Mayday on Montreal Counter-information

May Day as though Kids Matter

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 12:28:00 +0000

This year Punch Up Collective hosted our seventh contribution to recognizing May Day in Ottawa: a kid-centred picnic and short march. We wanted to share something about why this was so fun and to reflect a little on including kids and families in these kinds of celebrations, and the difference between including them and focusing events on kids and families.

We’ve done a mix of things to recognize May Day – sometimes events, sometimes workshops or other things that we hope contribute to carrying on the legacy of struggle for dignity and joy for everyone. Our first May Day event, in 2015, was a called “ All In: Worker Organizing Beyond the Mainstream Labour Movement .” It was a panel featuring people talking about sex work, migrant labour, harm reduction workers, and drug users. As part of our planning for the event, we paid a local comrade who ran a daycare to bring toys and activities and set up a kids space. No one brought their kids. That same year we ran a workshop called “ Planning to be Good to Each Other ” about building social harm reduction practices in radical groups; again we set up childcare, again no kids were there.

Toronto: May Day Bank Attack

Tue, 10 May 2022 10:55:00 +0000

Anonymous submission to North Shore Counter-Info

In “Toronto” on the morning of May 1st, we attacked an RBC branch in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en land defenders. We left a spray-painted message, a damaged lock, and a mess of red paint.

As we walked away into a beautiful May Day sunrise, we left a trail of messages through the city.

We were left wanting more, but we know that there are many more days ahead.

Video to Celebrate the 15th Anti-capitalist May Day

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 13:08:00 +0000

From the Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes

A video that was sent to us by comrades to celebrate 15 years!

CALLOUT for the Anticapitalist Mayday '22: Colonial and Ecocidal, Capitalism is War!

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 12:02:00 +0000

From the Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes

On May 1st, 2022, Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes (CLAC) is calling for a 15th Anti-Capitalist Workers’ Day demonstration. This year, the colonial state has demonstrated once more that it will prioritize capital growth over our lives. In total hypocrisy, our governments speak the words reconciliation and environment while ignoring the sovereign rights of Indigenous peoples and destroying the land with extractivist and discriminatory policies. It is time to revolt!

Leaving the SPVM Behind to Attack a High-Tech Hub: A Promising Anti-Capitalist May Day

Mon, 03 May 2021 13:04:37 +0000

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

This May Day, Montreal’s annual anti-capitalist demonstration organized by the CLAC gathered in Jarry Park under the theme “No old normal, no new normal”. It was a sunny late afternoon, and the energy was high amid the banners and black flags as the demo began to snake through the residential streets of Villeray.

Heading west on De Castelnau, fireworks were set off, and construction cones were used to block the road behind us. The cops seemed confused about the route we were taking, which meant that there were less of them in our near vicinity. Dropping south onto Jean-Talon, the demo continued west through the viaduct beneath the St-Jérôme commuter rail line.

Anticapitalist May Day 2021: No Old Normal, No New Normal!

Sun, 02 May 2021 13:39:57 +0000

From the Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes

The Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes (CLAC) denounces the violent repression of its demonstration again this year. Indeed, the SPVM proceeded, as usual, to unjustified and brutal arrests. The police used truncheons and tear gas to silence the people who are tired of being exploited every day to enrich the nauseating bourgeoisie and their companies that profit from COVID-19. Several people were injured and the police even destroyed the cell phone of one participant.

A Pact of Solidarity for May 1, 2021

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 14:05:00 +0000

From Montréal Antifasciste

Given

that, today, as has always been the case, May 1 is an opportunity for the workers of all nations to celebrate their historic victories and to put forth demands for further improvements to their working conditions and their health and safety conditions in general;

given

that protecting the health and safety of health care workers is of primordial importance;

and given

that the health care system and all of its workers, nurses, doctors, councillors, managers, office workers, and support staff are currently under enormous pressure and deserve our unconditional support;

May Day 2021: We don’t want this world they are trying to sell us!

Mon, 22 Mar 2021 12:09:00 +0000

From the Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes

The pandemic we are mired in precarize everyone and highlights serious injustices. The stimulus wished by the leaders is an economic stimulus which is not addressed to us. It is not addressed to the artists and other people who don’t make enough profit to merit the right to exist. It does not concern sex workers, whose existence itself is still criminalized. This stimulus ignores handicapped people, the marginalized, those with mental health issues. The stimulus they talk about, it is for the oil companies, the Bombardier corporations, the party friends like Guzzo, but it is not for us. To let the governments save us from the crisis they created themselves through the constant cuts to healthcare and through their “snowbird” lives, would be to accept death. What we need to stimulate is not the economy, but the struggles for our rights and the end of capitalist exploitation.

City Redecorated for May Day!

Sat, 02 May 2020 13:59:17 +0000

From the CLAC

Seen at Hochelaga/Viau overpass : “We are confined but did not forget… Anticapitalist May Day Your batons and prisons Your pipelines Your healthcare cuts”

Banner drop in Rouyn-Noranda: “The power is austere”

Seen this morning on A20 highway near L’Isle-Verte, between Trois-Pistoles and Rivière-du-Loup “May Day: support to the underpaid workers. Despised yesterday, on the front line today !”

The IWW put together my photos of more banners on their Facebook page .

Landlord Association's Offices Flooded for May Day

Fri, 01 May 2020 12:44:27 +0000

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

The pandemic has laid bare the hostility the Corporation des propriétaires immobiliers du Québec (CORPIQ) has for tenants. As tens of thousands of increasingly precarious people struggle to make ends meet, CORPIQ has pressured the Régie du logement to re-start eviction hearings, encouraged landlords to collect rent as usual, and tried to discredit the calls for a global rent strike. CORPIQ defends the class that profits from our basic need for shelter and ensures that many are denied a stable and safe place to live.

Opportunity in Every Crisis: A Call For Decentralized May Day Actions

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 16:52:28 +0000

Anonymous submission to North Shore Counter-Info

However you tell the tale of May Day, one thing is consistent: it is a time people gather together, to march in the streets or to celebrate a new spring. Although most of us are enjoying the warmer weather blowing in, we are mostly stuck in our homes. Reading the news, trying to figure out the right thing to do, watching May 1st creep closer and wondering what it will look like this year if we can’t take over downtown and revel in May Day as we have come to know it: a celebration of anticapitalism.

This May Day, Resistance Continues Despite the Confinement!

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 18:04:02 +0000

From the CLAC

In these times of pandemic, capital kills more than ever. Workers are left without equipment in hospitals. Confinement falls upon us because our government did too little, too late. Rich landlords who brought the virus back from their latest trip are angered by a rent strike that their penniless tenants have no other choice but to partake in. The people dying right now are among the most vulnerable, from grocery store clerks, to delivery workers, prisoners, homeless folks, and undocumented migrants. All of this while the most fortunate get to work from home. Nevertheless, social distancing remains an important way to reduce transmission, and this is why WE WILL NOT MEET PHYSICALLY FOR A MAYDAY PROTEST. We will however try to make resistance as visible as possible, given the difficult context.

Reportback from Montreal's May Day Against Borders

Tue, 14 May 2019 16:08:26 +0000

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

On May Day 2019 in Montreal there were four different demonstrations at different times and locations across the city. The CLAC (Convergence des Luttes Anti-Capitalistes) called for their annual anti-capitalist May Day demonstration to be held in the theme of “No borders”, in the context of the rise of the xenophobic far right in Quebec and the ongoing attept to construct a new migrant prison in Laval, QC. We attended the CLAC’s No Borders May Day, which gathered at 6:30pm at Square Cabot in the west end of downtown Montreal.

Anticapitalist MayDay 2019 - Cabot Square - 6:30PM

Tue, 26 Mar 2019 13:24:11 +0000

From the Convergence des luttes anti-capitalistes

On Wednesday May 1st, at 6:30pm, in Square Cabot, the anticapitalist caravan is back at it again to say fuck your borders and fuck your prisons!

For people fleeing miserable living conditions, what are borders if not fences around prisons? After all, what’s the difference between forcing people to live inside arbitrary perimeters against their will and imprisoning them?

Being forced to work for a Canadian company in Honduras, Haiti, Colombia, or elsewhere isn’t much better than being detained. These companies produce all of the useless junk that forms the basis of our modern comfort. The fact that the factories are so far away from Canada makes the exploitation less visible for westerners, though it is clear that slavery has not vanished; it’s only been given a different label. Exploited people pick our fruits, sew our clothes, catch our fish, and die for the rich to get richer, day after day, after day, after day…

Report-back from the 2018 CLAC May Day Demo

Wed, 09 May 2018 16:43:07 +0000

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info CLAC organized its annual May Day demonstration on the theme of the G7 this year. The planet’s most powerful will gather June 8th and 9th for a major meeting in the Charlevoix region.This year, May Day saw the unions agreeing to accommodate the bosses’ calendar by holding a march Saturday April 28th, gathering several thousand people.On the first of May, three demonstrations were called in Montreal: CLAC’s at Parc Lafontaine, the Revolutionary Communist Party’s in the Golden Square Mile, and the IWW’s in Parc-Extension.About 200 people gathered towards 6pm at the southwest corner of Parc Lafontaine for the CLAC demo. Lots of police were deployed all around with bike cops as well as numerous buses of riot police. The SPVM had made up its mind to let no one demonstrate on this May Day. The crowd growing gradually, one noticed the presence of about forty individuals putting on black clothing, looking to form a black bloc more consequential than in recent demos in Montreal. The riot cops chose to move in closer to leave the small crowd no room to maneuver.Just before the departure, some speeches were given on the ravages of capitalism locally and elsewhere. The demo then took the street towards 6:30pm on Sherbrooke, going west. The cops then decided to take the sidewalk on the north side to begin forming a kind of moving kettle around the demo. A small but very determined black bloc did not want to allow them this space prized by the Urban Brigade which gains considerable tactical advantage from it. By taking the sidewalk, the Urban Brigade is able to control the whole of the demo, in that it can decide where to direct the crowd. This greatly limits attacks on symbols of capitalism, such as banks. Taking the sidewalk should be a collective reflex of the demo, because having a demo encircled by the SPVM is a problem for everyone. If removing the cops from the sides remains the work of a small part of the demonstration, it will remain very difficult to hold the street in Montreal in a more combative way.Protected by banners the black bloc decided to empty a fire extinguisher, throw bricks and rocks, and shoot fireworks at the cops, to force them to make a retreat. While the cops backed up a bit, a number of them choosing to hide behind parked cars in fear, the strategy was not as effective as hoped, as the demo found itself split in two with the arrival of a second Urban Brigade on the other side, which pushed the rear of the demo back east and made one arrest. At this moment the police rapidly regained control of the situation, deploying riot cops on the streets north and south of Sherbrooke. People had no choice but to disperse or return to Parc Lafontaine just five minutes after the start. It wasn’t the clash with the cops that forced the dispersal, but rather the arrival of cops from all sides in large numbers.The dispersal was also facilitated by the lack of closer links between people in the demo. Being able to keep a much more compact unity could have limited the damage caused by the cops’ intervention. Keeping a slower pace and ensuring that no one is isolated at the front or the back could have possibly allowed the demo to go on for longer. The cops prepare for annual demos like May Day months in advance, and they seek to disperse us as quickly as possible. Finding ways to unite the intentions of every person who shows up is difficult, but it remains the key to continuing to hold the street.This is a text that calls for others: how did you experience this May Day, and what could be done so that we continue to find each other in the street?

May Day 2018 Montreal: Anarchists Attack Police

Fri, 04 May 2018 14:32:41 +0000

From subMedia

On May Day, the CLAC, or anti-capitalist convergence, started their demo at Parc LaFontaine in Montreal. People took the sidewalks to prevent the cops from flanking the demo. About 5 minutes in, shit kicked off! Anarchists attacked police with rocks, bricks, flags, and fireworks.

Call to Demonstrate on May Day: You are not alone!

Tue, 03 Apr 2018 16:51:59 +0000

From the SITT-IWW Gathering with food and speeches at 2:30 pm at Parc Metro. Departure of the neighborhood demonstration at 4:00 pm. Followed by the CLAC anti-capitalist protest downtown.

As workers, unemployed, students and tenants, our best defense against those who exploit and abuse us is solidarity. That is why the Industrial Workers of the World (SITT-IWW Montreal) invites you to gather and fight together in Parc-Extension on May 1st.

2018 Anticapitalist May Day - corner of Sherbrooke/Amherst, 6PM

Thu, 29 Mar 2018 16:13:47 +0000

From Convergence des luttes anti-capitalistes (CLAC)

Now as before, they are rich because we are poor.

The financial masters of the Western world and seven of their political puppets will meet later this year at la Malbaie. They will fight to continue the exploitation of the global South and the pillaging of natural resources. The G7 will be a magnificient circus, paid for by our own exploitation. Paid by those who break themselves at work, by cut to social services, to education, to healthcare, to human dignity. A circus which will encourage free work given by unpaid internship, which will support the staggering profits of real estate moguls forcing us outside our homes. A circus whose sole goal is to promote an immoral statu quo. Imperialism and colonialism will be celebrated, at the expense of those who produce most of the world’s wealth. But it is not too late to fight back.

May Day in Montreal: Some Critical Reflections

Mon, 15 May 2017 19:44:07 +0000

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Despite a sizable turnout on a rainy day, May Day in Montreal left many feeling like the police succeeded in keeping our celebrations tame and orderly. The anti-capitalist demonstration started in two locations: a downtown contingent organized by CLAC (Convergence of Anti-Capitalist Struggles), and an anti-fascist, anti-borders contingent which would join the downtown one from the east. This was organized in part to avoid demonstrating alongside the PCR, authoritarian communists that CLAC persists in organizing with.

MayDay march rocks Montreal

Tue, 03 May 2016 21:22:03 +0000

From Submedia.tv

For the 9th year in a row an autonomous coalition of anti-capitalists invade the streets of Montreal to celebrate people’s struggles.

Anticapitalist May day

Tue, 05 Apr 2016 00:23:09 +0000

From CLAC Starting points:

Entrance of McGill University (corner of Sherbrooke and McGill College, McGill metro station)
Square Phillips (corner of Ste-Catherine and Union, McGill metro station)

THIS YEAR AGAIN, THIS IS A CALL FOR ECONOMIC DISTURBANCE IN DOWNTOWN MONTREAL, NAMED BY THE BOURGEOIS THEMSELVES AS THE NEW “GOLDEN SQUARE MILE”, ESPECIALLY THE PERIMETER FORMED BY THE SHERBROOKE, RENÉ-LÉVESQUE, PEEL AND UNION STREETS.

Again this year, the attacks against workers were dazzling : permanent economic crisis, increases in the cost of living, bosses and governments squeezing even more from employees. Notwithstanding the sacrosanct deficit zero we’ve been getting served for the last 20 years to justify cuts in social programs and help provided to poor workers and unemployed people. To divide our resistances even more, they wave the specter of terrorism and unearth xenophobia on a part of the population to encourage anger toward migrants, foreigners and people of color. Workers, the unemployed, students from everywhere in the world must unite against capitalist power. Against these attacks we must answer with solidarity:

Attack on employment centre in Hochelaga, May Day

Fri, 01 May 2015 22:38:28 +0000

Our enemies – journal de montreal, 01/05/2015

The local employment centre of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve was vandalized, over the night of Thursday to Friday, in Montreal, when white and red paint was thrown on the buildings façade and the windows were broken.

A passerby called 911 around 5:40 am to communicate the dammages to the building on rue De Rouen. Upon arriving at the location, police also noticed the interior had been ransacked, affirms the spokesperson of the SPVM, Jean-Pierre Brabant.

Mayday on Montreal Counter-information

May Day as though Kids Matter

Toronto: May Day Bank Attack

Video to Celebrate the 15th Anti-capitalist May Day

CALLOUT for the Anticapitalist Mayday '22: Colonial and Ecocidal, Capitalism is War!

Leaving the SPVM Behind to Attack a High-Tech Hub: A Promising Anti-Capitalist May Day

Anticapitalist May Day 2021: No Old Normal, No New Normal!

A Pact of Solidarity for May 1, 2021

May Day 2021: We don’t want this world they are trying to sell us!

City Redecorated for May Day!

Landlord Association's Offices Flooded for May Day

Opportunity in Every Crisis: A Call For Decentralized May Day Actions

This May Day, Resistance Continues Despite the Confinement!

Reportback from Montreal's May Day Against Borders

Anticapitalist MayDay 2019 - Cabot Square - 6:30PM

Report-back from the 2018 CLAC May Day Demo

May Day 2018 Montreal: Anarchists Attack Police

Call to Demonstrate on May Day: You are not alone!

2018 Anticapitalist May Day - corner of Sherbrooke/Amherst, 6PM

May Day in Montreal: Some Critical Reflections

MayDay march rocks Montreal

Anticapitalist May day

Attack on employment centre in Hochelaga, May Day

MAY DAY

ANTI-CAPITALIST DEMONSTRATION OF MAY 1, 2013:

colère noire contre la grande noirceur!

SOUTHWEST