[b]Linchpin: Can you tell us what your role is in the anarchist and student movements in Quebec?[/b]

[b]Rémi:[/b] At the moment, I'm a “supporter’’ of the [url=http://www.causecommune.net/]Union Communiste Libertaire[/url] and I have been a member of the UCL for several years in the past. As for my role in the student movement, since I am not taking any courses in the current session, I'm not a member of any student union. But I am a student at UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal) studying for a Masters degree in Political Science. I am also on the executive committee of my teaching and research assistants union, which is a Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) local.

Inside the student movement I mostly do support work. I facilitate general assemblies and congresses. I organize workshops to share skills such as how to facilitate general assemblies and how to protect oneself from police in demonstrations, etc. I obviously also participate in the demonstrations and the different actions organized by the student movement.

Besides this, I am also writing a chapter on anarchism in the Quebec student movement for a book about anarchism in Quebec today.

[b]Linchpin: Historically, has the anarchist movement played an important role in the student movement in Quebec?[/b]

By Zach Ruiter

Justice for Levi is a collation dedicated to the memory of Levi Schaeffer. The coalition had successfully challenged the Ontario Police at the Ontario Superior Court. The court ruled the conduct of police who shot and killed Schaeffer violated the Police Services Act. The Ontario Police have successfully appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada, which is expected to hear the case sometime in December 2012.

The officers in question, Kris Wood and Mark Pullbrook collaborated with police lawyer Andrew McKay to write/fabricate their notes. This allowed the officers to get their stories straight before submitting them to the Special Investigations Unit.

The coalition Justice for Levi hosted an event at the Peterborough Library on January 31st to release a 15-minute video presentation detailing their struggle. (Justice for Levi Video, We Want Justice For Our Communities Not Police Impunity.")

The video presents a simple yet compelling graphic narrative in black and white. It communicates the reluctance of the Ontario Police to be accountable to the families of those they kill. As an example, the video details how police requested a portion of $92,000 in legal costs from the Schaeffer family.

According to Kenny Hone, a Justice for Levi spokesperson, “the 3000 person strong O.P.P. with millions of dollars at their disposal are trying to crush poor families who are only seeking justice”.

By Brandon Gray

[b][i]For forty days this past autumn, approximately 500 people, mostly youth, maintained a protest camp in St. James Park, a couple blocks from the third largest stock exchange in North America. As part of the global 'Occupy' movement against economic inequality, the park was a base in which a political dialogue could happen using direct action and non-hierarchical decision-making.[/i][/b]

I had intently followed the Tunisian uprising, watched the battles for Tahrir Square and paid close attention to the Spanish Indignados as the wave of revolt headed westward and finally reached Wall Street. Through facebook I signed up for the logistics and outreach committees nearly two weeks before the occupation, hoping that one area of work would compliment the other. The first logistics meetings were awkwardly tense because nobody knew each other, a proper meeting structure was absent, and almost everyone there was new to activism. However the people showing up to meetings were working very hard to make the occupation a success and had diverse backgrounds to draw on. We soon had a long list of needed items, beginning with the big stuff: generators and toilets. I thought that the best relationship to have with the unions was one in which all materiel support would be welcomed but any members taking part would do so just like everyone else at occupy.

I was hand-billing at U of T campus before heading down to Berczy Park for the second planning assembly, when a man walked up to me to ask me about Occupy. It turned out he had participated in the early protests that evolved into the Egyptian uprising. He helped me get our flyers out to people before we headed down to the assembly together, discussing how to build a movement here based on the specific tactics they had used in Egypt. It was very exciting: revolutionaries were finding each other and sharing experiences and advice, integrating the nodes of this world struggle.

[i]Protest signs and work boots hang off a fence at the front gate of the Electro-Motive Diesel plant in London Ont. on Jan. 21[/i] [b] Photo: Mick Sweetman[/b]

By Alex Balch

There was little to celebrate this New Years Eve for workers at the Electro-Motive Canada (EMC) plant in London, Ontario. As midnight struck, the factory's 465 employees found themselves locked out of their workplace and forced into a labour dispute with one of the largest industrial equipment manufacturers in the world – Caterpillar Inc (CAT).

Making matters worse for the workers represented by Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) local 27, is the fact that CAT - like most industry-leading conglomerates - is notoriously brutal. This brutality has built the company a reputation as a strident enemy of organized labour. Its rise to prominence in the corporate world owes much to the ruthless manner in which it has historically employed union-busting tactics and cost-cutting measures. Beginning in 1992, United Auto Workers (UAW) members in Decatur, IL fought a bitter six-year strike with CAT. The company's threats to hire a permanent replacement workforce eventually pushed a frightened UAW leadership into accepting humiliating concessions. The betrayal of Skilled Trades Unions – whose members crossed picket lines to service industrial machinery operated by scabs - left workers in the community thoroughly disillusioned and their union local broken. This is CAT's legacy in the United States.

After acquiring the London EMC plant as part of their $890 million dollar purchase of US-based Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) in 2010, CAT introduced a new contract that would cut workers' wages in half (from $34.00 to $16.50) and drastically reduce their pensions and benefits. In justifying the massive rollbacks, CAT cited their concerns that the EMC plant's workforce wasn't “sufficiently flexible and cost-competitive in the global marketplace.”

Between October 22 and October 25, Common Cause organized a speaking tour entitled “Class War On The Workfloor” in four Ontario cities (Hamilton, Toronto, Kitchener & London). The speaker was postal worker, anarchist and rank-and-file trouble maker, Rachael Stafford, from Edmonton.

Below is the audio recording from the Hamilton stop of the tour, held on October 22, 2011. The talk outlines a perspective on workplace organizing not dependent on union executives, but rather on empowering workers to fight their own battles. In the audio recording Stafford explains why it’s important to deal with issues as they arise on the floor through direct action, worker education, and participatory decision making in order to build the kind of struggle that can aim for the whole pie -- not just a bigger piece. The talk also offers first-hand context to the recent CUPW struggle, which saw postal workers go from being on strike to being locked out and quickly legislated back to work. This bitter experience was a clear example of the bosses' ongoing campaign to claw back the very rights workers fought for (and won) decades ago. Because postal workers are not alone in facing cutbacks, exploitation, greedy bosses, and the like, they have a lot in common with other workers -- and we all stand to learn a lot from one another's struggles.

[url=http://linchpin.ca/files/classwaronworkfloorhamilton2011pt1.mp3]Listen to Part One:[/url]

[url=http://linchpin.ca/files/classwaronworkfloorhamilton2011pt2QnA.mp3]Listen to Part Two:[/url]