Comments Off on Landlord Association’s Offices Flooded for May Day
May012020
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
The pandemic has laid bare the hostility the Corporation des propriétaires immobiliers du Québec (CORPIQ) has for tenants. As tens of thousands of increasingly precarious people struggle to make ends meet, CORPIQ has pressured the Régie du logement to re-start eviction hearings, encouraged landlords to collect rent as usual, and tried to discredit the calls for a global rent strike. CORPIQ defends the class that profits from our basic need for shelter and ensures that many are denied a stable and safe place to live.
The hostility is mutual. On the rainy night of April 29th, in an early celebration of May Day, we paid a visit to CORPIQ’s offices in Ville Saint-Laurent. First, we disabled the security camera. Then, we broke a window and inserted one end of a garden hose into their office, attached the other end to the building’s own outdoor tap, and turned on the water causing a flood.* Good luck with your “return to normal”, assholes.
We have no demands to make to governments, but rather a proposal to other renters and exploited people: what would happen if landlords had to think twice before harassing a tenant, neglecting repairs, or making threats of eviction? What if landlords were terrified of seeing their office vandalized, their car(s) torched, or their home(s) attacked when they try to push us?
Shout out to all the rent strikers organizing to support each other and spread the strike.
Solidarity with prisoners – and everyone trapped in coercive relationships with the state and capital. The recent hunger strikers in Laval show that we can resist even in the bleakest conditions.
We dedicate this action to everyone feeling isolated, depressed, or hopeless in these circumstances. We’ll never stop fighting for a world without systems that profit from our misery.
*We encourage others trying this tactic to use a mail slot when available. There is always a risk of setting off an alarm or getting the cops called when you break a window. We took this risk and bet that any response wouldn’t come fast enough to stop us.
Some things are worth risking death for. Perpetuating capitalism is not one of them. Going back to work—at risk of spreading COVID-19 or dying from it—so that the rich can continue accruing profits is not worth dying for.
If the problem is that people are suffering from the economy being shut down, the solution is clear. People were already suffering as a consequence of the economy running. The inequalities it created are one of the reasons some people are so desperate to go back to work—but in a profit-driven economy, the more we do business, the greater the inequalities become.
Practically all the resources people need exist already or could be produced by voluntary labor on a much safer basis, rather than forcing the poorest and most vulnerable to work for peanuts at great risk of spreading the virus. Rather than going back to business as usual, we need to abolish capitalism once and for all.
Why Do Some People Want to Let COVID-19 Spread?
Supporters of Donald Trump are calling for the economy to resume immediately at any cost: they are gambling that, like Rand Paul and Boris Johnson, they won’t be the ones to die.
An image familiar from history: a banner reading “Get back to work” attended by a man with a gun.
It’s easy to understand why the beneficiaries of capitalism would welcome a pandemic that could kill off a part of the unruly population. The distinction between “essential” and “inessential” workers has laid this bare for all to see: a large part of the population is no longer essential to industrial production and the logistics of international distribution. In a volatile world, increasingly affordable automation has reduced the angry and precarious to a mere liability for those who hold power.
We are not yet desensitized enough to this notion that those who govern us can speak openly about it, but there have been attempts on Fox News to shift to a discourse that takes millions of additional deaths in stride as a worthwhile price to pay to keep the economy functioning. Aren’t we already desensitized to workplace accidents, air pollution, global climate change, and the like?
“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
–A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
But why would workers call for the reopening of the economy?
When the most you can imagine asking for is to be exploited once again.
If the logical result of a large part of the population being superfluous to capitalism is a greater willingness among the ruling class to sacrifice our lives, it is not surprising that workers who cannot imagine anything other than capitalism would also be more willing to see other workers die.
Discussing the economic impact of the bubonic plague in Caliban and the Witch, Silvia Federici argues that “the scarcity of labor which the epidemic caused shifted the power relation to the advantage of the lower classes.” Federici meant to call attention to the powerful labor movements at the end of the Middle Ages, but today we can derive grim implications from this analysis. In the same way that bigots wrongly imagine that shutting down immigration will secure high-paying jobs for white citizens, they might conclude that the smaller the working class, the better the deal for the survivors.
This is the same segment of the working class that has always welcomed wars and championed unthinking obedience to authority—the ones who accepted white privilege as a bribe not to show solidarity with other workers. Lacking longstanding bonds or a deep-rooted tradition of collective resistance, workers in the United States have always been especially willing to play the lottery when it comes to questions of survival and economic advancement. Many conservative whites seem to have given up entirely on realizing the dream of economic security that their parents sought, settling instead for seeing others suffer even worse than them. As we argued early in the Trump era, Trump did not promise to redistribute wealth in the United States, but rather to redistribute violence.
This willingness to risk death in hopes of seeing other (likely less privileged) workers die might be disguised as conspiracy theories about the virus, or even as outright denial of its existence—but at base it is schadenfreude of the worst kind.
Defending Liberty?
Yet there is something else going on here, as well. To some extent, those who have protested the lockdown over the past few days have understood themselves as defending their “rights” as citizens—though, senselessly, they are serving as shills for the reigning authoritarian government of the United States to intensify the control via which it will go on exposing them to risk. Their slogan might as well be “Kill all the immigrants and prisoners—set yourself up as dictator in the name of freedom—just let me die of COVID-19 in the comfort of my boss’s workplace!”
Ballots and bullets—the two means by which white privilege has always been imposed as a means to divide the exploited.
In this regard, in a confused way, the protests against the lockdown are part of a worldwide pushback against state authority in response to lockdown measures during the pandemic.
In Russia, demonstrations in response to the quarantine conditions have led to open confrontations, something rare indeed in Putin’s totalitarian regime. In France, riots have broken out in several cities and suburbs, such as in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, in response to the police taking advantage of the lockdown to murder five people and injure many more, the latest victim being a motorcyclist ; during the ongoing repression, officers shot a 5-year-old girl with a LBD40 rubber bullet, fracturing her skull. In Peru, police have attacked crowds of impoverished refugees attempting to flee the capital to their home villages, having run out of resources during the lockdown.
All of these examples show how poorly capitalist governments founded on coercive violence are equipped to maintain the sort of quarantines that can prevent a pandemic from spreading. In a society in which almost all wealth is concentrated in a few hands, in which state edicts are enforced by violence, a large part of the population lacks the resources to ride out a disaster like this in isolation. Most people who have maintained social distancing have done so out of concern for all humanity, at great cost to themselves, not because of the force employed against them by the state. State enforcement of the quarantine has been uneven, to say the least, with the governor of Florida declaring professional wrestling an essential function and police around the world turning a blind eye to conservatives who flout the shutdown.
In the absence of a powerful movement against rising authoritarianism, people who are concerned about the power grabs of the state may join “protests” like the ones encouraging Trump to lift the lockdown. This is one of the hallmarks of an authoritarian society: that people have no options to choose from other than to support one of the factions of the government, all of whom are pursuing totalitarian visions.1 Rather than choosing between subjugation under a technocratic state and risking death to continue our economic subjugation, we have to pose another option: a grassroots struggle against capitalism and authoritarianism of all kinds.
To some extent, the protests in favor of reopening the economy are an astroturf phenomenon, aimed at expanding the Overton window in order to make it easier for Trump to restart the economy at whatever cost. Both Trump and his Democratic rivals share the same fundamental program. They only disagree about the details.
Just as capitalism does not exist for the sake of meeting all our needs, there never was any plan to keep us all safe.
There was never any plan to protect us all from COVID-19. The Democrats just wanted to pace the impact of the virus on healthcare infrastructure for the sake of maintaining public order. They, too, take for granted that the capitalist market must continue—even as it impoverishes and kills us in greater and greater numbers. They won’t revolt against Trump’s ban on immigration any more than Trump will object to the surveillance measures they aim to introduce. Supporting either party means accepting the arrival of a totalitarianism in which it will be taken for granted that workers will risk death simply for the privilege of letting capitalists earn a profit off their labor.
To protect our lives and the lives of our neighbors, to gain access to resources, to attain freedom—there is only one way to accomplish all of these things. We have to revolt.
Click on the image to download the poster.
Capitalism Is a Death Cult
Nothing matters to the market but profit. Forests only have value as timber or toilet paper; animals only have value as hot dogs or hamburgers. The precious, unrepeatable moments of your life only have value as labor hours determined by the imperatives of commerce. The market rewards landlords for evicting families, bosses for exploiting employees, engineers for inventing death machines. It separates mothers from their children, drives species into extinction, shuts down hospitals to open up privatized prisons. It reduces entire ecosystems to ash, spewing out smog and stock options. Left to itself, it will turn the whole world into a graveyard.
Some things are worth risking our lives for. Perpetuating capitalism is not one of them. If we have to risk our lives, let’s risk them for something worthwhile, like creating a world in which no one has to risk death for a paycheck. Life for the market means death for us.
Proponents of rival authoritarianism seek to trap us in such binary choices: for example, if we turn a blind eye to Facebook censoring the pro-Trump “protests,” we can be sure that such censorship will be used against our own demonstrations in the future. ↩
On April 19th, solidarity caravans drove to prisons and migrant detention centres across the country as part of a day of action against imprisonment. The caravans made noise and held signs in solidarity with those locked up. This mobilization brought together former detainees, prison abolitionists, and migrant justice activists in a first united call, across so-called Canada, to demand the immediate release of all prisoners and status for all migrants in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We’ve included links to footage and report-backs from the different caravans below. You can also listen to a special live radio broadcast with dispatches from the caravans here. For more footage or reports from the caravans, just search #FreeThemAllCaravan on twitter.
Social distancing is impossible inside prisons and detention centres and those inside remain at high risk of contracting COVID-19. There are now over 260 confirmed cases of COVID-19 linked to Canadian carceral institutions around the country, where people are held on both criminal and migrant holds. There have also been cases confirmed in both Laval and Toronto migrant detention centres. On April 16th, the Correctional Service of Canada confirmed that an inmate at BC’s Mission Institution prison had died due to COVID-19, with over 50 other inmates testing positive for the virus.
From March 24th to April 1st, detainees at the Laval migrant prison held an eight-day hunger strike to demand their immediate liberation and decent, safe housing upon release. While many hunger-strikers have since been released, 11 people remain in detention.
Despite the mounting calls from dozens of organizations for Canada to release migrant detainees and prisoners, the Canadian government still refuses to free all prisoners. The CBSA for its part has been slowly releasing migrant detainees on a case-by-case basis through individual detention review hearings.
Released migrants often remain under threat of deportation and face precarity, with no housing, long processing times for work permits, and limited or delayed access to support programs.
However you tell the tale of May Day, one thing is consistent: it is a time people gather together, to march in the streets or to celebrate a new spring. Although most of us are enjoying the warmer weather blowing in, we are mostly stuck in our homes. Reading the news, trying to figure out the right thing to do, watching May 1st creep closer and wondering what it will look like this year if we can’t take over downtown and revel in May Day as we have come to know it: a celebration of anticapitalism.
Life is an evolving story, an ever-changing landscape. We have always had to adapt and shift our tactics to new realities as they crop up. This is no different. The context in which we find ourselves is affected by both the coronavirus and the repressive actions taken by the state around it, but the need for resistance is still just as present.
Even if we can’t gather, there are still ways to mark the day, to feel part of a larger whole that has always honoured the spring, always resisted oppressors, and always carried a new world in their hearts.
Decentralized direct action is a skill we already have, and it can be taken in small groups, which is convenient when the pandemic makes it reasonable to reduce the number of people we’re close to. We propose a two week window centered on May 1st for going out and attacking capitalism – tags, breaking things, liberating stuff, use your imaginination. We are also excited for celebratory actions that honour resistance history and the land. Or both.
There are opportunities in every crisis. For us and for the forces we oppose. It is a delightful new reality that it no longer cocks eyebrows when you’re just someone out for a night jog in a mask and hoodie down the empty, empty streets. And coming out of the Wet’suwet’en solidarity movement, there is a lot of resistance to celebrate, as well as new skills and contacts to build on.
The context as well casts new light on old forms of domination: borders become harder, the police gain new powers to manage small details of our lives, tech and telecom companies excitedly participate in ever more tracking (for our health), bosses rejoice as their low-wage workers are designated “essential” allowing them to profit off the crisis, money lenders (like banks and payday loans) get to sell desperate people new forms of debt, and the state sets itself as the only legitimate actor.
So we invite you to gather together a few friends, take to the night and celebrate the fires that burn within us. Share your stories on websites like North Shore Counter-Info, Montreal Counter-Info, and It’s Going Down, so we all get the reminder that when we resist, we’re never alone.
In these times of pandemic, capital kills more than ever. Workers are left without equipment in hospitals. Confinement falls upon us because our government did too little, too late. Rich landlords who brought the virus back from their latest trip are angered by a rent strike that their penniless tenants have no other choice but to partake in. The people dying right now are among the most vulnerable, from grocery store clerks, to delivery workers, prisoners, homeless folks, and undocumented migrants. All of this while the most fortunate get to work from home. Nevertheless, social distancing remains an important way to reduce transmission, and this is why WE WILL NOT MEET PHYSICALLY FOR A MAYDAY PROTEST. We will however try to make resistance as visible as possible, given the difficult context.
The Canadian economy, along with that of most countries of the G20, will present a negative fiscal balance this year due to the sanitary crisis. The economy, however, means nothing. It’s a mix of statistical indicators that have never reflected our collective well-being. These indicators are more often related negatively to the health of our relationships, children, and waterways. However, the political elite forces us to mourn the economy by blocking our access to the products of our labor. While the rich live in style on desert islands and in distant townhouses, the poor are stacked in slums, forced to produce wealth, to heal the sick, or to restock grocery store shelves. Confinement makes solidarity very difficult in a context otherwise favorable for the crumbling of the capitalist state.
Let’s take this opportunity to shift environmental questions back to an anticapitalist perspective of climate justice. At a time when the air of our cities is finally breathable, let’s avoid the return to normalcy demanded by the capitalist elite. Let’s avoid making forced isolation and mass surveillance the new normal. Because a return to normalcy would only be the second act of a single tragedy, with societies playing the same role they had in the ongoing ecocide. The system must change, we must build justice anew, a justice which respects life and ecosystems.
We want to belong to the world we inhabit. Capitalism built societies we don’t really want. It’s time to take back control of our future from the rich and powerful who have had it for far too long. It is time to build a world for all of us.
This year we will not take the streets. This is why we ask you to SHOW YOUR ANTICAPITALIST SOLIDARITY THROUGH BANNERS, ART PROJECTS, AND POSTERS. If you can take pictures, images will be presented on a Web page built for this purpose. Details will be available shortly.
We cannot lose hope. The struggle continues to be as necessary as ever.
For a variety of reasons, most of which have to do with COVID-19, the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair collective has made the tough–but in our view, responsible–decision that we are not going to organize the big two-day gathering that has taken place around parc Vinet for most of the past twenty years. Instead, though, we hope to organize a different kind of event on May 17, 2020, to sustain our connections, politics, and solidarity.
As a small collective, our capacities are constrained, and of course, we’re facing new pressures in our lives outside the collective. So we’ll absolutely need your help, just as we have always needed help in the past.
That being said, this is what we hope to do for May 17.
As we’ve always done, we want to provide artists, authors, publishers of anarchist literature, and other sorts of crews and organizations an effective space for selling or freely distributing books, zines, posters, stickers, and other items to people who want them. We envision this as a two-pronged approach: online “tables” and in-person deliveries (on Tioh:tiàke, i.e. the island of Montreal). At a time when anarchist infrastructure is having to close up shop, so to speak, we see sales as a form of solidarity, to keep our many projects alive through this latest crisis, which also makes it all that much more important to get anarchist ideas and inspiration out into the world. The collective will, to a large degree, need to rely on tablers and delivery people to make this work, but we’re definitely up for offering our resources in terms of setting up telecommunications infrastructure and other forms of technical support.
Beyond continuing to distribute books, art, and other anarchist materials, we’d also like to create a space on May 17 for real-time conversations, similar to past bookfairs. We see this as a mix of a small number of talks (which we hope to make as accessible as possible, including via live broadcast on community radio as well as over the internet), more participatory, connective small-group dialogues, and one-on-one conversations between organizers (matched up ahead of time).
Also on May 17, we would love to see an outpouring of street art and banners around Montreal, in a physically distanced art exhibit of sorts, and would encourage artists and others to not only do this but document it with photos too.
As we get closer to May 1, we’ll put out another, longer announcement with more details and probably at least a few more initiatives. By then, for instance, it may be clear whether some sort of physical, social gathering will be possible for the weekend of May 16 and 17, and we’re considering the idea of a post-bookfair zine. We also hope to have our poster, designed by Kevin Lo, ready for May 1, and would love to see it put up around Montreal.
Lastly, much thanks to everyone who wrote to us with suggestions and everyone who has already signed up for our volunteer listserv. If you have any interest in postering in or around Montreal, or could contribute to this project with respect to system administration, website design, or translation (from English to French, but also from English to other languages spoken in Montreal), please sign up by following this link:
In the West we laughed at the images of consumers at big chain stores desperately struggling for irrational amounts of toilet paper. When asked by the media, the consumers said they didn’t know why they needed so many rolls, or that they had simply followed the crowd.
The feeling of catastrophe is difficult to deny. Government experts are asking us to put our trust in the same health care heroes they have overworked, exhausted, and discouraged through repeated budget cuts and devaluing of their jobs in preparation for collective bargaining negotiations.
The dissonance is intense… so is the anger. Management is “rationing” protective equipment for employees; to this day, there are still no masks and few gloves for caregivers in many seniors’ homes despite the mounting deaths.
Entertainment and scapegoats. While the “guardian angels” are working themselves to death for lower real wages than in previous decades (prosperity is the order of the day for Quebec bosses!), the people are being asked to look the other way – to watch videos of baby animals. It’s going to be fine… and above all, wait patiently for the government to restore the normal conditions of your exploitation. It’s not a beautiful dream. The state is the coldest of monsters that, to paraphrase Nietzsche, tells us with lies crawling out of its mouth: ‘I, the state, am your caretaker’.
The story we all tell of these events is not just personal… it is shaped in large part by the state. In the face of the crisis, the state is bringing out the same old stories. Xenophobia being what it is, many people, including Trump, believe the virus is of Chinese nationality, or at least that fault lies with the Chinese people; a deception that suits the populists, who felt their national pride offended by the rise of China. Racism is never really confined to the “realm of ideas”. It has manifested itself in many ways through expressions and actions that are hateful to people of Chinese origin or associated with them for sometimes stupid reasons. A Chinese-born Chicoutimi woman, for example, has denounced several incidents in our region [https://www.iheartradio.ca/energie/energie-saguenay/nouvelles/coronavirus-une-chicoutimienne-nee-en-chine-victime-de-racisme-1.10852664].
True to form, the state also sent its armed wing to “contain the crisis”. The calls for law and order have generated a veritable snitching culture in which everyone is called upon to spy on the actions of others and rely on the police. Your neighbour is potentially the enemy. The situation in Quebec is currently so pitiful that even the cops say they are overwhelmed by the flood of sordid calls and are asking Quebecers to “chill out” with the snitching! Some politicians believe that the state is too soft and are calling for the army to intervene. You’d think that this virus is some kind of anarchist…
Finally, the borders. It was through the power of politicians, not the medical profession, that the popular narrative of events came to include the belief that the virus would be spread by people from outside the country, especially immigrants, and that closing national borders would be one way to stop its spread. Following populist pressure, the Canadian government even took steps to prevent refugee claimants from entering Canada. Do we think we can live in an airtight glass bubble? The fantasy of right-wing populists is utterly stupid. Billions of people in the global south, many of whom have no clean drinking water at home or have to fend for themselves on a daily basis to meet their families’ basic needs, are being asked to live in forced confinement. How many will die of hunger or thirst rather than coronavirus, while countries like Canada would rather invest billions to support the destructive fossil fuel industry? How can we not think that this lack of solidarity with the global South in the context of the pandemic will not encourage an even more intense spread of the virus and make it even more difficult to fight in Canada in the future? Fuck!
Please, let’s protect ourselves from the virus, but let’s also fight the confinement of consciences through class solidarity and international solidarity. Let’s target the real enemies.
Comments Off on International Call for a Dangerous May
Apr132020
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
In May, Let’s Play : A Call to Conflict
Here we can easily realize that rubbing alcohol gel can be used equally well to disinfect our hands as to start a fire.
In other terms: that we don’t need guidelines from the state to take care of our friends, and, once we have taken care of the question of survival, we have nothing better to do than go out looking for ways to strike a damaging blow. More than ever we are in need of revenge and true friendships.
Now that we are stuck in this futuristic system, our only solution is to declare war on normality, if we don’t want to die in asepticized boredom.
We face a dual movement. On one side it seems that power has never been so strong, winning its compliant citizens’ hearts and minds. On the other hand, it seems that it never had to manage such a complex situation (at least since we were born).
Therefore, we can maybe conclude two things:
First of all, it is not about waiting for any masses that would wake up to confront it.
Secondly, the moment seems favorable for attack.
Favorable here doesn’t mean the ONLY good moment. It’s always the good moment to fight.
No, favorable here means that our opponent is totally busy with other things, and we cannot know what exactly will be the consequences of our actions (in such an unprecedented situation), neither if we will have another opportunity soon.
It looks like an interesting wager for all the enemies of power. To seize the opportunity and see what can happen.
Now that the control forces canvassing the territory with vehicles, drones or just by foot have never been so present and overworked, what could happen if they were threatened inside their fortresses, with death threats written in paint? Regularly attacked with some stones/cocktails/fireworks/firecrackers in the middle of the night as they sleep? If they were ambushed during their patrols?
Now that the cages are chock full and that people slowly die behind bars, what could happen if the guards’ cars would unfortunately meet with a screwdriver/hammer/firestarter? If the people who lock up and stand guard, already under constant pressure, were hit and beaten while going back home?
Now that almost everyone works/studies/shares/relaxes/learns/rebels/has sex/… in front of a screen, what could happen if some easily accessible fiber optic cables were sabotaged?
Now that almost everyone “communicates” using cellphones, orders/commands/plans/organizes production (and sometimes activism) or “takes care” using applications or incessant phone calls, what could happen if some relay antennas, sometimes located in very out-of-the-way places, were put out of service?
Now that almost everyone lives confined in domotic nests hyperconnected to the matrix like a substitute of life, what could happen if a high-voltage pylon were to fall down?
We absolutely do not know what could happen. And that’s precisely why we imperatively should try it.
Disseminate and translate this text if you liked it. Attack and conspire if you want to participate.
Claim and develop your ideas if you want to dialogue with other rebels.
This short text is an invitation for a dangerous May.
Note n°1 : if you are too impatient to wait for the month of May and if you liked this invitation, you can just attack in April and say it in a potential communiqué.
Note n°2 : if you are too impatient to wait, you can attack in April AND May !
Comments Off on #FreeThemAll: Email campaign to release Federal prisoners
Apr122020
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
SUPPORT ALL PRISONERS NOW! NO ONE SHOULD SPEND A PANDEMIC IN PRISON!
The situation facing prisoners during the COVID19 pandemic is terrifying. It is widely understood that prisoners are in a dangerous position during this pandemic due to the close living quarters, lack of health care, and lack of access to sanitary supplies. Correctional Services Canada has done little to address the risks inside, aside from cancelling all visits, temporary work releases, and trailer visits. Predictably, COVID19 has already started to spread in the federal prison system with prisoners and staff testing positive in more and more institutions.
Calls for the release of prisoners have come from many different people and groups around the world and many mainstream news publications in Canada have published articles detailing the reasoning behind releasing prisoners now. We would like to add our thoughts to this conversation.
At the federal level, there are many tools that Correctional Services Canada and the Parole Board of Canada can use to release prisoners. These include: the extension of unaccompanied temporary absences, the use of Section 81 and 84 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA), expedited hearings for suspension and revocation cases, and using section 121)1.b) of the CCRA, which states that ‘parole may be granted at any time to an offender […] whose physical or mental health is likely to suffer serious damage if the offender continues to be held in confinement.’
The use of existing provisions to release prisoners to protect their health is not unprecedented. Indeed, as Jane Philpott and Kim Pate explain in an article in Policy Options, “sections 29, 81, 84, 116, and 121 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act were specifically created to move people out of prisons to address health issues, for other personal development, for compassionate reasons or for work. Sections 81 and 84 provide for the transfer of Indigenous prisoners to Indigenous communities but could be applied to others as well” (emphasis added).
In this context, we demand immediate action to protect the health and safety of federal prisoners. Specifically, we demand the following:
1. IMMEDIATELY RELEASE ALL VULNERABLE PRISONERS: Anyone who is over 50 years old, immunocompromised, pregnant, sick, or who has a preexisting condition that makes them at high risk of dying from COVID-19.
2. RELEASE ALL OTHER PRISONERS, STARTING WITH THOSE IN MINIMUM SECURITY PRISONS AND HALFWAY HOUSES: According to Correctional Service Canada’s own logic, those in minimum security prisons and halfway houses are considered the lowest risk to public safety, so start there. Let those with homes go home, provide safe physical distancing in halfway houses where people choose to remain, widen access to Canada Emergency Response Benefit funding to include people getting out of prison, and open up vacant housing for those with no homes.
3. TAKE IMMEDIATE SANITARY AND PREVENTATIVE ACTION TO PROTECT THOSE WHO REMAIN IMPRISONED: Provide soap, hand sanitizer with proper alcohol content as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), water, bleach, cleaning supplies, and self assessment tools (like thermometers) to every prisoner at no cost, and transfer prisoners in maximum and medium security into the empty minimums to allow for proper physical distancing.
4. NO MORE PUNISHMENT. PRIORITIZE CONTINUED ACCESS TO COMMUNITY AND FAMILY FOR THOSE WHO REMAIN IMPRISONED: Provide free phone calls and video visitation, allow phone calls and video visitation for volunteers and non-family supports, access to cell phones to limit use of communal phones and so that access to the outside continues if medical isolation happens, and stop using lockdowns to inhibit access to community and family supports. The World Health Organizing, stressing the importance of communication with the outside, has said that “decisions to limit or restrict visits need to consider the particular impact on the mental well-being of prisoners … The psychological impact of these measures needs to be considered and mitigated as much as possible and basic emotional and practical support for affected people in prison should be available.”
5. MEDICAL SERVICES FOR ALL: Ensure medical services are fully funded, accessible 24/7, and extra health care practitioners are hired. Provide training, PPE, and regular testing. Waive the need for guards to accompany prisoners to the hospital. No sending prisoners to special military hospitals.
Who should you contact?
At this point you could call or email:
1. Anne Kelly – Commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada: anne.kelly@csc-scc.gc.ca, 613-995-5781
2. Angela Connidis – Deputy Commissioner for Women, Correctional Service Canada: angela.connidis@csc-scc.gc.ca, 613-991-2952
3. Jennifer Oades – Parole Board of Canada, Chairperson: jennifer.oades@pbc-clcc.gc.ca, 613-954-1154
4. Bill Blair – Minister of Public Safety: Bill.Blair@parl.gc.ca
5. Kim Pate – Senator pushing for decarceration: Kim.Pate@sen.parl.gc.ca
6. Marilou McPhedran – Senator pushing for decarceration: Marilou.McPhedran@sen.parl.gc.ca
7. Jack Harris – NDP Public Safety Critic: jack.harris@parl.gc.ca, 709-772-7171
You can use the graphics at this link (demandprisonschange.wordpress.com) on social media! Tweet at @csc_scc_en AND @csc_scc_fr with the hashtags #FreeThemAll AND #FreeThemNow.
Inspired by the Black Panther Party and other groups of revolutionaries organizing to meet the health and educational needs of their community, members of the Latin American Young Lords Party set up a drug treatment centre in 1970. On November 10, 1970, about 30 activists occupied the then vacant sixth floor of the nurses’ residence building at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, New York. He quickly set up checkpoints and erected a barricade; the hospital administration was forced to negotiate and finally give them the space. In partnership with health care workers, addicts and community members, the Young Lords then established The People’s Drug Program, a community-run detoxification program. The following interview, conducted by Molly Porzig, was published on March 15, 2013, in the American magazine The Abolitionnist. Vicente “Panama” Alba, a member of the Young Lords Party and counselor at Lincoln Detox Center during the 1970s, recounts his experience.
/ / /
The Young Lords made seven demands to Lincoln Hospital in July 1970.
What was the Lincoln Detox Center? How did it start and why?
In the late 1960s and early 1970s in New York, we were living through a drug epidemic. In November of 1970, I was 19 years old and had been a heroin addict for five years. I began using heroin when I was 14, which was very common for young men and young women of my generation. Fifteen percent of the population was addicted (communities in the South Bronx, Harlem, the Lower East Side, Bushwick in Brooklyn, including everyone from a newborn baby to an elderly person ready to pass on). The concentration of addiction was on teenagers and people in their early 20s and 30s. Addiction at that time was primarily to heroin.
In the 1960s, the U.S. government engaged in a war in Southeast Asia commonly known as the Vietnam War, but the United States was involved in all of Southeast Asia. There was an airline that was an operation of the CIA transporting heroin from Southeast Asia to the U.S. We see now in Hollywood movies “gangsters” importing heroin, but the bulk of heroin imported to the United States was a United States government operation, targeting poor communities of color, black and Latino communities.
In New York, heroin devastated most of Harlem and the South Bronx. Young people utilized heroin very publicly, sniffing heroin at dance halls or in school bathrooms, which led to shooting up intravenously. This was an epidemic that Black Panther Michael Cetewayo Tabua, one of the New York 21, wrote a pamphlet on called “Capitalism Plus Dope Equals Genocide,” which we used widely. In 1969, the Black Panther Party in New York City was decimated by the indictment of 21 Black Panthers and needed to focus on the trial, becoming inactive in other areas at that time. Because of the relationship the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords had, together we began looking at the heroin epidemic, the general health of our communities and the public health positions of institutions against our communities.
Lincoln Hospital was built in 1839 to receive former slaves migrating from the South. By 1970, it was the only medical facility in the South Bronx. It was a dilapidated brick structure, from the previous century that had never been upgraded. It was known as the “butcher shop of the South Bronx.” In the old Lincoln Hospital (and even today) you walk down the hall and see blood everywhere—blood on the walls, the sheets, the gurneys, your shoes. Doctors were assigned there for internships and learned on Blacks, Puerto Ricans and a very small diminishing white community in the South Bronx.
In early 1970, there was a woman by the name of Carmen Rodriguez who was butchered in the hospital and bled to death on a gurney. Following that death, the Young Lords, with the participation of some Black Panthers, took over Lincoln Hospital for the first time and demanded better health care delivery for people in that community.
“Of course the powers that be did not want us there but could not figure out how to deal with people saying we ain’t going. We’re staying and we’re going to serve our people.”
During the takeover, the Young Lords, Panthers, supporters and translators set up tables where people came to document their experiences of the medical treatment. A major part of the takeover focused on how there were no translators at Lincoln Hospital. South Bronx is a predominantly Puerto Rican community, primarily of Spanish-speaking people newly arrived or second generation who spoke little-to-no English. People would walk in Lincoln Hospital for medical treatment and there was nobody there to understand your ailment or problem. The hospital administration had also been confronted about the lack of services for people with addictions, primarily heroin addiction. The community had told the hospital one of its shortcomings was that you come to the hospital and you get no treatment whatsoever. The hospital administration paid no mind to it.
Months later on November 10, 1970, a group of the Young Lords, a South Bronx anti-drug coalition, and members of the Health Revolutionary Unity Movement (a mass organization of health workers) with the support of the Lincoln Collective took over the Nurses’ Residence building of Lincoln Hospital and established a drug treatment program called The People’s Drug Program, which became known as Lincoln Detox Center.
The police surrounded us and we said we weren’t leaving. By day two, the takeover had spread by word of mouth and we had hundreds of people lined up wanting to get treatment for addiction. About a month later, the administration had to come to terms with the fact that we weren’t leaving. They had been sitting on the proposal of some monies that had been earmarked for treatment that hadn’t been implemented. The money was brought and staff was hired from the very volunteers of the Lincoln Detox program we started. Of course the powers that be did not want us there but could not figure out how to deal with people saying we ain’t going. We’re staying and we’re going to serve our people.
We were very effective in doing so, and kept our program running until 1979.
The Young Lords demonstrate in front of Lincoln Hospital, September 3, 1970.
What was your involvement?
I joined the building of Lincoln Detox from day one. Before that, my primary objective was to go get drugs, until one time Cleo Silvers and I were sitting on a stoop and she pointed some important stuff out to me. She told me to look at the New York City Police patrol car where two officers sat selling heroin. She said, “Look, those are cops. Look who you’re giving your money to!” The climate in our communities at the time is very important. On the one hand we have the drug epidemic, but there was also revolution in the air—change was something that you could breathe, that you could taste, that you could feel, because the movement was very vibrant. Some days before October 30, there had been a massive demonstration called by the Young Lords and I attended the demonstration even though I was still addicted.
Because of the way I felt that day, I told myself I couldn’t continue to be a drug user. I couldn’t be a heroin addict and a revolutionary, and I wanted to be a revolutionary. I made a decision to kick a dope habit. Coincidentally, that day I called Cleo, who told me to go to this place with these people. I met a couple of young brothers from the Puerto Rican Student Union and they escorted me over to Cleo at Lincoln Hospital. It had just been taken over a half-hour before. As I was withdrawing from my addiction, I did not detoxify in Lincoln Detox, but detoxified on my own, cold turkey, a challenge I placed upon myself.
I was recruited out of that experience into the Young Lords Party, maybe a month after the first day of the program. The presence of the Latino movement within the revolutionary movement in the U.S. hadn’t occurred yet in New York. It had occurred in the Southwest with the Brown Berets, but the Latino community in New York was predominantly Puerto Rican. When I joined the Young Lords, I was assigned to Lincoln Detox where I worked as a counselor.
What did the Lincoln Detox Center do? What approaches did it use?
We provided detoxification. We had support from medical doctors providing us with methadone, which we then provided to people in increasing dosages over ten days for people to withdraw, replacing the heroin with methadone and then decreasing it by milligrams every day. After the tenth day you would be physically clean.
This was also right around the time that Richard Nixon opened up relationships with China. A lot came out about Chinese way of life and how health care was provided to the people of China. We heard about acupuncture. We read a magazine article about a situation in Thailand where an acupuncturist used acupuncture to treat someone with respiratory problems and an addiction to opium. We read that the stimulation of the lung point in the ear was the key of the treatment. We went down to Chinatown, got acupuncture needles and began experimenting on one another. We then developed the acupuncture collective within Lincoln Detox.
We also understood that an individual’s addiction wasn’t just a physical problem, but a psychological problem. It was a widespread problem in our community, not because we as a community were psychologically deficient, but because oppression and brutal living conditions drove us to that. There was a book called The Radical Therapist that some of us read.
“The existence of the program was a thorn in the government’s side. We were revolutionaries and radicals doing work, recruiting people to do work the government didn’t want to happen.”
We developed therapy that integrated political education into therapeutic discussions. We held group sessions with overwhelmingly Black and Puerto Rican participants, and engaged in conversations around what it felt like to be Black or Puerto Rican, what it meant for someone who was called a “spic” to not understand what Puerto Rican was. Puerto Rican people are colonial subjects of the United States. You ask a Puerto Rican generally, an unconscious Puerto Rican and they’ll say, “I’m a U.S. citizen.” Well, you are an un-welcomed U.S. citizen, so what does that feel like and mean? The effects of colonialism and the treatment Puerto Ricans receive stateside are not understood because they become internalized. You have to start with what it means. How do you feel about your family’s inability to provide for you? Why do the cops hate you? Why does the school hate you? I went to public school, didn’t know English in 5th grade, and was placed in a class for the “mentally challenged.” There are people who need that support, but I don’t get it. What are the impacts of that kind of treatment by the institutions of society? What happens to a person who lives in those conditions, who gets beaten by police and called a “dirty spic” or who gets denied friendship because the person is white and you’re of color? There is a cumulative impact of this kind of existence and we would discuss it.
How did Lincoln Detox incorporate grassroots organizing into its ongoing work?
When you’re consumed by chasing a bag of drugs, chasing the money to get the bag of drugs, being high, or being in an environment with other people you get high with, it becomes a way of life. When people want alternatives, you have to provide it for them. We did not have the resources to say: Okay, you’re 17, you can benefit from finishing school. Here’s a school with caring teachers, caring counselors and so on to bring people up to speed in education or to direct people to get employment, particularly people who had been out of the work force. Given the natural power of the therapeutic approach, this was all very important that it was voluntary, that it was people’s will to do. If they learned things from our educational program and therapeutic sessions, they wanted to do something about those problems. We would direct them to get involved, to get engaged in campaigns that were going on in the community.
We had people advocating for people in welfare centers, training people on the rights of welfare recipients, and translators who would advocate for people who were Spanish-speakers. We played a part in the founding of a coalition for minority construction workers, because construction work was a good paying job and the industry excluded minorities. Those were a few things we did, in addition to political campaigns. Some people that came through our programs joined the Young Lords, Black Panther Party or the Republic of New Afrika. Some became Muslims and got deeply involved. Some got involved in the campaign to free political prisoners or began building collectives.
We fought everyday—we fought for the right to eat, the right to get paid, the right to be respected, the right not to be fucked with by the cops. We never asked for anything in return.
What were some of the strengths, successes, challenges and weaknesses?
There were strengths and successes throughout, but it wasn’t all glory. There were a lot of challenges and weaknesses. From the first day, November 10, 1970, we had a constant influx of people everyday seeking help. Hundreds and hundreds came—I’m not talking about one or two-dozen people—as the word spread about Lincoln Detox, the opportunity for people to walk in and get effective help from everyday people (not white professionals but their own people) who had a loving heart, developing an understanding of things they needed to articulate. People came from all over New York and Connecticut, Long Island, New Jersey, too. The Lincoln Detox program became so successful and effective that a United Nations delegation visited and gave us recognition for it.
At that point acupuncture became controversial because it was “non-medical” people providing medical care. Laws then were passed about who could do acupuncture, making it so that it could only be done under supervision of a medical doctor who might not have a clue of what acupuncture is about. Those kinds of political struggles—to maintain funding for the program, to keep the program alive, against the local police as well as the hospital police who continuously tried to make their way into the program (Lincoln Detox was a sanctuary where addicts could go and not be afraid of the police)—were big challenges. Then we struggled with the hospital to provide meal expenses for the program. People were coming off the streets, didn’t have anything to eat and needed treatment. We struggled and eventually figured it out.
We also struggled with developing our skills in treatment, acupuncture and detoxing. At the time we started the program, there was a big push to promote methadone maintenance as a treatment modality. Methadone is a scary drug, originally developed by Nazi scientists in order to furnish themselves with opiates. It’s highly addictive and the withdrawal is different from heroin. People slowly developed a protocol for detoxing off methadone. We could detox somebody from heroin in ten days and they’d be fine physically. Methadone was very painful for many months—three or four sometimes.
The existence of the program was a thorn in the government’s side. We were revolutionaries and radicals doing work, recruiting people to do work the government didn’t want to happen.
One morning in 1979, we went to work and the Lincoln Hospital was surrounded by police checking the identification of everybody walking in. They had a list of names and members of the Young Lords, Black Panther Party, and Republic of New Afrika and other people were excluded from entering the facilities, and were to be arrested if they tried to enter. They dismantled Lincoln Detox. One component they were very interested in was the acupuncture, because it was a money mill. Some people today say the Lincoln Detox still exists, but it doesn’t. There’s an acupuncture clinic at Lincoln Hospital but the program was dismantled.
Dr. Richard Taft is receiving acupuncture treatment from a patient intern at Lincoln Detox Center.
Was the collaboration between different groups such as the Young Lords, the Black Panther Party, the Republic of New Afrika and Muslim communities spontaneous, automatic or a more intentional effort in developing the program?
That’s a deep question. There’s the overriding principle of unity and respect and there’s the reality that we were all works in progress. It’s not like you go to sleep one night a junkie and wake up the next morning a revolutionary. There’s a process in growth and change. As products of today’s society, we are not examples of the society we’re building for tomorrow.
Collaboration and solidarity were very important to Lincoln Detox and there were a lot of struggles. We considered the Black Panther Party the vanguard of the revolutionary movement at that time, and there was the reality that the Black Panther Party was disintegrating. There were some people in the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords who were extremely arrogant. We had to struggle against and combat those tendencies. We would always go back to the principle of what is the best interest of the people. The outcome was very positive and we learned so much from each other. In 1973, when the American Indian Movement confronted the FBI at Wounded Knee on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, there was no question for us. It was automatically our responsibility to support and engage with that. We developed a philosophy, a practice that made it possible for us to do those things.
What lessons were learned that could strengthen work today?
I think that a lot of organizing that takes place today is funded. You don’t hear about many initiatives that are independent efforts. One of the things that Lincoln Detox was very much a part of was support for the Attica brothers during the Attica Prison takeover in September 1971. We did 20-something rallies in 15 days throughout New York City. We didn’t have the Internet or cell phones, or institutions financing copy machines or any of that. We hustled to type fliers, cut and pasted pictures and burned stencils.
Pa’lante (a contraction of Para Adelante, Forward!), is one of the publications of the Young Lords Party, distributed by the New York Chapter.
We built a movement and we looked for ways to make the movement survive without government funding. Nobody could tell us what we were going to do. Today a lot relies on foundation monies, and people focus on the money and don’t engage in campaigns. Even though we forced the government for years to underwrite our work, eventually they had the power and took it out. We didn’t have the power to continue that institution. If we were not in their facility could they have shut us down? I don’t know, but it would have been different.
We need to recognize we can’t have institutions within the institutions. I mean we eventually end up in one way or another in a place where Lincoln Detox ended. We need to think in terms of short range and longer-range efforts. How do you get rid of prisons under imperialism? You have to get rid of imperialism. In the mean time you may take on some struggles that may take on some reforms and that needs to be studied and discussed.
We can look at it from the humanist viewpoint and see that we saved and changed a lot of lives, people who would have been dead from heroin. I’m one of them, one of a lot of people. A lot of people became contributors to progress, but in changing the world the obstacles change too. After heroin came crack. We did not stop the drug scourge in our community.
What are some of the legacies or long-term impacts of the Lincoln Detox center?
Humbly, I don’t think there would be the new Lincoln Hospital without our work. If it weren’t for the struggles that we took on, the new Lincoln Hospital would never have been built, because all political interests had nothing to do with the interests of the people in the community. We had to fight to put the interests of the community at the forefront and demand that hospital be built. When they shut down the old and moved to the new Lincoln Hospital, they made space for every department except Lincoln Detox. The legacy spreads beyond that, too. If you go into any New York City public hospital, you see the Patient’s Bill of Rights on the wall. That came out of the first takeover at Lincoln Hospital. We made it come alive at Lincoln Detox.
What were some of the strengths, successes, challenges and weaknesses?
There were strengths and successes throughout, but it wasn’t all glory. There were a lot of challenges and weaknesses. From the first day, November 10, 1970, we had a constant influx of people everyday seeking help. Hundreds and hundreds came—I’m not talking about one or two-dozen people—as the word spread about Lincoln Detox, the opportunity for people to walk in and get effective help from everyday people (not white professionals but their own people) who had a loving heart, developing an understanding of things they needed to articulate. People came from all over New York and Connecticut, Long Island, New Jersey, too. The Lincoln Detox program became so successful and effective that a United Nations delegation visited and gave us recognition for it.
At that point acupuncture became controversial because it was “non-medical” people providing medical care. Laws then were passed about who could do acupuncture, making it so that it could only be done under supervision of a medical doctor who might not have a clue of what acupuncture is about. Those kinds of political struggles—to maintain funding for the program, to keep the program alive, against the local police as well as the hospital police who continuously tried to make their way into the program (Lincoln Detox was a sanctuary where addicts could go and not be afraid of the police)—were big challenges. Then we struggled with the hospital to provide meal expenses for the program. People were coming off the streets, didn’t have anything to eat and needed treatment. We struggled and eventually figured it out.
We also struggled with developing our skills in treatment, acupuncture and detoxing. At the time we started the program, there was a big push to promote methadone maintenance as a treatment modality. Methadone is a scary drug, originally developed by Nazi scientists in order to furnish themselves with opiates. It’s highly addictive and the withdrawal is different from heroin. People slowly developed a protocol for detoxing off methadone. We could detox somebody from heroin in ten days and they’d be fine physically. Methadone was very painful for many months—three or four sometimes.
The existence of the program was a thorn in the government’s side. We were revolutionaries and radicals doing work, recruiting people to do work the government didn’t want to happen.
One morning in 1979, we went to work and the Lincoln Hospital was surrounded by police checking the identification of everybody walking in. They had a list of names and members of the Young Lords, Black Panther Party, and Republic of New Afrika and other people were excluded from entering the facilities, and were to be arrested if they tried to enter. They dismantled Lincoln Detox. One component they were very interested in was the acupuncture, because it was a money mill. Some people today say the Lincoln Detox still exists, but it doesn’t. There’s an acupuncture clinic at Lincoln Hospital but the program was dismantled.
Was the collaboration between different groups such as the Young Lords, the Black Panther Party, the Republic of New Afrika and Muslim communities spontaneous, automatic or a more intentional effort in developing the program?
That’s a deep question. There’s the overriding principle of unity and respect and there’s the reality that we were all works in progress. It’s not like you go to sleep one night a junkie and wake up the next morning a revolutionary. There’s a process in growth and change. As products of today’s society, we are not examples of the society we’re building for tomorrow.
Collaboration and solidarity were very important to Lincoln Detox and there were a lot of struggles. We considered the Black Panther Party the vanguard of the revolutionary movement at that time, and there was the reality that the Black Panther Party was disintegrating. There were some people in the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords who were extremely arrogant. We had to struggle against and combat those tendencies. We would always go back to the principle of what is the best interest of the people. The outcome was very positive and we learned so much from each other. In 1973, when the American Indian Movement confronted the FBI at Wounded Knee on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, there was no question for us. It was automatically our responsibility to support and engage with that. We developed a philosophy, a practice that made it possible for us to do those things.
What lessons were learned that could strengthen work today?
I think that a lot of organizing that takes place today is funded. You don’t hear about many initiatives that are independent efforts. One of the things that Lincoln Detox was very much a part of was support for the Attica brothers during the Attica Prison takeover in September 1971. We did 20-something rallies in 15 days throughout New York City. We didn’t have the Internet or cell phones, or institutions financing copy machines or any of that. We hustled to type fliers, cut and pasted pictures and burned stencils.
We built a movement and we looked for ways to make the movement survive without government funding. Nobody could tell us what we were going to do. Today a lot relies on foundation monies, and people focus on the money and don’t engage in campaigns. Even though we forced the government for years to underwrite our work, eventually they had the power and took it out. We didn’t have the power to continue that institution. If we were not in their facility could they have shut us down? I don’t know, but it would have been different.
We need to recognize we can’t have institutions within the institutions. I mean we eventually end up in one way or another in a place where Lincoln Detox ended. We need to think in terms of short range and longer-range efforts. How do you get rid of prisons under imperialism? You have to get rid of imperialism. In the mean time you may take on some struggles that may take on some reforms and that needs to be studied and discussed.
We can look at it from the humanist viewpoint and see that we saved and changed a lot of lives, people who would have been dead from heroin. I’m one of them, one of a lot of people. A lot of people became contributors to progress, but in changing the world the obstacles change too. After heroin came crack. We did not stop the drug scourge in our community.
What are some of the legacies or long-term impacts of the Lincoln Detox center?
Humbly, I don’t think there would be the new Lincoln Hospital without our work. If it weren’t for the struggles that we took on, the new Lincoln Hospital would never have been built, because all political interests had nothing to do with the interests of the people in the community. We had to fight to put the interests of the community at the forefront and demand that hospital be built. When they shut down the old and moved to the new Lincoln Hospital, they made space for every department except Lincoln Detox. The legacy spreads beyond that, too. If you go into any New York City public hospital, you see the Patient’s Bill of Rights on the wall. That came out of the first takeover at Lincoln Hospital. We made it come alive at Lincoln Detox.
Harlem, 1970. Young Lords pose in front of an X-ray truck for tuberculosis detection, a service the organization provided seven days a week.
[1] Black nationalist separatist organization, founded in 1968.
[2] The Brown Berets are a Chicana revolutionary organization that emerged in late 1968 in the southwestern United States. It is still active today and has mainly focused on the issues of combating police violence and organizing the Chicana and Mexican populations against exploitation and racist policies.
