Analysis

Defend the Hood

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Dec 222016

Make sure to press CC on the video player for English subtitles

In 2016, numerous attacks were launched at diverse symbols of gentrification in the Montreal neighborhoods of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and Saint-Henri. We wanted to give space to the people involved so that they can explain a point of view, that corporate media consistently ignore or misrepresent. subMedia has obtained an exclusive interview with two anarchists involved in the actions.

To protect their identities, the voices have been dubbed by actors.

What does it mean for you to fight against gentrification?

1. Before anything else, we’re just talking for the two of us, not for anyone else who participated in the action. We don’t want to represent anything.

2. I don’t want to limit myself to fighting against gentrification, which I see as an intensification of the misery of capitalism. And I’m against capitalism in all its forms. I struggle against gentrification because it effects my life and the lives of many people, but also because it’s a context that allows the exchange of ideas and practices, to nourish a larger perspective of anarchist struggle. I’ve been inspired by anarchists in other cities who have anchored their struggles in where they live. They’ve managed to make certain neighbourhoods dangerous for the authorities and not very welcoming for capitalist businesses. I would like for the police to be afraid of being attacked when they patrol Hochelag, for small yuppie businesses to hesitate before setting up shop here because their insurance premiums will be super expensive, for people to think about how if they park their luxury cars in the neighbourhood overnight, they’re risking waking up to them being trashed, that as soon as graffiti or posters are cleaned, they’re back up.

1. And if we want these people to be afraid, it’s because we want the space to experiment with other ways of living, and cohabitation with them isn’t possible. Their world will always want the destruction of other worlds, those of freedom, of sharing and gifting, of relations outside of work and leisure, of the joy outside of consumption…

2. I think it’s worth being explicit about how the struggle against gentrification is inevitably a struggle against the police. The main tool that the city has to move forward with its project of social cleansing is the police and the pacification of residents. This reality is at the heart of the reflections that orient our actions. The pacification takes different forms: it’s the installation of cameras, the management of parks and streets, but also it’s the imaginary created by bullshit narratives like “social mixity”. The public consultations, the studies and projects of affordable housing are all just a facade: during this time, the social cleansing advances and more and more people are evicted. If these means of pacification don’t work, the city has recourse to repression, that’s to say, the police. It’s the police who evict tenants, prevent the existence of squats, etc. Every form of offensive organization that refuses the mediation attempts of the municipal authority will one day be faced with the police. So it’s also important to develop our capacity to defend initiatives against repression.

Without necessarily throwing aside community organizing, many anarchists prefer the method of direct action. Why?

1. We don’t have demands. We didn’t do this action to put pressure on power, so that they grant us certain things. For sure people should have access to housing, but I don’t think that we should wait for the State to respond to the demands for social housing that have existed since the 80s, in a neighbourhood undergoing gentrification. I’m more interested in seeing what it would look like for people to take space and defend it, without asking. I’m not interested in dialoguing with power.

2. Dialogue with the municipal authorities is, along with the threat of police repression, the principal method of pacification. To keep us in inaction, imprisoned in an imaginary where we can’t take anything or stop anything from happening.

1. What’s special about direct action is that you finally do away with the ultimate mediator, the State, by acting directly on the situation. Rather than giving agency to the city, in demanding something of it, we want to act for ourselves against the forces that gentrify the neighbourhood. The State is afraid of people refusing its role as the mediator.

Why choose a strategy of direct action outside of a context like those created during social movements?

2. Because we don’t want to wait for the ‘right context’. We think that it’s through intervening in fucked up situations in the world that we live in that we create contexts. The fact that this world is horrible is in itself a ‘good context’. Revolt is always worthwhile, every day.

1. I think that’s important to emphasize, I don’t believe in waiting for social movements to act. Acts of revolt have many impacts, even if they’re not inscribed in a social movement. And also, when the next moment of widespread revolt comes, we’ll be better prepared to participate.

Lastly, what do you say to those who say that gentrification is an inevitable process?

1. Gentrification is a process of capitalism and colonialism, among others. It makes itself seem inevitable, and maybe it is, but it’s nonetheless worthwhile to struggle against it and to not let ourselves be passive. In a world as unlivable as the one we’re in, I have the feeling that my life can only find meaning if I fight back.

2. At best, the process of gentrification will move elsewhere, if a neighbourhood resists. And yet, struggling against capitalism and the State opens up possibilities that otherwise wouldn’t have existed.

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Louis Cyr, the police, and the gentrification of St-Henri

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Dec 152016

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Why warriors at Standing Rock wear masks flyer

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Nov 072016

For distribution at Standing Rock solidarity initatives, to disprove the accusations against those who wear masks and counter narratives of pacifism.

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Theft, direct action, solidarity

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Jul 042016

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Today is July 1st, the day when the founding of the state of Canada is celebrated. We have chosen this day to announce that over the past months we have stolen and freely redistributed a number of quality objects and food obtained from bourgeois stores to marginalized individuals and families from oppressed communities in Montreal, occupied Kanien’kehá:ka territory. This text is to explain why we have done this, to express solidarity with related actions, and to encourage others to continue taking similar initiatives.

We publish this text on Canada Day because we are against all states, and in particular, against the violence of settler colonial states like Canada that are founded on genocide of indigenous nations, and on racist exclusion and exploitation of non-white people. We believe the well being of the majority of the world depends on fighting against industrial and imperial states like Canada that are the main promoters and beneficiaries of global capitalism. This is why we are breaking the laws of this state, stealing from capitalist businesses, and redistributing goods to communities who are being actively oppressed by this system. Theft is a direct action that so many of us carry out in our daily lives, to get what we need and want from a system that refuses to share. This time we have done it collectively and intentionally, as part of a broader struggle against oppression, and for freedom and self-determination for everyone.

We have been inspired by recent struggles that are both politically and geographically near to us, and we would like to express our solidarity with the brave actions we see all around. First, from Indigenous nations and communities continuing their centuries long struggles of for survival and defence of water, land and life. Algonquins against condo development along the Ottawa river, Innus against the hydroelectric damming of Muskrat Falls, Ojibway for the cleanup of mercury contamination at Grassy Narrows, and Mohawks of Kanehsatà:ke continuing to prevent any niobium mining in their community. There have been numerous occupations in recent months of government offices by those fighting state killing and complicity in the deaths and violence against oppressed communities. The Black Lives Matter occupation in front of the Toronto police headquarters, the indigenous occupations of numerous INAC (Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada) offices in solidarity with Attawapiskat, and the Solidarity Across Borders occupation of CBSA offices here in Montreal against the violence of immigrant deportation and detention.

We are equally inspired by the daily resistance of those struggling for dignity and survival in less visible ways without a ‘legal identity’, such as those who are undocumented, criminalized, homeless.

Finally, we applaud the impressive direct action by anti-gentrification looters in the Montreal neighbourhood of Saint-Henri who collectively expropriated thousands of dollars of food from a gentrifying grocery store. They are close to us not just in terms of their politics and geography, but also their choice of tactics. The forced displacement and marginalization of neighbourhood residents by gentrification is the direct result of the capitalism of urban real estate markets. Looting and attacks on gentrifying businesses is an important way of fighting back, alongside the numerous campaigns, actions, and organizing that have been challenging gentrification across Montreal for many years.

The Saint-Henri action was successful at drawing a large amount of media attention and public discussion to the issue of gentrification. Throughout this discussion, there have been arguments made to which we would like to respond. Some argue that gentrification is caused by big real estate developments, therefore small businesses should not be targeted. This stubbornly ignores the reality that although the condos are the driving force behind gentrification, the process is also facilitated and reinforced by the expensive new stores catering to the condo dwellers, the police that protect them, and the city government that gives their stamp of approval in exchange for a cut of the profits.

Others agree with opposing gentrification, but do not support illegal tactics like the looting of a gentrifying business. In response, we argue that the connected systems that we are struggling against, including gentrification, Canada, and global capitalism, inflict terrible violence and misery around the world every day, and have been doing so for hundreds of years. To survive means to stop and destroy these systems. It is a massive undertaking, one that is carried out daily by so many, and it is one of the most important things we can do on this planet. You say we have gone too far with our illegal actions? We say that we have not gone nearly far enough. Breaking a few laws is the least we can do. We hope for everyone’s sake that together we are able to do so much more, using whatever means are required.

In love and solidarity with all those in struggle!

POWER DOWN – No to the 735kV power line

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Apr 132016

From Interruption

735 000 volts. This is what will pass through the new very high tension line that Hydro-Quebec wants to construct as of this year. The trajectory of this line is 400km long and will transport electricity from the Chamouchouane central to Sanguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, passing through Lanaudiere, towards an eventual post that does not exist at the moment, in Terrebonne, called Judith-Jasmin. This will be linked to the Montreal region by a second segment of 19 km towards the Bout-de-l’Ile post. This is the most important hydro line in 20 years, estimated at 1,3 billion dollars. In fact, it’s the 12th line of this scale in so-called “Quebec”.

But firstly, they need to clear-cut the path where pylons will be planted. The deforestation has already begun in the north and in Lanaudiere. It has caused multiple expropriations and partially crosses the hunting grounds of Attikamekws in the north, St-Michel-des-Saints, St-Zenon, Ste-Emelie-de-l’Energie, St-Alphonse-de-Rodriguez, Rawdon, etc.

The project has been contested by many residents, farmers and ecologists for the past 6 years: “Useless, environmentally devastating and economically unjustified” (Citizens Under High-Tension). Beyond any doubts, it is a categorical refusal. The BAPE (Bureau of public audiences on the environment) has recommended the government wait until they have more information, to deepen the study of the impact and to take into consideration the opposition of the area. Nonetheless, the State has adopted a decree imposing the pursuit of the construction. Hydro-Quebec gave 4 million dollars in compensation to the Regional County Municipality of Lanaudiere and another one million to Manawan as compensation to make them swallow their salads. But there are still people who oppose; most have land concerns, they are angry property owners because the value of their houses will decrease or because they have farms and their animals can’t handle the strong electromagnetic fields of these high-tension lines. They refuse to sign the letters sent by Hydro-Quebec that requests residents permission to cut trees on their lands as Hydro will not have compensated them personally in cash. In response Hydro is harassing them and has obtained an injunction. Even if it is heartwarming for people to be mobilizing against Hydro-Quebec, this refusal only slows the process of systemic destruction and doesn’t aspire to halt it. We can even say that the motives of this opposition are absolutely contradictory to the desires of wild freedom that live in us. Our desire is to expand the field of possibilities, so we wish to propose other avenues to break the realization of this hydro project. As of this moment, the project is going ahead and the deforestation has already begun.

Another national myth

The Hydro-Quebec mafia has no interest in retreating faced with a project like this that represents enormous profit. In fact, the era of combustible fossil fuels is in decline. Facing the drying up of petroleum resources, the costs of extraction and transportation have become too high. The turn to green has been in the works for a few decades and in this context, hydro-electricity, perceived as a renewable and green energy, becomes a precious commodity. The large global corporations of commerce and finance are in the process of restructuring and transforming the industry and transportation in order to adapt to “green energies”. The new Minister of Transportation of Quebec has for an innovative mission the electrification of public transportation with new hybrid and electrical vehicles. Electrical cars become more and more accessible, Hydro installs battery recharge stations in every corner of so-called “Quebec”, even field vehicles will be electric in the near future. And all this with the objective to maintain the speed and the productivity of the industry. The infrastructure projects of energy transportation, as with roads, railroads, ports, pipelines and airports, are indispensable to the expansion of industry, a tentacular project in itself.

A myth is built around hydro-electricity as a green and renewable energy source. We brag about it almost as if it was the national joy of so-called “Quebec” with its numerous fresh water rivers of high flow. In reality, we should perceive hydro-electricity as an exploitable resource, commodifiable as much as iron, uranium or petroleum. Today, the territory is completely disfigured, there remains only a few high flow rivers that haven’t yet been invaded by dams. The electricity itself that they speak of is actually a gigantic enterprise of ecosystem destruction, of river pollution and the destruction of ways of life of communities that depend on the river for survival. When a dam is constructed, the river is blocked and a reservoir of water that floods a large surface of the territory is created. The river in question overflows from its bed near the dam and dries up along all its length. The trees and plants that have been flooded die and release methane and carbon dioxide into the water and the air. The methane and the carbon dioxide are greenhouse gases; it is reported that 12% of greenhouse gases emitted on the colonized lands of the Canadian State originate from hydro-electric dams. Another consequence of these floods is the methyl-mercury contamination of the water, originating from the release of fossilized inorganic mercury in the soil. Once the ground has been flooded by water, the mercury is released and transforms into methyl-mercury, a neurotoxin that is consequentially found in the food chain. The fish, animals and humans that consume it may develop a variety of illnesses, such as cardiovascular disorders and cancer. It has been accordingly discouraged for people to consume the fish of these rivers for a period of 30 years following the flooding of a basin. To summarize, the plentitude of fresh-water rivers of so-called “Quebec”, in the past potable, have all become toxic. The animals and the humans that depend on them for drinking water and food are poisoning themselves or losing a source of potable water. As a result: thousands year-old ecosystems and ancestral forms of life disturbed and destroyed.

The first intention of Hydro-Quebec is evidently the creation of consumer markets with the United-States, with a pretty discourse singing praise for hydro-electricy as being cleaner than coal electricity. On their website, they make the comparison. What they don’t say, is that its the shitty industry put in place with its logic of monopolization since the beginning of colonization by the Europeans 500 years ago that causes the destruction of life. Hydro-Quebec therefore explores all the american markets and talks of even undertaking other projects of dam construction for the few fresh water rivers still intact. They obviously don’t have any reservations regarding the real damages caused by their thirst for wealth.

The bleeding of electricity

Hydro-Quebec owns approximately 62 hydro-electric centres. Since the beginning of the 2000s, the great rivers of the James Bay area and the North Shore have been used to feed a hydro-electric complex (i.e. the Caniapiscau, the Opinaca, the Eastmain and Ruper), and seriously disrupted following the installation of hydro-electric centers (i.e. Sainte-Marguerite, the Romaine and Toulnustouc). These famous high tension lines transport the electricity coming from the North and supplied to the entire province, its urban centers, its suburbs, its industries and its mines. As an example, supplying a single mine in heating and electricity, to render its below ground environment inhabitable for the people who work in it, is the equivalent energy consumption of a city like Trois-Rivieres. As those who oppose the project say, the province has no need to produce more electricity. In fact, most of the electricity produced is already surplus. At the moment we consume only 15% of the electricity produced, the rest is lost through transportation, or even watered because it isn’t profitable to stockpile it in batteries. Actually, if the produced current isn’t consumed right away, its lost. Therefore, this 735 000 volt line will transport energy coming from the dams in the north: James Bay, Manicouagan, and the new dams of La Romaine on the North-Shore, projects that have faced intense resistance by the inhabitants of the region during the past years. The State accordingly justifies this project by saying the new dams provoke congestion on the existing lines.

Let’s not forget that Hydro-Quebec is a State company that has the monopoly on matters of electrify, that frequently gives contracts to companies with cloudy numbers, that imposes high fees, that expropriates land in exchange for ridiculously low compensation, and who works solely with the goal of favoring the industry. Here, what is important to us goes far beyond the value of houses. There is the annihilation of the environment, a reality erased by all kinds of false publicity of Hydro Quebec. Because in reality, the energy of the industry comes from a carbon thermal center, nuclear reactors or hydroelectricity,the paradigm stays the same: productivity, the pillage of territories and the expansion of the market. No energy dedicated to industry could be clean.

We are fighting to re-appropriate our lives. We have the intention of destroying what destroys nature, because we need it to be well and live healthily. Industry, dams, mines, and deforestation are devastating parasites. It suffices to imagine being a bird flying in the sky contemplating the scenery to realize the devastation that has been initiated is irreversible, to see the holes in the forest, to see the flooded lands in the bassins of the dams. We quickly understand that the ecology is far from being a priority of Hydro Quebec and its shareholders. They pay themselves hunting and fishing trips in resorts for the rich, and appropriate the rest of the lands by buying cottages, they build chains and fences, put up signs that say “private property, access forbidden”. Those responsible for these companies aren’t entitled to forgiveness.

We honour all acts of resistance, we salute the courage of communities struggling for self-determination and wild freedom. We are those who oppose the ravaging deforestation in the forest of Ouareau, with the Cree who are opposed to the clear-cuts in the forest of Broadback, with Six Nations who are also fighting against deforestation in the Red Hill Valley related to the high tension line in the south of so-called “Ontario”, with the Mi’kmaq who are fighting again fracked gas, with the Mohawks who threaten to block the Energy-East pipeline, with those who occupy Lax U’u’la (Lelu island) in blocking the construction of the Pacific Northwest LNG terminal and with all the accomplices with wild and combative spirits.

In this very moment, deforestation of the company of the region has begun, as well as the establishment of access roads. There is still time to stop the construction and it isn’t the State or any representative, even those with good will, who will help us. What are we waiting for?

To contact us: anti735[at]riseup.net

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Sounding out the void: reflections on the night-demos of December 2015

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Mar 312016

The three night-demos of this past November and December left a mark on us, a call for reflection. This is what we propose to share with you in the following pages.

Before and after these three demos, we were able to follow the unfolding of conversations – those that happened between friends as much as those we heard by chance in bars, living rooms and in the street – the furtive or noisy course of a feeling that seemed to be shared by many people: a feeling of emptiness. After the 200 person black bloc, after the broken windows, we heard “what else?” insistently. To the point where, when we asked friends if they were going to the third demo on December 18th, the majority answered that they had other things to do, like having dinner at a friend’s house.

So today, and in the past few months, we continue to ask ourselves what pushes those close to us, those who share the same desires to tear up the world and to nourish our rage, to chill with friends as we always do, rather than to seize the (rare) opportunity for a wild unleashing. This brings us to more questions: how can we think of these demos outside of the moments of strike which often push people to prioritize demos over dinners? What can our place be in these demos outside of social movements? What place do these demos take in our daily lives?

What is at the heart of our reflections, this feeling of emptiness, we have felt in all its force. These phrases repeated ad nauseam: “but where are we going with this?”, “what are these demos embedded in?”, “it’s not by breaking windows that we harm Capital”, “the State isn’t shaken by our nocturnal destructive wanderings”. The void, we feel it in the absurdity of gestures engaged for anyone other than ourselves, in the ridiculous silence of those we hate, in the infantilizing and numbing response of the Media that will only ever see us as violent imbeciles – not really dangerous. And worse still, they reflect to us a mirror image that strips away our power. This brings us to think that these demos, these moments of revolt that we open, can only be for us. If they are directed as messages for others, they become meaningless.

We refuse to fill the void that we felt with more demands addressed to those we wish to destroy. We don’t want to wait for the next mass movement to attack this world that does violence to us. We aren’t here to sacrifice ourselves for “the cause”, nor “because we have to”. In these demos, we draw strength from the feeling of deciding to live in the city differently. We take control, with the sense of chaos making us alert, the feeling that we are learning to navigate because it is the enemy of order and the normative universe. In these moments of chaos we no longer hear the trendy slogans repeated until they lose meaning, but bursts of destruction, fireworks and the howling that echoes them, windows shattered by rage and hammers. We feel the force of overturning this order, for the time that it lasts.

And if there is a feeling of emptiness that lives with this furious and ecstatic jouissance, it’s because we know that we seek to destroy more than windows. We can’t be content with the image of destruction. We don’t want to bask in in the spectacle of our own radness. We couldn’t, it rings false. This void, we feel it at our fingertips, because at the end, we are left bored. At the end, you’ve broken a window but this changes nothing; nothing but a sort of catharsis, finally hurting something other than ourselves. So how can we go further than breaking windows, how can we nourish these signs of power within us, against the world?

Already, we crave to see the demo as a space of exploration. To try a little to imagine beyond the gestures already learned – breaking windows, throwing rocks at cops, putting up graffiti, distributing flyers, shooting fireworks, etc. And for us, this doesn’t necessarily imply starting to seek new gestures, but perhaps to find in these gestures, repeated a thousand times by all kinds of people, a little more than their habit. To reflect on the intentions behind these gestures, looking for their unique meaning each time. Even if it is only in search of taking pleasure in them, a feeling of euphoria in the action. Making these gestures active, and not only reproducing them as images of themselves. Further, what this implies for us is to take demos seriously, to prepare ourselves for them before they are even called. Knowing that there will be others and we are already ready, already charged up, like springs only waiting for the moment of release.

What this also means for us is to avoid falling into this trap of living demos as pressure valves; moments where we feel like we are acting against the forces of this world and which then permit us to forget, to feel better so that we return to school and work. We want the demo to overflow into our lives, for it to be contagious and animate our daily gestures. For it to light fires in our lives so that we can then imagine a network of destructive and subversive actions; a web of rebellions that we give name to and tie together. So that we manage to make sense of all these spasms of resistance, without waiting to embed them in a social movement. For us, the demo can be a celebration that overturns and subverts lived time, that drags us out from the banality of daily life. We burn together, running where we wish in the streets and sidewalks with speed and determination, and we violently repel cops as soon as they approach us. We are here because we feel life differently in a demo, because we love the butterflies in our stomachs and our wildly pounding hearts, adrenaline rising.

We also wish to avoid that the demo only replies to itself and is contained to its own temporal-spatial limits and automatisms. We wish to avoid forgetting it the following day, because we have other things to do. We wish to carry the demo within us, to think about it, to talk about it with friends, to see what we would like to do the next time the opportunity presents itself, to always be alert. To not forget the feeling and exaltation possible when we give ourselves the chance, if we let ourselves actualize what we know we’re capable of when we prepare well. We don’t want to return to demos as if we don’t believe in them. Because by continually not believing in them, we bar ourselves from the possibility that the demo will be virulent and combative, that it will only be a parade of the normative order, whose dissenting role permits the maintenance of order. We don’t want to be fearfully lead by cops who are better prepared than us anymore, with our bags too heavy to run and our hands and ears frozen by cold because we forgot a hat and gloves, the too-recognizable clothing we wear everyday. We want every demo to create an unquenchable thirst for the next, because we are ready, because we are just waiting for the space to attack again with the weapons that we are sharpening every day.

We have also asked ourselves: why is it that we feel so called to by demos? Why not concentrate our energy on ninja-actions? Why wait for the next demo if we can do actions in the night with our trusted friends…? Because the demo has something of its own that these actions don’t; the demo is open, the demo is public. In the demo there are those we don’t know, who desire to be there. Like us at one point, who were alone and who came to demos. And who saw the distance between those who throw rocks and ourselves falter. Ourselves, who were there because we didn’t find any other space in our lives for insurgence, to “do something”. So, going to demos, and seeing ourselves become protagonists of this rebellion. No longer having in our minds this far off imaginary where others attack. Demos have opened up our possibilities, have allowed us to face our fear of cops, perhaps slowly, over the years, but always surely. To better understand the terrain, how the cops move, how to heal ourselves, when to run and how to stay calm. Where to hit, and how to see every bank, bourgeois car, and government building as a target. To no longer only see police as executioners, but as targets and beings that we can fight. The moment when we ceased to only be those who watched. And even, the moment when we looked at others, but when this was an active look. We were no longer spectators. If we didn’t pick up the stone, we nonetheless felt the euphoria of the gesture as the glass shattered. There was no longer distance between the throwers and ourselves, because the demo makes it possible to reduce this distance. It is us too, we are there, we are them, we are accomplices, we desire this, our being-spirit is in the rock that smashes.

We would lastly like to question the often-repeated strategy of calling a demo in the week following a successful demo, up until the last demo no longer kindles enthusiasm and is ferociously repressed. Because we feel it in advance, it was said, that the demo of December 18th would be less strong, that it wouldn’t have the same possibilities as the last. And some of us did not go to this demo; we gave power to the self-realizing prophecy that the third demo wouldn’t have the scope of the second or even surpass it in intensity.

And until the next demo, we aim to better plot the intentions that bring us to walk against the flow of traffic.

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Resistance to LNG on Gitwilgyoots Territory from an anarchist perspective

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Feb 122016

Resistance to LNG on Gitwilgyoots Territory

In late August, a crew of women of Tsimshian, Haida, Nisga, and Gitxsan bloodlines initiated the defense of Lax U’u’la (Lelu Island) and the Flora Bank¹ from LNG industry destruction. The Gitwilgyoots Tribe Sm’ogyet Yahaan (hereditary chief) and Ligitgyet Gwis Hawaal (hereditary house leader), and their families began a defense camp on Lax U’u’la, which is Gitwilgyoots traditional hunting and fishing territory. They were also joined by various significant hereditary people from other Tsimshian tribes, and a motley crew of native and non-native outside supporters.

This camp has been set up to prevent any further destruction of their land, as Petronas and Pacific North West LNG (PNW LNG) are planning on building a $11 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant on Lax U’u’la, which is at the mouth of the Skeena river near Prince Rupert, BC. They have been conducting environmental and archaeological assessments since 2012, which have resulted in over a hundred test hole sites and cut blocks, and have in the process cit down several culturally modified trees. This plant would be fed by 3 pipelines, including the recently provincially-approved Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT), owned by Trans Canada, which crosses through multiple indigenous territories, and which is currently being met with resistance from the Gitxsan people at the Madii Lii encampment. This proposed LNG plant has been opposed not only by the Sm’ogyet Yahaan, but has also been unanimously refused by the 9 allied Tsimshian tribes of Lax Kw’alaams, who turned down a $1.25 billion offer by Petronas at 3 separate meetings in Lax Kw’alaams, Vancouver, and Prince Rupert. Regardless, in preparation for the LNG plant construction, Petronas/PNW LNG have been trying to continue to conduct environmental and engineering assessments around Lax U’u’la, which include test drilling that are actively destroying habitat essential to all the salmon that run throughout the Skeena Watershed.

One of the major rivers that flow into the Skeena is the Wedzin Kwah (so-called Morice/Bulkley), which is the river currently being protected by the Unist’ot’en Clan, grassroots Wet’suwet’en and their supporters. The ‘Unist’ot’en Camp’ was also started to resist mega petro-infrastructure (including another major pipeline project of the Trans Canada corporation). The Unist’ot’en, Madii Lii, and Lax U’u’la are the first three bold frontlines against LNG development in the Skeena Watershed. At the time of this writing, others are organizing towards opening new action fronts in this bioregion.

The importance of the salmon is not abstract or theoretical. In addition to the negative mental health effects of disconnection and destruction of the land, most communities that live within the Skeena watershed rely on the salmon, oolichan, and other seafood to feed their families. Even if you are broke, and can’t afford food at the grocery store, you can still rely on the river’s steady supply of wild salmon to feed your kids and get through the winter. The same can be said of wildlife such as moose, deer, beaver, berries, etc…which would all also be heavily affected if these projects are realized. Many people also maintain a relatively autonomous income within the current capitalist reality by harvesting sustainably from this bounty.

Those who depend on our labour and obedience have always seen people’s ability to sustain themselves independently as a threat. Forced state dependence was and is a goal of colonization. Dependence must be created to limit community mobility to bordered areas (such as villages, cities, or reserves). These areas are easily controlled, and any resistance or insurgence can be monitored and mitigated. Those who know how to live with the seasons and off the land are a threat, as they do not need what the state provides to thrive.

The Canadian state and international corporations are investing in resource extraction projects all across so called Canada. The impact of these extraction projects on life-sustaining resources such as clean water, wild game, and medicinal plants in not an unintentional side-effect of capitalism. It’s killing two birds with one stone. The pipelines, mines, fracked gaslands, and railroad expansions are not individual projects—they are all part of the same effort to maintain a society and lifestyle that is dependent on dwindling natural resources, while at the same time destroying the potential for any life outside of the state’s control.

This struggle is also inextricably connected to indigenous cultural revival, decolonization of the land, our minds and social relationships, anti-patriarchy and genuine reconciliation between natives and non-natives. Of course, this also means the destruction of the state and capitalist economy.

To date, the resistance to Petronas/PNW LNG’s project has mainly been on the water. Their project is still in it’s initial stages, in that there are still some engineering assessments that need to be performed prior to beginning construction on the actual plant. In practice, this has primarily taken the form of trying to prevent the workers from performing any work, and disrupting environmental and engineering assessments. This means escorting environmental surveyors off of the Flora and Agnew Banks, preventing the drill boat from entering and anchoring on the banks, slowing down or turning back charter boats bringing workers to the barges. So far, these efforts have been limited and unfortunately has only temporarily shut down drilling operations. However, with the growing force of warriors and expanding solidarity it is still possible to break Petronas and Christy Clark’s dream.

There is also resistance by re-asserting that Lax U’u’la is used as a place of healing and ceremony. Infrastructure is continually being constructed and there are other preparations for defense of the island itself (which also serve to maintain and expand water operations). Several structures have been built, and once there is less consistent confrontation, there is the intention to use these spaces as a place to teach youth about ancestral ways of living off of the land, and to heal from the continued traumas of colonization.

For thousands of years, communities have sustained themselves by the plentiful offerings from the Skeena River and surrounding landmasses. These resource extraction projects threaten to destroy people’s ability to live off of the land, as opposed to the state. European colonization brought the near extinction of the prairie buffalo, and if we don’t fight, the wild pacific salmon will surely follow.

If we wish to see victory in this struggle against petro-corporations and the Canadian state we must continue to provide solid material support. We also need to proliferate social agitation and disruption of daily life in the population centers throughout this region and beyond.

There are many ways to show solidarity with this ever-expanding and fierce resistance. Funds are always needed for boat fuel/maintenance, and the camp is specifically trying to raise enough money to buy crab traps, new boats, and fishing line so that they continue to harvest food in and around Lax U’u’la, to provide for their elders and communities. You can also always come and visit the region on your own, with a buddy or with a crew to contribute on the ground of this growing defense camp. Struggle is always strengthened by a de-centralized and broad attack, solidarity can also include resistance to industrial developments in your own backyard (Site C Dam, the Trans Mountain and Line 9 being just a few examples). These projects are also facilitated by the bureaucrats who work for the governments and companies and who’s offices are located in urban centres. In the past, solidarity has been shown through noise demonstrations and other actions against these offices and company infrastructures.

You can donate to the Lax U’u’la defense through their GoFundMe page at: http://www.gofundme.com/lelu_island

Useful websites:

www.laxuula.com

Stop Pacific NorthWest LNG/Petronas on Lelu Island—on Facebook

www.madiilii.com

www.facebook.com/unistoten

www.skeenadefense.com

1. A lot of the focus of this struggle has been the eelgrass and the Flora Bank, and how this habitat is essential to development of juvenile salmon that run all throughout the Skeena. While we don’t want to diminish the importance of this habitat, we also recognize that these crucial areas do not exist in isolation. The Flora Bank can not be separated from Agnew Bank, the surrounding landmasses, and the currents, sediments, and creatures that surround and impact it in more ways than we can possibly imagine. We caution against the strong focus on the Flora Bank—if the LNG processing plant is moved to Ridley Island (a neighboring island not surrounded by the Flora Bank), it will still facilitate a capitalist society and reinforce a colonial state.

Stantec Montreal Offices:

300-1080 Beaver Hall Hill

Montreal, Quebec H2Z 1S8

600-1060 Robert-Bourassa Boulevard

Montreal, Quebec

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Don’t need a strike to revolt against the State: report-back from the December 18th night demo

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Dec 222015

On the night of Friday, December 18, around 150 people gathered in downtown Montreal for a night demonstration. It was the third in a sequence that began on November 30 and continued December 9, the latter constituting potentially the most successful combative demonstration in Montreal since the student strike of 2012. December 18 was hyped as a chance to take the combativeness and courage that allowed us to create so much time and space for ourselves on the 9th even further.

The callout read : The night belongs to us. The youth say fuck the government, the rich, and the fascists, without forgetting the cops. The struggle is only just beginning, there’s no need for a strike to revolt against the State. This demo will also be in solidarity with the comrades imprisoned in Greece and for a Black December. Against the violence of the State, we will be the reply. Love and Rage.

The excitement discreetly coursing through the city and the fine-tuning of plans throughout the week set high expectations for many of us. The crowd that gathered in Berri Square, though not as numerous as some had hoped, did not seem unprepared to meet them.

This night, however, largely belonged to the police. Despite being attacked with rocks and flares in a final standoff on Ste Catherine, they were allowed to control the route of the demo at every key intersection and eventually funnel it into an area where the geography made it easier for police to disperse the crowd using tear gas and riot-cop charges. As the crowd was chased eastward on Ste-Catherine, the windows of Laurentian Bank, gentrifying businesses in the Gay Village, and at least one police vehicle were smashed, but the desperate quality of this destruction was a far cry from the joyful rampage down René-Lévesque a week earlier.

Unfortunately, the most memorable aspect of this night might be the presence of undercover cops of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), some sporting their interpretation of black bloc attire. Undercover cops responded viciously when outed by participants in the demo; in various instances,they beat, arrested, pepper sprayed, and even pulled a gun on individuals or groups who attempted to expose or confront them. It’s been a while since the cops have made such a brazen attempt to infiltrate a demo in Montreal, and we see it as a direct response to the popularity and effectiveness of black bloc tactics on December 9. By sending such easy-to-spot undercovers into combative demos to attack protesters, the SPVM makes its goal (beyond injuring and terrorizing its enemies) clear enough: to generate distrust of others who mask up in order to defend themselves against repression.

The police hope that people will equate those who conceal their identities with agents provocateurs, creating a climate that discourages people from adopting black bloc tactics and therefore facilitates the police’s control over the situation. Within hours of the dispersal of the demo, images and accounts of the infiltrators began to go viral on social media; some peaceful-protester-types were already playing the cops’ game by publicly arguing that attacks on police which were carried out by anarchists on December 18 were in fact the work of the undercovers, who (according to this their logic) would have endangered fellow cops in order to blend in or justify police counter-attacks.

The threat of undercovers in demos isn’t new, and we think the best ways of countering it remain the same. We benefit from large and well-executed black blocs, in which people are as indistinguishable from one another as possible so that undercovers are less able to keep track of everything that’s going on or gather valuable evidence against any one participant. The bloc and the entire crowd should stay relatively tight, to make it harder for undercovers to carry out targeted arrests by attacking someone and dragging them away from the crowd. When demonstrators are able to identify undercovers with certainty, they should be forcefully ejected such that their employers are deterred from repeating the mistake of sending them in. Let’s remember the March 15th demo in 2010 where the black bloc chased similarly-dressed undercovers out with rocks, sticks and fireworks. Following this, the police abstained from using infiltrators for a while.

While people were rightly shaken by this incident, we also want to reflect on the demo as a whole. We remain encouraged by how we’ve materialized a spirit of revolt over the last three weeks, but we think Friday could have been so much more, and, without announcing tactical adaptations in a public report-back, we want to offer a few thoughts on why we were so vulnerable to police interventions.

While participants were masking up in the first blocks of the route, live-streaming cameras were yet again filming from every direction. An analysis from a report back on the 9th bears repeating; “Ideally, we’d have a culture of explaining to people how this is harmful, and then proceeding to take action against them or their recording devices if necessary. We should note, however, that several independent media initiatives who regularly film at demos appear to have solid practices of not recording or publishing incriminating video.” We would add that regardless of editing practices, filming should be not considered acceptable in the first fifteen minutes of a demonstration (while everyone is masking up), as it feeds police valuable evidence.

Our position weakened each time we let the police dictate our route by blocking off two out of four directions in an intersection, but there was no major effort by any part of the demo to either bring the crowd to a stop and confront the police lines in hope of punching through, or reverse course (like on December 9 when a quick, well-executed reversal allowed us to evade police control). In the past, we’ve been guilty of expecting such decision-making to come from presumed organizers at the front of the demo, but there is also a strong night-demo culture of autonomous groups proposing plans that get put into action if enough people are into them. In the absence of this autonomous intelligence and with the front of the demo proceeding at full speed past police lines, each block we passed felt like we were sinking deeper into a police trap. Historically, through a variety of methods, we ended mass kettling as well as the flanking sidewalk cops; our most urgent tactical need right now is probably to make it impossible for the police to decide the route of the demo by cordoning off streets at their leisure.

The cohesiveness of the bloc and its resulting capacity for coordination also left something to be desired. Dozens of people were in full bloc, with perhaps fifty more at least wearing masks, but we were often scattered throughout the crowd. On the 18th, the lack of cohesion made informal, real-time coordination between affinity groups more difficult, and the bloc’s actions largely failed to build on one another and create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. For instance, on several occasions cop lines were met with a volley of only two to three rocks – not enough to break the resolve of a cop in full riot gear. A barrage of thirty rocks, on the other hand, could realistically cause them to retreat or take cover, potentially opening up space for the demo to break away into more favorable terrain. The bloc being able to recognize itself as a cohesive unit and act as one could enable this type of coordination.

We continue to need better ways of dealing with tear gas, which for the third night demo in a row succeeded in dispersing the crowd.

We are thrilled that we can have combative anarchist demonstrations that don’t need to piggyback on student mobilizations and which can exist outside the scheduled times for street fighting, such as March 15th and May Day. When combative demos only occur in the course of reformist mass struggles they are framed as useful only insofar as riots strengthen our rapport of force with the State, increasing the likelihood of the State meeting the movement’s demands (against austerity, police violence, etc). Combative demonstrations without demands put an anarchist analysis of power into practice: by refusing to frame our struggles in terms of demands, we refuse the crumbs which the State offers us, we refuse their attempts to reassert control and legitimacy, and we learn to create our own power, which is much harder for them to take away. To develop our power, to develop an autonomous anarchist struggle in this city and to undertake conflict with authority outside of predesignated timelines, narratives and terrains – these are worthy goals in and of themselves.

The frequent manif-actions during the strike habituated us to demo-actions of a few hundred people making blockades and occupations possible. Combative demonstrations open up a new possibility of direct action with the capacity to directly strike urban targets otherwise difficult to attack (transportation infrastructure, police stations, etc…) or to defend liberated territories (ZAD, squats, etc…). Developing a habit of calling for demonstrations like those in the last weeks allows anarchists to have autonomy from reformist social movements. It is necessary to call these demos to punctuate daily life with this destructive rage, whether it be to give force to anarchist events, or in direct response to attacks on our struggles.

Further resources countering the agent provocateur narrative:
In defense of the Black Bloc: disproving the accusations against those who wear masks

Photographs of suspected undercovers :

8.5″ x 14″ | PDF

The Black Bloc Takes Back the Streets of Montreal

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Dec 122015

On the night of Wednesday December 9, a demonstration against austerity took the streets of Montreal, under the banner “Our Struggle Is Not Negotiable“. Québec’s public sector had held a general strike earlier the same day, and some union leaders have been supporting mobilizations on a scale not seen for decades in an effort to increase their bargaining power.

The callout read: We won’t let ourselves be pacified by a sell-out agreement or by a special law. To the front: our struggle is non-negotiable, we won’t back down. The night of December 9th, let’s retake the street. Let’s warm the city with our footsteps and our shouts!

A week earlier, during the night demo of November 30th, a smaller-but-determined bloc had smashed a cop car immediately upon taking the street, entering into a fifteen-minute battle with riot police who were hitting people with batons and plastic bullets at the intersection of Sainte-Catherine street and Bleury street. The successes of the 30th helped provide momentum for the 9th, and the tension and excitement were palpable as participants began to gather at Berri Square.

Barricades on Nov. 30

A few dozen black flags were distributed throughout the burgeoning crowd. Upon taking the street and heading west on Maisonneuve avenue, those who were not masked from the get-go began to cover themselves up. Within minutes, most participants in the 200-person demonstration had concealed their identities, forming potentially the largest black bloc in Montreal since 2012. Our enemies in the mass media didn’t even try to frame the destruction that unfolded as the work of outside agitators as they often do; the bloc was undeniably constitutive of the entire demo.

Early on, half a dozen people swarmed an obnoxious Québécois nationalist who shows up to nearly every demo and snatched away his Québec flag and sign, punching him in the throat when he tried to hold on to his props.

Ten minutes into the demonstration, riot police formed a line to our front and right, at the intersection of Maisonneuve avenue and Saint-Dominique street, trying to funnel us south where they were preparing the same maneuver at Sainte-Dominique street and Sainte-Catherine street. Their strategy was clear: to contain us in the Quartier Latin and away from the prime targets in and around the business district, including the police headquarters. The crowd had the collective intelligence to not let the police determine our route, and reversed upon itself, heading east on Maisonneuve avenue. Masked groups were seen sharing rocks, and the crowd darted south through a parking lot and housing project courtyard to get onto Sainte-Catherine street, where the police had not had time to form new lines to restrict our movement.

What followed was a half hour of riotous cat-and-mouse in which the crowd stayed one step ahead of police control. A group of six bike police on Sainte-Catherine street who were naively approaching to flank the demonstration were attacked with a hail of rocks. Surges of excitement were felt in the crowd as the cops were struck with fear along with projectiles, and rapidly fled east out of view. It was on.

The demonstration made a sprint toward René-Lévesque Boulevard, while those further back chanted calls to stay close together. The demonstration took up all six lanes on René-Lévesque, and looking around, our capacity for destruction appeared significant. The semi-armored units with plastic-bullet guns that typically march along each side of the demo were nowhere to be seen, having been blind-sided with volleys of rocks to the back of the head during the demo the week before. For a breathless twenty-minute stretch, the demo acted as a grand criminal conspiracy. Hammers, flag poles, rocks, and the removable metal garbage canisters on every street corner were used to smash the windows of Citizenship & Immigration Canada, construction conglomerate and defense contractor SNC-Lavelin, several banks, and other buildings. For a festive touch, people also wrecked the Christmas decorations assembled at office building entrances, and overturned SNC-Lavelin’s Christmas tree. A few participants ran ahead and broke the back window of a police van with rocks, while others shot off some very large fireworks at the remaining vans positioned in front of the demo. Cheers erupted with the sound of every shattered window. Unknown accomplices could be seen searching for and sharing projectiles; when the demo passed a construction site, comrades ran ahead to find any materials that could be pillaged, and were successful in breaking up decorative stones along René-Lévesque into throwable chunks.

Police began shooting tear gas while trailing the demo to the east on René-Lévesque, using guns that can fire each canister more than a block. At first, it wasn’t successful in dispersing the demo because the crowd just moved west faster while staying relatively tight. The demonstration began to head north on University, smashing yet another Bank of Montreal window as it passed by. The demo split when faced with a cop car blocking a smaller street, but quickly managed to regroup with itself and responded by howling joyfully. At this point, the police continued to fire tear gas and the crowd had thinned to around 50 people. People began to disperse to the surrounding streets, while groups of police and vans continued to harass small groups of demonstrators walking along the sidewalks back to Berri Square. The Media reported one arrest of a minor for obstructing police work, but no charges related to the mayhem.

Moving forward

Against one of the largest and most experienced riot policing squads in North America, those who took the streets on Wednesday decidedly swung the balance of forces in our favor, at least briefly.

We felt moved to write a reportback because we see a lot of potential in the determination and preparedness of the crowd, and have some further thoughts for how we might expand the scope of these moments, both quantitatively and qualitatively. For now, we offer a few notes on tactics which could expand the time and space of combative demonstrations. Ultimately, though, we want to escape the pattern of being successfully fought out of the streets after smashing a few windows and break with this routine of containment.

This could look like:

Bringing rocks, fireworks, and tools along (if it feels safe) so that we have fighting capacity right from the get-go and aren’t completely dependent on scavenging for projectiles on the street.
Barricades are our friends, and we don’t give them enough love. Participants can fight behind them at standoffs to prevent charging dispersals, and they also function to disrupt the city in our wake and make police maneuvers more difficult to coordinate. Establishing them behind the demo (ideally in a way that doesn’t obstruct the movement of the demo itself) can also effectively block trailing police cars.
Participants can scavenge materials for projectiles to share with the crowd in the time between confrontations, so that when the police inevitably come in harder, people are ready to respond effectively.
The police cars trailing the demonstration and in front of it should consistently receive projectiles so they can’t be within throwing distance.
Bike cops or riot police should be forcefully prevented from flanking the sides of the demonstration. If necessary, participants can hold the sidewalks as well as the streets.
On the 9th, many people were recording the events on their cell phones undisturbed. Ideally, we’d have a culture of explaining to people how this is harmful, and then proceeding to take action against them or their recording devices if necessary. We should note, however, that several independent media initiatives who regularly film at demos appear to have solid practices of not recording or publishing incriminating video. In a video posted to YouTube of Wednesday’s demo, for instance, the camera pans up to avoid filming people destroying property, as the sound of glass shattering can be heard.
Tear gas eventually functioned to disperse the demos on both the 30^th and the 9^th, despite some efforts to throw back the canisters and prepare vinegar-soaked cloths. The main problem appeared to be panic spreading in the crowd, not necessarily the physical effects of tear gas. It is possible that more careful efforts to encourage people to stick together and proceed in an intelligent direction can continue diminishing the impacts of police weapons.
Questions of discourse and propaganda: why, as anarchists, do we smash the city? How are these actions connected to austerity? How do our struggles exceed any reformist, demands-oriented focus? Though moments of conflictual action bring together many individuals with divergent perspectives and intentions, it would be interesting for participants to communicate their analyses in these moments of destruction. Smaller crews could come prepared and wheatpaste the streets with posters, put up graffiti, or throw flyers from within the demo or from higher-vantage points.

These ideas mean little on paper, but we look forward to the possibility of elaborating them together in the streets. Our hearts are warmed by the sparks that constitute our history of collective revolts, and the potential for these sparks to catch, because we desire nothing less than a city in ruins.

SNC-Lavalin recieved special attention.

To print: 8.5″ x 14″ | PDF

The Economy of Power

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Nov 112015

This was originally written as a reflection after visiting friends while they were imprisoned in Mexico City. They have now been released, but the discussions we had concerning dignity and responses to repression are still relevant. I hope that this can contribute to ongoing discussions within Montreal and elsewhere about how and when anarchists interact with repression, and maintenance of dignity.

The Economy of Power

“Face à un monde aussi exécrable, que ce soit ici ou dehors, la seule chose que t’as, c’est ta dignité. Quand tu l’as vends, peu importe si t’as bien encaissé, tu l’a vendue, ta dignité. A l’interieur de toi, t’es déjà mort.”

“When faced with such an abhorrent world, either here or outside, the only thing that you have is your dignity. When you’ve sold it, regardless of whether you got a good price for it, you’ve sold it—your dignity. Inside yourself, you’re already dead.”

– de Nordin Benallal
publier dans le journal anarchiste bruxellois Hors Service.

I’m hanging out with my friends in the courtyard of Santa Martha, one of the prisons in Mexico City, DF (Federal District). We’re drinking sweet milky coffees and working on our tans/sunburns, surrounded by mommas cuddling their kids, picnics, and couples fucking. My friends are here facing charges related to an attack that occurred on a Nissan dealership in DF, in early january 2014. It’s possible they could be here for a while, but instead of dwelling on that, we’re shooting the shit and talking about everything from crushes, gossip back home, and obviously, anarchy.

One conversation that comes up the most frequently has been about dignity, and what it means to preserve it in different contexts. We talk about how any insubordination inside prison, even resisting a strip search, can mean beatings and being moved to solitary confinement. Any resistance can result in a prisoner’s ‘privileges’, such as visit from friends and family, being taken away from them. An accumulation of this ‘bad behaviour’ can result in a lifetime of imprisonment. Everyday, our friends who are locked up here make the choice as to whether to act seemingly obediently, or to refuse co-operation—which risks their physical and emotional health. As in life outside, some decisions are made prioritizing dignity, and others, comfort.

It’s through these conversations that I realize that, though dignity is a word that we pretend we have a generalized understanding of, everyone has a different and specific definition for what it means. To me, dignity is the process of being accountable to an internal sense of self-worth. As an anarchist, it is knowing that I am deserving of autonomy and freedom; and it is the steps that I take to ensure this truth.

Using this definition, any time I let another body define my self-worth; any time I don’t have complete authority over how I spend my days, I lose an amount of my dignity. But it isn’t as simple as that—dignity isn’t only lost, it’s traded. It is the currency of power, and is traded back and forth for varying degrees of comfort and relative freedom.

I keep thinking about the dignity I traded to get here. About the three rounds of bag searches and body searches to get into Santa Martha. I’m thinking about how I’ve been exploiting my privilege and exchanging my dignity for an easy border crossing. Even before arriving, I was trading my agency over my how I spent my days for the money to buy the flight here. I’m thinking about how, every fucking day I’m alive, I exchange some amount of freedom, of sovereignty, of dignity for “comfort”. Every time I don’t hop the metro turnstiles, in every instance I pay for food, every moment I participate in capitalism and facilitate society, I am exchanging my dignity for ease and comfort.

Dignity is traded in an economy of power. This is most apparent in prison, where the outside social power structures are an amplified version inside the walls. For example, in canadian prisons, the material items which help preserve an internal sense of humanity (coffee, toothpaste, postage stamps, etc.) are bought through the canteen. Money buys better lawyers, and with them comes a greater chance that the state will address the abuses faced by their clients at the hands of the prison, and thus “grant” the dignity of better treatment. Even a plea to the state authorities is a participation in the economy of dignity, and in reinforces their monopoly on dignity in prison. This exchange of money for dignity operates on the same economic level as the rest of canadian society.

This economy of power only became clear to me after visiting my friends in mexican prison because the mexican prison system is less bureaucratized. Although there is a formal economy inside (within the prison’s ‘tienda’–equivalent to a canteen), there is also a more evident informal economic system (people create their own markets and jobs), as well as a more informal economy of dignity/power: bribes. If you want to hold onto a scrap of dignity by not being patted down intensely, just slip the guards a 200 peso note. Want to bring in some letters from home? Slide a 20 across the table… Within this economy of power, what does it mean to maintain dignity? What would it mean to prevent it from becoming currency in circulation? And how many times a day do we trade it for relative comfort?

According to anarchist tendencies, here are some of the ways in which dignity is maintained:

– Through hunger strikes inside and outside of prisons
– Through refusing to sign restrictive bail conditions, and thereby refusing to give the state the authority to explicitly and systemically surveil and control one’s actions.
– Through refusing searches of one’s body, home and belongings
– Through a refusal to recognize the courts as having authority and jurisdiction over their lives and bodies.
– Through going ‘on the run’ or ‘underground’ instead of facing prison sentences
– Through refusing to co-operate with police investigations or snitch on friends and comrades.

It is telling that the moments where we think about and discuss dignity are when it is about to be stolen—in the times that the state has responded to our actions with increased repression. Dignity exists outside of these moments, and it is important to think about how we can maintain it in the everyday. It should go without saying that depending on how each individual defines their own freedom and sovereignty, this process of dignity reclamation in daily life will take different corresponding forms.

I wonder what it would look like if there was a culture here of anarchists defending their dignity, especially within the judicial process. The only time I have seen strong and consistent resistance to the canadian court system has been from individuals from several native communities, who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the courts. Other times, when I have seen non-native anarchists or anti-authoritarians try to maintain their dignity in the face of the courts , these acts have been dismissed as being “not worth it”. A small gesture, like refusing to rise when the judge enters a courtroom, is considered “too costly”. It is generally understood that the discomfort of the cost—anything from a dirty look from a court cop to being charged with contempt of court—simply isn’t worth the assertion of dignity. Through the reinforcement of this understanding, we have set the price of our dignity—and it’s pretty low. What would it look like if we, who saw our hearts reflected in those who maintained their dignity during their court process, were to act in solidarity with them? What would it take to create a culture that supported these types of actions, instead of looking upon them as insignificant, or ‘not worth it’?

While I want to see and practice more examples of dignity being maintained, I don’t want to participate in the creation of informal standards or silent expectations for how an anarchist should act with dignity, regardless of how that individual defines it. This expectation is at risk of being enforced by spokespeople, and is eerily reminiscent of the creation of idols, martyrs, and heroes. In the past, I’ve witnessed situations where an anarchist is imprisoned or undergoing a court process, and they become the “face of anarchism”, and as such, are held to certain responsibilities and codes of conduct. This type of treatment pretends that the judicial and penal system are somehow separate from this society. The fundamental values and character of an individual doesn’t change simply because they enter a courtroom—their actions both in and outside of the judicial process will be mirrored. If we, as anarchists, try to hold those who are locked up to an informal set of behavioural expectations, we reproduce the dictatorship of the morality of our society.

No one has the responsibility to either represent or inspire me, though I do feel affinity with and find inspiration from people who go on hunger strike, or refuse to sign conditions, or who keep their mouths shut in the face of intense repression. I’m inspired and excited because I know that they are acting these ways to maintain their dignity, I feel solidarity and complicity with people for whom maintaining their dignity is the only fucking available option. It isn’t about ‘showing the state that you can maintain your dignity’. It isn’t about ‘proving’ anything to the state and security apparatuses. It is about finding dignity in an internal authenticity.

I feel affinity not with people who are playing a specific role, for the creation or maintenance of some godforbidden ‘strategy’–I feel affinity with people who, in their cores, know that there is a part of them that cannot be stolen, cannot be corrupted by capitalism or this society. I am inspired by those who know that, as long as they keep that part of themselves intact, they cannot be broken.

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