Students

A week of student strikes having just ended, this is a claim for a series of direct actions that spanned the course of the past two years including three nocturnal attacks. Pieces of Concordia University infrastructure were destroyed at a variety of sites. Based on their own estimates these damages cost the school hundreds of thousands of dollars. These attacks were not done because of Concordia’s investments or ties. This was all done because of their attempts to pound their students into submission. These nocturnal attacks are being announced to erase any doubt in the simple minds of the university administrators who will do anything and waste all their money and resources just to chase after some authoritarian fantasy of an obedient consumer-student, administrators who have minds that are obsessed with their own ideologies, who live in echo chambers where their rich friends cheer them on and leave them out to dry when they see no results, and who throw tantrums when their perfect vision of order is disturbed time and time again despite the money they have wasted on their peanut-brained private security apparatus. We laugh at you because you waste your time on the hopeless dream of all tyrants while barely deserving such a title in your sandcastle empire. You do not understand that love for the world and the refusal to accept the abuse, brutalization, and slaughter of other humans is an eternal human tendency that will endlessly replenish the pool of people struggling for freedom. This human nature has never been stopped by such pitiable punishments and will renew itself endlessly and pour out of any and all cracks which we will make ourselves if we have to. ...

Two windows were smashed at concordia’s October 7th demonstration because of their suspensions and treatment of the strike Monday, and because they invited cops onto campus and used security to arrest two people. May concordia security suck on my two rocks. Long live freedom. Long live anarchy.

Your browser does not support the audio element. Yesterday in Tiohtia:ke, forty anarchists (and our friends 🙂 ) attacked the buildings of mcgill university. Armed with rudimentary tools, we succeeded in destroying all windows that stood in our way. With the help of hammers, rocks, and glass bottles, we vandalized this symbol of the colonial capitalist system. Within 15 minutes, we smashed over 30 windows on multiple pavillions of the institution, as well as the electronic locks of the administration building. An exam in progress during the protest was cancelled for 350 students. According to a mcgill spokesperson, the damages are estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Two comrades who were momentarily detained by the failed pigs of a private security agency, subcontracted by mcgill, were gloriously de-arrested. The police response was slow and ineffective, the protest led to no arrests or injuries. We dispersed completely before the arrival of the spvm. ...

Strategic takeaways TLDR: 1) It does not take many people to change the course of a protest. 2) When the police are busy defending a fixed point it opens possibilities for exciting action in other places. 3) Our comrades can be de-arrested, and doing this against security officers is good, lower-stakes practice for doing it against the police The takeover of Concordia’s Hall building was yet another instance of the slow building militancy in the Tiohtià:ke (Montréal) solidarity movement for Palestine. ...

Police were invited to campus last week by McGill and pressured to charge someone by the administration just for some graffiti. When cops are invited onto campus they police and ruin young people’s lives. Universities need to be made places of sanctuary. Denunciations and the lessons of history have not worked so far. Yesterday, at night, we anarchists, armed with tools that anyone can find, committed our first acts of revenge, leaving our marks on the McGill administration building. ...

The protest and blockade against the UK anti-trans campaigner Robert Wintemute at McGill on Tuesday 10th Jan 2023 is potentially a moment of polarisation for the queer and trans liberation movement in Montreal. It is also a serious blow against the ability for anti-trans campaigners to freely build support for their ideas in the city. Further, the militancy of the rally clarifies some of the current contradictions in our movement and demonstrates the movement’s interest in moving in a more radical direction. ...

Through this solidarity struggle, it has become clear that as a radical community, we need to stand in solidarity with the kanien’kehá:ka kahnistensera. Because these traditionalist activists from Kahnawa:ke have been fighting for the last fifty years for the sovereignty of their people. Because they are among the few Mohawk people who still hold fast to their pre-colonial mode of governance, called the Great Law of Peace. ...

We are settler anarchists acting independently in solidarity with the Kanien’kehà:ka Kahnistensera. We support the Mohawk Mothers strong opposition to the New Vic renovation project. Our action is an artistic intervention that seeks to amplify the dire consequences of McGill’s current approach to the area; that is, covering up possible evidence of unmarked graves and ancestral sites of the Rotino’shonni people. We decided to act because we oppose the settler colonial state and the grotesque society that exists in this colonial context. We want to make it very clear that we planned and carried out this action completely independently of the Kahnistensera and did not communicate with them about it in any way. ...

Important Update: Monday, October 17, 2022 It has come to our attention that certain phrasing of our previous communique requires immediate correction and clarification. We deeply respect and honour the hard work the kahnistensera have done, so in an effort to address certain concerns we would like to communicate the following. Since the colonial institutions involved in supporting McGill’s New Vic project have apparently attempted to use this action against Arkéos to threaten the kahnistensera and their ongoing court case, the organizers of the action want to add the following update to our statement below: we planned and carried out this action completely independently of the kahnistensera and did not communicate with them about it in any way. Our use of the word “accomplices” in the original communique was influenced by broader anti-colonial anarchist discussions around the use of that word in other contexts, with our working definition being that ‘’the work of an accomplice in anti-colonial struggle is to attack colonial structures & ideas.’’ (See here .) We also wish to redirect you to this engaging text about similar issues, titled “On the question of allies”, which can be found here . Our point isn’t to squabble about term usage, but rather, to give context as to why we chose this term. In retrospect, we realize the use of this term was not appropriate given the ongoing, separate and independent legal battle the kahnistensera are involved in. ...

In 2022, I was an active anarchist in the two week occupation of McGill University. In the months prior to the occupation, I was part of the meetings that discussed the idea of pitching up tents in the Arts building. Back then, we were just 6 people at a picnic table. I witnessed the successes and failures of the occupation (and of its offshoots at Concordia and UdeM) but until now have not written anything on the subject. ...

In this episode I chat with two members of Divest McGill , a student-led organization at McGill University in so-called Montreal. They are fighting to force McGill to divest from the fossil fuel industry and transform the university into something liberatory and accountable to the people whose lives it affects. This spring, they led a more than two-week-long open, social occupation of a university building. All music in this episode is from the 2012 anti-folk opera " What The F*ck Am I Doing Here? " about anarchist participation in the 2012 Quebec student strike. Check it out on Soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/whatthefuckamidoinghere/sets/what-the-fuck-am-i-doing-here ...

Welcome, to This Is America, March 25th, 2022. On today’s episode, first we speak with someone involved in a recent occupation at a university in so-called Montreal . The interview starts around 06:15 Your browser does not support the audio element.