Montréal Counter-information

From our enemies – 19/6/2015

PENETANGUISHENE – Inmates at the maximum security facility in Penetanguishene, Ont., erupted into a random riot Thursday, destroying meal hatch doors, cell doors, phones, duct work and garbage bins in a six-hour incident that was only resolved when a tactical team used pepper spray.

The riot began when 45 prison inmates in two separate units at the Central North Correctional Centre refused to be locked in their cells.

Chris Jackel, a Central North Correctional Centre officer and president of the Local 369 was part of the Institution Crisis Intervention Team (ICIT) that had to intervene in the incident after inmates rejected peaceful negotiation.

Jackel said there were 45 inmates in both wings and no one was inside their cell, refusing to participate, when his team arrived. Only 19 were “actively trying to destroy parts of the institution,” while the others “likely had a very small role.”

“Regardless of how many inmates are there, they’re all a threat until the situation is under control and we can determine who’s a player or not a player,” Jackel said. “It’s almost impossible to determine who was active and who wasn’t because even the ones sitting around could have verbally been instructing the others. There’s a hierarchy in prison.”

Jackel said the inmates at the prison, which has a capacity of 1,150 but is currently housing between 800 and 900 inmates, had caused an estimated $50,000 in damage. They also used shampoo and soap on the floors to create a slippery surface to stop the progress of the officers.

“That’s an old-school technique,” he said. “They’ll soap it up with shampoo or soapy water so that when we go in, we’ll be slipping and sliding. They’ve been doing that for 50 years.”

The incident began when the prisoners were gathered for a usual afternoon lockup. The fourth unit of inmates refused to lockup and created a standoff with facility staff. They were eventually returned to their cells, but Jackel said that served as a catalyst for the inmates of the remaining two units who erupted into a riot.

When prisoners refused to comply with a negotiation team, the ICIT team was sent in around 5 p.m. Jackel said some inmates had weapons in the form of the meal hatch doors, which are made of solid steel. Others were using socks filled with what he thought to be concrete and swinging them over their heads in a similar fashion to a medieval mace.

From our enemies – 20/6/2015

Inmates damaged doors, ripped phones off walls, tried to breach a door that connected two wings, covered floors with soap, shampoo and garbage and used socks filled with “heavy material” as weapons before guards used pepper spray to subdue them.

“(They) were actively causing damage to the two wings, just trying to break as much as they could,” said the president of the screw’s union, adding the riot took six hours to get completely under control.

From our enemies – 19/6/2015

It started around 2 p.m. on Thursday just as guards were getting ready to lock up inmates for the afternoon. Chris Jackel, a Central North Correctional Centre officer and president of Local 369, was on duty as a guard at the time.

“They were breaking all sorts of things, using them as weapons, barricaded in the entry doors to the wings, making weapons with whatever things they had,” says Jackel.

Jackel says a negotiator was brought in to try and talk the inmates into a peaceful end to the situation, three hours later the intuitions crisis intervention team – a tactical unit – was deployed. Jackel says they shot pepper spray into the unit and the officers went in.

“With a discipline show of force they were able to quell the riot in, corral all 45 inmates,” adds Jackel.

Jackel says the inmates spread shampoo and soap on the floors to make the area slippery. The ministry says there have been no reports of injuries to staff or inmates.

BREAK THE DOMINION

From Appel de l’Est

On this 15th of June, two events will take place at once, revealing the nature of the Dominion and its oil tanker projects. A bogus consultation in Québec City will seek to win over the population to the destruction of worlds. The flow of Line 9 will also be reversed around the 15th, despite all the opposition, the doubts expressed by scientists, and the refusal of the people living on these lands. So we have on the one hand, a consultation for justifying this shit and on the other, the great destructive snake taking material shape. The Kanadian and Kébécois colonial states commit themselves to what they both hold dear: the consolidation of their colonial power, that of a Dominion realizing itself through the infinite extraction of resources.

« He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth »

This is the statement of domination that guides the politics of the oil economy: in their destruction of worlds all is equal, all is just, for all is reduced to the status of financial and energetic potential.
But the resistance is alive and the Call of the East pounds in the hearts of those opposed to destructive ambitions.

On this 15th of June, let us initiate hostilities: let us launch the Call with actions that bring these issues to the fore, and disrupt the order of domination.

Last Wednesday, April 15th, my friend got arrested at UQAM. Security agents followed him in the hallways. They called the cops who made the arrest. He spent the night at the Operational Center. He was supposed to get released at the municipal court but the judge moved the inquiry to the next day. He spent that night at the Rivière-des-Prairies male prison in northern Montreal. The next day; Friday the 17th, we organized a picket in support at the municipal court and waited all day for his turn. We were about 30 people. After the inquiry, the judge denied bail before trial. Until then, he will serve time without trial at Rivière-des-Prairies. The judge’s main argument is that if he had freed our friend, it would damage public opinion and that the population would lose faith into the justice system. He also spoke of the importance to preserve the public’s trust into the management of that justice system; in concern to a «well-informed public», he said. He was talking about the people who read the newspapers and watch the news on television every night, basically, thus an hymn to the mass media.

Contrary to what the judge stated, our friend is paying the price alone for a movement already strongly repressed, meaning that his imprisonment is nothing but political.

Facing the political and judicial violence ongoing at UQAM in the context of the injunction against strike mandates, and the relentless profiling that students and their allies are being put through, we can only revolt. Our friend is clearly being used as an example in order to strike fear and shut down the voices of dissent. We do not believe in the justice system but it is easy to feel lonely and powerless against such hegemonic power. We acknowledge the fact that we are in a “war” were two sides with opposite and irreconcilable interests are fighting each other, thus meaning that we have to organize to protect ourselves more so that we can stay dangerous while confronting the state and his minions. This is why masking ourselves is appropriate. Even if your friends and the security guards recognize you, it is still harder to do so with the surveillance camera that will be used to incriminate you.

Our friend is not a martyr, he is not a hero nor a leader; what happened to him could’ve happened to anyone of us.

That is why we are calling for active solidarity without dissociation or condemning of all the people criminalized by the State, at all time and in the context of the actual strike movement, may it be for the reason of disruptive actions, protests or facing injunctions. This solidarity expresses itself with a collective responsibility towards the well being of each and every one of us. Denouncing criminalization with protests or pickets, opposing targeted arrests and snitching, bringing legal, financial and moral support (letters, fundraisers, etc) and demanding the removal of charges, copwatching, taking care of the wounded, staying close together. Those are the basis of a resistance culture that we must nurture and develop. The legitimization of tendencies that advocate the less possible gain, are less dangerous and maintain a status quo that divide the movement and isolate radical thinking. We believe on the contrary that it is by the continuity of the movement, it’s expansion and intensification that we can aspire to a more just society. Police repression and it’s consequences on short, middle or long term is an attack with no common measure against this ongoing movement.

We won’t back down.

You can write support letters to our friend and leave them at L’Insoumise (the Montreal anarchist bookstore), at Café Aquin (in UQAM-Hubert Aquin Pavillion or at La Déferle (« anarchist social space » in Montreal).

You can also contribute to the fundraiser, write to us for more infos:
groupedesoutien@riseup.net

There will be a picket in front of the municipal court on April 29 at 9:30
AM.

All the prisoners are political prisoners!

Down to all the prisons!