Rent strikes are risky. To reduce the risks, the more of us the better. We have strength in numbers.
Collective direct actions like rent strikes are a good way to change our power dynamic with the government so that it can intervene to cancel mortgages and rents for everyone.
Gathering together as tenants of the same landlord makes organizing a rent strike simpler for us and makes it more complicated for your landlord to use legal remedies (such as eviction).
Steps to Follow:
Find out more: read the Legal Considerations and Resources section.
Discuss the strike with your roommates, neighbours, people who live in the same building, and also with people who have the same landlord if you know them or can get in touch with them.
Hang a white sheet in front of your house to show that you are demanding a rent and mortgage freeze, and that you will go on a rent strike if the government does not act.
Devise strategies that are appropriate for your different situations. Here are some examples:
If you can afford to pay your rent, think about putting money aside so that you can pay all the unpaid rents when the crisis is over, if needed.
If you live in a group, talk to the other residents to see how you can strike collectively.
If your landlord has a lot of units, try to talk about the strike in as many of his or her units as possible. A situation where many tenants of the same landlord go on a rent strike gives you a better bargaining position. Your landlord must therefore consider several legal recourses with the Quebec Rental Board (Régie du logement) and risks losing all his tenants at once.
Let your landlord know that you are unable to pay your rent. We have sample letters to send in the Resources section.
Answers to Your Questions
Will we be in trouble? What are the possible consequences?
Going on strike is never without risk, but it is also a way to make your needs and rights heard. By collectivizing the risks, we also collectivize the defence organization. The more people participate, the greater the chances of avoiding these risks. However, it is important to learn about these potential risks by referring to the Legal Considerations section.
Why encourage/participate in the strike at all?
In the context of a State of Health Emergency, with the closure of all non-essential businesses, if we do not organize collectively, thousands of people will not be able to pay their rent and bills anyway.
The more people get involved, the less likely it is that the consequences will be serious for the strikers. The stakes are similar to a workplace strike or a student strike, but for tenants.
The civil rights movement used rent strikes to protest discrimination and to ensure rent control. It is a form of non-violent civil disobedience and one of the only tactics we have left in times of pandemic.
You cannot be legally evicted as long as there is a State of Health Emergency. It is only after the crisis, if the government has not responded to our demands, that the risk of eviction resturns. But we will continue to strike until rent cancellation is granted. We will keep up the pressure to make our demands heard and to ensure that landlords cannot take action against their tenants.
The current situation is unprecedented and we must stand in solidarity among precarious and marginalized people.
Don’t landlords have bills and mortgages to pay too?
Yes, but it’s not up to the tenants to take responsibility for the landlords. It is up to the government to take action to ensure that landlords do not have to pay their bills either. Tenants must put their health and their immediate needs, such as food, first. Tenants have also been paying abusive fees for many years.
Landlords with mortgages should require banks to suspend mortgage payments without interest.
In times of health crisis, it is the duty of landlords to refuse to collect rent from their tenants. We must all put pressure on the government.
Tenants are not responsible for the current health crisis. They are not responsible for the jobs lost, the hours cut, or for getting sick.
Times are uncertain, we do not know how long this crisis will last or how it will evolve. It is the people in precarious situations – those who were already struggling to pay for groceries, rent, bills and debts – who will be hit hardest. It’s the wealthy in a society who should bear the brunt, not the tenants.
I can pay my bills and my rent, why should I participate?
The more people participate, the harder it will be for landlords and the government to break the strike and the more likely we will get the government to respond to our demands.
You may not be in financial trouble now, but in a month or two, you may not be able to pay your rent, as thousands of people are already now incapable of doing.
These demands we are making on the government are about saving lives. We want the government to take emergency measures to prevent as many deaths as possible and for people to continue to take care of their health to better resist the spread of COVID-19. No one should have to choose between housing, food and health.
Everyone must stand together in times of crisis and there must be a collective response to current problems. We already know that many of us will be unable to pay our rent in the coming months. Participating in a rent strike is a necessary gesture to ensure that the government recognizes the needs of the population and decrees the cancellation of rents and mortgages as long as there is a State of Health Emergency.
Does the government not offer financial assistance to people?
The measures that have been put in place by the federal and provincial governments are not for everyone: currently, those who are not eligible for Employment Insurance (self-employed or contract workers, students, precarious workers, etc.) and who are not sick no longer have any income and are not entitled to anything from the government.
Although Employment Insurance has been improved, the waiting time to obtain it has not disappeared, quite the contrary. The measures proposed by the provincial and federal governments will not allow those who need it to survive to pay their next rent.
Shouldn’t we focus our energy on fighting COVID-19?
That is precisely what we are doing. We are demanding that landlords, banks and governments take steps that will allow us to focus on fighting COVID-19. If we stop eating or taking care of ourselves so we can pay our rent, or if we have to find ways to make money (which often involve having to leave our homes) while all the jobs are gone, we will not be able to contribute most effectively to fighting the pandemic.
How many people are involved? I will only participate if there are many of us.
It’s hard to count the number of people who are on rent strike. Already, a large number of people are showing their solidarity and their intention not to pay their rent by hanging white sheets in front of their homes. Others are coordinating on social networks to publicize the use of rent strikes. Several autonomous citizen groups are currently organizing rent strikes in their communities. Consider joining in!
Poor, unemployed, laid-off, precarious, undocumented, contract and other workers — all of us who live month-to-month — will not be able to pay rent this April 1st. Many of us were struggling to pay rent before this crisis hit, and are likely already behind. In a perspective of direct action and social solidarity, ALL tenants can refuse to pay rent on April 1st.
Even if you are able to pay your rent, please consider joining the strike to support those who aren’t. If we all go on rent strike together, we’ll make it impossible for the authorities to target everyone who does not pay.
Together, we can:
Stop paying rent;
Block evictions and renovictions;
Open up vacant housing — including Airbnb, empty condos, and hotels — to house homeless people or those who lack safe housing.
The urgency of the moment demands decisive and collective action. Let’s protect and care for ourselves and our communities. Now more than ever, we must refuse debt and refuse to be exploited. We will not shoulder this burden for the capitalists. Tenants must not be made to pay the price for a collective health crisis.
The Régie du logement has suspended eviction hearings. For the immediate future, your landlord cannot take you to the Régie to evict you for not paying rent.*
If you nevertheless experience harrassment or intimidation from your landlord, talk with your neighbors about a collective response.
* If the Régie restarts regular operations and you are called to an eviction hearing, you can, as a last resort, avoid an eviction order by paying all outstanding rent on the spot in cash plus fees, as long as you haven’t paid late frequently. But if we’re enough to go on rent strike, we can support each other and make it impossible for evictions to proceed as normal. Further legal information will follow. [See Legal Considerations]
All power structures are rooted in ideology. A shared belief in this ideology is what keeps the structures of power in place. Under capitalism, the edifice of social control is built on the collective illusion of private property, and the sanctity of the so-called ‘free market’. Any moves taken to challenge this logic will therefore provoke pushback from the system’s indoctrinated cheerleaders, and will certainly catch the attention of the repressive and recuperative functionaries of the state. But as the saying goes… you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. And you definitely can’t overthrow capitalism without messing with people’s stuff.
So…. what is property, anyway? And what do anarchists have against it?
Comments Off on Fare Distribution Machines Disabled in Montreal MetroTagged with: How-to
Dec032019
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Over the past several days, motivated by an international call for transit fare strikes, the fare distribution machines in several metro stations were disabled by blocking the debit/credit card readers and coin slots.
The STM is continually hiking fares and deploying squads of wannabe-cop “inspectors” to harass, fine, and assault people over $3.50. Currently, the STM is even seeking to give its inspectors expanded powers to detain and arrest people and access police databases. Every effort to maintain and expand policing of people’s movements deserves to be met with resistance. Fortunately, there is no shortage of inspiration from around the world, above all the ongoing revolt in Chile.
These actions were experiments with some simple, effective, and fairly discreet means of sabotageing fare collection and enforcement. At this point in time, the method that gives us the most confidence is to apply super glue to both sides of a random unactivated gift card and insert it fully in the debit/credit card slot, and put more super glue in the coin slot after causing it to open by operating the machine as though you want to pay for a ticket with cash. We hope this technique can be reproduced widely alongside other tactics for taking these machines out of service.
Everyone pays for the rich to get richer. We pay with our labor, working to fill their pockets. We pay with skyrocketing rent as they gentrify us out of our homes. We pay with the destruction of the environment, the erasure of our communities, the stress in our day-to-day lives. We pay for things that used to be free, like water. We pay taxes so they can hire more cops to terrorize us. Everyone pays, but only they benefit.
We could talk about the high cost of living—but who’s really living?
On November 29, nobody pays. This is a call for a strike addressing all the ways they are squeezing us, all the ways they are making it impossible to live.
There’s a call in Seattle for a fare strike on public transit. In Portland, people are rallying on November 29 in Pioneer Square; in San Francisco, people are meeting at 16th and Mission. There have been demonstrations about transit costs and enforcement in New York City for weeks already and more are scheduled this week. Chicago is in on this, too. Wherever you are, you can organize something or carry out an action with your friends.
A strike is a blow. It’s not just a boycott; it means interrupting the system, stopping it from working. At the least, you could avoid paying the fare on public transit in your city. But it’s better to make our refusal public and collective. Hop the turnstiles all together. Open up the gates and intervene if security tries to harass anyone. Sabotage the machines. Make the walls proclaim “Nobody Pays!” with posters or spray paint. Set up a table and give out literature about why no one should have to pay, ever. Establish a fare dodgers’ union like they did in Sweden.
People around the world are in revolt against the rising cost of living. In Ecuador, people occupied the parliament and forced the government to cancel all the new austerity measures. In Chile, mass fare evasions gave birth to a countrywide revolt that even the military could not suppress. From Paris to Beirut and Hong Kong, people are recognizing that our only hope is to resist together.
November 29 comes on the cusp of the 20-year anniversary of the demonstrations that shut down the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle in 1999, showing the power of direct action to change history. Today, opposition to capitalism has spread widely, but it’s up to us to spread the practices of resistance that will make us ungovernable.
The fare evasion movement in Chile.
Nobody pays—because they’ll spend millions for cops but they’ll kill a person for dodging a two-dollar fare. Nobody pays—because the infrastructure they build is not meant to serve us, but to control us. Nobody pays—because we don’t just want a few piecemeal reforms, we want to show that we are strong enough to change the world ourselves. Nobody pays.
The morning of September 27th, the streets of Montreal and Quebec City were taken by storm by a historic human tide. Hundreds of thousands, young and old, hit the street in response to the international call for a Global Climate Strike. This call for a planetary strike arrived in Quebec in the spring, when student associations and teachers’ unions began voting to walk out on September 27. In the summer, cégep administrations, threatened by the prospect of illegal strikes by teachers, decided to make the day of September 27 an “institutional day” and arrange the calendar accordingly. Institutional days, as a mechanism for capturing and absorbing strikes, gradually spread throughout the entire Quebec education system, from elementary schools to universities. If, at first, one could be satisfied that more than 600,000 people would be “freed” by the authorities to participate in the demonstration of September 27, doubts arise with respect to the future of the movement and its autonomy. The strike as a voluntary and collective interruption of daily routine has been diverted by school administrations, which used institutional days to ensure that they would maintain control of the agenda and temporality of the struggle.
On September 17, the administration of the CSDM (francophone secondary school board) sent a letter to parents informing them that a pedagogical day would be moved to allow students to participate in the demonstration of the 27th. Beyond the calendar change, the letter was an opportunity for the CSDM to openly threaten students who would seek to strike beyond September 27:
2. Advise your child that in no case may he prevent other students from attending class, since the scolarisation of students is a fundamental right that must be respected;
3. Remind your child that he must show evidence of civility and not participate in blocking access to school in any way whatsoever, with respect to anyone, because this may constitute mischief under the meaning of the law.
All while arranging the calendar to permit protesting on September 27, the CSDM in this way seeks to ensure that the Friday strikes affecting many schools last spring don’t reproduce themselves. It reminds us that institutional days decided from above enable the intermediary powers that are school boards, cegeps, and universities to delegitimize strike days decided from below.
At the university level, the situation at Polytechnique lucidly revealed the fears of power regarding the movement’s development. Despite an electronic vote by students more than 78% in favor of class cancellations, the Polytechnique administration refused to accept the “request” for a levée de cours. Polytechnique director-general Philippe A. Tanguy – former engineer with the French oil company Total – justified this refusal by saying:
“Polytechnique supports this cause, but we are also aware that, unfortunately, this global day of action will not be sufficient to resolve the climate issue; there will be others, and we will not be able to cancel classes for all of these days”.
His justification effectively shows the limits of asking authorities to cancel classes. Despite the adoption of institutional days in many institutions, we cannot forget that a strike never awaited approval by bosses and other authorities to be carried out, and that it’s perfectly normal that it disrupts the institution’s calendar and daily routine, and more largely, society.
The major union federations also played a key role in the disappearance of the strike from public discourse. While various unions began adopting strike mandates for the climate outside of the Labour Code’s legal framework, the union federations explicitly intervened in the movement by demanding that protest organizers stop calling for workers to strike. In place of the collective “Planet on Strike”, formed by workers at the grassroots level, the collective “The Planet Comes to Work” substituted itself, coordinated by union federation leaders. Whereas Planet on Strike aimed to shake up the legality of strikes in Quebec by assuming at the same time the necessity and illegality of the strike, The Planet Comes to Work sought to mobilize workplaces while eliminating all mention of striking from posters, flyers and communications. During the press conference on September 27, Serge Cadieux, spokesperson of The Planet Comes to Work and secretary-general of the FTQ, reminded us of the federations’ lack of political courage by refusing to mention the ten or so unions that had chosen to strike and reaffirming the federations’ submission to the Labour Code. Beyond their lack of political courage to reappropriate the strike outside its legal framework, Serge Cadieux reminded us of the depoliticization of contemporary syndicalism: he affirmed that “there is no opposition between the economy and ecology” and that unions were working with “the world of management” and “the world of finance” in order to confront the climate crisis.
The proximity between the union federations and political and economic power is not new, although one might have thought that in the current context of climate crisis the federations would see the necessity of a rupture with the capitalist system. Far from it! In any case we have no illusions about the union federations’ role in the climate strike movement which has been and will be one of pacification and recuperation.
Through their support of the movement, administrators, politicians and bosses strive to drain environmental questions of all their political character. A flattened “struggle” emerges, without conflict, in which there are no guilty or responsible parties. We all agree on the importance of the environment and we march together to underline it, as if fossil fuel development, the appropriation and destruction of land, or the destruction of rivers and oceans were natural processes escaping our control. Desjardins, National Bank, and CIBC take measures allowing their employees to miss work to protest, MEC closes its stores, alongside a long list of companies ranging from a legal firm to an advertising agency. Joining protesters in the streets, heads of state, ministers and CEOs appear as citizens like the others, who’ll promise to stop buying plastic straws, for their children’s future. They deny the political character of the environmental movement, as if the future of the planet depended more on the good will of each individual than on the decisions they make. By flattening and pacifying what should be a struggle, they try to contain environmental issues within the straitjacket of individual consumption, wherein everyone must do their part, and the 500,000 demonstrators do not realize the collective force that could be produced by their encounter.
Green capitalism’s recuperation of environmental struggles has refined itself now over several decades. It’s probably because these struggles have the capacity to put a colonial and capitalist world into question that they’ve been neutralized so effectively. But for once, the discourse of recuperation sounds oddly false. The generation that grew up surrounded by the same lies, that tell it to study, recycle, work, eat local, and impoverish itself for an increasingly uncertain future, refuses to continue playing the game. Throughout recent months, we’ve seen strike votes passing with huge majorities in unexpected cégeps, illegal strike mandates in local unions, and high school students organizing strikes and weekly demonstrations over many months.
Behind the “strike for the planet” lie questions that largely exceed the stakes within which labor strikes are legally contained. The strike for the planet is not a “pressure tactic” in hopes of getting better working conditions or blocking a tuition hike. Politicians are asked to “do more”, but the rare efforts to define what that could mean fall flat. No demand appears able to contain the extent of the stakes raised by the movement. It’s the very condition of the worker or student subject that could be thrown into question by this strike: why continue studying, working, and investing in your RRSP while the world crumbles beneath our feet? The strike for the planet has the capacity to see itself for what it is, a political strike capable of interrupting the temporality of this death-machine world, a temporality where the growth of capital and colonization is interwoven with the acceleration of ecological catastrophe. In the hour of climate emergency, it is no longer a question of pleading with authority for liberation, but rather of Striking in the most political sense, that is to say destituting our everyday life by collectively retaking each moment of our existences. We can no longer follow the rhythm of a protest movement fenced in by the state. We must strike, interrupt, and radically transform our relation to the world and to time.
The following text was written by the CLAC, the IWW and Montréal Antifasciste and was distributed at the Montreal climate demonstration on September 27, 2019. It can also be downloaded to print here.
1. GOVERNMENTS WON’T SAVE US
Those who benefit from poisoning the land and exploiting people you care about won’t be reformed. They’ll make it seem like they hear your voices and occasionally put on grand spectacles to temporarily appease your anger. They’ll encourage you to channel your anxiety into pointless practices that only reinforce individualism. So while some of us compete to take shorter showers or to reduce our trash output, government officials, universities, and corporations shamelessly invest in more pipelines, host uncritical academic conferences, or fly jets to fancy meetings where empty promises are made.
The impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases on climate has been known since the late 19th century. The view that carbon dioxide affects global warming has been widespread since the 70s. Since the 80s and 90s, observations and computer models have overwhelmingly pointed to human-made activities as important factors in climate change. It’s been more than 30 years since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created to compile information and advise world governments on how to minimize the anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change that has already claimed innumerable human lives and caused the extinction of many other animal species. This same panel now says we only have 10 years left before we reach a point of no return towards the death of this planet. Our countries are consuming the bulk of the planet’s resources. Yet here we are, asking for the same colonial governments and political class that put us in this mess to ban plastic straws and increase carbon taxes. We have been begging them for decades now. It’s time we start taking power ourselves.
2. CAPITALISM AND THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Capitalism is a socioeconomic and political system under which a privileged few own what the rest of us need to survive. That means the worth of sentient beings and plants is based on their ability to generate wealth. It’s the idea that land, workplaces, trees, animals, housing, and water, are to be owned privately by individuals or corporations, which gives them power to exploit these things however they want, regardless of our concerns, needs, and well-being. This economic system is why corporations are free to build fossil fuel infrastructures on unceded Indigenous land as governments use militarized police to suppress any form of resistance.
To exist, capitalism must uphold hierarchy, power, and obedience. That’s why your acts of rebellion are framed differently than their acts of systemic violence (e.g. stealing food from Walmart vs stealing land from Indigenous peoples). Our efforts towards a better future are meaningless without a radical departure from the system that made violence and destruction the normal (and legal) state of affairs.
3. COLONIALISM, RACISM, AND DESTRUCTION
To be green is to also to oppose colonialism and racism. Both of these things have everything to do with the climate crisis.
Atmospheric pollution can’t be calculated without taking into account past and present colonial realities. Our understanding of how different countries contribute to climate change must take into account historical greenhouse gas emissions, and most importantly, who profits from the destruction. Industries and empires have been built on the labor of Black and Indigenous people and other people of color. Canadian and American companies murder land defenders for minerals in Latin America and Africa, poison air and waterways in Asia, and put our trash on boats to be dumped far from our eyes.
Repeatedly in Canadian history, ecological devastation has been used as an intentional weapon against Indigenous peoples. Overhunting of bison by settlers led to famine in the Prairies in the 19th century, which was consciously encouraged by the Canadian government under John A. Macdonald as a tool of genocide to “clear the West.” Such practices continue to this day. Grassy Narrows is an Indigenous community near Ontario’s border with Manitoba; its water was contaminated by tons of mercury dumped into its water system by an upstream paper mill. One study estimated that 90 per cent of the population suffers from some degree of mercury poisoning, which can cause everything from cognitive impairments to hearing loss and emotional changes. The heavy metal can be passed from mothers to babies they carry, making it a problem that lasts generations. This is the legacy of Canadian colonialism and genocide; for many people the ecological catastrophe is already centuries old.
In so many ways, the most oppressed always pay the price for Western lifestyles and the out-of-control growth that accompanies them. Droughts, floods, and famines, are increasingly common and displaced people need new places to call home. Thus, as we fight climate change, we must also fight the system of borders that values some lives above others. We must fight the police entering migrants’ homes in the middle of the night to take parents away. We must fight the construction of a migrant prison in Laval that has kids growing up behind bars. We must fight against oil wars that leave entire countries destroyed. We must fight white-supremacy whether it takes the form of neo-fascist militias, conservative columnists, or colonial states claiming sovereignty over Indigenous land. Ultimately, we must also confront anyone who accepts any of this is without feeling profound anger. We can’t allow the most privileged people on this planet to use terms like « overpopulation » or « migrant crisis » because they are too scared and selfish to stand up to real perpetrators of the destruction of our world.
4. RESIST SCAPEGOATING AND THE FAR RIGHT
Certain groups are taking advantage of the catastrophes taking place to put their own hateful and nightmarish ideas into practice.
Following hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans in 2005, white supremacist militias took advantage of the disaster to murder random Black people they found trying to survive the floods. More recently, in 2019 in both Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Texas, neo-nazi gunmen committed massacres, killing dozens of people of color, in attacks which they explicitly framed as being to “save the environment.” All over the world, many people in the rich nations which are creating the most ecological damage are demanding tighter border controls and restrictions on immigration, often citing the need to protect natural resources. At the same time, some racists suggest that there are too many people in the world and target racialized people and people in the Global South with coercive “population control” measures. Here in Quebec, members of far right anti-immigrant groups have sometimes found themselves welcomed in environmentalist spaces and mobilizations, while the concerns of people of color and anti-racists have been simply brushed aside.
This legacy of eco-fascism must be confronted, otherwise the movement to save the planet could very easily find itself manipulated and turned into an instrument to oppress and do violence to those already most directly harmed by the catastrophes capitalism has unleashed.
5. WHAT WE CAN DO!
Reject legality, especially when laws are made by colonial states (e.g. Canada, Quebec) unrecognized by the first inhabitants of the land.
Listen to and make space for Indigenous voices in the struggle against the colonial and capitalist destruction of ecosystems.
Recognize when our struggles are being co-opted by political parties or companies to amass sympathy and capital.
Avoid political parties, non-profits, or anyone pretending to fight domination while reproducing power hierarchies.
Learn about alternative (anarchist, communist, feminist, anticolonial) ways of organizing social life.
Attack the symbols of capitalist power: banks, mining companies and multinational corporations.
Make the fight against all forms of oppression an active part of your militancy and do your part to ensure the burden of dealing with uncomfortable realities linked to climate change don’t fall on the shoulders of those patriarchy deems responsible for the role of care.
Practice consensual decision-making and cultivate consensual relationships.
Get informed, end isolation by finding accomplices within your communities, and build networks of resistance with others who are willing to stand up to power.
Only take calculated risks and practice security culture.
Oh and obviously if we’re going to get arrested, let’s make it worth it.
This flyer was written and is distributed on unceded Indigenous land and a gathering place known to he Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) Nation as Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal).
In December 2018, Montréal Antifasciste published a dossier on the neofascist organization Atalante, tracing the group’s history as well as the trajectory of some of the individuals at the heart of the project, specifically, members of the Québec Stomper Crew gang and the band Légitime Violence. A series of follow-up articles have focused on the activities of a number of people within Atalante’s sphere of influence.
It’s September 2019, and although Atalante’s activities have slowed down a bit in recent months, the core militants show no sign of calling it a day, so we need to remind them and their entourage that we have no intention of letting up.
In order to make the social cost of being a fascist or a Nazi in our neighbourhoods and communities intolerable, the most effective tactic remains exposing the fascists to their communities, to their colleagues, employers, families, and neighbours, from whom they generally hide the real nature of their activities or use euphemisms like “nationalist,” rather than saying they are fascists. Given that they have decided to be Nazis and to persist in heading down that road, we are completely committed to seeing that they pay the consequences. History has shown us that sooner or later fascist principles always lead to violence —sometimes even genocide— targeting people from different social sectors who are already suffering more than their share of misery and oppression in so-called democratic capitalist society, and we have no intention of standing by while this history repeats itself.
By making public where various fascists from Atalante work, it is most definitely our intention to cost these fascists their jobs, because the projects they are involved in in their personal lives endanger both their immediate colleagues and the general public, most particularly racialized people, Muslims, Jews, queers, and leftists.
We think that campaigns to isolate and ostracize them and to target companies that provide them with shelter and support are necessary, both as a matter of public safety and as an act of working-class solidarity.
This is a reminder that fascists will never be welcome in the places where we live or where we work.
Roxanne Baron, the only woman in the Québec Stomper Crew, is not just some unimportant member. She is also a key figure in Atalante, having participated in almost all of its actions since the organization’s inception.
Her exact function in Atalante isn’t clear, but we know that until recently she played an important role on Instagram, sharing numerous photos of herself and her comrades carrying out actions in Québec City and Montréal, as well as, for example, at the CasaPound “mother ship” in Italy. (In fact, her carelessness on Instagram cost some of her comrades their anonymity … oops.)
A fact that is particularly staggering on a variety of levels, Baron hasn’t been shy over the months and years about repeatedly bragging about her dubious reading habits while at her place of work: the Hôpital de l’Enfant-Jésus. She claims that without her colleagues or the hospital’s patients noticing, she read works from the neofascist organization CasaPound, the Belgian Nazi Léon Degrelle, the fascist historian Robert Brasillach, the ultranationalist intellectual Charles Maurras, and the French antisemite Jacques Ploncard. She even crows about surreptitiously reading Nazi texts at work:
“Journée tranquille… Quand on croit que tu lis de petits romans comme tout le monde au travail”
[A quiet day… When they think you’re reading some innocuous novel like everyone else (LOL emoticon).]
We also know from her Instagram account that she has tattoos with an array of fascist images: a fasces, the symbol at the origin of the word“fascism”; a Celtic cross, a universally recognized “White Power” emblem; the inscription “le diable rit avec nous” [the devil laughs with us], a reference to the lyrics of the Nazi hymn SS marschiert in Feindesland; another inscription reading “presente per tutti camerati caduti,” a traditional Italian fascist greeting; and a mjölnir, the hammer of Thor, an image that is not explicitly racist, but which is now systematically sported by white supremacist Odinists. To put the star on top of the Christmas tree, something that is not without interest for opponents of “religious symbols” in the workplace, around her neck Baron wears a sonnenrad, a black sun, an occult symbol popular with contemporary neo-Nazis.
At the very least, it’s alarming to think of this person, who in her private life openly participates in a clearly racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, and homophobic political project, working in a health services institution, where she is in daily contact with the general public, including a large number of people from different social sectors designated for elimination by Nazi ideology.
Alias “Tony Stomper.”After growing up in Mont-Laurier with his younger brother Étienne (also an Atalante member), Antoine Mailhot-Bruneau began his CEGEP studies at Lionel-Groulx, participating in the student movement during the 2007 strike. After that, he moved to Québec City, where he joined the Québec Stompers, at the time a street gang gravitating toward far-right ultranationalism. Around that time, he went to Rimouski to study to become a sailor, moving on to the Université Laval, entering a program to become a history teacher, which he soon abandoned.
On a trip to Italy, he discovered Blocco Studentesco, a neofascist student organization that is for all intents and purposes the youth wing of CasaPound. Little by little, he became Atalante’s main theorist and seems to be the author of Saisir la foudre [Ride the Lightning] under the pseudonym Alexandre Peugeot, who is also the author of several articles in Le Harfang, the magazine of the Fédération des québécois de souche.
Antoine has shown a lot more discretion than his friend Raphaël Lévesque, always taking the necessary steps to keep his role in Atalante a secret, rarely appearing at the group’s public actions and blurring his face and using different pseudonyms in his rare furtive video appearances. Unfortunately for him, a 2017 interview he gave to Zentropa Serbia (a CasaPound satellite), where he used the pseudonym “Alexandre,” made it relatively easy for us to determine his central role in Atalante.
Despite all his precautions, we were also able to confirm that he is a paramedic on the South Shore of Québec City, in the Chaudière-Appalaches region, working for the Lévis-based company Dessercom.
As in the case of Roxanne Baron, as part of his professional responsibilities, Antoine Mailhot-Bruneau, a fascist militant and a member of a violent gang, inevitably comes into contact with members of the public who belong to communities targeted and victimized by fascists.
Imagine, if you will, how it would feel to be a first-generation immigrant, a Muslim woman, or a Jew having a heart attack or some other serious health problem, and to have the first responder be a fascist theorist, an inveterate racist, Islamophobe, and antisemite. Imagine that your life depended on the care you received from an individual who unreservedly believes, for example, in the need for the “remigration” of all migrants who are not Catholic French Canadians “de souche.”
We believe that this is an unacceptable situation that violates the ethical principles and professional norms upon which the paramedic profession is itself based.
Yan Barras
Yan Barras, social worker (not a member of the professional Order of social workers)
On the night of December 31, 2006—January 1, 2007, a small group of Stompers and associates, including Raphaël Lévesque and Yan Barras, burst into the café-bar L’Agitée in Québec City, a cooperative they knew to be run and frequented by antiracist activists. In less time than it took you to read this account, the boneheads trashed the bar, and Yan Barras stabbed at least six people with an X-Acto knife, before fleeing.
In spite of the sordid nature of the incident, the Stompers drew a certain pride from this brutal attack, going as far as to reference it in the lyrics of the eponymous song “Légitime Violence”:
Ces petits gauchistes efféminés,
qui se permettent de nous critiquer,
ils n’oseront jamais nous affronter,
on va tous les poignarder! »
[These little leftist sissies,
who dare to criticize us,
wouldn’t have the nerve to face us,
we will stab them all!]
After pleading guilty to assault with a weapon, Yan Barras was sentenced to two years in prison. The judge even recommended that he receive therapy while in prison to address his proclivity for senseless brutality. When he got out of prison, Barras registered in the social work program at the CEGEP de Sept-Îles, and some might have thought that it looked like he intended to change course.
But far from changing his ways, Barras had “No Remorse” tattooed on his forehead under a death’s head devouring the three arrows that represent antifascism, and he promptly rejoined the crew of racists who would later create Atalante. Not only did Barras not distance himself from Raphaël Lévesque, the Mailhot-Bruneau brothers, and company, he has often participated in Atalante activities in recent years, as well as continuing to provoke and intimidate the Quebec City left, notably by marching with other members of the Stompers into the middle of a small abortion rights demonstration in August 2015, and more recently by joining his brothers in trolling the 2019 May Day demonstration, with one of them even giving the Hitler salute.
Today, Barras works as a “liaison coordinator” for the social reintegration company Habitations Méta Transfert Inc., in Québec City. Obviously, this places him in position of authority over a vulnerable clientele, a position he can use to attempt to recruit anyone fitting his fantasy of “a master race” or to deny services to those he judges “inferior.” You can’t blame us for wondering how many other Nazis this company might employ …
Shawn Beauvais-MacDonald. The quote is form Adolph Hitler.
Shawn Beauvais-MacDonald, security guard; student at the Centre intégré de mécanique, de métallurgie et d’électricité (CIMME)
But Beauvais-MacDonald wasn’t done with the surprises! It later became clear that under the pseudonym FriendlyFash he was a very active member of the“Montreal Stormer Book Club” chat room, a small neo-Nazi social club that was attempting to organize in Montréal at the time. Beauvais-MacDonald has never bothered trying to hide his penchant for Nazism on Facebook or his other social media accounts.
As a guest on the podcast This Hour has 88 Minutes, on January 4, 2018, Beauvais-MacDonald talked about the consequences of doxxing on his daily life. He talked about how he lost one of his two jobs (as a bouncer at a bar), but that his colleagues at his other job thought it was “hilarious”:
« The other job, I work with Chinese people and they find it hilarious, so whatever. »
Despite Beauvais-MacDonald having been widely exposed and denounced in 2017, it seems that until fairly recently the company Securitas employed him as a security guard at the CIBC branch in Montréal’s Chinatown. The obvious question is whether Securitas was simply unaware of their employee’s extracurricular activities all this time (in spite of the numerous mentions in the mainstream media and on antifascist websites) or simply chose to turn a blind eye.
It is also worth asking whether his job at Securitas (a publicly listed company, we might add in passing) as a security guard has given Beauvais-MacDonald access to material or privileged information that might be useful to his neo-Nazi network.[2] What computer databases or other resources has he had access to thanks to his job with Securitas?
We’re not sure at this point if Beauvais-MacDonald still works for Securitas, however, he is currently a student at the Centre intégré de mécanique, de métallurgie et d’électricité, in LaSalle.
It remains to be seen how the school’s administration and student community feel about spending their days around this notorious Nazi.
Antoine’s little brother is another important player in Atalante and a patched-in member of the Québec Stomper Crew. Having completed a BA in animation, in 2017, at Université Laval, Étienne is Atalante’s de facto graphic artist, producing designs, logos, and posters under the pseudonym “Sam Ox.” Shortly after we released the “UnmaskingAtalante” dossier, establishing the link between him and his avatar, Étienne fell silent and deactivated all of his accounts on major professional platforms.
In spite of the “brown” stain on his CV, he seems to have found employment with Sunny Side Up Creative in Québec City.
One of the most active Atalante members in the Montréal region, Vincent has participated in numerous group activities, including most of the nighttime postering runs. Originally from Montréal’s South Shore, he kicked around the Longueuil hardcore and punk scene for quite a while before coming into contact with the bonehead milieu and radicalizing, finally embracing full-on fascism. He found himself very isolated in his milieu (he’s the son of a trade unionist!), but he seems to have found a family in Atalante.
Cyr is a butcher at Fruiterie Milano, a neighbourhood grocery store in Montreal’s Little Italy neighbourhood, where his brother also works.
The bassist for Légitime Violence, Atalante’s flagship band, Mecteau originally came out of the hardcore scene. A “first-rate” second stringer, he spends his time at cosplay, as the second fiddle in a crappy neo-Nazi band, and as a tattoo artist at his business Jhan Art.
Mecteau is one of Atalante and the Stompers’ go-to tattoo artists, which perhaps explains why, upon his return from a recent visit to Bicolline (the most important LARPing site in Québec), he found his tattoo parlour “a bit the worse for wear.”
“Svein Krampus” on Facebook. Sven Côté is a longtime bonehead from the national socialist black metal (NSBM) scene. He’s been active in Atalante since the winter of 2016, after an online radicalization that began in 2013, culminating in his embrace of fascism. A protégé of Raphael Lévesque (aka Raf Stomper), with whom he has exchanged openly antisemitic posts on social media, he has remained a loyal member of the group and has recently stopped blurring his face in Atalante’s documentation of its activities. He grew up and lives in the Basse Ville neighbourhood of Québec City. It is generally believed that Côté was among those who attacked La Page Noire bookstore in Québec City on the night of December 8–9, 2018. We have reason to believe that this attack served as a rite of passage into the Québec Stomper Crew for Côté, as he received his colours that same evening.
He is a cook at Le Fin Gourmet, a restaurant in the Saint-Sauveur neighbourhood of Québec City.
More revelations will follow…
Shutting Down the Fascists: A Task That Falls to Our Communities
Fascist militants are not just random doofuses we have some niggling differences with; they are hateful individuals who seek a new social order that involves the oppression, persecution, and elimination of millions of people. Their ideology presents a direct threat and constitutes a form of violence targeting many of us: queers, racialized people, Muslims, Jews, leftists, and numerous others.
At the same time, capitalism itself constitutes a form of violence against many of the people targeted by the far right. As anti-capitalists, we don’t recognize the authority of bosses, the state, or professional orders, and we don’t intend to leave it to them to remove the fascists from our communities and workplaces. We recognize that very often workers have to unite and take the measures necessary to force their employers to ensure their safety.
Excluding fascists and other far-right militants is a task that above all falls to the working class and to members of the public who are endangered by their presence and activities. It is in that spirit that we share this information.
Friends, it’s time we got to work.
[1] This mobilization was meant to be a show of force bringing together white supremacists, “ethnic” nationalists, identitarians, neo-Nazis, and other neofasicsts that make up the American “alt-right” current. The August 11–12, 2017, events in Charlottesville made history as a complete fiasco for the alt-right, most notably because the white supremacist James Alex Fields chose this occasion to use his car as weapon in an attack that killed the antiracist activist Heather Heyer.
[2] Just a few years ago, it was revealed that Hensel European Security Services (HESS), a security company in Germany, was providing Amazon with far-right guards to police, intimidate and abuse foreign workers in the company’s warehouses. Closer to home, in the 1980s, in Canada, William Lau Richardson, the leader of the KKK’s “Klan Intelligence Agency” was employed by the Centurion security company, a position he used to carry out operations against the left. In the 1990s, it was alleged that neo-Nazi private detective Al Overfield similarly used his access to police computer databases to provide information on antifascists to his friends in the Heritage Front, and Bryan Taylor, head of the Ku Klux Klan in British Columbia, used his position at ADT Security Systems to disseminate racist propaganda.
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
