Events
Podcast
Columns
Library
Contact
Jan 19, 24
Filed under: Canadian Tire Fire, Featured
In today’s column, we have a roundup of Palestine solidarity actions from the last month and a half, news from land defense struggles in so-called B.C., and international student and tenant solidarity actions.
2024 started on the right foot with noise demonstrations for prisoners in Hamilton and Montreal. A report back from Hamilton read:
…we made our annual stop at the Barton Jail, the monument to misery that looms over downtown Hamilton. We came prepared with fireworks, smoke, and paint, and nicely decorated the jail while providing a show for folks inside. There’s a distinct feeling watching every window for three stories fill with silouettes waving and banging on their windows, while you and your crew shout and wave back, filling the night air with as much noise and light as you can. Despite the heavy force of oppression that pushes down on all of us every day, we’ll continue to push back, to fight the fear and isolation, and dream of a free world.
On January 12th, three Indigenous land defenders were found guilty of criminal contempt in a B.C. Court for breach and prior knowledge of an injunction. The alleged breach occurred while defending Wet’suwet’en territory and the Wedzin Kwa from Coastal GasLink’s pipeline construction in 2021. The three land defenders were arrested during the raids of Gidimt’en Checkpoint and Coyote Camp. This week, the court will consider an application to stay the charges based on Charter of Rights violations and use of force during the arrests.
Palestine Solidarity
As Israel’s siege on Gaza passed the 100-day mark this week, protests and actions across the country have continued to call for a ceasefire and end to the occupation.
Office occupations continued, including the targetting of Israel shipping company Zim in Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa. Rail blockades, also targetting Zim, took place in London and Halifax.
Blockade at CN rail in Halifax. SOURCE: @WBWCanada
Blockades of weapons and ‘security systems’ manufacturers took place in Waterloo and Mississauga.
Protests took on a new angle as Christmas holidays and consumerism came into sharp contrast with the ongoing genocide. Many protests targeted shops and malls, especially those with direct ties to Israel. People also took to the streets in downtown Vancouver and Montreal to disrupt New Years Eve celebrations in solidarity with Palestine.
In Vancouver, Indigo stores were shut down on multiple occasions.
In Toronto, protesters filled the downtown Eaton Centre to sing songs for a ceasefire. The gathering was quickly and aggressively broken up by police.
On another occasion, people protested outside a Zara, also in the Eaton Centre.
In Montreal, some anarchists took a clandestine approach, using the cover of darkness to attack a Indigo store:
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.
The police are not able to protect the advocates and accomplices of genocide everywhere or at all times. We used a fire extinguisher filled with red paint to redecorate the interior of the Indigo store in downtown Montreal, after breaking the windows. No one was arrested.
Politicians were targeted at their fundraisers, homes, and offices.
Rally at home of Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly to demand Canadian state end support of Israel. SOURCE: @hussansk
At the same time, thousands continue to show up in the streets for Palestine.
Toronto Tenants Occupy Landlord Office For Three Days
In Toronto, members of the York Southwest Tenants’ Union staged a successful three-day occupation of their landlord’s office to protest the eviction of one of their neighbours. The resident of 1440 Lawrence Avenue West had been facing eviction over rent arrears, but told she would be allowed to stay if she paid. Then, when she went to the landlord’s office to make the payment, she was told she was being evicted immediately and was locked out of her apartment. Her neighbours swiftly came to her defense, occupying the landlord’s office and demanding she be allowed back in.
The sit-in lasted 74 hours in total, with some visits from police but no escalation. Finally, the tenant was given back her keys and able to access her apartment. The tenant has now been granted an expedited hearing at the landlord tenant board, to investigate her eviction order and to determine if the lockout was illegal. Meanwhile, the tenant union says other residents of the building are being evicted in similar circumstances. Many residents of the apartment complex (though not the one evicted in this case) are part of an ongoing rent strike to protest above the guideline rent increases in their building.
In other militant tenant news, Parkdale Organize is raising money for a free food program organized by tenants out of an occupied apartment unit. The group writes:
In December 2020, Parkdale tenants occupied a vacant unit at the West Lodge towers to distribute food to their neighbours. Tenants continue to occupy a vacant unit for this end to this day. And throughout this December, three years later, the West Lodge tenant committee is asking for support so they can continue this important project. The organizing that you see on social media or in the news is the organizing that occurs in moments of crisis: evictions, rent increases or dire disrepair. And these actions are important.
Behind that, often unseen, lies even more critical organizing work. When we sustain building committees outside of moments of crisis, we are part of building the meaningful connections between neighbours that are necessary for effective actions when crisis does come. But more than that, we fundamentally change the way that we live in our buildings. And we build the collective power to intervene on both the small and large attacks that we, as working class people, face everyday. Neighbourhood organizing is about so much more than rent increases and disrepair. It’s about changing the way we all live together. And supporting the working class initiatives that emerge from that: https://westlodgefoodbank.com
Finally, tenant unions in the US and across so-called Canada recently held a week of action in solidarity with the Montreal Autonomous Tenant’s Union, which for the past few months, has been attacked by landlords in the streets and in the courts. Various tenant unions dropped banners, held benefit events, and participated in a phone-zap campaign. From a report on social media:
Over the course of the week, we organized a Klezmer Benefit Night with Yenne Velt, a phone blast to speak to contractors doing renovations for the Cucurulls (Atwill Morin and MAD Construction), and tabling outside the Cucurulls’ buildings. We also paid a couple of visits to the landlords’ offices: our Tenant Power Choir came by to sing some of their classic solidarity ballads, and a debate (should landlords be abolished?) was held between a few tenants and a mystery landlord.
Thank you to all who participated in the week of action and helped make it clear that corporate and state repression will not stop us from organizing.
Thank you as well to the Los Angeles, Tucson, Madison, and Eugene tenants’ unions for their solidarity across borders. Thank you to the Vancouver tenants’ union and the Comité logement du Plateau Mont-Royal for similar solidarity.
We could use help to cover our extensive legal fees in criminal and civil court, donate a few bucks here.
Follow the Montreal Autonomous Tenant’s Union on social media here.
International Students Stage Multi-day Protest of Algoma University
On January 7th, Indian International students launched an indefinite protest outside Algoma University’s Brampton campus. The protest was started after the group says over 100 international students were failed by a white professor, some for the second time, in a course that is mandatory to graduate. The professor would not provide any explanation or justification for the failing grades. The students would need to pay $3,500 to retake the course, a steep price on top of the already exploitative $22,000 per year tuition fees. Instead, they banded together to demand that the university review the exams to verify whether the failing grades are correct. For three days, they maintained the protest and held marches through downtown Brampton.
In response to the public attention and pressure, Algoma administration reviewed the grades for the course and found them to be ‘abnormally low.’ They applied a bell curve to the grades, increasing the number of passing students. The remaining 32 students were offered study support and a makeup exam that would be marked by a different professor.
By the weekend of January 13th, international students from two other programs at Algoma joined the protest with similar concerns. The students are calling for greater transparency and fairness in assessments from the university.
TMX Construction Disrupted
According to reporting by Ricochet, on December 10th, two land defenders and allies of the Secwépemc people disrupted work at a site along the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. With the guidance and blessing of a Secwépemc elder, a Cree land defender and a white ecological scientist broke into the site of a bore hole along the expansion route, with the goal of dropping tobacco to the bottom of the hole, and chaining themselves to the site, disrupting work. They were successful on both counts. The two women were eventually discovered by workers and threatened with arrest. After two hours, they left before RCMP arrived.
Construction at this particular site is the result of an adjustment made to construction plans in September 2023. Originally, Secwépemc people were promised that the sacred site, called Pípsell, would be avoided, and that less-disruptive “micro-tunneling” would be used in the area. However, after encountering issues with micro-tunneling, the Trans Mountain Corporation sought and was granted approval from the Canada Energy Regulator to adjust the route into the area and use an more disruptive open trench approach.
On January 12th, the Canada Energy Regulator commission approved a further variance in Trans Mountain’s plans, allowing them to use a different pipe thickness, diameter and coating than was originally approved, as well as granting relief from the requirement to adhere to their “Quality Management Plan”. The hearing was not open to the public.
The Trans Mountain expansion is expected to be completed in early 2024.
Follow Canadian Tire Fire on Mastodon!
