On April 11th. A group of Montreal Anarchists snuck into the offices of RBC armed with flyers, stickers and paint cans. They left a message for the bank: Divest from CGL. Coastal GasLink is a filthy pipeline project being built on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory without their consent. Royal Bank of Canada or RBC is heavily invested in this disgusting project since they simply don’t care about Indigenous sovereignty and the ongoing climate catastrophe.
In the early afternoon, a small group of anarchists snuck into the RBC offices at Place Ville-Marie. Armed with flyers, stickers and spray paint cans, they left a message for the bank: DIVEST FROM CGL. Since the Fall of 2021, the Wet’suwet’en have been actively campaigning for RBC to stop funding the destruction of their land, but RBC continues to ignore them.
As long as RBC is funding pipeline projects, they will find us in their way.
– some fucking angry anarchists
Reflections On Ongoing Anticolonial Solidarity:
Imminent Threat: Coastal Gaslink (CGL) is set to drill under the Wedzin Kwa this Spring 2022. The people, land, language and culture of Wet’suwet’en as well as the animals residing on these territories are facing annihilation of their lifeways. For those who have heard the call to action, this upcoming year is crucial to the future of Wet’suwet’en self-determination and sovereignty.
Solidarity actions keep the Gidimt’en fight visible and the people on the frontlines safer from police repression and CGL harassment (https://twitter.com/Gidimten/status/1450808498833473549) Just in the past month alone, the RCMP made 54 visits to Gidimt’en Checkpoint, waking elders at all hours of the night and threatening arrest. These ongoing acts of intimidation and police repression are a part of a broader strategy by the Canadian state to use the legal and judicial systems to continue to deny Wet’suwet’en sovereignty, despite the fact that the Canadian judicial system recognized Wet’suwet’en sovereignty in the Delgamuukw v British Columbia decision.
Longterm Struggle: Commitment is a long breath that is constantly threatened by exhaustion. This struggle against CGL takes on many dimensions: decolonial, environmental, anti-capitalist and feminist. The numerous “man camps” invading the Yintah intensifies and facilitates men’s ability to kidnap, rape and murder Indigenous women, girls and two-spirited individuals (see the Final Report by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, p. 593). As long as CGL and the RCMP remain on the territory so too do the heightened levels of colonial gendered violence.
We continue to support Gidimt’en Checkpoint’s fight against Coastal GasLink and extractive companies because the struggle towards Indigenous self-determination is a long, arduous struggle. Solidarity organizing is most effective when it is consistent and strategic. Our ongoing efforts contributes to the strength and `visibility of their fight for self-determination, sovereignty, and freedom.
Imagine the strength and capacity of solidarity work if people engaging in this kind of organizing had personal and collective stakes in the game? For instance, there are many Indigenous people fighting across Turtle Island to be free from the settler state and to be free to govern themselves as they deem in accordance to their own ways. There are also many non-Indigenous people fighting to be as free as they can from the institutionalization and regulation of their bodies, relationships, and communities. These varying experiences and histories of struggle provide a basis for profound points of connection.
Imagination is an asset when it facilitates various ways to make this fight visible. Adapt the tactics and organizing strategies to your capacities and resources. Most importantly, act. It’s time.
This week across southern ontario and quebec, we’ve lost count on how many RBC branches were targeted (we estimate 10+) for disruption and attack. So-called toronto, hamilton, montreal… friends in places as small as orillia and as distant as nanaimo. These actions respond to a need to target investors in the Coastal Gaslink pipeline project – which is currently behind schedule thanks to the direct attack that took place in february as well as the successful campaigns to block the project thus far lead by Gidimt’en Clan – but is still rapidly being constructed on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory.
RBC is one of its largest financial backers, and in the past week and preceding months, has been the subject of pressure tactics ranging from direct action interfering with bank branches, to pushing elites/clients to pull their money out of RBC accounts, to organizing to disrupt RBC’s Annual General Meeting in Toronto. The message is clear: the Royal Bank of Canada needs to divest from CGL immediately.
In hamilton, where we’re writing from, bank branches were vandalized, had their locks glued, and ATMs damaged. We chose these methods to directly interfere with the operations of the bank, hurt them financially and in their public image, and to contribute to the spread of easily-replicable, anonymous actions.
RBC was the central target this week, but they are not alone in complicity. We can also set our sights on other big banks, TC Energy, many related contractors and developers, the RCMP, and the State of so-called Canada.
This is only going to escalate. CGL, and their financial allies like RBC, perpetuate the situation by continuing their exploitative projects and violent attacks on Wet’suwet’en territory. The Wedzin Kwa remains under the looming threat of being destroyed via drill. Elders, matriarchs, supporters, comrades, and land defenders face daily assault. We all need to prepare for more, to respond with more boldness, to do more damage. If they push, then we then will push back, but harder. With only a bit of planning and courage, we can act in ways that feed our spirits and keep the fight alive. Stay safe, and we look forward to seeing your work out there in the days to come.
Comments Off on RBC Quebec President Evening Home Visit! *Video*
Mar012022
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Around dinner time on the night of February 23rd, two dozen anticolonial militants paid a surprise visit to RBC Quebec president Nadine Renaud-Tinker, at her 734 Upper Lansdowne avenue Westmount home. While Indigenous land defenders and settler accomplices resist wave after wave of colonial assaults to defend the Wet’suwet’en Yintah and the Wedzin Kwa river, investors like RBC comfortably profit off of the ongoing genocide of First Peoples and the destruction of unceded land for capitalist extractivist projects. Let’s remember that the Royal Bank of KKKanada leads a group of 27 banks providing the 6.8 billion dollars needed to build the Coastal GasLink Pipeline. It has, since 2016, contributed more than 200 billion dollars to the fossil fuel industry.
Though it is neither possible nor desirable to recreate the cruelty financed by president Renaud-Tinker on Wet’suwet’en land, militants wished for her to also experience the feeling of seeing unwelcomed visitors at her doorstep. They stayed for more than an hour, chanting slogans and dancing to music. The energy was high and comrades didn’t shy away from expressing their dissatisfaction, before leaving safely.
Following the recent sabotage of a Coastal GasLink drill site, increased RCMP repression and surveillance is already being deployed on Wet’suwet’en territory, and our solidarity is more important than ever! Stay tuned, the fight continues! #AllOutForWedzinKwa
Comments Off on In Defence of the Attack on the CGL Drill Site
Feb252022
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
On February 17 the Coastal GasLink drill pad site by the banks of the Wedzin Kwa (morice river) was seriously damaged by an unknown group of courageous individuals. As anarchist individuals living in the North who are supportive of struggles in defence of the land and against ongoing colonization by canada and its corporate interests we declare our support for this action and encourage others to do so.
While we don’t know exactly what happened that night we can study the statements by CGL and the RCMP to read through the bullshit and get some picture. It seems undeniable from the photos that tremendous property damage was done: Vehicles used by the ex-cop ex-military mercenary Forsythe Security were damaged (the so-called poor traumatized “CGL workers”) and machines and trailers were trashed almost certainly by means of commandeered CGL heavy machinery. Other claims by CGL and the pigs are unsupported by their facts and are almost certainly bullshit: “Workers” themselves were clearly not the subject of attack since all damage was limited to vehicles and buildings and ceased as soon as security left the site. The supposed attempt to set a vehicle on fire with a security guard inside is nothing but conjecture and nonsense. In a video interview CGL released with the mercenary involved he made that claim based on the fact that a flare landed in the back of his truck while he attempted to force his way through land defenders back to the drill pad after having been expelled. Hardly seems like an attempt at lighting a vehicle on fire and in the context clearly a defensive act. Throughout the incident it seems clear that force was only used as necessary to scare CGL security into leaving so that the real work of demolishing CGL’s infrastructure of violence could begin. The axe-murderer narrative hardly stands up to their own facts!
Let’s talk for a minute about the RCMP’s claim about officers being led into a trap and injured. They claimed that they were met with projectiles while attempting to dismantle a blockade and that they then charged in the dark through the road block at which point one of them stepped on a spike board. Spike boards are defensive instruments used to stop vehicles from ramming through road blocks. Rather than their “lulled into a trap” spin this sounds like a defensive action in which people tried to stall a likely-violent police response, only used projectiles when it became necessary to defend the blockade and in which the only police injury was self-inflicted by an officer running through the dark into an unknown situation. Given the history of RCMP police violence in the region and their deployment of assault rifles, attack dogs and use of torture against land defenders it seems clear that this “violence” was defensive in nature and protected people from the far more serious violence the RCMP would reasonably be expected to have done to people if they’d reached the drill pad.
What we are left with is this: After years of trespassing and violating consent, after three militarized RCMP raids at the service of CGL, after years of harassment and intimidation of land defenders by CGL’s Forsythe security and after more peaceful methods had failed to stop CGL’s continuing violence against the land and indigenous relationships and laws some unknown individuals struck back with an impressive act of sabotage and destruction against corporate property. There is a very big difference between violence against property and violence against people and life and compared to the violence that CGL and the RCMP have been unleashing this action at the drill pad seems restrained, proportional and commendable.
We see this action as a natural outgrowth of the ongoing resistance against CGL and not in any way unprovoked or unexpected. While we don’t want to make assumptions about who was responsible we think it’s reasonable to believe this was undertaken by people acting in defense of the land and river. That is why we have referred to them as land defenders. May others continue this fight, take action against CGL, canada and on-going colonization where they stand and draw inspiration and courage from this action as we do.
What appears to be a highly effective act of sabotage carried out by Indigenous land defenders: cue the conspiracy theorists…
And some aren’t even theorizing, they assert it as fact: it was the cops, it was CGL… Here’s a theory: the attack was carried out by Indigenous people who, in the cold dead of night, set out on a mission to sabotage the CGL pipeline.
They carried out an audacious and complex attack that I would imagine started with getting the security guards away from vehicles and buildings. At some point after the security guards had fled, blockades and counter-vehicle devices were put in place on the only road leading to the site, delaying police response probably by hours. In that time the warriors carried out millions of dollars in sabotage.
Considering all this, I think it’s important to acknowledge that this may just be what it appears to be: an attack carried out by Indigenous warriors.
I’ve seen people posting about a bomb attack the RCMP carried out in Alberta in the 1990s as proof of cops carrying out fake attacks. This bombing was part of the police investigation of Wiebo Ludwig and his campaign against the oil and gas industry. The action was intended to entrap Ludwig. With cooperation from the oil company, the police blew up an abandoned, unused shed. It was in no way a major act of sabotage, in contrast to what is now being reported in Wet’suwet’en territory. It was insignificant compared to the actual sabotage that was occurring and for which Ludwig was widely suspected… and for which there was a virtual media blackout by the oil companies and RCMP who did not want the practice of sabotage to spread.
One of the problems with this conspiracy mongering is that is undermines the effectiveness of this action. The more it spreads and festers the more people question if it was a genuine act of resistance or not. Who does this inspire? In whose interests are acts of Indigenous resistance diminished rather than promoted? I also believe this conspiracy mongering demoralizes those who carried out the action (and who are now being hunted by police).
Comments Off on New Disruptive Action in Solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en Targeting Royal Bank of Canada Branches (Again)
Feb102022
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
On the night of February 6th, 2022 in Montreal (Tio’Tia:Ke), non-Indigenous allies demonstrated their solidarity with the Gidimt’en clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. The instigators of this action are responding to a call by Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs to #ShutdownCanada in response to the invasion of their territory, the Yintah, by the RCMP for the third consecutive year.
We used many different tactics : smashed windows, glued locks and card readers, and spray-painting #FuckRBC on the interior, so all RBC clients were aware of why their bank has been consistently targeted for the past 5 months.
The Wet’suwet’en people are currently resisting the construction of an oil pipeline by Coastal GasLink, a TransCanada Energy company – which is known in Canada for attempting to build the Energy East pipeline – on their traditional territory. Among other things, the construction of the pipeline puts the Wedzin Kwa River at risk, since the pipeline is planned to pass under it. This river serves as a source of water and fish, and is central to the traditional practices of the Wet’suwet’en people.
These were small and easy actions, and we encourage everyone to get together with their trusted friends and test out all the different ways we can fuck with RBC. Several solidarity actions have indeed taken place in different places across so-called Canada, in the last weeks. The call for solidarity actions is ongoing: “The Gidimt’en Clan invites you to organize demonstrations and actions in your region. It also calls to put pressure on governments, banks and investors […] to make a donation […] and to come to the camp.
Solidarity with all peoples who resist! No to Coastal GasLink!
Comments Off on An Initiation to Non-Peaceful Action Seen from the Inside
Jan262022
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
We are a group of young activists that have been active for only a few years. The experience of participating in different environmental organizations made us realize the limits of these organizations with respect to the effectiveness of our struggles. So in recent months, we decided that we wanted to try to inflict economic damage on fossil fuel companies through our actions. This decision led to much in the way of questions, preparation, reflections and ideas. These things are what we would like to discuss in this text.
It began with many of us acknowledging something: the environmental struggle has hit a wall. We repeat actions of the same intensity (whether we’re 20,000 or 500,000 in the streets) for a cause that is becoming radically more urgent. We complain that the government doesn’t listen, but we choose to stay in a passive position, always in a posture of making demands while more than enough evidence has accumulated to disillusion us. Wishing to be lucid about the effectiveness of our methods as much as what little room for manoeuvre we have left, we felt the necessity to do more and to do better. These reflections emerged as well following readings like “How to Sabotage a Pipeline” by Andreas Malm, texts on the history of the Earth First movement (“Down with Empire! Up with Spring!“), and written reflections from ZADs and from current environmentalist groups.
Some may tell us that these reflections needed to come sooner. They may be right. Still, it is absurd to ask an activist to move from inaction to the most radical form of action. Every activist accumulates experiences that lead them to reflect on the effectiveness of their actions. Each one of us may then evaluate what they can do, based on their desires and abilities.
So we started to think about what would be within reach for us and have a certain impact. The first obvious obstacle that presents itself is the law. We believe that right now, everyone must reflect on their capacity and will to break the law in order to have an impact. Accepting legal risk takes time, it’s a psychological process not to be ignored — being comfortable with the actions that follow all the more so. This taking of risks may throw into question some of our aspirations and make us face our privileges as well as what they may imply as responsibilities. Therefore we invite anyone with the will to intensify their political action to reflect on the legal risks they are ready to take. Ultimately, we see it as a necessity so as to have a greater impact. It’s a matter of finding a balance between risk and intended impact. We do not seek to get arrested “to get arrested” or in a perspective of civil disobedience with an audience. We no longer want to be in a position of making demands to those in power, we want to cause direct economic damage with the goal of forcing a prohibition of fossil fuels.
The second obstacle apparent is that of preparation. We weren’t prepared to take this kind of action, and information stays hidden (with reason). We had to delve into different sources ourselves to learn certain techniques, to have good legal protection, and to communicate with each other securely. All this preparation takes more time. However, if we wish to intensify our struggle, we must get off the beaten trail and try to learn on our own the best we can. Through this process, there will be experiments and mistakes, and we will not all become perfect activists overnight. This lack of preparation and knowledge must not be an impediment to the intensification of our actions, it only requires that we make the time to learn by ourselves and share our knowledge.
The third barrier that appears is that of our (in)experience related to our age and the network of who we know. We are part of a new generation of activists that was not around for some big dates of struggle in “Quebec”. This inexperience leads us to have less practice, but also less knowledge of activist structures and practices. This inexperience can also elicit distrust from older comrades who see us as naive or unable to act in view of an escalation of pressure tactics. This distrust has its reasons, but we still would have more to gain by uniting as much as possible and sharing knowledge that was erased with the dissolution of the ASSÉ and burnout. Not that we put aside the necessity of organizing in affinity groups to build trust and maintain security.
Lastly, the fourth barrier we face, one that we may feel inside us without sharing it, is an emotional barrier. Lowering your fears about actions you’re doing, facing confrontations with the police and their intimidation tactics (we recognize that for some people confronting the police is not a matter of choice), developing the courage needed to trust yourself on new paths that lie outside societal approval: all these things require emotional work that takes time, even more so as we may carry within us the image of the perfect revolutionary who is afraid of nothing, who fights the police without fear, maybe even with a smile, and we consider that it may be a question of nature. Whereas in our lives, we want to take care of each other, promote understanding of points of view and foster kindness, our organizing asks that we harden ourselves, face our fears, express our anger and take our legitimate place even if it means confronting the order of the world. This work on our nature and our emotions should be seen not as a barrier, but as an invitation to develop sharing circles to do this work together rather than alone. Ultimately, developing these qualities will allow us to live a life that is closer to our ideals and allow us to be happier.
Surmounting these barriers as much as possible, we carefully planned our action. The action aimed to damage gas stations in order to render them inoperable for several days. In the course of things, we had our challenges. One location ended up being surveilled, and another closed a few weeks before our action, rendering it useless. We nevertheless gained practical experience by which we faced our fears and learned lessons from our mistakes. It is necessary to begin acting, even if we are not perfect, even if we don’t know everything. What’s important is to organize as well as we can but above all to act, because all that stops us is essentially fear and a lack of time.
In conclusion, we believe it is necessary for the struggle to evolve toward a plurality of direct actions. Our goal in this text is to share that it is not necessary to know everything, that it’s normal for many obstacles to appear along the way, and that we can all autonomously gain the knowledge and reflections needed towards this end. Ecological struggles will mark the coming years. They are struggles that we have no choice but to win. We would like for the next people who organize in the context of the ecological crisis to not take the typical peaceful path. We also want to call for activists from previous generations to share their knowledge with us so that we can move forward together. However, we do not overlook the impact that repression had on some of our friends. We recognize the courage of the people who were or are in any way a part of struggles past and present.
With plane-loads of cops on the way, Coyote Camp executed a strategic retreat to avoid police violence and criminalization. Cops are left with an empty camp.
We will continue to fight Coastal GasLink, but can not do so if all of our warriors are taken as political prisoners.
We call on supporters to continue to come to the yintah and to continue to take action where you stand. Visit https://yintahaccess.com for more info.
