Montréal Counter-information

From the Collective Opposed to Police Brutality (COBP)

On March 15, 2021, the 25th International Day Against Police Brutality will take place regardless of the sanitary situation.

Those involved in the organization of this year’s edition will opt for adequate alternatives according to the evolution of the pandemic, which, besides, had already hit by March 15, 2020.

Because it bears emphasizing what a brutal year it has been! Through difficult times, as the entire population strives to show solidarity, there is a constant value on which we can always count: the police remain merciless.

Let us remember the final 8 minutes and 46 seconds of George Floyd’s life. Let us remember Sheffield Matthews, assassinated by the SPVM in the early hours of October 29th. Let us remember Chantel Moore, Rodney Levi, Eishia Hudson — thirty-four people killed by Canadian police in total over the first 11 months of 2020. Nearly half of those assassinated were Indigenous.

Many activities surrounding the International Day Against Police Brutality will take place before, during, and after March 15, in one form or another. In preparation, we ask you to submit any text messages, images, and video or audio recordings we may share in our annual journal and on our website.

And contact your friends and affinity groups to pass along the message that March 15th is on. Be ready!

In 2021, we are calling for police abolition, pure and simple. For a quarter-century now, we have taken to the streets to force the police to reform, to show signs of improvement — yet year after year, the situation has only worsened. Inquiry commissions are growing in numbers, reports are increasingly damning, and still, nothing meaningful has come of them.

In the end, what is this system of institutional repression and its police force for, here and elsewhere? Who is it protecting? The courts did not protect the women who fought sex offender Gilbert Rozon.

The RCMP did not protect the Indigenous people of New Edinburgh, Nova Scotia, against the racist white people who set their warehouse on fire.
The SQ did not come down on the police officers who raped Indigenous women in Val-d’Or.

The SPVM used, and continues to use, all the tools at its disposal to expel the homeless from their encampment along Notre-Dame Street and many other locations around Montreal.

And finally, as of right now, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) is ruthlessly deporting the “guardian angels” whose thankless work keeps our healthcare system running.

And the situation is the same everywhere. It can be seen in France, in Chile, in Haiti, in Nigeria, in the United States, in Brazil — a worldwide movement that is rumbling and spreading. A movement that is demanding the end of police as we know it. A movement that is shouting out, loud and clear.

Because we have had enough of counting the number of lives lost at the hands of the police, because the tearful sorrow of families and friends has turned to anger, because “injustice” and “impunity” rhyme with “colonial-racist-sexist system”, because there are alternatives: ABOLISH THE POLICE.

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Saturday night, a curfew took effect in the streets of Quebec – the widest and most intense restriction on movement since the October Crisis of 1970. The Legault government has given police the power to stop anyone outside past 8:00pm and fine them up to $6000 if they cannot provide a reason that the cops deem valid. Over the coming weeks COVID will continue to spread. Meanwhile, people without papers, homeless people, those dealing with unsafe living situations, workers of the underground economy, and people who just want to go for a walk at night – among others – are facing harrassment by the police on a nightly basis with no definite end in sight. All this to protect the status quo of an economy that is killing us and the planet. This brutal development in an era of experiments in social control cannot go without a response. It is not only possible, it is necessary, to fight back.

We refuse this escalating government control over our lives while rejecting the position of the populist right and conspiracy theorists. These groups either deny the threat of COVID-19 altogether or falsely blame certain racialized groups, often with thinly veiled dog-whistles about a “globalist elite.” Their response to COVID makes clear that we are faced with a confrontation between two ideas of freedom. The freedom we want to defend does not subjugate individuals to a state-sponsored idea of the collective good. However, it demands that we acknowledge the material reality of our world and the actual conditions of oppression – ours and others’ – and not take shelter in whatever fictional geopolitical plotlines might soothe our sense of powerlessness and affirm our indignation. This freedom assigns responsibility to each of us to fight for a life worth living, rather than endlessly projecting responsibility onto imaginary enemies. COVID is real, so is the police state.

We have never believed Legault’s calls for restrictions were based on concerns for our safety. Since the beginning of the pandemic Legault and his cronies have hesitated to shut down workplaces and schools, while at the same time further restricting our ability to create our lives on our own terms outside of work. This shows that the state only cares about us while we continue to produce and consume, keeping us just healthy enough to continue lining the pockets of the wealthy. All over the world the rich have gotten exponentially richer during the pandemic, while our pain increases. Capitalists and governments (they are the same!) are adapting to social restrictions, allowing them to profit off us while we continue to suffer. We have always been against this world of work which steals our ability to create our lives for ourselves. Let’s not allow the state to further define how we live and how we protect ourselves and our loved ones.

The criminalization of our relationships by the state is harming the mental health of more and more of our friends and family. A life lost to a mental health crisis is no less tragic than a life lost to COVID-19. The press conference of January 6th made it clear that mental health is barely an afterthought to the government. We believe how we live our lives is more important than mere survival, and reject any definition of health dictated by the demands of economic production.

Meanwhile, the state is attempting to turn us against each other. They would have us become our own little surveillance operations that need only call the snitching hotline put at our disposal to do the job of the police – who themselves have been invited to “make their rounds, sirens on, through the streets of cities in order to mark the beginning of this exceptional period”, according to La Presse (January 8, 2020).

But contrary to La Presse, we expect this period will be anything but exceptional. Exposing the power of the police state at its most violent is at best a test; at worst it is the new normal. It is up to each of us to ensure that their show of force cannot hold up against our inventiveness, and that the streets, emptied out of their inhabitants, can become a playground.

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

A lot has changed in the past year. If you would have told me a year ago that the government would ban gatherings in private homes, and given police special powers to forcibly enter people’s homes without a warrant*, I would have assumed that you were a paranoid conspiracy kook. Yet such is the reality in 2021.

A certain video recently surfaced showing police dragging a Gatineau resident out of a house where 6 or 7 people were gathered. Apparently, a neighbour had reported a small gathering to police. I feel that it illustrates the current state of affairs well. Please take a minute to view it:

It is very strange to me that very few activists seem to be raising their voices against this draconian expansion of police powers. We should keep in mind that civil rights, once relinquished, may only be regained through struggle. Think about it. Now that the precedent is set that the state can override our civil rights, what is to stop politicians from sending police to invade people’s homes whenever it is convenient to do so. When Quebec prime minister Francois Legault gave the police power to enter homes without a warrant, it was done as an emergency measure. Well, here we are, many months later, and there is no end to the emergency in sight. I, for one, am concerned that these temporary measures may become permanent. My perspective is that previous generations of activists fought so that we could have some of the legal protections that we have. They weren’t gifts from benevolent masters. They were hard-won. My point is that, if the state is able to take a right away, why would they give it back? I think that rights exist in the minds of the people – in order for a people to behave as if they have a right, they must believe that they have that right. My concern is that many people seem to no longer believe that freedom of assembly is a right that their neighbours should have. For one thing, we are witnessing the rise of a snitch culture. A certain segment of the population now feels that they are doing the moral thing by reporting their neighbours to the police. As members of an oft-criminalized political leaning, we should be concerned. I believe that there is a “Use-It-Or-Lose-It” nature to civil rights. If people begin to believe that their rights apply only in times of peace and prosperity, then what happens if we enter into a prolonged period of economic depression and political turmoil?

In my view, effective political organizing is contingent upon the ability to assemble, whether legally or illegally, openly or clandestinely. I believe that anarchists should defend the right of freedom of assembly. It seems somewhat insane to me that this is even an argument that needs to be made in 2021, but such are the times that we live in. Nothing is more foundational to anarchism that the principle of voluntary association, that is, the freedom of individuals to associate and to disassociate at will. Yet, in the name of public health, the state has effectively suspended the freedom of assembly. Strangely, most anarchists have remained silent on this subject. Do trust the state to return our rights once this crisis is over? To me, that puts far too much confidence in the state.

I assume that most of you reading this would agree that we must, on principle, oppose the expansion of police powers, however, for some strange reason, criticism of measures taken in the name of public health seems to be taboo for most Leftists nowadays, at least in the public discourse. This worries me. People could be forgiven for thinking that anarchists in 2021 are pro-lockdown, and really, how can one be pro-lockdown without being pro-state? There is nothing voluntary about a lockdown. There is nothing voluntary about the imposition of a curfew.

If anarchists do not oppose the expansion of state powers, what cultural currency will anarchism have? There is nothing voluntary about a lockdown. It does not compute in my mind that someone could be pro-lockdown and anti-state. We are now living in a political context in which the police can invade your home without a warrant*, without laying criminal charges, without even accusing you of a crime, and in which the state encourages people to snitch on their neighbours for holding small gatherings. It seems to me that the state is boiling the frog. And at which point do we begin to resist? And how do we resist?

My feeling is that anarchism in our political context is struggling to adapt itself to the times. We have always been greatly outnumbered by liberals, people who essentially trust the government to govern in the best interest of the people. In a time where the political reality has been transformed so rapidly, in a time characterized by a dizzying cascade of confusing information, misinformation, and disinformation, we are losing our way, following the liberal herd into the state-sanctioned pen. We must steadfastly affirm what our values are, and one value that anarchists have always held is that the freedom of assembly is a foundational right that must be defended.

I am interested in starting a conversation about how anarchists should organize in response to lockdown measures. If this resonates with you, please write to vertetnoire@riseup.net.

*Technically, this is debatable. In September, 2020, Legault announced a new system for the expedited approval of warrants. Presumably, this was introduced to bring Quebec’s lockdown laws into compliance with Canadian laws, however, it represents a radical departure from the previous definition of what a warrant is. Whereas a warrant used to require presenting evidence that an individual may have committed a crime or is engaged in criminal activity, now a system of “tele warranting” allows rapid approval of a warrant. I suspect this form of “warrant” is a phone call in which the officer’s request is rubber-stamped. I don’t regard this shift in definition as legitimate, and I believe that in this age of propaganda we must be wary when the state suddenly re-defines words.