Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
The RBC on Commercial drive and 1st ave was molotoved on the night of Nov 15, the other location on Nanaimo and Hastings had 12 windows smashed in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en people and all indigenous people resisting colonialism and white supremacy. They ignore peaceful protest, take a stand.
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Fire extinguisher full of white paint was used on the facade of a RBC branch located in Ottawa during the holiday week.
The action was meant as an answer to the calls to action from the Gidimt’en clan who retook possession of “Coyote Camp” with their allies. We stand in solidarity with the Wetʼsuwetʼen nation and against KKKanada’s genocidal project.
Fuck CGL, Fuck the RCMP, fuck RBC, Shut down KKKanada and get the fuck out of the Yintah!
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) funds Coastal GasLink (CGL), the pipeline fiercely opposed by Wet’suwet’en land defenders for over a decade. As we enter 2022, despite three RCMP raids, land defenders at Coyote Camp stand in the way of CGL drilling under the sacred headwaters of the Wedzin Kwa. RBC and all of CGL’s investors must understand that this pipeline will not be completed.
On the evening of December 30, 2021, more than a dozen windows were broken at the RBC head offices for Quebec, in the middle of downtown Montreal. No one was arrested.
As settlers on stolen lands, may we carry into the new year our resolve to develop practices of anticolonial solidarity that cannot be ignored.
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
We noticed RBC is having some trouble replacing their broken windows. We’re going to chalk it up to supply chain delays that all of the branches that had their windows smashed two months ago still have tape and plywood patching up their facades. Meanwhile, RBC continues to fund Coastal GasLink, so on a recent night in late December, we gave them four more windowpanes to replace at the branch at the corner of Monkland and Harvard in Notre-Dame-des-Grâces.
Sending love and strength to Coyote Camp and land defenders everywhere.
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
On the evening of the 25th in Montreal, we sabotaged two rail lines in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en Land Defenders. We were inspired by the communique “Glorious Rage: Rail Sabotage in Solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en” and its instructions on how to easily disrupt CN’s and CP’s rail infrastructure.
We did it, so can you.
Anonymous submission to North Shore Counter-Info
There’s lots of smack to be said about Santa and, as anarchists, we aren’t big cheerleaders for the bearded guy; but we can appreciate that his sneaking game is on point. So a few of us celebrated this year by doing some sneaking of our own.
Late into the night on Christmas 2021, a call was answered to attack the banks and funding sources of the CGL pipeline that is being forced on the Wet’suwet’en people. Banks – like RBC – are very easy targets as they have many branches across the cities we live in that are relatively unguarded at night. A Hamilton branch, on Upper James, was one such branch visited and redecorated.
We entered the first doors of the bank and filled their three ATM card slots with glue. We then additionally superglued the lock on the door into the bank. On the way out we left a message “NO PIPELINES ON STOLEN LAND” on the doors for all to see. This was a very easy and replicable action that we encourage others to take up. It is possible that the continued attack against banks like RBC will begin to eat into their pipeline profits (if we can cost them enough money) and convince them to withdraw financial support for the project. And, if not, it’s a real cathartic “fuck you” against the institutions destroying everything good in this world.
As we head into this liminal space between Christmas and New Years, some of the darkest days of the year, we are reminded to take stock of what still matters to us and what we hope to bring into our lives in the coming trip around the sun. As we head into what might be another COVID winter, we encourage all our comrades to look into the warmest parts of their hearts where we all still want prisons and banks to burn and for our friends to hold our hands and dance around the flames. For as long as we keep those sparks alive in our eyes, everything is still possible.
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
We went out last night to do a fire extinguisher paint job on the facade of the RBC branch located at the corner of Mont-Royal and Papineau in so-called “Montreal”. In the context of the call by the Gidimt’en clan for an international week of action to defund Coastal GasLink, we acted in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en who continue to defend their Yintah and who recently re-established Coyote Camp. Our solidarity will not be interrupted by the new lockdown in progress here.
Solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en, Coyote Camp, and land defenders.
Fuck CGL, fuck the RCMP, fuck RBC, down with Canada!
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
This flyer contains information on transportation infrastructure in Canada, vulnerable infrastructure bottlenecks by province, and the 20 worst traffic bottlenecks. We put it together for distribution at demonstrations, in the hope that it can help to spread action beyond these moments.
From Gidimt’en Checkpoint
On the week of December 20, we are hosting an International Week of Action to Defund Coastal GasLink. Banks and private equity corporations are bankrolling Indigenous rights violations and destroying our shared climate.
Their lack of accountability in financing colonial violence and land theft from Indigenous people is unacceptable. We are all in this together! We all have a responsibility to stand up to big financial institutions that invest and keep the fossil fuel industry going full force.
With no green sustainability transition in the foreseeable future, all of humanity and our kin are at dangerous risk. With the fires and floods that happened recently in the south of so-called British Columbia we can’t let any more time pass while big banks are fueling our demise.
Hold an action in your city or your town, we know it’s close to the end of the year, we need to make sure RBC doesn’t slip through the cracks and slither away!
Banner drop, hold a Rally/March at the RBC headquarters/building, have a sit-in, jam up phone lines, spread the awareness!
See this Google Doc for the week of action toolkit and to join us for a mobilization call to take action.
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
On Saturday, more than sixty people acting in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en land defenders blocked the CN main line in Saint-Lambert south of Montreal for over six hours. It was the longest rail blockade in Quebec since the winter of 2020, interrupting Via Rail service and immobilizing six freight trains. These notes reflect the experience of a couple participants in Saturday’s blockade.
Nostalgia mixed with anticipation as we arrived at the tracks where they cross rue Saint-Georges, with banners ready to hang across the rail crossing and no police in sight. It was a bright morning, temperatures just below freezing and the ground snowless, a contrast with that first night in February 2020, when temperatures sunk to 25 below and snow could be piled into mounds atop the rails.
On Wet’suwet’en territory, 4000km to the west, land defenders continue to fight the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. Weeks after raids on the Gidimt’en Checkpoint and Coyote Camp saw 30 arrests, calls to come to the Yintah have been renewed and supporters already refuse to accept the latest invasion as defeat, setting fires on roads and blocking CGL work. Their actions inspire ours.
The police want a dialogue
The Service de police de l’agglomération de Longueuil (SPAL) counts 546 officers and has jurisdiction over the fifth largest city in Quebec by population, of which Saint-Lambert is part. Fady Dagher, chief of the SPAL since 2017, has made the news for “trying to change the face of policing” in the south shore suburb. His efforts have been described as “humanizing” and even “revolutionizing” the police. The SPAL recently received $3.6 million from the Quebec government for developing a “police de concertation“, through training programs that focus on prevention, a better understanding of social issues, and constructive dialogue.
What does this have to do with our rail blockade? While on the Island of Montreal, we would have had SPVM holding tear gas launchers and threatening us somewhere within the first hour, we were instead greeted by unarmed negotiators telling us they respected what we were doing and that, furthermore, a city bus had been commissioned and brought to the rail blockade to allow us a place to warm up. While the offer was declined and it became obvious that the negotiators’ real mission was intelligence-gathering, the light police presence (and music!) allowed the mood to stay cheerful and gave people time to set up dozens of small barricades along a 500-m stretch of the train tracks with railroad ties and tree branches, which would take CN workers time to clear once we left. The thin line of police even retreated off the railway when the crowd advanced on them and demanded they return to the sidewalk.
A de-arrest
The masks fell at lunchtime. Two kind comrades had arrived with a box of samosas, but the police were denying them entry to the train tracks, cutting them off from the blockaders. Our complaints did not sway the dozen cops present, so a team exited the tracks to escort the comrades and their food offerings into the blockade. That is when an employee of the SPAL tackled a blockader to the ground, choking him and punching him in the head. Demonstrators quickly surrounded the cop, de-arrested the comrade, and pushed the cop back. Though some samosas had fallen onto the street during the melée, all were recovered, and the box was carried onto the railway, where all comrades regrouped safely and the blockade continued. Those were without a doubt the best-tasting samosas we can remember.
Stopping trains
The sky clouded over, and snow was falling by early afternoon. A handful of SPAL reinforcements arrived. Journalists climbed the ridge on one side of the tracks to get pictures from a different angle. Half an hour or so after lunch, the police liaison officers re-entered the blockade to inform us that we were committing a crime and breaking federal rail safety laws. They said the Sûreté du Québec (provincial police) were on their way. Chants of “Shut Down Canada” drowned out some of their words; cheers went up when they informed us that six freight trains were stalled. We watched trains come to a halt and retreat into the train yard to the south of us throughout the day, but we weren’t counting. The blockade went on.
Trying to leave Saint-Lambert
Around 3pm, it was clear that our numbers would soon be dropping, while the police would soon have better-equipped reinforcements. With the tracks still barricaded and requiring careful inspection, we left in a demo into the town of Saint-Lambert. SPAL cruisers followed closely, trying to drive through the crowd at least twice. We reached Victoria avenue, the main commercial street of Saint-Lambert, which is where we would disperse.
The violence that police would soon target us with does not compare to the violence of being removed from your land by RCMP pointing assault rifles at you, but we think it is still important to document. Shortly after the demonstration was no longer a cohesive group holding the street, cops began several chases targeting individuals they believed to have taken part. Four violent arrests were witnessed in the area of the dispersal, in each case the person targeted was significantly outnumbered by cops. A SPAL officer tasered one person prior to arresting them.
Until next time
In the future, we hope we can be inventive and unpredictable in our dispersals and come into actions with several possible departure plans that account for different levels of escalation that may occur during the action. Recently in Quebec City, a rail blockade left in a demo along the tracks, exited through a hole in a fence next to a university campus and was immediately able to blend into crowds of students.
Despite the arrests, we left with renewed confidence in our capacity to hold down a blockade for longer than an hour or two and energized for upcoming solidarity actions. We’re impressed by how we collectively handled the different forms of police pressure we faced and refused to play the cops’ game of “dialogue”.
Let’s keep shutting shit down!
