From From Embers
I talk to Rosa, a friend and anarchist person of colour living in Montreal, about racism, identity politics, identity-based organizing and projects she’s involved with. Thanks to Rosa for the music selections!
From the Committees for Territorial Defence and Decolonisation [Facebook page]
Last summer, a barricade stopped gas extraction by the petroleum company Junex at the Galt site, near Gaspé in Quebec. Ever since, the River Camp, established not far from the blockade, continues to keep watch over the territory. We are asking you to join the camp and make it vibrant. The takeover of this region by oil companies and its destruction are not a fatality. Only a sustained presence can put an end to the destruction of the rivers, forests, and all forms of life. Defeating the dispossession of the region’s inhabitants and the pillaging of unceded and unconquered Mi’kmaq territory is possible.
The River Camp held on through the fall and winter. As well as being a site of resistance, the camp became a place of meetings, exchanges, and popular education warning against the predation by oil companies on the Mi’kmaq territory of Gespegewagi. Since the end of May, the Quebec government has made known its intention to evict the camp which is on so-called public lands. This threat does not scare us, it only signals a desire by Junex to start drilling again. Everyone who cares about protecting the land and creating new solidarity between settlers and indigenous peoples is called to join us to continue building a front against extractive industries.
The defence and decolonisation of territories require more than an individual, moral, or theoretical stance – it implies physical presence and confrontation with the destructive forces of capital and the State. All decolonial or ecological critiques that motivate our mobilisations are worth nothing if they can’t be deployed during significant political moments. Such events are the perfect occasion to invent new practices of resistance and create new bonds
In view of the imminent resumption of drilling, our pursuit of solidarity on Turtle Island brings to question our ability to lead struggles on a level with the current catastrophe. The fantasy of alliances between political tendencies, like those between settlers and indigenous peoples, must make way for concrete and continued engagement on the ground.
The colonial machine is ravaging the world by its extractive economy in a sempiternal process of deprivation and destruction. The struggle against this disaster, in solidarity with the historic guardians of the water and the land, constitutes a meaningful opposition to a dispossession of more than 500 years. The defeat of the modern/colonial project will only be possible by means of concrete actions leading to a radical transformation of land use.
The River Camp is anactualisation of that project.
The call is out! In order to persist, and build force in the region, the River Camp needs renewed energy over the course of the coming months. This is an invitation to those willing to spend a few days at the camp or stay for months or even years. All contributions are welcome.
THE CAMP IS LOCATED ON ROUTE 198, 20 KM NORTH OF GASPÉ AND 60 KM SOUTH OF MURDOCHVILLE
Bring your tents, hammocks, friends, and everything necessary for the upkeep and expansion of the camp: food, materials and tools for construction or mobilisation, as well as everything that is necessary to sustain your life form.
To join us, you can write at the following address: campdelariviere@gmail.com or on our Facebook page Camp de la Rivière.
For help in forming Committees for Territorial Defence and Decolonisation in your neighbourhood, your reserve, your city, or your region you can contact us at the following address: cddt@riseup.net or our Facebook page Comités de défense et de décolonisation des territoires.
From subMedia
This week on TFN we give you a peek into what could become Klanada’s Standing Rock and bring you updates from political prisoners in the United Snakes and Greece.
To find out how to support Red Fawn go to https://www.standwithredfawn.org/
For distribution at schools, workplaces, coffee shops, barricades, events, and demonstrations!
From subMedia
Rob Turner, project manager at Alton Gas, dropped by the camp for “maintenance” work. Not only, does he fail to acknowledge that this site is located on unceded Mi’kmaq territory, but he also implies that the Nova Scotia premiere should have authority on this stolen land.
For more info, check this site.
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
In 2016 the federal government announced the construction of a new migrant detention center in Laval. This prison, which is anticipated to hold up to 158 undocumented migrants, is intended to be built on Correctional Service of Canada grounds, right beside Leclerc prison, and is slated to open in 2021. While the Liberal government is attempting to spin this project as a more humane way to detain migrants, we call it what it is — a prison, and know that this is simply prettier window dressing on a violent system of imprisonment and deportation, one that keeps people locked in cages while tearing apart families and communities. We want a world without prisons or colonial borders, a world where people, not states, can decide how they can move and where they can stay. Stopping the construction of the Laval Immigration Detention Centre is one step in the struggle to tear down migrant prisons everywhere.
Block new prisons from being built and shut down the old ones!
This site is an information clearinghouse for news, analysis, and materials related to the struggle against the Laval Immigration Detention Centre.
Anonymous Submission to MTL Counter-info
Before the weekend of action
June 27th, CRAM shared the claim for the painting of the Maisonneuve and Macdonald monuments.
The weekend of action in photos
A nice victory – we promised them hell, they got a taste of hell.
Let’s keep up the fight, fascism shall not pass! Another call to action will be published later in the summer, stay tuned!
From Solidarity Across Borders
Refugees Welcome Caravan Wraps Up 3 Days of Outreach in Border Region from Coaticook to Huntingdon
Canada Day Action
Signs bearing the words “CROSSING HERE due to (un)Safe Third Country Agreement. Still on unceded indigenous lands” were placed at five different sites along the Canada-US border early morning on Canada Day.
Photos: https://bit.ly/2tZJR2I [Facebook album]
There are multiple sites similar to Roxham Road every few kilometers along Quebec’s border with the United States. In addition to sending a message of support to refugees and migrants who are crossing irregularly from the United States, this action was meant to encourage people living in the area to actively support them – to open minds and hearts, and, in a very literal sense, to Open the Borders.
The signs draw attention to the reason people are crossing in this way: the so-called Safe Third Country agreement, which prevents migrants from making refugee claims if they go to a regular border crossing. They also question the legitimacy of the border and the Canadian state, established by European colonial powers to consolidate control over stolen lands and resources.
Caravan
The action marked the end of the “Refugees Welcome Caravan” which was on the road from June 29th to July 1st, traveling along the Canada-US border from Coaticook to Huntingdon to build support in the border region for migrants. At public gatherings such as an antique car show in Venise en Québec and a farmers’ market in Frelighsburg, shopping mall parking lots, and city centres, the caravan attracted attention with a musical procession, juggling and fire tricks, while passing the message with posters, flyers, speeches and improv theatre. Over the three days, more than 60 people – from Montreal and the region – participated in the 10-car caravan, which spent the two nights in a church and a farm.
Photos: https://bit.ly/2u3ylDu [Facebook album]
The vast majority of people the caravan met supported the message of welcome to refugees. Caravan participants took the opportunity to exchange with people who thought Canada was much more welcoming than the United States and those blinded by racism into believing the fear-mongering propaganda of the right-wing and populist politicians in the hopes of shifting their perspective to the points of view of the oppressed.
Despite current public attention to the violence of the American immigration system, Canada continues to close its border to migrants coming from the United States as refugees. When people manage to cross irregularly, Canada’s refugee system is the next barrier they face: less than 50% of people whose files have been heard (as of March 2018) have been accepted. People who are rejected are deported or forced into precarity as undocumented migrants.
Solidarity Across Borders rejects the case-by-case approach and calls for status for everyone crossing the border. Though Canada is certainly no paradise, people are coming because they think it is the best option for them. No one should have to go through the stress, precarity and humiliation of trying to prove they are a refugee and why they deserve to stay here. No one should be threatened with deportation. No one should be stripped of status and be forced to live in the shadows, prey to exploitation and fearing discovery.
#NoBordersCaravan
#NoCrossingisIllegal
#Statusforall
A particularly disgusting piece of “fake news” was being shared on social media following to two far-right rallies that occurred in Montreal on July 1st.
While La Meute and Storm Alliance were immobilized by antifascists, a smaller march called by the Front Patriotique du Québec marched from Carré St-Louis to the Jacques Cartier Bridge.
Within hours of the FPQ march ending, a story began to be shared in their networks – and also by members of La Meute, Storm Alliance, and other such groups – about a brutal attack on three Indigenous people who had been trying to join the FPQ march. According to this story, antifascists spotted these would-be Patriots at an unnamed metro station and beat them so badly they had to be hospitalized:
In another post, this same “Calinda Nath Grondin Cado” claimed specifically that it was Jaggi Singh who led this violent attack:
As the story was repeated on twitter by La Meute member Sébastien Chabot (alias World Truth), it became a matter of “the troops of Eve Tores” (sic) who had sent three people to hospital:
The spin people were giving this on social media was that “antifa” had attacked Indigenous people hoping to attend the FPQ march. This plays into the increasingly prominent narrative within the national-populist right, that Québécois were never colonizers but were the historic allies of Indigenous people, who are now called upon to stand with Quebec against the “invasion” of “illegal immigrants” and a corrupt (English) Canadian federal government.
The problem with the story of this attack, of course, is that it is not true. Not even a little bit. As became clear quickly enough.
Thanks to work by comrades at LetroupeauQC, it quickly became clear that the people shown in the photos were in fact victims of violence … just not in Montreal, not in 2018, and not from antifascists.
Mathieu Grégoire was the victim of a homophobic assault in Beauce in 2016:
Stephanie Littlewood was the victim of a brutal assault from her ex-partner in Leeds, England, 2016:
Nagieb Khaja is a journalist who was beaten by border guards at the Turkey/Syria border in 2015:
Yet again, the far right has been caught peddling lies. What makes this case special is how brazen the lie was and how quickly it was debunked by people on our side. Indeed, within 24 hours, members of La Meute were being warned not to share the story, that doing so would simply discredit their side:
While it is good to see that even our opponents have now conceded that this story is untrue, it would be a mistake for us to simply move on without highlighting some important dynamics in play.
First, we must note that two people were accused publicly on social media of being behind a violent assault. Eve Torres is a candidate for Québec Solidaire in the Outremont-Mont Royal riding, who has garnered media attention due to the fact that she wears a hijab. Jaggi Singh is a Montreal-based anarchist and antifascist who both the far right and “mainstream” political and media figures have tried to paint as the “leader of the antifas”. Both Torres and Singh spent the day at the anti-La Meute demonstration and so couldn’t have been involved in any assault some place else, even if it had occurred, but this didn’t stop members of the far right from accusing them. This was both slander, and incitement to violence – more than one person commented on social media how there would be reprisals for this non-attack. It is no coincidence that these two were singled out in this way: hijab-wearing and racialized activists in Quebec are prime targets of the far right here, and always end up topping their “enemies” list. A situation which the mainstream media and political figures are complicit in creating and maintaining, due to its own racism, sexism, and Islamophobia.
Second, this serves as a reminder that the far right is built on lies and misconceptions about the world. Not a surprise, something we all know. Nonetheless, we assume that most of our opponents are at least sincere – i.e. they may be repeating lies, but we assume they believe them. Yet it is important to keep in mind that there are operators who understand the situation, who realize how credulous their fellow far-rightists are, and who take advantage by consciously fabricating lies in order to advance their agenda. (We saw this in December in the case of “fake news” targeting mosques in Cote-des-Neiges, and more recently when a far-right troll tried to fabricate evidence of sexual assault by a medic at the G7 protests.) Whether these people are police operatives attempting to manipulate the overall political situation, pathological individuals seeking attention, or unscrupulous political agents who don’t mind lying to their own side is often difficult to tell.
Dirty politics of this sort are referred to by police and military as “psychological operations.” Progressive movements need to understand that we are now operating in a situation where such psychological operations are increasingly common, and we need to take precautions to reduce their impact. This is not a problem that will go away, and we are horribly mistaken (and naive) if we believe that all cases will be this easy to spot. We have to be careful.
