Attack

The buzz has become impossible to escape. Business associations speak of “renewal”, while expensive restaurants celebrate “revitalization” and local politicians promote “redevelopment” as the city gives large grants to Toronto entrepreneurs to set up shop in town. This is all accompanied by a media blitz presenting Hamilton as a land of opportunity for the rich. With every passing day the meaning of these words becomes painfully obvious – in practice they really just mean increased misery, hardship, and displacement. Real estate agents, property management firms, investors, and business owners amongst others, reap huge profits as many of us who have called Hamilton home struggle to get by in the changing city. This is a fundamental reality of capitalism and is not surprising. What is surprising, is that those who celebrate and profit off gentrification continue to do so openly without regularly feeling the anger of those who their narrow self-interest harms. ...

Heavy machinery of the oil company Squatex was set aflame in the middle of Thursday night in Sainte-Jeanne-d’Arc. The company has already carried out drilling in the area. The equipment was parked on the grounds nearby. Emergency services were dispatched to the site of a fire around 8:30 Friday. The fire, which is now under control, is considered suspect by police. It would have started during the night. An inspector and arson technician were called to the site. ...

May 18 is an important day for me. On May 18 the FFFC[1. Don’t ask me what FFFC stands for, because I don’t know.] firebombed a Royal Bank of Canada branch in a wealthy ottawa neighbourhood. One month later, on June 18, I was arrested, along with Roger Clement and one other person. It was alleged that I had thrown the firebomb that started the fire at the RBC, and I was charged with three counts of arson to property. The charges were ultimately dropped due to a lack of evidence against me. ...

[ For reading ] [ For printing, 11”x17” ] “Direct action, simply put, means cutting out the middleman: solving problems yourself rather than petitioning the authorities or relying on external institutions. Any action that sidesteps regulations and representation to accomplish goals directly is direct action—it includes everything from blockading airports to helping refugees escape to safety and organizing programs to liberate your community from reliance on capitalism .” ...

11 x 17″ | PDF Everywhere the cops aren’t – and they can’t be everywhere all the time – there are banks, gentrifying condos, government offices, surveillance cameras, blank walls, and the infrastructure of capitalism (railroads, highways, pipelines, construction projects). Those who attack are those who don’t believe history has only one path, written by the authorities, towards a society that is increasingly controlled and increasingly dead. The pervasive surveillance around us shows us that the authorities fear our potential to act for freedom. By choosing to revolt against everything that keeps us from truly living, we can contribute to destroying this world that has been imposed on us while creating a new one. ...

A couple hundred people gathered yesterday evening at Place Valois in Hochelaga for the 20th annual edition of the Demonstration Against Police Brutality, organized by the Collective Opposed to Police Brutality (COBP). It was the day after the largest snowstorm of the year in Montreal, and the mounds of snow lining the streets meant obstacles for both demonstrators and the cops. Refusing the protest framework demanding less brutal police, we carried with us the memory of March fifteenths past and their legacy of anti-police revolt. Also, rocks. ...

A few minutes after the business closed, a surveillance camera captured a masked individual writing some hardly flattering graffiti. For the owner, Stéphane Allard, there is no doubt that it was a planned, anti-gentrification action. “You see four individuals pass by with a backpack. Then you see a masked person write hateful graffiti”, explains Mr. Allard, who estimates he lost an entire day of work. ...

About a year ago, the good citizens of the neighborhood were indignant about an attack against Electric Kids, whose front window was sprayed with purple paint which we can still see traces of today. Tonight, we decided to attack other businesses on rue Sainte-Catherine – three furniture design boutiques, a real estate office, and a yuppie hair salon. If this is the strategy we use, it’s not just to make those who support and participate in the gentrification of Hochelaga talk about it. We want to do more than just raise our voices, to be more than indignant when faced with this movement that slowly chases us from the neighborhood. Rather than being satisfied with just smashing their windows, we decided to spray the interior of the design businesses with paint to ruin their merchandise. It’s a matter of directly effecting these owners, and not just the facades that protect them. ...

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On the afternoon of Thursday, June 16, some respectable gay organizations held a ‘vigil’ in Montreal’s Gay Village for the victims of the recent shooting at a gay club in Orlando. The Collectif carré rose (CCR), which campaigns for more cops and security in the Village to counter ‘homophobic attacks’ (read: rich people getting mugged), disgustingly invited a slew of local and provincial politicians to speak to the crowd, including Quebec premier Philippe Couillard. While the politicians pretended to not be complicit in violence against queer and trans people, mining the crowd’s grief for political capital, the CCR and their buddies salivated at the promise of new lobbying possibilities for their pro-cop bullshit. ...