Solidarity

Five years ago on this day in Cuba, small groups of protesters took to the streets to demand better living conditions. In the days that followed, thousands of Cubans from dozens of other cities spontaneously joined the protest movement. July 11, 2021 was not just a cry against hunger or shortages; it was the moment when thousands of people realized that, faced with a state turned into an oppressive overseer, the only way out is to stop looking at the power. The protests in Cuba left us with anarchism’s oldest and most forgotten lesson: that all authority, however much it disguises itself as ideology, can only sustain itself through obedience and repression. ...

Or: Ambulance Chasing All the Way to the Xenophobia Hospital (On Identity Politics in Montreal) Prologue On March 9th, 2011, in Midan El-Tahrir in Egypt, the Egyptian military arrested an estimated 18 women. They tortured them and carried out “virginity tests” to be able to prosecute them for “prostitution” - a charge any unmarried woman who is not a virgin faces in most of the Arab world. In Egypt “prostitution” carries a punishment of up to seven years, and obviously social and cultural death if not an honor killing by the families. Women faced persecution for taking part in protests and various occupations of the square because of this case, combined with horrendous sexual assaults by security forces in the Midan. This story on its own reflects the severe consequences of conservative society. Conservatism is anti-insurrection, developed and encouraged by states to control ‘the crowd’ and ‘the people’. When every random aunty is an informant, and every random uncle is a prosecutor, who needs the state anyway? In the fight for freedom across these conservative communities, the fight against the state is one and the same with the fight against the dogma of religion and culture. In essence, a rebellion against “community”, the watchdogs of the state, cannot be separated from the fight against the state. ...

Early this morning, autonomous activists in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle recovered a life-size replica of an MK-84 bomb made of papier-mâché and set it on fire near the Port of Montreal, on Notre-Dame Street between Dickson and Viau. The intervention of the fire and police services disrupted traffic. The MK-84 is one of the most devastating bombs in existence. Measuring 3 meters and weighing approximately 2 tons, it is the deadliest bomb on the market, with a blast radius capable of killing up to 1 km around its point of impact. During the first year of the genocide alone, “Israel” dropped more than 14,000 bombs on the Palestinian people. This bomb is shamefully manufactured by General Dynamics, which has a subsidiary in Repentigny. ...

« … the state, the bourgeoisie and even the working class have been constituted in part through the destruction of First Nations, the dispossession of their territories, the extortion of their resources and settler colonialism– Francis Dupuis-Déri et Benjamin Pillet, 2019. L’anarcho-indigénisme. Lux Éditeur, Montréal. p.35 Over the past few weeks, blockades of forestry roads have been carried out in Haute-Mauricie and in the north of Lac-Saint-Jean by the MAMO Alliance (First Nation). These actions, conducted to contest Bill 97 on forestry regime reform, have interrupted or disrupted forestry operations. ...

Dear comrades and friends, As we enter the fourth year of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the urgency to act has never been greater. The situation grows increasingly dire, with the toll of the war deepening both on the battlefield and within the fabric of Ukrainian society. So today we need your voices, your solidarity, and your actions to amplify our actions for justice and resistance. ...

A demo for Palestine attacked Concordia University Sunday evening. Many windows of luxury stores on Sainte-Catherine street were also broken. The police were kept at a distance with the help of molotov cocktails. Photos of the demo

May 6, 2024 Around the world, countless indigenous communities are fighting extractivist projects and infrastructures, such as mining projects, hydraulic fracking, deforestation and pipelines. In the territory occupied by the Canadian state, for example, a huge project is currently under construction: the Coastal GasLink Pipeline, designed to transport gas extracted by hydraulic fracking. This project not only destroys entire regions, but also threatens the Wet’suwet’en indigenous way of life. The pipeline is to be built on their territory, crossing the Wedzin Kwa River, which is essential to their way of life as a source of water and fish. That’s why the Wet’suwet’en have long opposed this project with fierce resistance, defending their land. Their resistance is met with strong repression, but also benefits from great solidarity. ...

This week, an anti-colonial uprising broke out in Kanaky, an archipelago in the South Pacific. Kanaky was named “New Caledonia” by British colonizer James Cook and has been occupied by France under that name since the 19th century. The Kanaks are black indigenous peoples of the islands whose cultures face genocide from white French “immigrants” who drive them from their lands and impose capitalism. For more general information: ...

In the early morning of January 13th, we took an action in solidarity with the arrestees of November 23rd, 2023, in Toronto. The Toronto police poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into breaking into homes, handcuffing the elderly, sacking personal belongings, and terrorizing families. Parents were handcuffed in front of their children. One person arrived home to find their door broken down and a patio chair throw into the front garden. Another family was told not to speak in their mother tongue. The arrestees had allegedly taken a normal action of postering an Indigo bookstore and splashing paint on its facade. The action targeted Indigo founder and CEO Heather Reisman, who funnels Indigo profits into the HESEG Foundation, which provides education grants to individuals who emigrate to Israel to enlist in the IDF, aiding and abetting international recruitment for the Israeli military. Reisman is a core proponent of Canadian support for Israeli settlement and military operations. To further punish the activists, to terrorize others in the Palestinian solidarity movement, and legitimate their persecution, the police encouraged a media narrative that these were antisemitic hate crimes. As the vileness of these raids illustrates, if the police were actually interested in stopping hate-motivated attacks, they would have only to simply not go into work. ...

At the end of October 2023, in the quietest hours of the night, a small group quickly secured a blockade to the CN rail lines in “bc”, near the Hope area. The blockade consisted of a 100-pound iron work table vice – whose jaws were tightened directly to the rail – topped with a several hundred pound pile of chain and scrap metal. On one side of the gigantic work-table vice was painted “FREE GAZA” in red. On the other side was painted “CGL OFF THE YINTAH”. The blockade was secured to a curving stretch of rail in the forest, near no residences. CN freight trains churn through this area multiple times per hour. The blockade was fixed immediately after a train passed, to give the most time for safe work. ...

Excerpt from Canadian Tire Fire #65 Since Hamas’s October 7th attack, killing around 1,400 people and taking around 240 hostages, Israel has been carrying out a massive campaign of death and destruction on the Palestinian people through a brutal siege and military offensive. Thousands of Gazans have died, over 10,500 at last estimate , with thousands more estimated buried under the rubble of countless buildings collapsed by the bombings. Fuel has run out at many hospitals, worsening an already deadly crisis caused not only by the air and ground assault but also by the blocking of food, water, and fuel from entering the open-air prison. ...

Today, November 1st 2023, when the veil is at its thinnest, the dead in Gaza speak to us. We, the writers, are not Palestinian. We write this for fellow north american anarchists of a certain type. You’ll see yourself as you read. We also write this for the anarchy-adjacent, and for anyone who is interested. ...