Democracy

Late on election night, dozens of black flags lined the streets just south of Lafontaine park. Discarded in the midst of an altercation with riot police who shot canisters at us, broke us up, and temporarily shattered our togetherness, they remained, at least momentarily, scattered across the pavement, there to mark our passage. A passage too short. A passage not nearly close to sweet. The demo began around 10pm. The lighting of a pink smoke grenade marked the beginning of what was going to be a brief but fiery display of resistance. Fireworks splintered and splattered, dying out among the trees. Cops had been roaming around since the beginning of the banquet, at times hiding behind their unmarked vehicles, but for the most part, staring at us from a distance, as if trying to locate the one transgression, infraction, crime, that would later serve as a justification for the barrels of tear gas they were preparing to unload on us. ...

Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Android | RSS Cover photo: Italian anarchist partisan fighters celebrate the defeat of fascism. In this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we talk with long time indigenous author, artist, and organizer, Gord Hill, who for decades has written under the pen name, Zig Zag. While Gord is perhaps best known for documenting indigenous struggles across the so-called Americas, in his newest work for Arsenal Pulp Press , he takes on the history of fascism and resistance to it over the past 100 years in, The Antifa Comic Book: 100 Years of Fascism and Antifa Movements, which also features a forward by Mark Bray . ...

The electoral circus has begun in Quebec. As anarcho-syndicalists, we believe necessary to promote a systematic abstaining stance. This is why we share here two posters as an answer to statist propaganda and electoralist brainwashing. The fact that we don’t vote is the logical result of our revolutionary project. It’s delusional to think that our emancipation will come from parliament. We’ll only be able to realize anarchist communism (only economical and political system that insures our individual and collective emancipation) by organising our struggles in a horizontal, egalitarian fashion… and far away from political parties. ...

Every time there’s an election, on the provincial or federal levels anyway, Montréal anarchists respond. There are stickers, there are posters, there are demos. ON NE VOTE PAS, ON LUTTE! declares the banner at the front of the march. I think that every person should, on occasion, reflect on their habits. It may be too much energy to change a habit, even a bad habit, but it is at least good to know what the habits are, what they entail, and think about how to live with them better. ...

On Friday, May 18, 2012, two new laws came into effect in Montréal. Their purpose is to stifle the anti-capitalist revolt that has grown from the more-than 100-day-old provincial student strike. The first is the municipal by-law that forbids the wearing of masks during any demonstration with the penalty of a $1000 -$5000 fine (additionally, if the Federal government’s proposed law comes into effect, wearing a mask in a ‘riot’ could result in up to 10 years of prison). The second is the provincial government’s Special Law (Loi 78) that requires any public demonstration to submit itself to meticulous control by the police to avoid being declared ‘illegal’. Any leader, spokesperson, or rank-holding member of a student association that blocks access to classes or counsels others to do so will be subjected to a fine ranging between $7000 and $35,000. ...