Anti-capitalist

In the West we laughed at the images of consumers at big chain stores desperately struggling for irrational amounts of toilet paper. When asked by the media, the consumers said they didn’t know why they needed so many rolls, or that they had simply followed the crowd. The feeling of catastrophe is difficult to deny. Government experts are asking us to put our trust in the same health care heroes they have overworked, exhausted, and discouraged through repeated budget cuts and devaluing of their jobs in preparation for collective bargaining negotiations. ...

Inspired by the Black Panther Party and other groups of revolutionaries organizing to meet the health and educational needs of their community, members of the Latin American Young Lords Party set up a drug treatment centre in 1970. On November 10, 1970, about 30 activists occupied the then vacant sixth floor of the nurses’ residence building at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, New York. He quickly set up checkpoints and erected a barricade; the hospital administration was forced to negotiate and finally give them the space. In partnership with health care workers, addicts and community members, the Young Lords then established The People’s Drug Program, a community-run detoxification program. The following interview , conducted by Molly Porzig, was published on March 15, 2013, in the American magazine The Abolitionnist . Vicente “Panama” Alba, a member of the Young Lords Party and counselor at Lincoln Detox Center during the 1970s, recounts his experience. ...

It’s Rent Day and thousands all over Quebec can’t pay. Montreal, April 1, 2020 — Today is Rent Day, and thousands of people all over Quebec cannot pay rent, or have to make the inhumane choice between paying rent, or having money for food, medicine and other basic needs. Tenants are scared, fearful, and anxious. While all of society is trying to manage a public health crisis, one main indicator of physical and mental health – housing – is the source of anxiety and depression. ...

Collective direct actions like rent strikes are a good way to change our power dynamic with the government so that it can intervene to cancel mortgages and rents for everyone. Gathering together as tenants of the same landlord makes organizing a rent strike simpler for us and makes it more complicated for your landlord to use legal remedies (such as eviction). Steps to Follow: ...

11" x 17" Poster 8.5" x 11" b&w Poster / Bilingual Flyer See also: Grevedesloyers.info Poor, unemployed, laid-off, precarious, undocumented, contract and other workers — all of us who live month-to-month — will not be able to pay rent this April 1st. Many of us were struggling to pay rent before this crisis hit, and are likely already behind. In a perspective of direct action and social solidarity, ALL tenants can refuse to pay rent on April 1st. ...

All power structures are rooted in ideology. A shared belief in this ideology is what keeps the structures of power in place. Under capitalism, the edifice of social control is built on the collective illusion of private property, and the sanctity of the so-called ‘free market’. Any moves taken to challenge this logic will therefore provoke pushback from the system’s indoctrinated cheerleaders, and will certainly catch the attention of the repressive and recuperative functionaries of the state. But as the saying goes… you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. And you definitely can’t overthrow capitalism without messing with people’s stuff. ...

Over the past several days, motivated by an international call for transit fare strikes, the fare distribution machines in several metro stations were disabled by blocking the debit/credit card readers and coin slots. The STM is continually hiking fares and deploying squads of wannabe-cop “inspectors” to harass, fine, and assault people over $3.50. Currently, the STM is even seeking to give its inspectors expanded powers to detain and arrest people and access police databases. Every effort to maintain and expand policing of people’s movements deserves to be met with resistance. Fortunately, there is no shortage of inspiration from around the world, above all the ongoing revolt in Chile. ...

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The morning of September 27th, the streets of Montreal and Quebec City were taken by storm by a historic human tide. Hundreds of thousands, young and old, hit the street in response to the international call for a Global Climate Strike. This call for a planetary strike arrived in Quebec in the spring, when student associations and teachers’ unions began voting to walk out on September 27. In the summer, cégep administrations, threatened by the prospect of illegal strikes by teachers, decided to make the day of September 27 an “institutional day” and arrange the calendar accordingly. Institutional days, as a mechanism for capturing and absorbing strikes, gradually spread throughout the entire Quebec education system, from elementary schools to universities. If, at first, one could be satisfied that more than 600,000 people would be “freed” by the authorities to participate in the demonstration of September 27, doubts arise with respect to the future of the movement and its autonomy. The strike as a voluntary and collective interruption of daily routine has been diverted by school administrations, which used institutional days to ensure that they would maintain control of the agenda and temporality of the struggle. ...

The following text was written by the CLAC, the IWW and Montréal Antifasciste and was distributed at the Montreal climate demonstration on September 27, 2019. It can also be downloaded to print here . 1. GOVERNMENTS WON’T SAVE US Those who benefit from poisoning the land and exploiting people you care about won’t be reformed. They’ll make it seem like they hear your voices and occasionally put on grand spectacles to temporarily appease your anger. They’ll encourage you to channel your anxiety into pointless practices that only reinforce individualism. So while some of us compete to take shorter showers or to reduce our trash output, government officials, universities, and corporations shamelessly invest in more pipelines, host uncritical academic conferences, or fly jets to fancy meetings where empty promises are made. ...

In December 2018, Montréal Antifasciste published a dossier on the neofascist organization Atalante , tracing the group’s history as well as the trajectory of some of the individuals at the heart of the project, specifically, members of the Québec Stomper Crew gang and the band Légitime Violence. A series of follow-up articles have focused on the activities of a number of people within Atalante’s sphere of influence. ...