Montréal Counter-information

Anonymous Submission to MTL Counter-info

On New Years Eve 2018, a crowd of around 150 people gathered near Henri Bourassa Metro on the island of Montreal to take three school busses out to Laval, Quebec. Every year since 2014, and intermittently in the years prior to 2014, people gather outside prisons in the Montreal area to set off fireworks, wish people in prison a Happy New Year, and show our opposition to prisons, borders, and the industries and governments that sustain them.

After a brief bus ride, we stood together outside our first stop, the Federal Training Centre’s Minimum Security prison at 600 rue Montée Saint-Francois. Stretched out along Montée Saint-Francois with nothing but a regular chain link fence separating the living units from the road, the Federal Training Centre Minimum is the only stop on our route where we can see people’s faces in the windows. This year was no exception. Dozens of people stood in their cell windows waving and shouting back to us as we set off fireworks, played music, and yelled greetings. We showed off our banner, which read “Happy New Year! Free all prisoners!” and chanted “Pour une monde sans patrons, ni flics, ni prisons!” (For a world without bosses, cops, or prisons).

Our second stop was at Leclerc, a provincial prison for women. This year we were able to get closer to the gates than last year and after setting off fireworks and blasting music, we noticed lights flickering on and off in the windows of the prison! This prison is set far back from the road and we were excited to know that people inside could hear us and see us. Leclerc has been denounced over the years for having horrendous conditions, most recently in early December 2018 by a coalition of groups in Quebec. The cells are so cold that prisoners have to sleep with their coats on and the water is undrinkable. While we wouldn’t settle for nicer prisons in our fight for a better world, we think it’s horrible that prisoners in Leclerc have to deal with such shitty conditions!

Next we stopped at the construction site for the new migrant prison that is currently being built. We pointed out the construction site to the crowd and filled them in on the plans for the new prison. Overseen by architecture and engineering firms Lemay and Groupe A, the new migrant prison is part of a government overhaul to spiff up the deportation machine. The government claims the new building will have a warm wood interior and be designed to “not feel like a prison” despite plans for just as many security cameras and fences as one would expect. We think these plans are all bullshit and fully expect the new prison to turn out the same as the regional federal prisons for women built in the 90s and 00s with high security units, cameras everywhere, and no budget left for programming because the security costs ran so high. That is, if we don’t manage to stop the construction first!

Then we walked up the road to the migrant prison that is currently in operation. We set off fireworks and shouted to folks (including the kids!) inside. Some drummers in the crowd kept a good beat going. The MC’s reminded us of the hunger strike against the government’s “alternatives to detention” plan that imprisoned migrants in Ontario carried out in September of this year. This plan includes introducing an electronic monitoring program and contracting the John Howard Society and the Salvation Army to create “parole-type” programs for migrants. We think it’s all a way to control and monitor more and more migrants who come to this country, who are often fleeing situations of violence that Canadian imperialism helped create. Shame on the John Howard Society and the Salvation Army for taking these contracts! And fuck the government’s plan to increase deportations by 30% in the coming years! For a world without borders or prisons!

Our fifth stop was at the Federal Training Centre – Multi level. This prison has a wall and two fences around it, so it’s always hard for us to get close and always hard to tell if anyone inside can see or hear us at all. Despite that, we set off fireworks and shouted to folks inside. Our sound system battery had died by this point, so we meant to read out a statement from our imprisoned friend Cedar in Ontario, but didn’t have the lung power to do it with no sound system. Solidarity to Cedar and everyone else who has to spend this holiday behind bars! We’re thinking of you all and fighting to make it so no one ever has to spend New Years inside!

Finally, we walked back up the road to pass the Federal Training Centre Minimum one last time and say our goodbyes. On this second trip by the prison, a few people had come out of the buildings to stand in the yard despite the cold and they waved and yelled to us from across the fence and line of cops. A hearty fuck you to the cops who insist on standing between us. Some folks in the crowd sang the Helicopter Song and tried to teach everyone some new lyrics to Ke$ha’s We R Who We R. We set off the last of our fireworks and headed to the buses.

This New Years Eve Noise Demo tradition feels super important to us! Thanks to everyone who came out, we were thrilled with the number of people that showed up this year. Solidarity to folks inside fighting the system from in there!

From Hamilton Anarchist Support

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

From the 21st to 26th of October, 2018, Montreal will be the site of the International Corrections and Prisons Association (ICPA) conference, hosted by Correctional Services Canada. The theme this year is “Beyond Prisons: The Way Forward.” Highlighted as topics of some of the conversations are: going forward to make imprisonment and community supervision both more humane and effective, using technology to humanize corrections, and improving community engagement.

The conference is aimed at corrections and prison staff, offering them a mess of programming, including academic research, presentations, and guided visits to prisons, to entrench the view that prisons can be humane, and their professions anything other than deplorable. Also invited are CEOs of companies who cater their businesses towards prisons—whether that be in the form of making electronic bracelets or making the terrible food served in prisons. The conference will include “facility visits” to a halfway house in Saint-Henri, two federal prisons in Laval, and the provincial prison in RDP. (For more info on all the different aspects of the conference visit:
icpa.ca/montreal2018)

We think there are many reasons to oppose this conference, but have decided to highlight the following:

Under the pretext to create more “humane” detention conditions for migrants, CBSA has been awarded huge government budgets for creative new control measures for migrants. Work has begun to attempt to construct a new, higher tech, “more humane” migrant prison in Laval, on land owned by the Correctional Services of Canada. It is meant to replace the current migrant prison right nearby, and “look less like a prison.” In the context of rising fascism and anti-migrant sentiment in Quebec and Canada more broadly it is entirely possible that the number of prison spots available to enforce deportations could double in the coming years, should the current prison be kept open and the new one successfully built. Regardless, a new humanized migrant prison, or the “alternatives to detention” such as ankle bracelets or the equivalent of parole officers for migrants that the government is proposing, should not be embraced simply because they look less like traditional prisons. They serve the same purpose: to expand the CBSA’s capacity for border enforcement and immigration policing—for imprisoning and deporting migrants and to rip people away from their families and communities.
For more information: stopponslaprison.info

As corrections officials gather to talk about how technology can make prisons more humane, we think about the new protocols in Pennsylvania state prisons that are using technology to sterilize communications and make it impossible for people to send books and other physical mail to people inside.
For more information: booksthroughbars.org/takeaction/

As Correctional Services Canada hosts this conference, we think about the recent outcries against solitary confinement and psychological risk assessments of Indigenous prisoners. We think of the role of Canadian penitentiaries in imprisoning Indigenous people resisting colonization for centuries. We think of the early jails that imprisoned Black people resisting slavery, that continue to imprison Black people at high rates today. We think of all those who have died in prison and who continue to die in prison and those resisting prisons around the world.

We are inspired by the recent Prison Strike that took place in many prisons across the US and Canada, which drew attention to the terrible conditions in jails and prisons, but also to the foundations of the prison system as a whole in slavery and colonialism. The death of a man incarcerated in remand in Burnside jail in Halifax just after the strike reminds us of the stakes of the continuation of imprisonment, in any form. The strength of resistance both inside and outside prison walls during the prison strike inspires us to reject the ICPA’s attempt to make imprisonment seem normal and palatable. We reject the attempt to whitewash the reality of imprisonment and call for opposition to this conference.

On Sunday October 21st at 3pm—on the two-month anniversary of the 2018 Prison Strike—there will be a rally against all prisons, outside the ICPA Conference at the
Montréal Marriott Chateau Champlain,
1050 Rue de la Gauchetière Ouest (metro Bonaventure).
Bring banners, signs and noisemakers!

Against all prisons, even the “nice” ones.
The only way forward is an end to prison!

for more information: https://montrealcontrelesprisons.wordpress.com/