we want to share specific news of Marius’ struggles on the inside.  This year was filled with new heartbreak as the Bureau of Prisons developed means of isolating him further.  Beginning last summer, Marius began to see huge gaps in the mail he received, sometime going weeks without personal mail, with movement newsletters even more scarce. It was finally revealed via a phone call with a friend that FMC Carswell had been cutting off all communication about the National Prison Strike and thus any personal mail mentioning the strike was destroyed.

Even with these more obvious events Marius is going into his 10th year of incarceration, friendships and supports on the outside have been pushed to their limit, consistently thwarted in their attempts to get mail past Carswell’s complex and unexplained regulations.  Aside from the few close friends and immediate family he has left, Marius receives very little mail. Mail is his lifeline to the outside world. He needs supporters to recommit to correspondence, and to visits, for those of us who knew him before his arrest (a requirement of the BOP).  Know that letters which mention political actions will not make it through the tight censorship.

On the outside, new projects which seek to break down the barriers imposed by prison have flourished. Comrades all over the US and elsewhere have started publishing prison newsletters, giving wings to the ideas of our imprisoned comrades, enabling them to spread seeds in the “free world” and in the prison cells. Individual support websites, counter-information websites, zines collecting prisoners’ writings, the Certain Days calendar, the new Black Bridge website, and other efforts keep our comrades behind bars connected with us, and us connected with them – through creative expression, mutual contribution to theory, and strategizing for continuation of struggle.

This extends also to the realm of action, with solidarity rooting itself in the spirit of combative, internationalist struggle against prison and its world. Following the arrest of Pola Roupa and Konstantina Athanasopoulou and the detainment of Pola’s six-year-old child Lambros-Viktoras, diverse and combative actions took place, resulting in Lambros-Viktoras’ grand-mother gaining custody of her grandchild. The actions taken all over the world in solidarity with the US prison strike in September 2016 offer a clear vision of how words and deeds can mix in the cauldron of revolt. We also want to mention the upcoming Fight Toxic Prisons convergence in Texas, drawing the important connections between ecological devastation and prison society and rooting both in active solidarity with imprisoned comrades.

This year we challenge ourselves to weaponize our words and gestures to one another, to give them teeth. Let’s find ways to fight the censorship of those sending messages from the inside, and those sending strength and support from the outside. Let us not be satisfied with merely expressing our desires and ideas to whoever is listening, but really live them, and develop them together. The state wishes to crush our comrades by separating them from communities of struggle. We will not let it succeed!

[PDF for reading] [PDF for printing]

The Rebel! Rebuild! Rewild! Report for 2016

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May 222017
 

As we roll into our fourth year, Rebel! Rebuild! Rewild! keeps gaining momentum. Our collective, for which Earth First! was a primary inspiration, began with the aim of bringing a culture of revolutionary ecology to the territories we inhabit in so-called Ontario and Quebec.

Back in January 2016, we held a winter organizing convergence called “Vision 2020,” which brought together many of the most committed eco-anarchists in this neck of the woods. The name reflects our desire to articulate a revolutionary vision for a decolonized, post-petroleum world.

For us, it’s not enough to fight against what we oppose. We also need to be creating the communities that we wish to replace capitalism with. A tall order, to be sure, but to it seems more realistic than just smashing the state. Who would abandon the life that they know without a glimpse of a world beyond? To quote an anonymous anarchist author: “Who would smash the platform they’re standing on without a safety net to catch them?”

For sure, we’ve got to fight fiercely against the forces fucking up our home. We’d do well, though, to approach environmental struggles as moments of revolutionary potential; that is, as moments of opportunity. We can use these moments to share inspiration, to brainstorm, to offer visions, to disseminate seeds of resistance. Never underestimate the power of ideas. They’re the stuff revolutions are made of.

The number in the name Vision 2020 stands for the year 2020. We were asked: “Where do we want to be, as a movement, five years from now?” Together we brainstormed about multi-year strategies to advance the cause of revolutionary ecology. The idea was to start with a big vision and reverse-engineer it, breaking it down into things we can do now that will move us in the direction we want to go. We’re dreamers, but we’re pragmatic dreamers. Our ideal is to organize in such a way that everything we do makes more ambitious things possible.

This gathering helped us synchronize our goals. To us, the ultimate goal is the creation of autonomous zones able to survive and thrive independent of the state and fossil fuel economy. We imagine constellations of ecological communities, perhaps organized in bioregional federations, bound together by friendship, trade, and relationships rooted in mutual aid and solidarity.

One idea that was agreed-upon was that of the Mobile Resistance Unit (MRU). The idea’s simple: Get a trailer and fill it with a bunch of equipment that would be useful to a blockade, action camp, or front-line community. Since much of the work we do is in solidarity with indigenous communities, this idea grew naturally out of the desire to make ourselves as useful as possible.

Another result of Vision 2020 was the decision to start a land project in the Gatineau Hills in Algonquin Territory (north of Ottawa). We’d been invited by the owners of a 200-acre farm to move there and establish a community.

In the springtime, some of us did. We held a week-long permaculture camp in the spring of 2016. We planted large gardens and learned a lot. Since most of us grew up in cities, this gave us a taste of rural life and hands-on experience in skills we’ll need to learn in order to live our future autonomous lives.

I think everyone considers the third annual Rebel! Rebuild! Rewild! action camp a resounding success. There may have been less than 50 people, but the quality of the time that we spent together left nothing to be desired. We drew new people in, learned a lot, had fun, and shared food, ideas, inspiration, and joyful moments. There were some great workshops, but the reason I call it a success is that, because of R!R!R!, a strong network now exists that didn’t before. Also, we acquired a trailer and lots of gear for the MRU.

A core stayed on the farm through harvest season, and the land yielded us a bounty. All in all, it was a rewarding experience. For now, the land project is on hold. A general will still exists to create an intentional community, but for now, R!R!R! will be more focused on activism that challenges institutional power.

In November, we deployed the MRU for the first time. We’d received word that the Mohawks of Kahnawake had started a protest camp near the Mercier bridge, which they’d blocked several times. This is a major bridge onto the island of Montreal, and was blockaded by armed warriors during the Oka Crisis of 1990. The camp, called the People’s Fire, was started in solidarity with the water protectors fighting DAPL at Standing Rock.

The day that we rolled up to the sacred fire at Kahnawake was a glorious day. Once we introduced ourselves and showed the Mohawks what we had brought, we were received like allies (in the true sense of that word). Within the hour, we were constructing a heavy-duty army tent, which is still there to this day.

Various R!R!R! members continued to visit the People’s Fire, which served as a base for several 24-hour blockades of a major rail line, costing the rail company millions of dollars.

In late November, we began planning a mission to Standing Rock with Mohawks from the People’s Fire. We were able to raise enough funds to buy five army tents, which we brought to Standing Rock, where three were erected and two were donated. We also brought a bunch of other gear. Two of us were there until the bitter end and were arrested for resisting the eviction of Oceti Oyate.

What does the future hold for R!R!R!? Time will tell. Now’s an exciting time for us. The more we scheme, the more we dream, and the more we dream, the more we scheme. Things keep moving, and the seeds that we’ve planted seem to be growing. I guess it’s true: Resistance is fertile.

That said, we’re still loosely organized, and for most members, R!R!R! is a side project. So much more would be possible if more people were more deeply involved! For real, for real, we need help. Exact dates have yet to be announced for the fourth annual R!R!R! action camp, but it will be towards the end of June. The goal for the collective, however, isn’t just to organize an annual event, but to become a revolutionary outfit active 365 days a year (366 on leap years).

In the spirit of achieving this goal, we’re recruiting. Do you love nature and hate capitalism? Are you passionate, hard-working, smart, and brave? Do you want to make visionary activism the focus of your life? Do you have useful skills or like learning new skills? If your answer to all these questions is yes, please get in touch with us. Come hither, ye wildsome wyrdlings!

For Autonomy! For Sovereignty! For Survival!

REBEL! REBUILD! REWILD!
rebelrebuildrewild.org

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