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

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

(We have a newsletter. If you want to subscribe, send an email with the SUBSCRIBE NEWSLETTER in the header)

Each cop hides a secret: it’s easy to attack power

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May 142017
 

11 x 17″ | PDF

Everywhere the cops aren’t – and they can’t be everywhere all the time – there are banks, gentrifying condos, government offices, surveillance cameras, blank walls, and the infrastructure of capitalism (railroads, highways, pipelines, construction projects). Those who attack are those who don’t believe history has only one path, written by the authorities, towards a society that is increasingly controlled and increasingly dead. The pervasive surveillance around us shows us that the authorities fear our potential to act for freedom. By choosing to revolt against everything that keeps us from truly living, we can contribute to destroying this world that has been imposed on us while creating a new one.

A world where people are free to build the networks and associations they desire to meet their needs in common with others, without the coercion of capital. Where the prisons are razed to the ground, and patriarchy, police, politicians, borders, and bosses are a thing of the past. Where gift economies of mutual aid and solidarity lay waste to wage slavery and the commodification of our lives. A world where the earth is understood not for us to exploit, but of which we are a small and dependent part.

A world of anarchy.

BUSINESS INVASION: A Tactic to Fight Gentrification?

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May 062017
 

This winter, I visited New York City, where I attended a really inspiring Black Lives Matter demonstration called the People’s Monday March. They employed a tactic I’ll call Business Invasion, which allows a small number of people to deliver a political message in a way that cannot be ignored.

The day after that action, I wrote a reportback, which forms the first half of this article. The second half is reflections on how this tactic could be used by anarchists to fight gentrification in Montreal.

I’m sure that this tactic could be adapted in other ways than the one I’m suggesting here, so I hope that this article catalyzes some brainstorming.

REPORTBACK FROM PEOPLE’S MONDAY MARCH – FEBRUARY 9TH, 2017

I tend to judge the success of a protest by the feeling that the group comes out of it with. Do we come out of it feeling like we were going through the motions, or do we come out of it feeling rared up to fight the power? In the case of this demo in NYC, it was definitely the latter.

The People’s Monday march has been going for over two years. It is organized by a multiracial POC-led group called NYC Shut It Down. It has been held every Monday for over two years, formed out of a desire to maintain movement energy generated by the 2014 unrest following the police murder of Eric Garner. Each march memorializes a different victim of police murder.The first one was held on February 9th, 2015, and I’m told there has been one every single Monday ever since, without fail, no matter the weather. Initially, every People’s Monday march began at Grand Central Station, but over time organizers chose to start holding it in different parts of the city. Sometimes they will go to Brooklyn, Harlem, Queens, etc… and bring street demos with a militant vibe to neighborhoods where protests are rarely held. Part of the thinking behind this is to bring people from the neighborhood into the streets, which apparently has been successful.

I attended the People’s Monday march on March 13th. At 7 p.m. a group of around 30 people gathered in Washington Square park in the middle of Manhattan. The march was unpermitted and the route was not pre-announced, but that didn’t stop the group from immediately seizing the busy streets. Throughout the march, NYC Shut It Down showed their courage and confidence in their own power by not only disobeying police orders, but also antagonizing the police by yelling insults at them from close range. Keep in mind there wasn’t a large crowd to melt back into if a juiced-up cop started ‘roid-raging. These motherfuckers got gonads.

The real reason that I’m taking the time to write this reportback, though, is because this group did something that I haven’t participated in before, which I think could be a useful tactic in many instances. The group invaded first a bar, then a fancy restaurant, then a Whole Foods grocery store with a huge check-out line.

The purpose of going into these places was to force a captive audience to listen to a political message. For this, they used the Occupy Mic-Check tactic. One spokesperson would speak at the top of their voice, and then everyone else would repeat their words as loudly as possible. In this case, the message was as follows (almost verbatim):

“We are here today because Black Lives Matter! We are here today because Black Women Matter! We are here today to remember Denise Hawkins, murdered by police!
Fact 1: Denise Hawkins was an 18-year old black woman from Rochester, New York. Her high school principal said “they never saw her not smiling.” Denise had an 18-month son with her husband, Lewis Hawkins, at the time of her murder.
Fact 2: Her father forced Denise to marry Lewis after she became pregnant. Lewis was abusive and she tried to leave Lewis three times before she was killed. Police had been called before, but they never helped Denise.
Fact 3: On November 11, 1975, Denise and her family were at her cousin’s house for dinner when she and Lewis started arguing. Her cousin called the police.
Fact 4: Denise was holding a knife when Lewis chased her out of the apartment with a chair, threatening to kill her. Seconds after she fled the apartment Officer Michael Leach, who was standing outside, shot in the chest, killing her.
Face 5: Officer Leach claimed he was trapped in a corner unable to move away from Denise and feared for his life, a story disproven by forensic evidence. Officer Leach made a similar claim in 2012 when he murdered his own son. No officer was charged with any crime in the murder of Denise Hawkins.
This is not an isolated incident. In the past 15 years, the NYPD has murdered over 300 people. Of these, over 80% has been black or brown. Of these murders, there have been four indictments, resulting in a total of two convictions, with an end result of ZERO JAIL TIME. If you believe that BLACK LIVES MATTER, we ask that you raise your fist in solidarity.”

In each location, quite a few people present did raise their fists, and the protesters exited the premises, chanting, in one case to applause. It felt validating for more than one reason – on one hand, it felt nice to be supported by members of the public, and on the other hand, it felt good to get in the faces of people who aren’t sympathizers… to force them to listen. In the age of the echo chamber, where social media algorithms allow people to insulate themselves within bubbles filled with like-minded voices, we gotta find creative ways of rupturing them bubbles. Nowadays, when it feels like many liberals believe that the media portrayal of reality is more important than reality itself, it was intensely satisfying to participate in something where the desired result did not happen in the digital landscape but on a human level. This is unmediated propaganda. Dare I call it propaganda of the deed?

So mad respect to the People’s Monday organizers NYC Shut It Down, for showing me what consistency looks like. And let’s be real, if we can’t be consistent, what can we hope to accomplish? Since 2014, every single Monday, rain or shine, they’ve been holding it the fuck down. What can we learn from them? Be bold. Be defiant. Have a specific message. Be loud. Be proud. Have fun. Say it like you mean it. And make it social – after People’s Monday, comrades gather to socialize in a neighborhood restaurant.

I’m told that in the past, the People’s Monday march has occasionally led to clashes with police, but apparently property destruction is not part of the culture. Perhaps smashing windows and slashing tires is viewed as counterproductive, because I’m sure that it’s neither due to moral objection or lack of courage. If the point of militant protest is to deliver a message in a way that can’t and won’t be ignored, they achieve that, perhaps to a greater extent than is achieved by smashing windows.

The People’s March does very much have a ritualistic element to it… which I mean in a good way. As such, every march ends with Assata’s prayer, with all participants joining hands and chanting together: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and protect each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

I think a weekly ritual could serve the purpose of movement-building well. Public events give people an opportunity to meet each other, but we all know that activists are slow to bestow trust. People need to get familiar with each other before they can work together. A smaller group makes it easier for folks to get to know each other.

Also, I really like actions that are demanding justice on autonomous terms rather than reacting to an injustice. I think it’s a mistake to view outlying incidents such as police murders as the actual problem, rather than symptomatic of a more deeply oppressive normalcy (i.e. self-policing, surveillance, prison slavery, wage slavery, patriarchy, and the list goes on). Rage at the abuse of power can conceal the heart’s true rage, the rage born of the heart’s desire for freedom – the rage against oppressive power itself.

A TACTIC TO FIGHT GENTRIFICATION?

I said at the beginning of this article that I thought that this tactic could be interesting in the struggle against gentrification in Montreal. Here’s what I mean: if anarchists in a given neighbourhood, say St. Henri or Hochelaga, made a habit of invading gentrifying businesses. Perhaps this could be on a weekly basis, especially at first, to popularize the tactic, but if the idea catches on, maybe it could be used in a more impromptu way. For example, if a bunch of anarchists are in the same place at the same time, say for a show, event, demonstration, etc., maybe an Invasion could occur almost spontaneously. If we can have fun with it, perhaps by incorporating bizarre attention-getting activities, perhaps invading boutiques could be become something of a sport. Come to think of it, the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair is coming up…

When I imagine this, I’m not thinking about invading a pretentious cafe or trendy bar and yelling “Fuck you, Yuppies!” That sort of approach is more likely to make people defensive than catalyze critical thought. I think it’s better to meet people where they’re at. Let’s not assume that gentrifying customers are aware of the consequences of their consumption. Let’s not tell them “get the fuck out”, but instead explain how the process of gentrification works, what role they play in it, and why we oppose it. It is likely that customers attracted by the trendiness of an area have a certain appreciation of what makes a neighbourhood special. If they could understand that they are slowly poisoning the well that they want to drink from, perhaps they’ll change certain habits.

I think it would be preferable, actually, to amuse customers rather than insult them. In entertainment, there is a natural affinity between performer and spectator. This is a relationship dynamic that is culturally understood, something that consumers are comfortable with. The ideal would be to make the patrons laugh. When someone laughs, they drop their guard. They become receptive.

The mood of the People’s Monday March was sombre and resolute, as was appropriate, given that it is meant to mourn and honour the dead, as well as protesting the racist violence of the police. I think that anti-gentrification Invasions could afford to be more light-hearted and irreverent in their approach.

The fact is that urban consumers have lots of choices when they’re deciding where they’re going to spend their money. If enough people can be persuaded not to frequent a particular business, it may have to close. Let’s keep in mind that in the earlier phases of gentrification, it is often independent businesses that are opening up shop. Likely, they are not turning a profit in their first year, or maybe even their first few years. Even if they are owned by someone with deep pockets, if they aren’t profitable, the owner will eventually have to close them down. Maybe it would be wise to target specific businesses rather than Gentrification, which can be seen as immutable force.

Also, for hipster venues, remember being “cool” is part of their business model. Try thinking about what is cool for a hipster or yuppie. What you can do to undermine that? If activists can make a venue uncool in the minds of its target demographic, its bottom line will take a hit.

A successful campaign to shut down a business could also ward off would-be gentrifiers, as word could get around about this kind of thing – maybe forcing one boutique to close would keep three new ones from opening up.

Of course, this tactic doesn’t directly address the bigger problem – condos, speculation, raising property values and rents, etc. I offer these thoughts knowing full well that effectively fighting gentrification will require a prolonged, multi-pronged effort from deeply-committed community members.

That said, to be successful, a movement must conduct itself as its goals are attainable. “Fighting Gentrification” is not a strategy. A movement needs attainable goals – goals that are measurable. Shutting down a specific business is certainly possible – and shame on you if you doubt me! How are we going to smash the state if we can’t even smash a yuppie boutique?

To render victory imaginable, there’s no better propaganda than victory. The small triumph of shutting down one hipster bar, dog spa, or luxury shop will give participants in anti-gentrification struggles a taste of their own power.

The religion of green anarchy

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May 062017
 

Anonymous submission

This text was originally sent to Black and Green Review. They never responded.

Disclaimer—in North America, which is my context, land defense struggles are often from indigenous perspectives, and they are struggles based on reclaiming or defending land from the state. I can only speak from a settler perspective, and my critique is specifically of land defense through a futurist lens and the deification of nature as it is practiced by settlers in North America.

The Religion of Green Anarchy:
a critique, a question, and a proposal

Many land defense struggles in North America focus on the purity of the wild when coming from a settler green anarchist perspective. Based on the propaganda and analysis that comes from this perspective and out of these struggles, we seek to defend these spaces from industrial civilization (and through this, colonial expansion) because we are defending the last ‘wild’ areas, from which we can subsist. This belief in ‘wild’ and ‘untouched’ spaces is not only unfounded, but falls into the creation of a morality of the wild, which takes on a religious tone. This religious tone can be broken down into: a) ‘good’ wilderness vs ‘bad’ wilderness, and b) preservation of a utopia or ‘heaven’ for future generations. Oftentimes, settlers in North America lack a coherent culture – there is no North American culture outside of capitalism. This religious tone can be understood as a response to this cultureless void, as we try to create a context for ourselves—an anchoring for our identities.

When we approach land defense struggles from this moralist and future-oriented perspective, we limit the potential of these struggles. The primary drive of engaging in land defense struggles for future generations can prefigure the struggles themselves. This leads to an acceptance of concessions and defeats, as we are able to convince ourselves that a failed land defense is contributing to a culture of resistance, with which the future generations can engage. What would these struggles look like were we to see them as book-ended by our life and death, breaking from the limitations of morality, culture, or the future generations? What trajectory would a land defense take if individual sensory experience were the guiding principal?

CRITIQUE

1) Wild and untouched spaces don’t exist, and agriculture isn’t the original sin.

The definition of a pure space is often tied up in settler misconceptions of the ‘pure’ native and hunter-gatherer societies – as those untouched by colonization or agriculture. This ignores that many nations, pre-contact, managed wild spaces. Examples of this are maintaining burnsites for berry-picking, creating clam gardens, and complex territorial management and distribution. This isn’t meant to be a generalization about all nations—just examples of how some nations, pre-contact, interacted with the wilderness in ways that are similar to agriculture.

Green anarchist analysis and critiques cite agriculture as the beginning of the end of hunter-gatherer lifestyles. I don’t contest that agriculture necessitated more sedentary lifestyles, acted as a colonial force, and created delayed-return lifestyles and economies that eventually resulted in increased domestication. However, it was not the driving force that enabled and created these storylines or this history. Desire for ‘power-over’ through enforcing hierarchy is a more likely culprit, and comes from individuals who facilitate a certain society. This isn’t to say that hierarchy and desire for power over are inherent in nature—not at all—but to caution against the strong correlation between nature and perfection, agriculture and humanness/domestication—these are false comparisons. Nature is imperfect, and it’s incorrect to fetishize the natural world as being pre-domination. Destroying agriculture or returning to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle will not destroy society and capitalism. This is evidenced by the hunter-gatherer societies who reproduce systems of morality and norms similar to those in North American capitalist culture. Perhaps the ways in which these moralities or norms were reinforced is different from our current society (for instance, shaming as opposed to prison)[1. For specific examples of shaming as a method of ensuring social norm compliance, you can read the “Use of Humour in Hunter-Gatherer Governance” section of Peter Gray’s “Play as a Foundation of Hunter-Gatherer Social Existence”.], but it’s important to note that these norms existed, and were socially-imposed.

Pure wilderness is a civilized concept, and shouldn’t be used to determine which territories warrant defense, or as a wildness to return to.

2) Nature is a whore.

a) Purity of the wild as morality.

Within green anarchist analysis, ‘pure’ wildness (we can replace ‘pure’ with ‘undomesticated’ or ‘wild’) is deserving of preservation and defense, whereas ‘impure’ (domesticated) wildness is not. This is evidenced by the struggles which receive the most attention from the settler community—largely, anti-resource extraction land defense in undomesticated areas, with clean drinking water, a focus on preserving intact salmon runs, etc. This moralization of nature, and distinction between good and bad nature, allow for good nature to accumulate value (as it is defended) and bad nature to depreciate in value (as it is undefended), leading to the commodification of nature.

We also see this language of morality and purity in green anarchist publications, as they create standards for living a ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ life. A morally ‘good’ life is a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, while a morally ‘bad’ life is one that resides in or relies on the city and industry, or practices agriculture. The fact that projects such as the Feralculture Project, which rely on capitalism and colonialism, are lauded and uncriticized, demonstrates that the only barometer for green anarchist morality is pure vs impure wilderness.

This obsession with a ‘pure’ wilderness is very similar to judeo-christian obsession with the pure and untainted body—virginity. As the human hand corrupts nature through management and development, the heathen hand corrupts the woman through sexuality and desire.

b) “This was here before you, and will be here after you.”
“The future is primitive, whether we see it or not.”
–Black and Green Review #2

This moralization of nature—good vs bad nature, some worthy of defense and other that is tainted by human contact—is always presented in the context of future generations. Again, when we look at the propaganda put out by land defense struggles, it is frequently through the lens of preservation for the future—not the present, individual sensory experience.

This is dangerous not only in that it nurtures an unreal hope that there is a better and happier future awaiting us should we lead morally-correct lives, but because it places our struggle in this future as opposed to the present. This becomes the same hope as religion– one that allows us to withstand the banal and depressing day-to-day through the guarantee that at some point on the future, all will be better. Green anarchist moralists live either in the past—by idealizing hunter-gatherer societies—or in the future—by hoping for a ‘primitive future’. Similar to many religions, where one lives life not for now or even in now, but for a life after death. The present becomes time killed reading and learning about the lives of saints, the life of god, the mythics and stories of the bible.

This futurist mentality is particularly dangerous for people with uteruses. Since the highest value of life is set for the future generations, our bodies have unfortunately and oftentimes unintentionally been transformed into tools for the green anarchist project. Any hope or value that anarchists place upon the future generations originates from a reliance on the principle that every individual, if exposed to the correct conditions, experiences, and ideas, will identify with anarchist principles. As any person who spends time with children will know, they are their own people. Even if they grow up in a co-operative and caring environment, surrounded by a strong critique of society and power, they may still turn out to be individuals who profit from power and hierarchy. They may turn out to be our enemies, not our allies. This critique of the valorization of the child is brought forth in Baeden 1, a journal of queer nihilism, in the following statement:

“All political positions, he argues, represent themselves as doing what is best for the children. Politicians, whatever their parties or leanings, universally frame their debates around the question of what policies are best for the children, who keeps the Child safest, or what type of world we want to be building for our children. The centrality of the Child in the field of the political is not limited to electoral politics or political parties. Nationalist groups organize themselves around a necessity to preserve a future for their children, while anarchist and communist revolutionaries concern themselves with revolutionary organizing meant to create a better world for future generations. Politicians concern themselves with different children depending on their varying from ideologies, but the Child stays constant as a universal Möbius strip, inverting itself and flipping so as to be the unquestioned and untouchable universal value of all politics. Politics, however supposedly radical, is simply the universal movement of submission to the ideal of the future—to preserve, maintain and upgrade the structures of society and to proliferate them through time all for the sake of the children.”

The majority of land defense struggles are strongly defined by this concept of ‘for the future generations’, and the idea that we struggle against industrial civilization for the future, not for now. Though I am uncertain of the origin point of this reasoning, it is my experience that it is frequently referenced in native land-defense struggles. It is not logical to take the same perspective of native land-defense and super-impose it onto our lives and our struggles as settlers. The term ‘ally’, though corrupted by settler-guilt and identity politic olympics, originally meant two groups of different origins fighting for a common outcome. With this definition in mind, it does not make sense for settlers to appropriate various indigenous understandings of historical rooting and ‘fighting for the future generations’. A native friend once explained to me that colonization had so thoroughly eroded her current community that it was impossible for her to conceive of fighting for anything other than the future generations, because she believed that healing would require more than one generation. This is fucking intense, but to claim this as a settler reasoning for struggle would require a lot more reflection and intention than it is ever attributed.

One explanation for why settlers hold on to this concept is that it provides a generally-understood answer for the question of why we engage in land defense struggles, and has become widespread as a reasoning. As a result, this perspective precedes the struggles themselves and influences how they play out. If we invest ourselves in the future and can see our struggles, regardless of their outcome, as contributing to a culture and history of conflict, we are more likely to concede defeat or compromise before we reach our goals.

What if we fought as though our lives depended on it? Not the lives of our children, or our friend’s children, but our lives, right now, in the present? This would make for a very different type of struggle. Potentially short-lived, but that’s the way it is with uncompromising struggles.This is neither a critique nor a conclusion, but a question.

PROPOSAL

Everything on this earth has been touched, in one way or another, by humans and society. According to green anarchist morality everything is impure. This doesn’t mean that a polluted river, or an abandoned city lot is undeserving of protection or defense. In contrast, if you look at land defense through a non-humanist perspective, these impure areas are worthwhile to defend in that they in no way can be beneficial to humanity or society—the mercury-laden soil can’t produce medicine or food, but is still valuable to the multitude of species that exist within it.

A proposal for how to value the impurity of the wild would be to destroy any attempt to create culture in the cultureless void. This cultural void is a gift and a step closer to life free of imposed morality, cultural stigma and codes. And what a gift, an identity formed only by the individual (and their subjective experiences)! We should embrace our lack of culture, this void, instead of trying to fill it with god and religion by another name. We can do so by trying to destroy any attempt to create this culture through participation in the human strike.

The human strike “…defines a type of strike that involves the whole life and not only its professional side, that acknowledges exploitation in all the domains and not only at work. Human strike can be a revolt within a revolt, an unarticulated refusal, an excess of work or the total refusal of any labour, depending on the situation. There is no orthodoxy for it. If strikes are made in order to improve specific aspects of the workers’ conditions, they are always a means to an end.”

The creation of culture in green anarchy/land defense struggles is a reaction to a cultureless void. The human strike in terms of land defense can be seen as refusing to acknowledge ‘futurism’ by refusing to participate in creation of a culture through reproduction and faith in the future generations. It can take the form of refusing to participate in the morality of the wild by refusing to act for the future generations, and acting only for ourselves and our individual sensory experiences. “But human strike is a pure means, a way to create an immediate present here where there is nothing but waiting, projecting, expecting, hoping…To produce the present is not to produce the future.”

Participating in the human strike is to not allow our bodies to become tools for the struggle for the future, through either reproduction[2. Having children doesn’t exclude you from participating in the human strike, as I am defining it. If you want to have children, and it gives you immediate joy, that is centering your body on your own experience. It is the investment in the children and hope that they will somehow contribute to a struggle in the future that contributes to a creation of culture.] or by dedicating them to tasks that facilitate a society that maintains itself through coercing its participant into relying on a hope[3. “Despite the madness of war, we lived for a world that would be different. Do you really think that, without the hope that such a world is possible, that the rights of man would be restored again, we could stand the concentration camp even for one day? It is that very hope that makes people go without a murmur to the gas chambers, keeps them from risking revolt, paralyses them into numb inactivity. It is hope that breaks down family ties, makes mothers renounce their children, or wives sell their bodies for bread, or husbands to kill. It is hope that compels man to hold on to one more day of life, because that day may be the day of liberation…Never before in the history of mankind has hope been stronger than man, but never also has it done so much harm as it has in this war, in this concentration camp. We were never taught how to give up on hope, and this is why today we perish in gas chambers.”—Tadeusz Borowski, Auschwitz, our home (a letter)] for the future. Another aspect would be a destruction of capitalism, society, and culture, while at the same time recognizing and disassembling the trap of the culture of green anarchy/morality of the wild.

Concretely, an example of how to engage with this definition of the human strike would be to occupy land, and practice the skills for subsistence and life independent of society, without acknowledging the state. Independence from society can mean learning to sustain oneself outside of it. In cities, this often takes the form of stealing and scamming. These are and beautiful anti-social ways of surviving—they destroy the relationship to and power of money, rendering it ridiculous, as well as the individual actualizing their desires in conflict with society. Hunting, fishing, harvesting wild foods, etc. achieve the same goals as scamming and stealing, as long as they are acted without consent of the state (poaching, for example). These forms of subsistence make a mockery of money, while also allowing the individual to thrive independent of and in contradiction to the state and society.

By learning these skills, we doubly participate in the human strike by dedicating our time to something that is completely irrelevant and useless to capitalism and society. Building a log cabin, snaring rabbits, or harvesting maple water–these things we do for our enjoyment and our enjoyment only. This is a passive form of resistance, in that it is just diverting our energy from production for society towards our own end goals, our own desires, our own joys. This could fall into the trap of drop-out culture, but differs in that it understands the necessity of defending the areas of our enjoyment against incursion, and attack on resource extraction projects that threaten our ability to continue to live unmediated by the state. Through pairing dedication of time to joyful projects irrelevant to capitalism with refusal to seek consent from the state and a strong investment in land defense, this can become part of a coherent and conflictual life.

At this specific time in North America, power is accumulated in the resource extraction projects throughout the North. To participate in the human strike would mean attacking where power is accumulated and where the state’s intervention is weakest. Rural and more northern areas, where these resource extraction projects are located, have a less developed infrastructure for surveillance and repression than cities.

A very regional and specific example of how to engage with the human strike would be to occupy land that has been slated for development, use the land to learn and practice subsistence skills that you enjoy, and then fiercely defend it from the state, without concessions or compromise. Practically, if you wanted to participate in anti-colonial governance structures, this could take the form of seeking permission/complicity from hereditary governance structures, and occupying land for subsistence purposes. The goal of this occupation would primarily be conflict, not preservation. These spaces may be short-lived, but this would transform land defense from a pseudo-religious/future-oriented project into the daily action of our desires.

These spaces would also not be isolated from urban struggles, but a complement to them. Though power is accumulated in these resource extraction projects up north, there are still ties to the urban environments that provide the workers, house development offices, and plan the projects themselves. These occupied spaces could also become refuge for those who are avoiding repression. There are no cameras or randomized ID checks in the forest or the mountains. Search parties have little success trying to find people who don’t want to be found.

This seems like a pretty extravagant proposal. To occupy land, learn the subsistence skills that give us joy, and then militantly defend it. All with the understanding that we do this for ourselves, for our own individual sensory experience, with no reliance on the future generations or with the safety blanket of ‘we’re contributing to a culture of resistance’. There are already several land defense camps which demonstrate aspects of this proposal, primarily from a First Nations land reclamation perspective. Unist’ot’en, Madii Lii, Lax U’u’la, and the Standing Rock Sioux anti-pipeline camps are all examples of successful and inspiring struggles. The above critiques and proposal are not geared towards these struggles, but towards settler intervention and green anarchist analysis that comes out about these struggles. Part of the destruction of society and capitalism is acting from a place of decolonization/anti-colonialism (colonialism facilitates capitalism, capitalism facilitates colonialism). Any land occupation that occurs in North America, if it is to be successful in not reproducing the power structures of capitalism and society, must include an anti-colonial/decolonization analysis. This would mean creating links with the pre-existing land defense projects, finding affinity with the individuals whose territory is under attack, and figuring out where our struggles overlap.

This is also not a proscription for how to participate in the human strike and land defense, but a proposal, such that those who feel affinity with the ideas presented can choose to participate.

 

4:20 – Against Legalization and Criminalization Alike

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Apr 232017
 

The text that follows is part of a zine that was handed out at 4:20 this year in Montreal, along with two other texts that were posted to anarchistnews.org recently (A Lament for Criminality and Psychonauts Can Also Be Pirates: How to Do Drugs and Get Free). A report-back from the event will soon follow with a pdf of the zine for others to hand out elsewhere at similar events.

I approach the “issue” of weed legalization, and the spaces it inhabits with two main things in mind:

Perhaps in our desire to show the seriousness of our positions (or because we think we’re too cool?), it seems we have abandoned non punk, queer, or hipster alternative spaces to the right wing and liberals. These spaces are dominated by people we have no affinity with as anarchists, but are participated in by all sorts of (at least mildly) rebellious youth who are hostile to certain aspects of law and order, and don’t take “cannabis culture ” on as the stupid identity it usually is. As an iconoclastic weirdo who tends to get along with lots of people, but never really fits in anywhere in particular, I hate the tendency of anarchists to voluntarily pigeonhole ourselves.

I’ve always been disgusted by the racist and anti-working class prejudiced elements of the right-wing of the weed legalization movement which is largely dominant where I come from: Vancouver. I want to intervene in these spaces to show other potential rebels that there are non-reformist paths to take, and that we should not be striving for legitimacy in the systems which feed our misery and alienation.

In honour of all the old friends and acquaintances who are dying at a horribly tragic rate in the fentanyl epidemic in the Lower Mainland in BC, that neither the right-wing of the weed legalization movement, nor the left-wing of those focused on harm reduction can adequately address. What is needed is an all-out assault on both the state and the bosses who have left us all totally disempowered and isolated, towards a free and creative individuality based in rebellious communities that the neoliberal world intends to destroy and erase.

– Llud (Wreck/ Black Banner Distro)

The “Drug War” Didn’t Start, and Wont End,
With Weed Prohibition

A war has been raging for over a millennium. A lot can be said about this war, but generally we can sum this up as the consolidation of force, resources and legitimacy through the dispossession and commodification of humanity and the earth. We can call this war the state. This war initially only affected small parts of the world, around the territories controlled by various empires such as the Incas or Egyptians. But by now, after over five hundred years of capitalist globalization, this war effects nearly the entire earth, with only small pockets such as in Papua and the Amazon rainforest remaining out of reach. Consistent waves of domination and exploitation have brought greater levels of wealth and control to the powerful and greater tragedy to the dispossessed. Through these processes, people have been enslaved or otherwise exploited, genocides have been carried out, and whole ecosystems have been reduced to their chemical components.

But what does this all have to do with the “drug war”?

Since this war has always been about dominating people, cultures, animals and the environments they inhabit, it has also been about controlling peoples thoughts, what they can do with themselves, and what they can put in their bodies.

For example, during the middle ages, elements within european society, primarily peasants, had retained certain aspects of their pagan, pre-christian cultures. These cultures emphasized a strong connection to nature and sexuality, less rigid gender roles, queer sexuality, women’s control over their own pregnancies, and the taking of medicinal herbs and psychoactive drugs for spiritual purposes. In order to gain more control over their rebellious populations, European states carried out military campaigns, branded as Crusades, and Inquisitions that went on for hundreds of years. People who engaged, or were rumored to have engaged in these kinds of behaviors, were tried as “witches” and “heretics” with many people, especially women, being tortured into confession and burned at the stake. In many cases the cost of running the inquisitions was paid for by the accused, who’s property was seized and divided between the judges and accusers.

At the time, there was also free land that belonged to no one, and was shared by all the peasants of the local areas, referred to as “the commons”. This land was used for harvesting herbs and cultural practices separated from the church (of which there was only one you were allowed to belong to at the time). The commons were gradually swallowed up by the privatization of land during the Crusades and Inquisitions.
We can see parallels to this history in the legacy of colonization here in the place we call “Canada”. Native people’s languages and cultures, which also had strong connections to the land and the wild plant-life upon it, were made illegal, with native children being forced into religious schools, and taught to hate themselves and their cultures. This all coincided with a massive dispossession of land from native peoples, by state and private landowners, as well as through the creation of Parks – that is, places where people could visit and observe a wilderness from which they had been alienated, but where they would be forbidden to live as a part of the land.

Looking specifically at the “issue” of marijuana, we can see that along with opium and cocaine, the laws that first criminalized its use were part of a racist narrative targeting Chinese, Mexican and Black people in the United States, with the same logic being applied throughout much of the British colonial empire. A key element of this racist narrative, was a paranoia that white youth were being coaxed into interracial relationships through use of these drugs, which was seen as an attack on white-supremacy.

The “drug war” has never been a purely local issue and has until today played an important role in capitalist globalization. The “drug war” is an important fixture of modern capitalism, and fills prisons locally, disproportionally with people of colour. In the United States, the flooding of crack and heroin into poor neighborhoods is part of a well documented government strategy to repress rebellious social movements.
In places like Mexico, where the government is often referred to as the “narco-state”, the “drug war” plays an important role in terrorizing workers and peasants. Paramilitary organizations play a role in a process started by the North American Free Trade Agreement that dispossesses indigenous people of their collectively worked lands to open them up for the growing of Coca to produce cocaine, as well as legal crops like Avocados for the global capitalist market. This has a triple effect of producing profits for capitalists, keeping workers and peasants obedient though fear, and repressing, delegitimizing and denying resources of rebellious social movements.

This is a dire situation, and it is sad to see the response it gets from the weed legalization movement here in Canada. While it is true that we are up against a vast enemy, and this enemy can only be attacked in parts, the reformist tunnel-vision being pushed by the likes of Marc and Jodie Emery will only strengthen the system we need to oppose. We can’t effectively address only one minuscule aspect of this war, because the monster we are fighting will continue on its path of misery and destruction from other angles.

If the weed legalization movement is successful in its meager goals, this will only mean greater profits for liquor and pharmaceutical corporations, and a few small business owners (like Marc Emery). The rest of us will lose the opportunity for tax free income, our weed can be regulated and filled with more chemicals that it already might be, harvesting the infinite variety of other wild medicinal herbs will become more precarious as the land continues to be plundered and poisoned by industry, and the carceral system will always find more reasons to kill and imprison people of colour, as well as poor or working class people, in the same ways it always has. In fighting prohibition it is important the we question the notion of legality itself.

It’s important to point out that along with preventing a broader analysis of the problem itself, the weed legalization movement distracts us by emphasizing pacifism and ineffective lesser-evilism in favour of various political parties during election time, to attain its goals. Sadly, it also emphasizes solidarity towards only “non-violent” drug offenders (meaning white middle class business owners), and we are unable to practice an expansive solidarity through action – one that considers those who are not perfect innocent angels, those who might have trouble surviving in this world for a million reasons – that could actually address the problem.

The drug war was never about some mysterious hatred for one silly plant, but as I’ve explained, it is a fundamental way that the powerful have ruled over us for centuries. With this in mind we can understand that the very idea of a respectable legitimate politics reinforces prohibition. Borders reinforce prohibition. Racism reinforces prohibition. Sexism reinforces prohibition. Prison reinforces prohibition. Property reinforces prohibition, and the very notion of Nation-States reinforces prohibition.

Yes, it is important to fight against the absurdity that is the possibility of being kidnapped by armed police for lighting a plant on fire. But it is also important to break and help others break all the other absurd laws too.

This war that is the state has never been a complete victory and defeat. Historical resistance to domination has included communities of escaped slaves (known as maroons) that organized and attacked their former masters, Native communities engaging in long-term struggles against colonizers; women, queer and trans people self-organizing to defend themselves against attacks and living joyful lives on the margins of a society that wants to destroy them; youth and counter-cultures taking their freedom into their own hands, women taking control of their own bodies and refusing the logic of patriarchy, workers sabotaging machinery that deepened their subjugation under the economy, and a multitude of other forms.

This resistance continues in many forms today. It is important to help people crossing borders illegally. It is important to fight against the prison system. And it is important to break and spread a disrespect for property laws that keep us from housing ourselves, and keep us grinding away at our jobs. It is important because the lives and self-respect of ourselves and all others are at stake.

Total war against the market and hierarchy!

Free weed, free lives and free lands for all!

What the fuck is anarchism?

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Apr 062017
 

We’ve made an ‘introduction to anarchism’ flyer, merging several texts by comrades from elsewhere. The flyer includes a list of local spaces and resources for anyone interested in anarchism in Montreal. For distribution at schools, workplaces, barricades, events, and demonstrations!

[Print, bilingual, 8.5″x11″]

Anarchists oppose all forms of oppressive power. we strive for a world based on self-determination and mutual aid. As the world veers towards tyranny, only grassroots direct action can keep our communities safe. If you’re ready to take action without waiting for orders, you’re one of us.

Anarchists look reality in the face and desire its complete transformation: the elimination of exploitation and domination. Anarchists are among the only ones offering a clear vision of another way of living. In organizing networks and community spaces around the world, we come together to assist each other in meeting basic needs and building the collective capacity for self-defense. In neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools, anarchists are fighting gentrification, the violence of the police, and exploitation while creating inclusive alternative infrastructures for survival. Across bioregions, we are organizing to protect our drinking water and the earth we all depend on for life.

Anarchists see the imposition of racism, class society, nationality, gender and patriarchy all playing parts in creating a world where a few own everything and the rest are forced to work for them in order to survive. A world that is also held in place by institutions of direct control in the form of police and prisons.

Anarchists recognize the one-two punch of the right and left wings of the state. The right-handed uppercut of market capitalism and the strong left hook that more government offers have taken turns pummeling people and the earth for hundreds of years. Anarchists are those who have had enough of it all.

Naturally anarchists are decried as dangerous by cops, politicians, and the rich, and rightly so, because if anarchists had their way those roles would no longer exist. While we’re told to grow up, to quiet our rage, to check another ballot, wait another decade for change, our limbs and minds grow weary. Our dreams and desires yearn to overflow, for something different.

Anarchism means destroying the forces that seek to keep us on our knees, as much as it means finding your friends, lovers, families and communities to have each others’ backs, with unbounded rage and joy. The riot that spills into the streets with dancing and laughter, the potluck that leaves everyone fed, the social center filled with books and ideas, the friendships based in affinity and unconditional solidarity, the window smashed to let in the light from outside.

In a world full of alienation and apathy, anarchists are willing to act in accordance with their ideas. Anarchists are those who would set fire to a bulldozer or a new luxury home rather than let a forest be cut down, who would rather hear the sound of shattering glass than a politician’s speech. Deserting and disobeying all the rules written against us, by squatting and stealing for our survival, and rejecting the roles we’re assigned, as good worker, good student, good citizen, good woman or man. Rewriting the usual endings; by supporting prisoners rather than letting them disappear in isolation, by beating up rapists and homophobes rather than suffering their violence, by creating forms of love that only strengthen us rather than containing and limiting us. Taking control over our surroundings by painting graffiti on the walls or occupying space and planting gardens. By arming ourselves with the ability to create a new world and destroy the one that has been imposed on us.

Anarchism in Montreal:

Montreal Counter-information is a local website that publishes news and analysis about anarchist struggles in Montreal.

Visit resistancemontreal.org for a calendar of radical events in the city, and a larger list of anarchist groups, spaces, and news.

If you want to learn more about anarchism across North America, you can visit these (anglophone) websites:

crimethinc.com — anarchist analyses and introductory resources

itsgoingdown.org — coverage of anarchist activity across North America

sub.media — video coverage of anarchism (sometimes with French subtitles)

Enbridge Line 3: The Feeblest Head of the Hydra

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Mar 232017
 

From It’s Going Down

I started researching this article while at Standing Rock, after learning that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had approved a $7.5 billion pipeline project to replace Line 3. At the time, I didn’t even know such a proposal was on the table. In so-called Canada, the Kinder Morgan and Energy East pipelines have gotten the lion’s share of media attention.

My first thought when I saw the map of the pipeline route was that it seemed calculated to run through areas where the environmental movement is weakest and where anti-oil activism would be most unpopular. My second thought was to ask myself what I could do to help stop it. I think that in more hostile political climates it’s even more important that local organizers know that they have the support of a broader movement.

By the time I’d read a few articles I was excited about the possibilities of this campaign. Basically, Line 3 is an aging pipeline that has reached the end of its life-span. You could also call it a ticking time bomb. My point here is that if the Line 3 replacement project is stopped, and if Line 3 is taken off-line, then for the first time in the history of the anti-pipeline movement, we won’t simply be stopping them from expanding their capacity, we’ll actually be reducing it. We’ll be turning the tide.

What is Line 3?

Enbridge’s Line 3 Replacement Project is a $7.5-billion-dollar project, slated to run southeast from Hardisty, Alberta (near Edmonton), through Saskatchewan, Manitoba, North Dakota, and Minnesota to Superior, Wisconsin, on the western tip of Lake Superior. The original 34-inch pipeline was built in 1968. The new pipeline would be 36 inches and could carry 760,000 barrels per day (bpd).

This project would be the most expensive in Enbridge’s history. The line is currently transporting about 390,000 bpd, far below its maximum throughput of 760,000 bpd. Its flow has been restricted for safety reasons.

Bizarrely, in this case Enbridge wants to convince regulators how unsafe Line 3 is. According to expert testimony the company provided to Minnesota’s Public Utilities Commission, the corrosion and cracking is so extensive that further use could cause calamitous leaks.

How bad is it? Enbridge says that half of the joints are corroding, and that it has five times more stress cracks per mile than other pipelines in the same corridor. It was originally made with defective steel and the welding was done with outdated technology. One worker called keeping it safe “a game of whack-a-mole.”

According to Enbridge, “Approximately 4,000 integrity digs [invasive pipeline inspections] in the US alone are currently forecasted for Line 3 over the next 15 years to maintain its current level of operation. This would result in year-after-year impacts to landowners and the environment. On average, 10-15 digs are forecasted per mile on Line 3 if it is not replaced…”

Enbridge is staring down the clock right now, as the US Justice Department ordered the company back in July to replace the entire pipeline by December 2017 or commit to substantial safety upgrades to the existing line. That decree is part of a settlement the company reached after a massive 2010 spill of 3.8 million litres (around 80,000 gallons) of oil into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River.

Although Enbridge is replacing Line 3 because they have to, they’re also looking to slip something past the public. Not only does the proposed “replacement” up the capacity of the pipeline, it also would allow it to transport tar sands. Currently, Line 3 carries “light” crude oil—which is largely drawn from Western Canada’s conventional oilfields—but a completed Line 3 replacement would allow Enbridge to carry diluted bitumen across the border. This project hasn’t had to jump the political hurdles of other border-crossing tar sands pipelines, like the Keystone XL, and already has a presidential permit.

The new line would run parallel to the existing Line 3 for most of its route, but would take a different route for the final 300 kilometres (around 185 miles) between Clearbrook, Minnesota, and Superior, Wisconsin. And, oh yeah, the original pipeline would be decommissioned and left in the ground.

So, let’s recap. This “replacement” doubles the capacity for Line 3, changes the product to be shipped, follows a different route, and the pipeline that it will “replace” will remain in the ground. Don’t you love living in the age of persuasion?

Honor the Earth, an indigenous-led NGO based in Minnesota, ain’t having it. From their website: “Enbridge wants to simply abandon its existing Line 3 pipeline and walk away from it, because it has over 900 “structural anomalies,” and build a brand new line in this new corridor. If this new corridor is established, we expect Enbridge to propose building even more pipelines in it. We cannot allow that.”

Resistance in Minnesota

Thanks to the amazing work of Honor the Earth and other activists in Minnesota, things are looking good for the campaign against Line 3. Here’s a breakdown:

The conservationist group Friends of the Headwaters was formed to divert Line 3 from northern Minnesota’s wild rice lakes. They proposed a longer pipeline that would carve further south through agricultural lands. State law requires pipeline companies to submit a simple environmental review of proposed projects. Three years ago, when Enbridge first brought up the Line 3 replacement, they intended to study their chosen site only. Friends of the Headwaters insisted that they also study feasible routes outside the Mississippi River Headwaters area.

A lengthy lawsuit ensued, and in December of 2015 the Minnesota Supreme Court sided with environmentalists. Enbridge was ordered to complete a more comprehensive assessment, including alternate routes.

Minnesota is currently writing its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for Line 3, after months of battle over what the study would include and who would perform the analyses. The draft EIS is scheduled for April 2017 and the public will be able to comment at public hearings. A final permit decision is expected in spring of 2018.

As soon as Minnesota’s Environmental Impact Statement is released in April, the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy plans to continuing fighting Line 3 in court. So, given all of these factors, for sure Enbridge will fail to meet the project’s December 2017 deadline. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Let’s be real, though. There’s a shit-ton of money at stake here. I find it hard to imagine regulators taking a 390,000 bpd pipeline off-line. I’m not aware of a major pipeline ever having been taken off-line because it is old and unsafe. One example of such a pipeline is the TransNorthern pipeline in Eastern Canada. Back in November, a trio of Quebecois women shut down this pipeline through a lockdown action. They did so to bring attention to the fact that even members of the National Energy Board (NEB) have recommended that this pipeline, which was built in the 1950s, be decommissioned. TransNorthern continues to operate despite its inability to comply with the improvements the NEB ordered the company to make.

It would be great if Line 3 were shut down by the state of Minnesota, but equally possible is that Line 3 will spill, and that when it does an army of pundits will pin the blame on environmentalists for delaying Line 3’s replacement. Remember Lac Megantic? An oil train blew up a town in Quebec, killing 47 people, and the next day media spin doctors were using the disaster to argue for pipelines, since oil-by-rail obviously isn’t safe. These bastards have no shame.

Which brings us to a reality that we will probably have to deal with in the near future. As pipeline infrastructure ages, the public will be presented with a new choice—shiny new pipelines or old, rusted-out, leaky ones. This is a classic double bind, a false choice designed to force acceptance of something undesired. You know, like democracy. Perversely, environmentalists may stand accused of causing oil spills. Activists will reject this logic, but it may be seductive to centrists and pre-fabricated-thought-thinkers. It might be wise to think of a counter-narrative to this.

The reality remains that Line 3 might spill before it gets shut down. My guess would be that Enbridge will get an extension beyond December 2017 and continue operating. And it’s certain that other pipelines will rupture.

A New Approach

What if, instead of occupying to stop a pipeline from being built, land defenders used the event of an oil spill to shut down a pipeline? Though it’s probably undesirable to occupy the site of a spill, this could be accomplished by occupying a site of critical importance for the functioning of the line, such as a pumping station or valve, and preventing workers from accessing it. There would be several advantages to this strategy.

First, when there is an oil spill, a pipeline is already shut down. Though a slew of recent direct actions targeting valves have shown that it is certainly possible to autonomously shut down pipelines safely, it would be easier and less psychologically taxing to keep a pipeline off-line than to shut one down.

Second, an oil spill packs an emotional punch. I maintain that it is emotion, not rational thought, that inspires action. To most people, the petroleum economy is so normal that it takes a change in consciousness to interrupt their acceptance of it. It provides a moment where anti-pipeline direct action will be broadly understood, drawing sympathizers and supporters out of the woodwork. Artful anarchist propaganda makes radical ideas seem like common sense, and this argument sort of makes itself: If a pipeline is disaster-prone, it should be shut down.

Third, if we’re shutting down active pipelines, we’re not merely stopping the expansion of the oil and gas industry, we’re forcing its shrinkage. We’re seizing the initiative away from the capitalists. We are busting the operative myth of statecraft—that we do not have a choice.

Fourth, this switches the focus away from the sort of thinking that presents one issue as the be-all and end-all of ecological activism. There are over 200,000 miles of pipelines criss-crossing Turtle Island. There is a potential front-line just about everywhere. This shifts focus closer to home, and also ideally would lead to situations where there the tactic becomes normalized, because it is happening all over the place.

Lastly, everything that we can do to increase the political and economic risk of pipeline ruptures to corporations is good. If spills come with higher consequences for companies, they will have more incentive to prevent them. Some famous squatting graffiti in Spain read EVICTIONS = RIOTS. In two years, could we say OIL SPILLS = OCCUPATIONS?

From Temporary Autonomous Zones to Permanent Autonomous Zones

I am hoping that the Line 3 campaign leads to something akin to the resistance at Standing Rock, but which draws on some of the lessons of that fight. It’s long been my belief that resistance to industrial capitalism should go hand-in-hand with the creation of autonomous communities able to survive and thrive independent of the fossil fuel economy, and that blockades provide a moment where the impossible suddenly becomes possible, where we can strike at the heart of capitalism by collectively defying the illusion of property that holds the whole system in place.

My political goal is the creation of a federation of autonomous communes able to meet their own needs independent of the fossil fuel economy.

For that reason, I went to Standing Rock in hopes that others felt similarly, and there was a will amongst many people to reclaim treaty land and to create a permanent autonomous community on the site. Alas, the site wasn’t ideal, both because the Oceti Sakowin/Oceti Oyate camp was on a floodplain, and because it was on a sacred burial ground.

Some settlers will feel uncomfortable with the whole notion of approaching moments of opportunity created by indigenous-led resistance campaigns with any agenda at all. Aren’t non-native allies supposed to take direction from native people? To this, I’ll reply with a story.

Unbeknownst to most people, after the anti-fracking movement in Mik’mak’i (in so-called New Brunswick) was successful and most people went home, the occupation continued. There was a small group of extremely committed people who tried to do exactly what I am advocating here—to turn a resistance camp into a permanent eco-community. Some of those people were native, some Acadian (descendants of French colonists who settled in the area in the 17th and 18th centuries), and some settler. They made it through the winter and the spring. My partner and I were there in the spring and we started a garden with the help of a Mi’kmaq elder. It was a beautiful moment, in a beautiful place. A beautiful dream.

The local support was overwhelmingly evident, if passive. When the camp needed money, they’d simply do a road block fundraiser, allowing cars to pass one at a time and asking for a toll. Most people, native and settler, would donate. One day, in the weirdest busking experience of my life, my partner and I added a fire show to the whole bizarre spectacle. I remember thinking, Goddamn I love this corner of the Maritimes—where else in the world would this even make sense?

In the end, the dream was given up because of interpersonal conflicts, but by that time it had already stopped advancing because the occupiers didn’t have the know-how or the resources to build permanent structures. They didn’t feel that other people, who had been so active in the camp when it was the place to be, cared enough to help them build their dreamed-of community. To them it was the natural next step, and it hurt them that others couldn’t see that. It still saddens me that that dream remains unrealized, and in my memory it will go down as a missed opportunity that strengthens my resolve to be prepared for the next moment of unforeseeable potential.

As a side note, some of the Acadians who were involved in that did go on to start a land project in the woods of Mi’kmak’i, which they started in large part to acquire the skills that would have allowed them to succeed in the first place. That place, located within the legendary Cocagne vortex, is, to me, one enduring legacy of the resistance at Elsipogtog.

Also, realistically, most people who come to a front line aren’t going to decide to live there long-term. For the revolutionary movement that I envision to emerge, folks would have to be willing to actually continue to live in a liberated zone after all the action has died down. This part of the theory’s untested. Do enough people actually want to live in off-grid communities throughout the four seasons?

Well, surely when the crisis deepens and matters of survival become much more pronounced, we’ll do what we need to do. That’s the best hope I’ve got; that we will succeed where so many previous generations of radicals haven’t, not because we’re smarter or braver, but because we have to. The survival instinct is a powerful thing.

As the ideologies of liberal democracy and infinite growth show themselves to be the shams that they are, more and more people are going to be looking for answers. I don’t have many answers, but I see the creation of autonomous zones as a realistic goal. We can start now. Standing Rock is an autonomous zone. The ZADs in France are autonomous zones. Such liberated territories give us opportunities to learn, to experiment, to put ideas into practice, to make connections based on shared values, and to inspire ourselves and others through direct experience. It’s only though experimentation, through trial and error, through blood, sweat, and tears that we’ll learn how to be free. Standing Rock provided thousands of people with hands-on experience in a laboratory of freedom. Such experiences are transformational, and are preparing us for what is to come.

Rapid Response

My goal is to connect the current political moment with the vision that many eco-anarchists hold—that is, the creation of interdependent autonomous communes able to survive and thrive independent of the fossil fuel economy.

So, let’s start thinking about how we might get to that point. What would it take?

At Standing Rock I put a ton of energy building and winterizing shelters, as did many other people. Many shelters were later abandoned and had to be cleaned up. I think that it would make a lot of sense for front-liners to think about acquiring and building mobile homes and various structures that are relatively easy to set up, tear down, and transport. The Standing Rock model is a game-changer, but there’s a lot of room for improvement, too.

When I was at Standing Rock, there was a lack of strategic action undertaken. Many people would probably see this as being due to a lack of leadership, but I see it as a lack of coherent affinity groups. An action plan requires a group to carry it out, and the more elaborate the plan, the better coordinated the group needs to be. A sophistication exercise involving diversion and multiple flanks, such as what would be required to take a heavily guarded site, such as the drill site at Standing Rock, would require multiple teams sharing a certain level of training and confidence.

So when I think about the future, I imagine affinity groups comprised of full-time activists for whom the activities of the group are their primary focus in life. How can we make it more realistic for more people to be able to do this?

We need bases. I think that we need a combination of urban collective houses and rural land projects that eco-anarchists can use to launch actions from. We need a culture of people who see revolution as their calling in life, their vocation. That’s what I think it will take for this movement to become revolutionary.

Where Are We Going as a Movement?

Back to Line 3. Look, it’s a pipeline. You’re against it, I’m against it, and we can stop it. To me, the more interesting question is: What will be achieved by victory? Of course the land and the water will be defended, and that is enough reason to fight—but all of these pipelines, mines, prisons, and schools are but the visible, manifest symptoms of a disease called capitalism. So long as we are dependent on capitalism for our means, we’ll still be biting the hand that feeds us.

The environmental movement is not inherently revolutionary. What can we as anarchists do to nurture the revolutionary tendencies it contains? I’m not interested in making capitalism more sustainable; in helping the machine perfect our enslavement. The fact that it is unsustainable may be humanity’s last chance for liberty. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life fighting different heads of the Hydra unless at the end of the day we’ve fundamentally transformed the way that we live.

So I ask: Where are we going as a movement? I ask, because if we want to make it somewhere, we’d better have a clear idea of where we’re headed. What vision do we have to offer? What can we invite others to believe in along with us? What spirit can we summon forth into the collective consciousness? What songs can we sing with our whole hearts when we’re on the front lines?

Nothing’s more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Look at Standing Rock. Who could have imagined such a thing just a short time ago? Who would have taken this article seriously if I wrote it a year ago? Our movement is growing, it is expanding, it is stronger and stronger by the day. We are winning the hearts and minds of more and more people, and bigger and bigger goals are becoming more and more attainable. It’s time to articulate a program of revolutionary social change that sees resistance to pipelines as a starting point.

The other sovereignty – the Innu

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Mar 202017
 

From The Sling: Montreal Anarchist Journal
Selected excerpts www.littor.al

Praised on both sides of the white world as a turning point in the way of dealing with indigenous communities, a crucial “modern treaty” is getting ready to be signed, should all go poorly. The Petapan Treaty with the Innu communities of Mashteuiatsh, Essipit, and Nutashkuan is the result of 30 years of negotiations, during which six other Innu and Atikamekw communities have ended up withdrawing from the process, leaving a handful of Band Council chiefs to rule on the future of a territory 16 times larger than the Island of Montréal.

Expected to be signed around the end of next March in the National Assembly, the Petapan Treaty claims to recognize “autonomy of governance” of the territory of Innu Assi, supposedly putting an end to the long history of encroachments upon indigenous peoples, and their cultural assimilation and extermination. If this brutal history was certainly conducted by means of treaties, the last on the list would be, they say, of a different kind. Unlike the James Bay Agreement, which allowed for the constitutional integration of not less than 20% of the “Québécois” territory – around 300,000 km² – from the hands of the Cree, the Petapan Treaty does not intend to “extinguish” ancestral rights, but only to “harmonize” them with those of Québec…

Encompassing the watersheds of Lac Saint-Jean, a large part of Labrador, and all of the Côte-Nord, Nitassinan – traditional territory of the Innu and the Atikamekw – extends over close to 100,000 km². This is where animals and fish have found refuge from the reach of civilization – two thirds of Nitassinan are zoned as beaver reserves – and where minerals and powerful rivers have not yet been harnessed. This is what makes this treaty crucially important for a government that never ceases to want to finish off the natural resources.

Beyond these altruistic outward appearances, the Petapan Treaty hides a considerable problem behind this facade. To be sure, the Innu will become the “managers” of their territory – not all Innu, obviously all of this only concerns the duly authorized Band Council chiefs. Managers… This is the term that the government used to designate families who have a certain territory for hunting, up until it was replaced by “area wardens” to avoid any confusion. But if the development projects will have to receive the approval of the Innu people, and if they will not doubt be granted the traditional “vacation pay” of 3% of income, this transfer of territorial management towards the ancestral “owners” does nothing except to force their hand to open it up to infrastructural development. See the trick: at the end of a period of 12 years, the federal government will cease to pay insurance benefits that today it owes to reserves, leaving to the semi-autonomous government, not to say Innu protectorate, the job of raising its own taxes.

Without more assistance from the federal government – compensations for the atrocities it committed – the Innu will have to resolve to open their resources to exploitation, or otherwise simply starve. Especially since the costs already undertaken for the negotiations, what with the huge number of field studies and legal opinions, are up to more than 40 millions dollars… Not counting that the government of Québec had already reserved total and exclusive ownership of water and underground resources, as well as 75% of surface minerals. If it had to change its mind faced with protests, finally leaving the Innu to reign alone over their resources, the territory of Innu Assi that would have been realized by the agreement was then cut by more than half, going from 2,538 km2 to 1,250 km2. In Nutushkuan, a 50-megawatt hydroelectric dam project is already feverishly waiting for the conclusion of the agreement – the 2004 agreement, which is to be the basis for the treaty, takes it for granted, maintaining that “Québec will commit to giving priority to the First Nation of Nutashkuan on the development of hydro power of 50 MW or less in Innu Assi.” Given the dislocation and scattering of Innu Assi’s project territory, one can understand well why it took 30 years to identify and remove all zones of strong geological potential from the agreement.

The resistance

But there is absolutely never anything so easy. Sometimes it is enough for a small rumbling of opposition to ruin a rip-off that’s been years in the making. A number of Innu “area wardens” are currently rising up against the Petapan Treaty, and starting to make waves. In presenting themselves at random selection hearings for the “managers of trapping territories” before forming the “Tshitassinu committee” in order to benevolently advise on the application of the treaty, these opponents are starting discussions that quickly put the entirety of the process back into question. Multiple blockades of roads and forest trails, to which have been added members of Atikamekw communities, simply ignored by the agreement, is putting a non-negligible pressure on a process whose validation relies upon an appearance of ethical purity.

If the opposition to the Petapan Treaty clearly sees right through the game of government, it’s because they have their own established way of life. As far as the eons-old practice of hunting, trapping, and fishing is concerned, the treaty does nothing less than to render this form of life extinct, through the Québécois and Canadian systems of permits, certificates, catch recording, hunting seasons, and game quotas (point 5.7 of the agreement). It is therefore the mode of life the most suitable to indigenous people before colonization – hunting and fishing as the principal means of survival – which finds itself attacked in one of its last holdouts on the continent. There, where one can find the last wild animals able to provide for the needs of a limited population of hunter-gatherers, the covetousness of mine and hydro intends to destroy that which the settler colonies have devastated everywhere else. However, the relationship of treaty-opposing Innu traditionalists to the ancestral practice of the hunt is considered “sacred”. In other words, it cannot be harmonized with white norms without it losing its soul. The hunt, as intended in its full sense, as an inalienable spiritual activity, contains an immemorial relation to the Innu territory, and a knowledge of how to live there more sustainably than with any development. As a occupier-hunter of the Innu territory recounted: Our ancestors have lived on this territory since long before the creation of the Band Councils by the Europeans. They have given us the necessary knowledge to live and do things for millenia in Nitassinan. We don’t need a treaty or a government to control or restrict our traditional practices. The long walk of the Innu has never needed European laws on Nitassinan!

It is thus apparent that this re-emergent indigenous sovereigntism in so-called Québec isn’t the one that speaks in Band Councils and reads agreements. The groups of Innu and Atikamekw hunters contrast real, de facto independence to the legal, de jure independence of the Petapan Treaty, denounced as an incursion of the European concept of the State. So do not hesitate to respond to their call for solidarity if they act to support this indigenous affirmation of an ancestral independence. In recognizing, first of all, how the structures put into action by treaty negotiation are entirely attributable to whites – let’s remember that more 50% of the Essipit Band Council employees are whites coming from Escoumins and other contiguous municipalities; the resistance to their insidious maneuvers is thus as much the responsibility of non-indigenous solidarity as of the concerned communities. Next, in taking seriously the conceptions of the world and of the specific territories of these communities, as the incarnation of a real face of a continued resistance to the civilization of development, at the same time as their privileged target. Which brings us to ask ourselves, concretely, how to recognize their de facto independence, and how to assist their rejection of resource extraction projects. Because this Turtle Island where we are staying contains a number of ferociously sovereign ways of living, which demand to be considered as such. Even if that means dissolving what they have customarily considered as Québec and Canada.

Let’s support the struggle against the Petapan Treaty!

For more information, visit the Facebook page of Regroupement des familles traditionnelles de chasseurs-cueilleurs Ilnuatsh.

Frontlines in the Fight Against Islamophobia

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Mar 152017
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

On March 4th a series of Islamophobic demonstrations had been called across Canada, by a (probably one-person) group known as the Canadian Coalition of Concerned Citizens. Ostensibly the rallies were against Bill M-103, a parliamentary private member’s motion condemning Islamophobia (in the wake of the massacre at a mosque in Quebec City earlier this year), which the CCCC framed as an attack on free speech[1. M-103 is an unremarkable standard politician’s denunciation of racism. It is a non-binding motion calling for the problem of racism and Islamophobia to be recognized and uprooted, for studies to be done and statistics collected, and for solutions to be found, but does not actually suggest anything concrete beyond this.]. So the March 4th rallies were officially “for free speech, against sharia law and against globalization,” and internal guidelines specifically told people not to bring white power or openly racist signs (which of course didn’t stop them from shouting “race traitor” at us as they arrived, or giving nazi salutes).

Georges Hallak, the Montreal-based Islamophobe behind the CCCC, seems to have adopted a “throw it at the wall and see if it sticks” approach, setting up facebook events across Canada for pickets and then posting asking if anybody local could bottomline the effort. Not only did this meet with some success in English Canada — in that local racists did in many cities join in and showed up on the day in question (though generally outnumbered and drowned out by antiracists) — but in Quebec the effort was taken up by the province’s far-Right groups, and became an opening for the first coordinated and united far-Right “coming out” here.

Radical forces in Montreal – generally spearheaded by anarchists and Maoists – have consistently shut down every single known far-Right public gathering for over 20 years now; once again, this time these forces prepared to do what they had in the past. Despite the very cold temperatures (-20 c), about the same numbers came out as at the multiple antifascist mobilizations in 2016 (a few hundred), and some people were prepared to do things. However, what was different was that whereas in 2016 there were at most a dozen racists who showed up, this time there were over 100, with a competent and imposing security detail of their own, and coordinating with police.

Superficially in Montreal, our side held the upper hand — we were more than them, a few of their people did get smacked, a few of their signs and flags were taken by force, the police were positioned to “protect” them from us, and when some of us did outflank the police the fascists were moved away and then finally dispersed –but this was really a failure for us. The racists marched through downtown to get to the rally site;once this racist contingent got there, they were able to hold their corner (protected by cops) for over an hour, putting on an impressive display (big flags, signs, etc.). When finally the police were outflanked and some of our forces were able to get to the racists, the latter were not sent running but under police escort they marched in an orderly fashion back to their starting point, from where they dispersed.

The above has been the goal of the far-Right for years, but those groups that tried (most recently, multiple times in 2015 and 2016, PEGIDA Quebec) have not been able to pull it off — each and every time, their forces were tiny, and they appeared as losers. Today from various reports, and from what we could see on the 4th, they feel like anything but.Given that in the past for every person who showed up on their side, there were a dozen who on social media said they would but did not (out of fear of being vastly outnumbered and humiliated or hurt), the fact that they pulled it off may mean they can do even better next time.

In Quebec City — obscenely, the city where five weeks ago a far-Rightist killed six people and seriously injured many more when he shot up a mosque — things were worse. The far-Right mobilized over 100 people;most of those who showed up were middle aged or older, and probably not the type who would have been up to a physical confrontation. However, a smaller contingent associated with the fascist group Atalante were also present, and at a certain point it looked like they might have been looking for a fight. Given the smaller number of antifascists present on the 4th, it is unclear if the police had not been there, who would have been sent running.

(To contextualize the situation in Quebec City, it should be noted that the week earlier there had been a well-attended anti-racist festival and large anti-racist demonstration; it is not a matter of there not being positive developments on the ground, just that for a variety of reasons these did not translate into a favourable balance of forces for us on the 4th.)

In Saguenay, northeast of Quebec City, there were roughly 100 racists who marched, with half as many antiracists. In smaller numbers, similar forces came together in the cities of Trois Rivieres andSherbrooke.

Both far-Right organizational work, and an unhealthy Islamophobic social environment, helped lay the basis for March 4th.

THE PLAYERS

The CCCC’s call had been taken up throughout Quebec by La Meute (“the wolfpack”), a far-Right organization with an impressive internet presence (over 43,000 members of its zero-security facebook group) that had been biding its time waiting for the moment to stage a major public event outside of cyberreality.

Founded in 2015 by two ex-soldiers, ÉricVenne (alias Eric Corvus) and Patrick Beaudry, the group’s first events were in the Quebec City and Saguenay areas. In August 2016 their fliers started appearing in public places, and a few weeks later Venneand other members disrupted an information event organized by a group of volunteers planning to host a family of Syrian refugees.

As is not uncommon with such groups, La Meute claim to be neither far-Right nor racist, just “against sharia law” and “radical Islam.” Furthermore, and still in line with many but not all such groups, their opposition to Islam is partly justified in terms of the latter being sexist and homophobic; Venne even made a point of attending the vigil in Montreal’s Gay Village following the June 2016 massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

La Meute’s stated goal is to become a large political force within the mainstream, however it remains a far-Right group, albeit one that does not like to be described that way.In the words of its media liaison Sylvain Brouillette (aka Sylvain Maikan), “Marine Le Pen is a lot closer to us than Donald Trump.” As shown on the 4th, La Meute aims to attract people ranging from conscious far-Right racists to people who sincerely do not think of themselves that way, but who are motivated by a combination of misinformation and fear about Muslims.

March 4th was an important test for La Meute; had it been trounced, this would have been a major setback. The group has been getting a lot of press based on its large facebook membership, but as we all know in and of itself that is a meaningless thing – in other words, for them, it was a “show up or shut up” situation. Smaller groups (PEGIDA Quebec, Soldiers of Odin), boneheads, and others who either don’t choose to, or who don’t manage to, do anything public with real numbers in Montreal, also joined in. So suddenly all of these little scenes with one person here and one person there, coalesced into something we could not shut down, under La Meute’s protection. People are guessing a lot of people came in from outside of Montreal, which may be true, but is a bit irrelevant. Plus, as there were also rallies in other cities, outside forces in Montreal should have been less of a factor than in previous mobilizations.

And remember: outside of Montreal, antifascist protesters were actually outnumbered by the racists.

Quebec City is the province’s capital; it is a smaller, far more white, and far more conservative city than Montreal. Furthermore, for years now it has been stewing in racist “talk radio” propaganda, which often singles out Muslims as some kind of threat to not only “the West” but to Quebec in particular, often in terms indistinguishable from groups like La Meute. In such a conducive setting, several far-Right groups have been able to develop.

Besides La Meute, another group active in Quebec City is the Soldiers of Odin, an international organization that first started in Finland, largely based around setting up anti-Muslim street patrols. In 2016 the group set up several chapters across Canada, including in Quebec. In January 2017 there was a shakeup in the Quebec organization, with leader Dave Tregget replaced by the Katy Latulippe, a hardliner (Tregget has since set up a new group, the Storm Alliance). According to a recent newspaper article, Latulippe “has vowed to return the Quebec branch of the Soldiers of Odin to its Finnish roots and ramp up patrols of the more Muslim areas of Quebec City. The goal, she says, is not to intimidate Muslim immigrants but rather make them aware of Quebec values.”

One other noteworthy group – that was also active in Quebec City on March 4th, along with La Meute, Soldiers of Odin, and Storm Alliance – is Atalante, a third position group which includes several boneheads and former boneheads (the group has been promoted at shows of the band Legitime Violence). Atalante is a part of the most clearly fascist and unselfconsciously racist tendency in the Quebec far-Right, along with groups like the Federation des Quebecois de Souche (more present in the Saguenay area) and La Bannière Noire (based in Montreal).

While small, Atalante has been busy since it was founded; over the past year it has held two public protests in Quebec City, organized a talk by Italian far-Right intellectual Gabriele Adinolfi (himself one of the founders of Third Position politics) and a public Catholic mass with the Society of Saint Pius X (a breakaway Roman Catholic sect with close ties to the far-Right internationally). As part of its third position approach, Atalante organized events providing free food and toys in working class neighbourhoods – but to “neo-French” only.

On the 4th in Quebec City, whereas La Meute formed the bulk of the demo, it was Atalante who seemed at one point poised to fight with our side. That said, their relationship to the broader anti-Muslim upsurge is not without nuance: in a statement they subsequently posted to facebook they criticized the narrow focus on Islam, saying the real enemies were multiculturalism, mass immigration, and the “banksters” system, and condemning as useless any mobilization that shied away from this. In a similar vein, their banner that day was inscribed with a modified quote from Marx: “Immigration — The Reserve Army of Capital.” (This is not the first time Atalante has made a point of criticizing less ideological racists – recently, they also leafleted a book launch of mainstream Islamophobic journalist Mathieu Bock-Côté, urging a more radical approach.)

SOCIAL CONTEXT

Beyond the involvement and organizational work of specific far-Right groups, there are broader social factors behind the stark difference in how March 4th played out in Quebec and in English Canada. Islamophobia and xenophobia in general are less contested in the public arena in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada, and the left’s response to racism (for generations now) has been far weaker and more incoherent than anywhere else in North America. This is because the complication of national identity and Quebec nationalism was never neutralized or resolved in a liberatory manner here. So while in many other places there is a large non-left section of the population who might be hostile to the far-Right because they see them as being somehow extremist, undemocratic, or otherwise unsavoury (for reasons we would consider not left, but which we still benefit from if only passively), in Quebec that section of the population is far more ambivalent and can swing either way depending on how things are framed. It gives the organized racists a larger pool to fish in, and more room to operate in, on the level of ideas. I.e. they are not always considered “beyond the pale.”

Still, it is worth reminding readers that during the period of the New Left, the so-called “long sixties”, Quebec was a progressive pole within Canada, and the Quebec nationalist movement was dominated by progressive forces. While this is not the place to go into an extended history of what went wrong, some of the roots of the problem can be traced back to this “high point”, where an identification with the anti-colonial forces worldwide, led many Quebecois nationalists to dismiss the possibility of their own nation being an oppressor, or of their own movement being a vehicle of racism. It is not uncommon today to find former radicals, left-wing activists and even leaders from that generation, holding openly racist and far-Right positions. What is perhaps different from other contexts in North America, is that these individuals do not always appreciate the fact that they have switched sides.

Add to this a series of orchestrated racist surges in Quebec over the past ten years, as a populist-nationalist right grew and seized upon Islamophobia as a way to increase its support and outflank their political opponents. Once Islamophobia proved a winning ticket, suddenly everyone wanted to have some, and several of the mainstream political parties – including social democrats and “feminists” and even “leftists” – started either engaging in or tailing anti-Muslim fearmongering, along the lines that they are terrorists or sexists or invaders intent on imposing Sharia law. If March 4th represented a significant far-Right advance, it was on a road paved by not only the mainstream right, but by some “progressives” too.

In addition to the above, the massacre on January 29th, when Alexandre Bissonnette (a far-Rightist) shot up a mosque in the Quebec City suburb of St-Foy, actually encouraged the far-Right. (The mosque had been targeted with Islamophobic vandalism multiple times before, including in June 2016 having a pig’s head left on its doorstep with a note reading “bon appetit.”)

While thousands of people came out in vigils after the massacre, and there was a lot of play in the media about Islamophobia for a few days, the aforementioned national-identity-issue in Quebec made it so that within a week not only the neonazis and fascists, but large swathes of the populist-nationalist right as well had reinterpreted the event as one where Quebec was now under attack by the “multiculturalists” and “islamists” who wanted to “exploit” the killings to clamp down on free speech, to humiliate or slander Quebec as somehow being racist, etc. – all as perfectly symbolized by the (meaningless) Bill M-103. These people sincerely feel that there is a lot of racism in Canada against Quebec, and that any talk of “islamophobia” is a smokescreen for this — and it must be said, this is a position that the left has never neutralized here, even within its own ranks.

While the January 29th massacre was condemned by almost all sections of the far-Right, it is not an exaggeration to say that many see the Quebec nation as having been the real victim. Furthermore, the attack clearly emboldened and encouraged other far-Right forces, and everyday racists, not only in Quebec but across English Canada too. It has been followed by a series of acts of vandalism against mosques, an anti-Muslim bomb threat at Concordia University in Montreal, and renewed attacks on Muslims in the media, especially on talk radio.

This is the context in which March 4th took place.

NOT JUST TRUMP

Quebec is a different nation from English Canada or the United States; while “the Trump effect” plays a part in things here, there are also internal processes at work which were leading in this direction regardless. Indeed, pointing to Trump, or to Canada’s imperialist crimes in the Middle East, as the main factor behind Islamophobia here, has become an argument mobilized by certain figures who seek to downplay or simply deny the deep roots of racism in Quebec. By blaming policies that are decided in Ottawa and Washington DC, such arguments leave Quebec once again the innocent victim, free of all blame.

There are many examples of this, but the most outrageous one is probably the article The New World Order Hits Quebec City by Robin Philpot, a long time anglophone apologist for racism in Quebec (as early as 1991, Philpot was writing that the Mohawk Warrior Society in its conflict with the Quebec State was merely acting as a catspaw for either the CIA or RCMP). Philpot’s “New World Order” article, which first appeared on the Montreal-based Global Research website and was subsequently reposted on Counterpunch, essentially argues that the January 29th massacre was a result of global imperialism, not of any particular problem with Islamophobia here. Indeed, covering up numerous mass-based Islamophobic mobilizations in Quebec, Philpot argues that the province cannot be Islamophobic because … there were large antiwar demonstrations here in 2003!

That such arguments lead nowhere can be shown by the simple fact that they fail to predict or explain things like March 4th.

In order to understand things, Quebec needs to be viewed as a distinct nation, but also as one which is embedded within and largely sees itself as belonging to the broader 21st century supra-national identities of “whiteness” and “the West” – not only in terms of the white West’s crimes abroad, but also in terms of social relations “at home.” This makes Quebec in some ways the same, in some ways different from other purportedly “white” “Western” societies. For instance, in terms of the groups discussed here, many of the intellectual reference points are different (i.e. more European, more hardcore Catholic), and even when they are shared (i.e. the European New Right which also impacted the American alt-right) they play a different role because they came here untranslated and through different channels.

The “strategic quality” of a far-Right breakthrough here, for those of you in the U.S., would be difficult to measure, and might not be much. On the other hand, as recent events have shown, any place these people can advance significantly, can constitute an inspiration or a leverage-point for their ilk elsewhere.

One way or another, what is now on the agenda for those of us in Quebec is to determine the meaning of recent events. For antifascists and other progressive forces, the priority is clear: building on our positions of strength, reaching out to new allies, and making sure that something like March 4th does not happen again.

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