Autonomy

Black and white PDF for printing (imposed) Colour PDF for reading It was winter 2020 and in the aftermath of the most inspiring anti-colonial uprising of my lifetime, I read Rattachements [1] ( Re-attachments in English) and Inhabit [2] . The trains had started up again across the country, and COVID-19 was starting to reorder our lives mere weeks after we had been doing our small part to help shut down Canada. In and around Tio’tia:ke (Montreal) where I live, there were many Indigenous-led initiatives, including solidarity rounddances that blocked traffic downtown, and of course the month-long blockade of the railway tracks that run through Kahnawá:ke. On and around the island, the engagement of settlers in #ShutDownCanada took a number of forms including clandestine sabotage of rail infrastructure, demos and vandalism of RCMP property, and multiple rail blockades, one of which lasted a few days. ...

I’ve been thinking a lot about subculture the past two years, and had intended that this month (May, 2019) be a deadline for getting out a piece of writing about it. I didn’t do that, because writing gets harder and harder as years go by, because online projects felt more immediate, more urgent, more like a living conversation, because I just didn’t get to it. But since part of what I had wanted to propose was that we have more intentional conversations as an anarchist milieu/community/movement/culture, and that we return somewhat to writing and printing as a means of doing that, it felt wrong to not put something on paper. I would rather this were a finished document with punchy, certain proposals. I suspect I’d get more response if it was. But it’s not. Consider it more of a published draft. ...

Band of buffoons, did you really think we would allow your little clique to hold its event, while you’re trying to destroy everything we have built? Driven by the force of the intergalactic call for solidarity with the ZAD, we decided to intervene during a 5 à 7 of En Marche (yes, they come bother us all the way in Montreal) to remind the Macronists that the nauseating odor of the shit they spread will always come back to their nostrils. ...

Over the past year, there has been something of a resurgence in anarchist activity in Ottawa, a vibrant community has begun to form, and it feels like the conditions are right for rapid growth in the radical milieu of our city. That is why we say: Resistance is Fertile! Most visibly, for the first time since the shuttering of Exile Infoshop over 7 years ago, Ottawa now has a anarchist social centre that is not also a punk house. This social centre, known as the Garden Spot (or G-Spot for short) is near Carleton University, and is already serving to bring together radical & leftist students from Carleton, the University of Ottawa, high schools, and the broader community. To build on the current momentum, we decided to hold a series of events of interest to comrades and newcomers alike. ...

A breach was opened by an now well-known anonymous group . Their autonomous action to reoccupy the territory demonstrated the inseparability of ecological and decolonial perspectives. By blocking Junex’s oil project and by affirming the legitimacy of traditional Mi’kmaq sovereignty on the territory, their action made space for new possibilities of successful struggle. This call to organize is done with the audacious spirit of the first barricades, now fallen. ...

But where do we go when we stay in the city? In parks? On friend’s balconies? What to do when we don’t want to resign ourselves to metro-work-sleep or the leisure of city festivals or the 375th anniversary celebrating the colonization of the island? Or to the summer that passes dully while drinking beers in parks? What to do with summer’s potential and the sudden opening of spaces under the sun and warm nights? Hibernation is over. I want for life to be a journey even if I stay here. I want to do unauthorized camping, not just in the woods or on the road to Gaspésie. I want a presence that carves out a place in diverse spaces so as to nourish friendships, creative relations of mutual aid and our rebellions. Being together with the city as a terrain to occupy (all the while occupying ourselves with not allowing the city to celebrate its colonial occupation too much), to disturb the limits imposed by the fencing, the bans on loitering and the well-tended grass. To occupy and care for buildings, alleys, and wastelands, without asking permission. ...

On the eve of the end of the week of international mobilization against the airport NDDL and it’s world, we held banners for half and hour in support of the ZAD at the ICAO Headquarters, to disrupt, if only for moments, their barren universe. The ZAD in NDDL is not only a foot in the mouth of the French government, AGO Vinci, and all the shareholders of this airport project, but also an example of autonomy, self-defense and a breach of their attempt to commodify everything around them. ...

The following is a transcript of a conversation between two friends shortly after the insurgency in Ferguson, Missouri. Bart was there and Nicola wasn’t, but both of them have participated in anti-police uprisings in the last several years on the West Coast and in the Midwest. We’re publishing this in an effort to explore the complexities of recent events in the United States, but also to contribute to the ongoing discussions and attacks against the existing order, everywhere. ...

Print-format zine (8.5"x11") The thrust of this critique is not pointed towards individual convictions, ideas and desires. As always, the greater the scope of our generalizations, the more exceptions we leave outside. These are responses to general trends and tendencies observed in the North American anarchist milieu. (United States and Canada - because there is a context that exists that is more than the addition of these two countries, but that is, of course, quite different in Mexico.) It is quite likely that many of these trends do exist elsewhere in the world, as do many products of American culture. That being said, I believe that many of these tendencies are particularly North American, even if their resonance is felt beyond these borders. Many of these statements and points have been said elsewhere, at different times and by different voices. The point lies that critiques ill-heard bear repeating. Will some be offended, feel targeted? I hope that if this is the case, those offended will not take their indignation as an excuse to throw this piece in the garbage, to rail against it. We are already too few, and too isolated. Yet no numbers or figures could be justification for silence. Cooperation and camaraderie in struggle become meaningless if they are conditional on thin-lipped nodding and pats on the back, if they refuse reflection and debate. Forgive the assumption, but we did not become anarchists in an effort to seek support and acceptance on all sides, to paint glue over cracks and inconsistencies. To be cliché, radical means seeking out the roots of any problem, situation, social or political form. If we cannot see aspects of society that are reproduced in our own circles, then any attempt at radical change is hopeless, no matter how large or how militant. That, or the more radical consequences of the anarchist project will be taken up by others before they are taken up by anarchists themselves. Of course, this is already happening, as it has happened before. Lastly, if your response to this text is merely, ‘but we’re working hard!’ then accept the response that any good boss will give you. ‘Work harder.’ Openings I. ...