Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
By accepting to be the general contractor for the new Laval migrant detention center, Tisseur Inc. made a grave mistake. On the night of October 26th we decided to make our contribution to the struggle against the system of borders and prisons in all its forms. We set fire to a truck on the banks of the Lachine Canal, on the site of another Tisseur project. We’re not done.
– anarchists
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
As part of a series of actions targeting migrant prison profiteers, around 12 of the spherical shaped biogas-capturing wells designed by Lemay and installed in Parc Frédéric-Back were tagged with the words ‘fuck lemay’. Many of these wells also had their unique identifiers blacked-out. Some park benches and one large map of the park, also designed by lemay, were tagged with anti-lemay, anti-cop, anti-authoritarian, and antifascist slogans and symbols. These much needed modifications will no doubt add to the park’s “unique environmental layout”, enhancing the “landscape’s feeling of otherworldliness”.
From Solidarity Across Borders
What: Multi-City Day of Action Against Migrant Detention
When: October 3, 2019
Where: Pan-Canadian & international
Over the past two years, there has been an active struggle against the construction of a new prison for migrants planned for Laval, Québec. Opposition to this project has included many groups and tactics, each fighting in their own way for an end to Canada’s border and prison regimes.
The anti-detention committee of Solidarity Across Borders has participated in this struggle by organizing demonstrations, workshops, press conferences, a declaration against the prison (now signed by more than 80 groups), and temporary occupations of the construction site itself. But despite sustained and widespread opposition to this project, initial construction of the new Laval migrant prison recently began.
We are now faced with the urgency of acting rapidly to build pressure on the companies that have received contracts for the construction of this new prison. We have begun a series of weekly actions focusing on these profiteers, and are calling for a multi-city Day of Action on October 3rd, organized by allied groups in cities across the country and internationally.
The new prison in Laval is just one part of Canada’s immigration detention system that the Day of Action aims to challenge. Whether it’s federal migrant prisons, provincial jails detaining migrants for the CBSA, companies profiting off migrant detention, CBSA offices, or the NGOs implementing the CBSA’s new ‘alternative’ systems of surveillance and control, Canada’s immigration detention infrastructure spreads far and wide. We are calling for actions on October 3rd that both challenge this system and help make its infrastructure more visible.
Can you help organize an action in your city? Please write to: solidaritesansfrontieres@gmail.com
No Prisons! No Borders!
For more about immigration detention in Canada and the new migrant prison
To sign our statement against the prison
From North Saskatchewan Resistance
The first gun control law passed in Canada was given royal assent in 1886. It applied only to the Territories, inclusive of what is today Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The scope of this legislation would make even Trudeau blush.
Section 101 of the North-West Territories Act made it illegal for anyone to own, use, transport, buy, or sell any firearms or ammunition for any purpose without the express written permission of the government. The law remained in place until 1905 when Saskatchewan and Alberta became provinces. The reasoning behind this bill, passed into law by the conservative Macdonald government, was to stamp out all remaining dissent against the Canadian state, especially by the Native and Métis inhabitants of the Territories, who in those days comprised the majority. Even with the leaders of the North-West Rebellion all brutally executed or exiled, the heavily-militarized North-West Mounted Police roaming the countryside, and the majority of the First Nations population corralled onto tiny reserves, the federal government felt the need to fully disarm the wild West. From that year on, the history of gun control in Canada has been a long history of the state disarming the people at the first flash of discontent.
In the years that followed, new laws required that Canadian citizens have permits for pistols and that foreigners acquire a permit before handling any firearm. A firearm registry was established. Even still, the rules governing firearms ownership were much more lax than the totalitarian police-state that ruled in the West in the immediate aftermath of the hanging of Louis Riel. As the Trudeau and Turner governments faced pressure from Quebec separatists and the FLQ demonstrated the lengths that they were willing to go to to break free of Canada, new systems of control were implemented first in 1969 with the omnibus C-150 and again in 1977. These laws introduced the FAC system and classified firearms as non-restricted, restricted, and prohibited.
Today’s system of gun control saw its birth in 1991. A gun-control bill had been passed around for months following the massacre of 14 women in one of Canada’s worst hate crimes in December of 1989 at the École Polytechnique in Montreal. Despite a great deal of public support for the bill, it failed to gain much traction in either the Liberal or Conservative Party.
In the summer of 1990, however, Mohawk warriors in Kanehsatà:ke began defending their land against illegal attempts by the Quebec government to build a golf course over their cemetery. After a police officer was killed in the stand-off, a months-long crisis ensued that threw all major parties into an embarrassing display of colonial racism and civic cowardice. A rising star within Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives, Kim Campbell, brought forward a heavily modified version of the previously unpopular gun control bill, and Bill C-17 (1991) passed through the House of Commons with the approval of both the Conservatives and Liberals. The firearm used to massacre over a dozen women in Quebec two years prior (the Ruger Mini-14) remained non-restricted, while the firearms carried by the Mohawk Warriors – all semi-automatic civilian variants of the AK-47 – were reclassified as prohibited.
Just a few years later, not wanting to be out-done by the Conservatives, the Liberal Party passed even stronger restrictions on firearms. Bill C-68 (1995) was again passed on the rhetoric of École Polytechnique, but nothing in the bill’s language would have prevented any mass shootings. Rather, the language of the bill was targeted at enemies of the state, such as the Shuswap and Secwepemc warriors who had held their ground at Gustafsen Lake just a couple of months before the bill was brought before Parliament.
The Canadian government has long claimed that its efforts to disarm its citizens have been in those citizens’ best interest, even while the RCMP return to their militaristic roots and every day look more and more like an occupying army instead of the familiar Dudley Do-Rights we’ve come to fetishize. When next the government comes to take the shotgun hanging on the mantle or the hunting-rifle in the safe, remember the history of gun control in this country, and think twice about thanking the constable for his service as he robs you in the middle of the day.
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
The video being unfortunately already in the possession of the SPVM, we decided to create a little remix.
August 24th, 2019. Downtown Montreal. A crowd spots two off-duty cops from the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal outside a bar. From the nearby Station 21, they spend their shifts harassing and brutalizing poor and marginalized people in the area. Off-duty, they have no guns, no tasers, no radios to call for backup. Let’s see what happens when they have no badge to hide behind.
“It isn’t simply an attack against these police officers — it’s an attack on the entire justice system.”
— SPVM Spokesperson
ACAB.
Stay tuned for updates.
From Solidarity Across Borders
Montreal, 27 August 2019 — The Superior Court of Quebec has granted Construction Tisseur Inc. a legal injunction against the migrant justice network Solidarity Across Borders. Tisseur was awarded the federal contract to build the new migrant prison in Laval in June. The temporary injunction was sought in response to a festive information-picket, featuring live Klezmer music, outside Tisseur’s headquarters in Val-David last Thursday.
“This sets a very disturbing precedent. It is a huge concern for everyone in Quebec when a company uses the courts to silence critics. We remember Barrick Gold’s legal harassment of Éco-societé for publishing Noir Canada. And we see a clear connection: Canadian mining companies like Barrick Gold contribute to displacing people who then end up in immigration detention centres. We won’t be silenced, there is far too much at stake,” said Jane Doe of Solidarity Across Borders.
Solidarity Across Borders received notice at 6:26 pm on Thursday, 22nd August of a court hearing the following morning. Solidarity Across Borders’ legal representative requested a postponement to allow time to prepare a defence, but the postponement was denied. The temporary injunction, prohibiting Solidarity Across Borders, Jane Doe, and John Doe access to Tisseur’s property at 1670 Route 117 in Val-David, remains in place until September 1st. The injunction could be renewed this week.
“We organized the picket last week to reach out to the workers involved in this project. We believe that detention centres for migrants and refugees, and the immigration system they are part of, undermine labour rights. We wanted to engage with Tisseur workers about this during their lunch hour,” said John Doe of Solidarity Across Borders.
“Tisseur complained that we put up posters on their walls. We taped up silhouettes of friends who had been detained and deported, such as Lucy Granados, a single mother and worker from Guatemala who came to Canada after the US-owned factory she was working at moved to Asia, where labour was cheaper, and “Daniel,” a 17-year old boy who was detained at a Montreal high school and deported alone to Mexico,” said Doe.
“We don’t think Yannick Tisseur was afraid of our temporary posters or non-stick tape, but he is clearly scared of these stories reaching his workers. One of the signs read, ‘Tisseur, would you imprison your kids?’ He doesn’t want his workers to know that this prison will be used to imprison children.”
Tisseur began construction of the new prison, located beside the current Laval Immigration Holding Centre, on 5 August 2019. Scheduled to open in 2021, it is part of a $138 million investment into Canada’s capacity to indefinitely detain and deport migrants, including children. Former detainees report serious mental health problems such as nightmares, depression, suicidal thoughts, difficulty sleeping, anxiety, and other symptoms related to post-traumatic stress syndrome.
From Solidarity Across Borders
Join us for the first of a series of public actions in opposition to the new Laval migrant prison! These actions will take place on Thursdays at noon at various locations, culminating in a multi-city day of action on October 3rd.
The new Laval migrant prison is part of a $138 million investment into Canada’s migrant detention system under the National Immigration Detention Framework (NIDF), a new policy announced in 2016. The NIDF provides for the construction of two new migrant prisons along with expanded carceral technologies to supervise and control migrants outside these facilities.
On Aug 22nd, we will be gathering in front of the Val-David headquarters of Tisseur Inc for a family-friendly, public, information-picket. Tisseur was recently awarded a $50 million contract to oversee construction of the new Laval prison, with initial work already begun.
Companies like Tisseur are eager to help build the infrastructure of an anti-migrant future but we have a vision of the future of our own. It does not include detention, borders, or prisons and we are calling for help to realise it.
To join us on August 22nd: we’ll be driving together from Montreal, so email solidaritesansfrontieres@gmail.com to reserve your place and find out the meet up place. We’ll be meeting at 10am to arrive at noon and return to Montreal no later than 4pm. If you have a car you can bring or lend, please let us know, as well as the number of seats you can offer.
No borders, no prisons, status for all!
Early this morning around 4am our friend and comrade Will Van Spronsen was shot and killed by the Tacoma police. All we know about what lead up to this comes from the cops, who are notoriously corrupt and unreliable sources for such a narrative. The story that we do have is that Will attempted to set fire to several vehicles, outbuildings and a propane tank outside the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma which houses hundreds of immigrants awaiting hearings or deportations. He successfully set one vehicle on fire and then exchanged gunfire with Tacoma police officers who fatally shot him. He was pronounced dead on the scene. We find his actions inspiring. The vehicles outside the detention facility are used to forcibly remove people from their homes and deport them, often to situations where they will face severe danger or death. Those vehicles being destroyed is only a start of what is needed. We wish the fires Will set had freed all the inmates and razed the entire Northwest Detention Center to the ground. And we miss our friend and wish from the bottom of our hearts that his action had not ended in his death.
Will Van Spronsen was a long-time anarchist, anti-fascist and a kind, loving person. Here in Olympia some of us remember him as a skilled tarp structure builder from the Occupy encampment in 2011. Others remember him from the protests outside the NWDC last summer where he was accused of lunging at a cop and wrapping his arms around the officer’s neck and shoulders, as the officer was trying to arrest a 17-year-old protester. The very next day when he was released from jail he came right back to the encampment outside the center to support the other protesters. He is also remembered as a patient and thoughtful listener who was always willing to hear people out.
We are grief stricken, inspired and enraged by what occurred early this morning. ICE imprisons, tortures and deports hundreds of thousands of people and the brutality and scale of their harm is only escalating. We need every form of resistance, solidarity and passion to fight against ICE and the borders that they defend. Will gave his life fighting ICE we may never know what specifically was going through his head in the last hours of his life but we know that the NWDC must be destroyed and the prisoners must be freed. We do not need heroes, only friends and comrades. Will was simply a human being, and we wish that he was still with us. It’s doubtless that the cops and the media will attempt to paint him as some sort of monster, but in reality he was a comrade who fought for many years for what he believed in and this morning he was killed doing what he loved; fighting for a better world.
This evening around 8pm roughly 30 anarchists gathered at Percival landing in Olympia WA to remember Will Van Spronsen and to oppose ICE. We held road flares and banners reading “Rest In Power Will Van Spronsen” “Abolish ICE” “RIP Will” “Fire to the Prisons” and “Stop Deportation End Incarceration.” We shared stories and memories of Will with each other, laughed, and cried. Some people split off and plastered downtown Olympia with “Immigrants Welcome” stickers, while others drove circles around downtown flying the “Rest in Power Will” from the back of a truck.
May his memory be a blessing.
Love to those still fighting.
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Three years ago, the Canadian state invested $138 million to expand its migrant detention system, including plans for a new migrant prison in Laval. Since then, a multiform struggle has arisen to stop the construction of this prison. Companies such as Lemay, Loiselle, and Englobe have been continuosly reminded that anyone who chooses to implicate themselves in this project can expect major delays at every stage of the project.
Two years ago, the architecture and engineering firms Lemay and Groupe A were awarded the first contracts to design the new prison. In January of this year, a contract for the General Contractor (GC) was opened for bidding. Just like the architects and engineers, the GC will be intimately involved in every stage of construction. Along with a number of yet-to-be-exposed subcontractors, the GC will be directly undertaking the construction of facilities intended to cage migrants.
Just over a week ago, the CBSA quietly awarded the GC contract to a company based in Val David called Tisseur Inc. Tisseur is a construction company with a history of building schools and bridges, and at $50 million, this is by far the biggest contract they have received to date. They have already posted over a dozen job listings online since signing this contract.
Just like Lemay, Tisseur wants to market themselves as a “socially responsible” enterprise. Their website boasts about their green construction projects and prominently features their code of ethics. But just like Lemay and others, Tisseur is eager to profit from the misery and violence that the Canadian state inflicts on migrants. They shouldn’t expect to do this quietly.
Tisseur may think that scoring such a major government project is their big break, but the recent history of companies such as Lemay, Loiselle, and Englobe suggests that this could instead be the beginning of costly tribulations.
Fuck Borders. Fuck prisons. Fuck everyone who profits from and maintains them.
See you soon.
SPEECH given at the SOLIDARITY WITH CEDAR & DROP ALL CHARGES AGAINST PRIDE DEFENDERS demo, MONTREAL, July 28th.
Thank you so much for coming – everyone – beautiful queers and trans people, anarchists of all stripes, anti-fascists – allies. It is going to be an amazing night of sending our love and solidarity to our friends in Hamilton and Cedar in prison. To start out with we have a just a few things to say…
We come together today, on the ancestral territory of Anishnabeg and Haudonousanee peoples, more specifically the unceded land of the Kanien’kehà:ka Nation, in order to protest and show our queer and trans rage following the events of the last week. It is important to be stated that the colonial mechanism that stole this land in the first place, allowing so called Montreal to be built, also targeted the cultural terrain of sexuality and gender for hundreds of years. While many of our identities are so different, the concepts and notions of gay or queer or trans that non-indigenous people use are constructed in reaction to, and from white Christian colonial and capitalist culture. The very fabric and fibre of these words, while clearly imperfect, is not new, and pays hommage to the people whose bodies were born into conflict with the heterocolonial project. We recognise that numerous indigenous cultures respected more than two sexualities and genders, celebrating their two-spirited community members. For five hundred years the colonial project of the State has attacked these people, trying to extinguish or assimilate them. But indigenous land sovereignty is inseparable from sovereignty over bodies, sexuality and gender self-expression. We honor the fighters who have struggled long and hard to restore sexual diversity and gender fluidity back into their cultures and we recognize our queer struggle as being intertwined with an anti-colonial struggle as well.
On June 15th, 2019 in Hamilton, “Ontario”, Pride was attacked by a group of far-right homophobes, christian fundamentalists, neo-nazis, and queer bashers. As they did in 2018, they arrived with massive homophobic signs and banners, and immediately began to scream insults and slurs. They aggressively harassed individuals, made jokes about rape, and threatened physical violence. Things quickly escalated as the bigots violently confronted people who were holding a fabric barrier in an attempt to block them from disrupting Pride. Initiated by the far-right activists a brawl broke out – queers who refused to allow their presence to go unchallenged were attacked, but fought back. Several friends were injured and required medical attention. The police did nothing during this hour-long conflict, and only stepped in at the end when there was nothing left to do. The haters knew they couldn’t sustain their presence any longer, and welcomed the police escort out of the park. After being kicked out of Pride, this same group chased and assaulted queer youth in the neighbourhood, and then went on to attack people at Toronto Pride the following week.
Since these events, the Hamilton Police have felt quite threatened – communities that feel empowered to use force to defend themselves undermine their unquestionable authority. Over the course of the last week, the police have consequently been targeting and harassing known queer anarchists in the city as punishment for folks standing up for themselves. Our dear friend Cedar (who wasn’t even present at the event!) was arrested on Saturday, and was on hunger strike for five days. They will stay in jail until a lengthy probation hearing, a vengeful and punitive measure carried out by the police because Cedar publicly criticized the police’s actions. Later this week, two other queer friends have been arrested and charged with probation breaches based on suspicion of being present at Pride. Not a single homophobe was charged all week, despite the widespread circulation of their names, faces and videos of their violent actions, until public pressure finally forced the police to charge Christopher Vanderweide with assault with a weapon. We oppose the colonial prison system, but the repression the police directed to those they suspect as Pride defenders first is once again truly revealing of their age-old position and purpose: protecting racists, misogynists, and homophobes.
Queer might involve our sexuality or our gender, but to us it means soo much more. It’s a territory of tension that we must defend. We stand in solidarity with Cedar and those accused in connection with this event, as well as any queers held in prison for bashing back. As queers and trans people, we know that our existence has been fought for bravely by those who have come before us, not only against homophobes and neo-nazis but also against the police. Queer militancy has a long lineage. We remember, 50 years today, the Stonewall Rebellion, on June 28 1969, as a four-day anti-police riot led by Black and Latina drag queens, kings, and transsexuals, like Marsha P. Johnson et Sylvia Rivera, in New York’s Greenwich Village. It went on to become a rebellion that was both gay and trans, for in the words of Queen Allyson Ann Allante, a fourteen year old participant at the time, “because it was the first time that both came together to fight off the oppressor and it set a good precedent to do it many times since. It was a big milestone for both communities because they were both in unity to fight the common oppressor, which at that time was the police and the mafia, who controlled the gay clubs.” While remembering the flying bricks and high heels exploding from gay trans anger, we can’t forget that the gay liberation movement that blossomed systemically tried to silence and marginalize the participation of trans women of color, trying to centre attention on a white gay respectable narrative. We see this tendancy 50 years later and we know that our communities still have internalized and externalized transmisogyny and racism to work on, and we see the imperativeness of fighting common enemies like the police or the far-right, shoulder to shoulder. We remember police attacks here in Montreal, stemming back to the attack in Truxx Bar when 143 party goers were arrested and charged for indecency in 1977. We remember also Sex Garage in 1990, when the SPVM descended on 400 gay club goers, violently beating them with their batons and the ensuing 36 hour fight. We know that queer and trans homeless youth and sex workers still face police repression constantly on the streets – the only reason that the Gay village of Montreal is now this far East of downtown is that in the lead-up to both Expo ’67 and the 1976 Summer Olympics, the SPVM carried forth a brutal criminalization campaign on the city’s queers – beating up and arresting many people as well as closing down bars. We know that worldwide queer people, especially those who are racialized, are disproportionately attacked, criminalized, incarcerated and even murdered. American transphobic hate crimes have tripled in the last five years and we see a similar trend here – our work is so far from being over! Yesterday the 11th American trans person to be murdered this year was found in Kansas City – Brooklyn Lindsey, yet another black transwoman trying to live her life. We remember Sisi Thibert, who in September 2017, was stabbed in Pointe St. Charles, Montreal. This sadness and pain stays with us always. Our existence will continue to be threatened unless together, we fiercely defend ourselves, our friends, as well as the spaces we create. But marginalized people are doing that on the daily. The far-right group that mobilized in Hamilton is not too different from far-right groups that have been fought against in Quebec. Queers are coming together, like in Hamilton and countless times before, to hold, feed, listen to, and fight for each other. We know that we need to make ruins of domination in all of its varied and interlacing forms and that none are free until all are free. Fighting back is always legitimate. We are going to dance and take up space tonight, be beautiful and revolting together, as a way to blend our queer love and queer rage for the fucked up attacks on our friends in Hamilton and the police’s consequential repression. We know that we are strong together – let’s fucking show it. We are here tonight to say :
Drop all charges against Pride defenders, free Cedar now!
Queer liberation and total freedom.
