Profession • % des employés qui ne résident pas à Montréal
Pompiers 82%
Policiers 81%
Contremaîtres 62%
Cadres 49%
Cols Bleus 48%
Professionnels 38%
Cols Blancs 32%
Brigadiers 5%
Total 49%
source: http://ift.tt/1HLR0Up
At the last May Day protest, police repression was brutal and a lot of protesters were hurt. Bobette was specifically targeted by the SPVM because of her political activities; they physically attacked her and psychologically harassed her. You can read a summary of what happened to Bobette on May Day afterward. Due to her injuries, Bobette has since then been force to cancel her contracts as a circus artist, which deprives her of income.
In order, for Bobette, to sue the SPVM for bodily harm as well as moral and material damages, she must raise 4000$ for a medical expertise for her defence. So we are launching a campaign to raise the necessary amount for the expertise and to assist her financially until she can work again
We’re asking for the financial support of people, groups and organizations to help Bobette win her lawsuit against the SPVM.
For more information, you can contact us at solidarite.bobette@gmail.com
To make a donation for Bobette’s lawsuit against the SPVM, please write a check for:
Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes
Please indicate “Solidarité Bobette” on the memo line, and send it to the following address:
CLAC-Montreal
c/o QPIRG Concordia
1500 de Maisonneuve West, #204
Montréal, Québec
H3G 1N1
To make a donation by PayPal, click the button on the CLAC Legal web page.
On May 1st, 2014, around 8:45PM, in a parking lot near the corner of St-Antoine and St-Laurent, Bobette was illegally detained and arrested by several officers of the SPVM. She was viciously thrown to the ground by an officer with the badge number #5269 of the SPVM, and then punched and kicked repeatedly by several police officers among them police officer badge number #5269 and police officer badge number #6162.
She was then dragged over fifty meters by SPVM police officers. These officers smashed her head against a wall, twisted her right thumb, pushed their knees behind her legs, all that while constantly hitting her as they handcuffed her with tie wraps. They kept insulting and mocking her, using recent painful events related to her personal life.
Afterward, Bobette was transferred to two other SPVM police officers, who conducted an illegal search of her belongings. These officers continued acting violently before taking her by car in the vicinity of 600 Fullum street, in Montreal. She was then transferred to a police van where more SPVM officers harassed and took pictures of her against her will.
Shortly after her release, she lost consciousness and was hospitalized for injuries from her beating at the hands of the police. Bobette suffered a concussion, whiplash, a sprain, permanent damage to the joints on her right thumb, and many bruises on her hands, wrists, shoulders and calves. Her neck needed to be immobilized in a cervical collar for thirteen (13) days. She has not recovered the full use of her right thumb. She still suffers from lingering pain to her neck, her back, and from throbbing migraines.
This information is also available on the CLAC Legal webiste in French and English.
Jennifer Pawluck, a 20 year old woman from Montreal, was taken into police custody yesterday [April 3] and questioned after she posted a photo of a graffiti mural on her Instagram. The mural showed a caricature of a Montreal police spokesman Cmdr. Ian Lafrenière, with a bullet hole in his head.
After she posted the image to Instagram, police came to her house and took her in for questioning, releasing her several hours later. The police say that there are secret reasons they detained her, beyond taking a picture of graffiti and posting it, but they won’t say what they are.
Pawluck participated in the mass student demonstrations in Montreal and was part of the ensuing mass arrests. She will have to appear in court on April 17, and is barred from going with a kilometer of police HQ and from communicating with Cmdr Lafrenière. She has not been charged.
This arrest occurs in the context of the Montreal police’s new 2013 gambit to snuff out the embers left from last year’s student strike. Because despite the election victory of the PQ – which was meant to be the nail in the coffin of last year’s historic upsurge – the embers are still hot and little flames keep on popping up.
The SPVM’s response has been to enact zero tolerance against any but officially State-sanctioned protests in Montreal. Unless organizers have given police their route ahead of time and asked permission to protest, police have been attacking demos, kettling people, making arrests, and enforcing Montreal’s new P-6 bylaw (one of three pieces of repressive legislation passed during the 2012 strike). Under P-6, merely being in attendance at a demonstration deemed “illegal” for failing to be sanctioned by the State is sufficient to earn you a $637 fine.
P-6 was passed on May 19, 2012, as part of the (not immediately successful) attempt to clamp down on the student strike which led to the toppling of the Liberal provincial government in September of that year. It was not implemented during the strike, which had the support of a critical mass of the broader population, including social democratic and nationalist forces. In the new context under the current PQ government, where the student question is supposed to have been “settled” and with much smaller numbers willing to take to the streets, P-6 was first implemented on March 15 of this year, at the annual International Day Against Police Brutality demonstration. It was quickly then used at two other demonstrations, all of which were suppressed by police before they could even begin. So far hundreds have been ticketed under this bylaw.
The situation continues to develop, and which way things will go will depend largely on whether people back down or stand up to the police’s campaign of intimidation. This is the context in which both Pawluck’s arrest and the widespread use of P-6 so far this spring must be understood.
Solidarity against police repression in Montreal: We will not submit to the municipal by-law P-6
With this public declaration, we assert our opposition to by-law P-6: we will continue to demonstrate without negotiating our demo routes with police, and we will systematically challenge all tickets that arise from this by-law.
The past year has been marked by an escalation of police repression against political protesters in Montreal. As our political movements take to the streets in larger numbers, with more frequency and militancy, we are attacked more brutally and arbitrarily than ever, with batons, pepper spray, tear gas, sound grenades, and rubber bullets. Our friends are mass arrested, humiliated, kettled, and in many cases badly injured.
Within this context of police escalation against political protesters, the Montreal police (SPVM) are attempting to normalize another practice: arresting demonstrators before they can even begin to demonstrate, or even gather to demonstrate. Three times within one week – March 15 on the International Day Against Police Brutality; March 18 before a planned night demo; and March 22 on the anniversary of student strike protests – the Montreal police stopped demonstrations before they could begin by surrounding protesters with riot police and arresting them en masse, in the hundreds. One clear goal of the police tactic is to scare demonstrators, and potential demonstrators, from taking to the streets
The SPVM can’t be bothered to make criminal charges. Instead, they use municipal by-law “P-6″ which makes demonstrations that don’t provide an advance itinerary to the police to be a contravention of the by-law. A municipal by-law offense is not a criminal charge, it’s the equivalent of a parking ticket. However, the P-6 offence was raised to more than $500 ($637 with fees) for a first offence last May in the context of the student strike movement.
The P-6 by-law prohibits “obstructing the movement, pace or presence” of citizens who are also using public space at the same time. How can we take the streets without obstructing vehicular or pedestrian traffic? Moreover, the P-6 by-law demands not only communicating demo routes in advance, but also the approval of our routes by the police. This is the equivalent of giving the police the arbitrary power to refuse our routes if they judge them to be too disruptive, and also to prevent marching to locations that have been chosen as political “targets.”
We refuse to negotiate with the police our freedom of expression, our right to demonstrate and our right to disrupt the existing social, political and economic order that we consider profoundly unjust and illegitimate.
Part of the response is in our hands, as part of grassroots, autonomous community organizations. There is no obligation to provide the police our demo routes, and the Montreal police in particular, who abuse their authority with impunity, don’t deserve any accountability from us. Instead, we’re accountable to each other, and the social movements we come from. We always retain the right to protest spontaneously, and with demo routes that reflects our needs and demands.
In the face of police repression, let’s take back the streets with our weapons of solidarity and support.
This statement is endorsed by:
- La Convergence les luttes anticapitalistes (CLAC)
- Action Anti-Raciste / Anti-Racist Action (ARA)
- Artivistic
- Assemblée populaire et autonome de Hochelaga-Maisonneuve (APAQ-Hochelaga)
- Assemblée populaire et autonome de Villeray (APAQ-Villeray)
- Association pour la liberté d’éxpression (ALÉ)
- Coalition Justice pour les victimes de bavures policières
- Collectif de solidarité anti-coloniale / Anti-Colonial Solidarity Collective
- CKUT Steering Committee
- Dignidad Migrante
- Les Frères et Soeurs d’Émile-Nelligan
- Front d’action populaire pour le réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU)
- Montréal-Nord Républik
- Mouvement Action-Chômage de Montréal (MAC)
- Organisation populaire des droits sociaux de la région de Montréal (OPDS-RM)
- Parti communiste révolutionnaire (PCR)
- People’s Potato at Concordia
- Personne n’est illégal / No One Is Illegal-Montréal
- Projet Accompagement Solidarité Colombie (PASC)
- La Pointe Libertaire
- QPIRG Concordia
- QPIRG McGill
- RadLaw McGill
- R.A.S.H. Montréal
- Réseau de la Commission populaire / People’s Commission Network
- Société Bolivarienne du Québec
- Union communiste libertaire (UCL)
(If your group also endorses this declaration, please get in touch via info@clac-montreal.net)
REMINDER: EVERYONE CAN EASILY CHALLENGE A P-6 TICKET
Be sure to plead “not-guilty” on your ticket, and to demand complete disclosure of all proof, and mail it back to Montreal’s municipal court within 30 days. The constitutionality of the municipal by-law will be challenged, and tickets are being challenged en masse, so no one should expect to pay a fine any time soon, or possibly ever.
La Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes (CLAC)
www.clac-montreal.net
info@clac-montreal.net
Filmed in 1984-1986 as a year-end film school project. I first met Windi in 1976, in Calgary on the 8th avenue mall. My friend D. and I wanted to hitchhike to Vancouver but ended up in Calgary. That first night, when we arrived there with no where to go and no one to contact Windi took us in for the night, at his pad he shared with a visual artist/bus driver lover. I had never met a gay person before. I later found out that this is what Windi would do, bring in wayward youth for the night, feed them and send them on their way. I stayed in Calgary for a few months and would see Windi performing every once in a while, in a skirt but not as a woman, in Calgary, in 1976...I didn't know or realize what he was singing about at the time but I sure thought he was courageous. I then met him again a few years later in Montreal. A few more years later, needing a year-end film school project, I decided to do a portrait of this man who, more than most, lived his life according to his principles. Windi was, of course, full of contradictions, like us all, but somehow that didn't matter with him.
Update (07/13/11): The four individuals who have been arrested and charged went in court last Wednesday. The Crown disclosed its evidence to the defendants. It also asked for a hardening of their release conditions. The hearing was then postponed to Monday, July 18.
Montréal, July 5th — On June 29th, 2011, the Anti-Gang unit of the Montréal Police Service’s Organized Crime Division arrested four political activists —including Patrice Legendre, a communist worker and supporter of the RCP. The police searched their homes and arrested them in connection with the most recent May First demonstration, organized by Montréal’s Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC). Nearly 30 officers were involved in the operation, which occurred early in the day.
According to the investigator who headed the whole operation, nine officers were injured, some seriously, during an altercation at the May First demonstration. More on the demonstration is available in issue 3 of the communist newspaper Partisan. The four activists who were arrested were detained and then released on a promise to appear on July 13 at 9 a.m. at the courthouse in Montréal. They have been charged with a number of offenses, from “assault with a weapon” to “assaulting a police officer,” “obstruction of justice” and “possession of a weapon with intent to cause harm.”
During the May First demonstration in the streets of Montréal, at which nearly 1,500 people were in attendance, the police provoked an altercation by trying to arrest, for reasons unknown, a militant who was widely known as the photographer for Partisan newspaper. As one would expect, dozens of protesters responded by confronting the police, telling them to release the activist they were trying to arrest. Obviously unprepared, the police chose to retreat.
The operation on June 29th was clearly carried out with very little basis. The content of the interrogation to which the arrested activists were subjected as well as the presence of an investigator from the “Integrated National Security Enforcement Team” suggests that there were other motives behind the operation.
First, we can assume the arrests were motivated by revenge, as the police will always want to “get back” at those who cause them to suffer a defeat —as was the case at the May First demonstration, where demonstrators stopped them from arbitrarily and inexcusably arresting one of the activists involved. The cops had egg on their faces and somebody needed to pay for it. Without any evidence to go on, the police decided to go after a few well-known activists, some of whom express their views openly. The demonstration was used as a pretext to criminalize their political involvement and, what’s more, the communist views they defend. Recall that in recent weeks, the RCP began publishing a bilingual, biweekly newspaper, Partisan, and has been distributing it in major cities in Ontario and Québec, and has also started organizing workers in the Revolutionary Workers Movement (Mouvement Ouvrier Révolutionnaire, MRO). Its struggle against capitalism and exploitation is taking new forms and is moving forward, and the police, we can assume, are not fond of that.
Investigators also said they had started monitoring Maison Norman Bethune —a bookstore run by the Information Bureau of the RCP— the day after the May First demonstration. Many activists frequent the bookstore, attending events and getting involved in the cause of revolution. It seems as though the police wanted to “go on a fishing expedition” to find somebody guilty of something so they could draw attention away from their own petty and provocative behavior at the May First Demonstration.
Further, information collected by the RCP Information Bureau suggests the police who carried out these arrests tried to implicate the RCP, and Patrice Legendre in particular, in three previous incidents, including one that happened a year ago in Trois-Rivières, where an explosive device shattered the doors of a recruitment office for the Canadian Forces. A group calling itself “Résistance Internationaliste” claimed responsibility for this act and since it happened the police have not solved the case.
Curiously, the day after the arrests in Montréal, the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team installed a command post for three days in Trois-Rivières across from the recruiting office in order, they said, “to collect new information and validate some leads described as ‘very serious’.” The police then presented pictures of the four arrested activists to the people of Trois-Rivières, hoping somebody could implicate them in one way or another.
The operation on June 29th was no accident. It comes at a time when the bourgeois state in Canada is on the offensive in criminalizing political struggle and the activists who are involved in it. We need only look at the G20 summit in June 2010 in Toronto, where over a thousand people were illegally arrested, to verify this. In recent years, dozens of activists, among them some from the RCP, have been harassed at home and work by the infamous “Integrated National Security Enforcement Team.”
The Revolutionary Communist Party harshly condemns this cowardly operation, which was politically motivated. It is doomed to failure and will backfire on those who planned it. The RCP is actively campaigning to denounce the arrests and obtain full and unconditional release of those arrested. We thank the many individuals and groups who have already expressed their outrage and solidarity following the June 29th arrests.
Denounce political intimidation! Defend our right to fight against the bourgeoisie and its state! Solidarity is our weapon!
The RCP Information Bureau
This from Bash Back! news:
06/07/10: The Laurentian Bank was attacked in the middle of the night. The atms, windows and sign were smashed with a hammer and rocks. An attempt was also made to obscure one of their cameras with paint bombs. The words “Solidarity with the G20 arrestees” were painted on the bank`s wall.
Solidarity with the G20 resistance. Don`t back down in the face of repression.
-anarchists
These are tags. One says "Fuck the Police", another says "All Cops Are Bastards." We have also seen these slogans at demonstrations in the past, so we can surmise that the group we are dealing with here is a group that we see in demonstrations.
- Yannick Ouimet, Service de police de la Ville de Montréal
Play safe and don't get caught!
From the CBC:
Vandals hit 11 Montreal police cars
Saturday, March 13, 2010
CBC News
Eleven cruisers were vandalized overnight at the Montreal police traffic and road safety division's building in the city's St. Henri district, police said Saturday.
Windows were smashed and the police cruisers' computers were damaged.Windows were smashed and the police cruisers' computers were damaged. (CBC)
Windows were smashed and the vehicles' computers were damaged.
Witnesses who alerted police said between 15 and 20 people, dressed mostly in black hooded jackets, used rocks and baseball bats to damage the vehicles in the parking lot on Dominion Street at Notre Dame Street West.
The vandals also spray-painted messages in English on the building, which was unoccupied at the time, said Const. Yannick Ouimet of the Montreal Police Service.
He speculated there may be a connection between the vandalism and Monday’s planned march against police brutality.
"We've seen these [graffiti] tags during past demonstrations," Ouimet said.
No arrests have been made.
There's a Fire Truck on My Ceiling
In 1978, the first time I met Windi Earthworm, he was sweeping (there’s no other word for it) out of the apartment of a mutual friend as I was entering, his grinning face framed by a flaming bush of hennaed red hair, wearing a loose-fitting shirt and a skirt your mama would’ve died for. A quick introduction and he was gone.
It wasn’t the first time I had seen Windi, mind you. I was familiar with him as the most idiosyncratic and mesmerizing of Montreal’s legion of buskers. Among the Dylan and Beatles covers, the occasional tasteful jazz or classical and the many traditional Latin American bands playing for quarters, Windi stood out. Aggressive, frenetically in motion, chiding, cajoling, even baiting his audiences – sometimes in drag, not feminine drag, no one would have mistaken Windi for a woman, this was a guy in a dress. His lyrics were hard and real and torn from his own life: drug deaths, homophobic attacks, militant resistance, street youth suicides, slumlords, ravaged prostitutes. But Windi wasn’t just some street poet of the underbelly, and his relationship to the street wasn’t reserved for his riveting performances. Many were the frightened young people who ate his food and slept on his couch, or perhaps you’d see him on the street dressed in his nun’s habit, so realistic that I once heard the cops address him as sister, handing out condoms or clean syringes. Never as part of a movement. Windi didn’t do movements – movements had rules – Windi wasn’t very good at rules.
Eventually, Windi and I became good friends. Brought together by the Vancouver 5 defence campaign. Windi had known some of the 5 well during the period he had lived in Vancouver. But again, Windi didn’t join the Free the Five Defence Committtee – groups and all that. The Vancouver 5 simply became part of his act. When AIM activist Gary Butler was transferred to a Montreal area prison, some of us set up a support group; Windi developed a rant that became an overall lesson in the oppression of Native people in North America. How many people read the leaflets we so painstakingly created? How many people stopped to listen to Windi’s rant? I’m pretty sure Windi wins.
Then, when I was living in West Germany in 1985, a letter came from Windi. He’d been diagnosed HIV-positive, still a death sentence at the time. By the time I got back to Montreal a year later, Windi had moved to the country. He was living in a shack with no electricity or running water – and trust me, Quebec winters suck. He was raising chickens, had a few goats, a garden and a sheep dog named Taj. For the next few years, Windi was my source of eggs and occasional fresh vegetables.
When Windi’s health started to noticeably deteriorate, he left Quebec for the West Coast, settling in Victoria, B.C. He knew his time was short, and he had a daughter in B.C. he wanted to be closer to. Windi died in 1993; I had visited him in Victoria a few weeks before. The disease had ravaged him; his once long red hair was cut short, gray and wispy. He slept most of the time I was there. From Victoria, I went to Colorado to visit friends. Shortly after I left, Windi was hospitalized for the last time. Every couple of days, I would call the hospital and we’d make small talk – what really was there to say – he was dying, and we both knew it.
The last time I spoke to Windi, he was less than 24 hours from death and in the grip of dementia. The last thing he said to me was, “there’s a fire truck on my ceiling.” Of course there was.
Windi Earthworm -
Live at Café Commun/Commune
Windi Earthworm
Alive!
click on the above links to play the song - right-click to download or else click on the following to download all of the above in a great big zipfile (203mb)
ADVAAR
Advaar is a celebrated Iranian music ensemble, the name is a Persian term meaning cycle, a notion found at the very heart in Persian art. Advaar is dedicated to building on the great Persian cultural heritage as well as composition and improvisation inspired by the landscape of learned and traditional repertoires.
KAIE KELLOUGH poet
Kaie Kellough is an acclaimed Montreal spoken-word poet and author celebrated across Canada for innovative and socially conscience poetry, Kellough is the author of lettricity (Cumulus Press) and is co-editor of talking book anthology (Cumulus Press).
MOLLY SWEENEY singer songwriter
Molly Sweeney is one of the most compelling new voices to emerge from the Montreal music scene, Sweeney’s percussive guitar, finespun lyrics and gossamer vocals evoke a world of rapturous melancholy, conjuring songs of exquisite love and unrequited dreams. In addition to solo work, Sweeney currently performs with Sam Shalabi’s Land of Kush both on-stage and on their critically acclaimed 2009 release Against the Day.
MALCOLM GOLDSTEIN and LORI FREEDMAN
Malcolm Goldstein, as composer/violinist, has been active in the presentation of new music and dance since the early 1960’s in New York City, as co-founder of the Tone Roads Ensemble and as participant in the Judson Dance Theater, the New York Festival of the Avant Garde and the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. His “soundings” improvisations have received international acclaim, while Goldstein has written extensively on improvisation and is the author of the book “Sounding the Full Circle ”. Lori Freedman is a Montreal-based bass clarinet player, composer, educator whose work travels internationally. Freedman stradles both worlds of contemporary and improvised music, has recorded more than 40 albums and travels widely playing with a huge variety of musicians such as Rohan de Saram, Frances-Marie Uitti, Joêlle Léandre and the late Steve Lacy.
BAX with Claude Maheu and Nicholas Calloia
Claude Maheu performs with flutes, saxophones, clarinets a multi instrumentalist and eclectic musician in Montreal. Nicholas Calloia is a celebrated contrabass player and is also a composer who is very active within the Jazz scene.
STEFAN CHRISTOFF on piano
Stefan Christoff is a community organizer, writer and piano player living in Montreal.
Artists Against Apartheid is the seventh concert occurring within the international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israeli apartheid.
Tadamon!: Boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israeli apartheid
Tadamon! Montreal
tel: 514 664 1036
email: info[at]tadamon.ca
The Opening of the Maison Normal Bethune
The Political Information Bureau is anno the opening of the Maison Norman Bethune - unique in Canada, aiming to be both an information center and an organizing space to support the struggle for socialism and world revolution.
This project is especially important in the current situation, where capitalism is going through one of its worst crises and where more and more people are expressing renewed interest in struggling for a system based on the interests of the majority and workers' power.
Located in the heart of Montreal's Centre-Sud neighbourhood, the Maison Norman Bethune will make a variety of documents available to those interested: the classic works of Marx, Lenin and Mao, works on revolutionary history, publications from contemporary revolutionary organizations such as the Parti Communiste Revolutionnaire, books and texts about current events and socialism, and in all languages... In short, the Maison Norman Bethune aims to distribute all that can serve the revolution.
The Maison Norman Bethune also intends to be a space open to workers and revolutionary and anticapitalist militants who hunger for knowledge and wish to organize themselves to not simply stir up new hope for communism and revolution, but a concrete and immediate project to make them a reality. It is also the place to contact the Political Information Bureau and to learn about the positions and activities of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
For the moment, the Maison Norman Bethune is open Wednesday to Saturday (see below). Over the coming weeks, the team which runs it will work to expand and improve the collection of books and publications available. Regular activities (speakers, video nights, etc.) will also be organized, and a schedule will soon be announced.
The opening of the Maison Norman Bethune itself represents an important victory in the struggle against the propaganda of the bourgeoisie and the unitary vision that its acolytes have been trying to brainwash us with for so long now. It is up to us and us alone, workers and militants who wish to bring forward the liberatory voice of communism and to develop revolutionary action which will put an end to the capitalist system whose time is up, to make this a lively space and a tool in the service of the struggle of the proletariat and the oppressed masses in this country.
The Political Information Bureau calls on all revolutionary, progressive, and anti-imperialist militants to support the Maison Normal Bethune. You have books to give us? You know someone, a militant or former militant, who still has some "hidden treasures"? You want to contribute financially to this project or to offer a bit of time to help out? Let us know, and a militant from the Political Information Bureau will contact you right away to follow up on your proposal.
And most importantly, come and drop by the Maison Norman Bethune, and spread the word!
The Political Information Bureau*************************************************
Maison NORMAN BETHUNE
Bookstore - Political Information Bureau
1918, rue Frontenac
Montréal (Qc) H2K 2Z1
(across the street from Frontenac metro)
514 563-1487
Opening Hours:
Wednesday: 12:30 - 6pm
Thursday: 12:30 9pm
Friday: 12:30 - 9pm
Saturday: 10:00am - 5pm
*************************************************
Every lost battle is a principle of weakness and disorganization; and the first and immediate desideratum is to concentrate, and in concentration to recover order, courage, and confidence.- Carl von Clausewitz, On War
If a state of tension exists, the effects of the decision are always greater partly because a greater force of will and a greater pressure of circumstances manifest themselves therein; partly because everything has been prepared and arranged for a great movement. The decision in such cases resembles the effect of a mine well closed and tamped, whilst an event in itself perhaps just as great, in a state of rest, is more or less like a mass of powder puffed away in the open air.As he explained:
Most bygone Wars, as we have already said, consisted, so far as regards the greater part of the time, in this state of equilibrium, or at least in such short tensions with long intervals between them, and weak in their effects, that the events to which they gave rise were seldom great successes, often they were theatrical exhibitions, got up in honour of a royal birthday, often a mere satisfying of the honour of the arms, or the personal vanity of the commander.
Woe to the cabinet which, with a shily-shally policy, and a routine-ridden military system, meets with an adversary who, like the rude element, knows no other law than that of his intrinsic force. Every deficiency in energy and exertion is then a weight in the scales in favour of the enemy; it is not so easy then to change from the fencing posture into that of an athlete, and a slight blow is often sufficient to knock down the whole.We will see.
“As police officers, repression is our job. We don’t need a community relations officer for a director, we need a general. Let’s keep in mind that the police force is, after all, a paramilitary body.”
Yves Francoeur, President of the Montreal Police Brotherhood
DEMONSTRATION: SUNDAY, MARCH 15th, 2PM
Metro Mont-Royal
Organised by the Collective Opposed to Police Brutality (COBP)
Rest of the text:
CALLOUT FOR MARCH 15th, 2009: 13th ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL DAY AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY
“As police officers, repression is our job. We don’t need a community relations officer for a director, we need a general. Let’s keep in mind that the police force is, after all, a paramilitary body.”
Yves Francoeur, President of the Montreal Police Brotherhood
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
DEMONSTRATION: SUNDAY, MARCH 15th, 2PM
Metro Mont-Royal
Organised by the Collective Opposed to Police Brutality (COBP)
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
The Montreal police (SPVM) is in an uproar. With the current cases against them looking as loaded as their guns, these guardians of the civil tranquility have a bad case of frayed nerves. Their bargaining tactics as they negotiate the renewal of their collective labor agreement have allowed us a glimpse of their true nature: they now parade around town in military apparel, sending a very clear message to the people of Montreal. The police are keeping a finger on the trigger, and are willing to fight for their right to keep it there.
And how could we forget the events of August 9th, 2008. Early in the evening, while playing dice at a park with his brother and some friends, 18 year old Fredy Villanueva was shot dead at point-blank range by Constable Jean-Loup Lapointe, as his accomplice, Stéphanie Pilotte, looked on. Not satisfied with having shot and killed one young man, Lapointe went on to wound two of the other youth present, shooting one of them in the back. It must be made perfectly clear that this was a murder and that Constable Lapointe should be considered a murderer and must absolutely face criminal charges.
There have been many attempts to portray this as an isolated case, a rare fatality that does not put into question the integrity of the police. Cops, however, never act alone. It is the entirety of the police force and the policing institution itself which is to blame in these cases: Fredy Villanueva is the 43rd person killed by the SPVM since 1987. Not a single police officer has been found guilty of voluntary or involuntary manslaughter. Every single police officer involved in these cases resumed regular duties, which explains why one can still cross paths with a cop like Dominic Chartier. Constable Dominic Chartier killed Yvon Lafrance in 1989, was involved in Martin Suazo’s death in 1995, and has had six complaints filed against him with the police ethics committee. But these facts alone are not enough to warrant a dismissal from his position as weapons instructor for the SPVM.
The Montreal Police Brotherhood (FPPM), with their incomparably bizarre Yves Francoeur reigning supreme in the role of godfather, exists mainly to cover up the wrongdoings of its members, operating much like a crime family. It systematically attempts to sabotage the holding of public inquiries and has interfered with the crown prosecutors’ work on numerous occasions. Meanwhile, with the SPVM recently proposing a ban on protestors wearing masks at demonstrations, we may well ask why the SPVM do not do some unveiling of their own. If the cops are so afraid of public inquiries, it’s because they have something to hide. Thanks to the FPPM, the details of the 2005 police shooting of Mohamed Anas Bennis have still not been made public, and as they have time and again interfered in the holding of any kind of public investigation, this case remains unresolved.
The Brotherhood, along with the vast majority of police, has lately been more radical in its stances, most notably in its president’s own words as he declared that Officer Lapointe “…did his job well”. The police try to set an example in this time of social unrest. They try to play their repression off as being necessary for keeping things in their rightful place. To succeed in their mission, someone will eventually have to pay the price. The political powers that dictate the police’s actions know who to blame when it comes to protecting their own: “visible minorities” who are members of “street gangs” who live in a dangerous and “troubled” ghetto. This kind of racial and social profiling is a day to day reality in Montreal’s working class neighbourhoods. In St-Michel, and Montreal-North to name a few, if it’s not the color of your skin that brands you a criminal, it’s the clothes you wear. As of last year even the highly respected Quebec Human Rights Commission had declared the SPVM guilty of “discriminatory practices and profiling”. The youth of these neighbourhoods are being judged by incompetent hacks and yet it is they who are treated as such. There is also the discrimination experienced by the homeless, who are apparently guilty of not being able to keep a roof over their heads. Montreal police (who seem to not have much rattling around in their heads) seem to find it perfectly reasonable to burden homeless with tickets they cannot pay, thus criminalizing their misfortune.
The people pay the price for “Justice” when its armed goons go on the attack. Besides their possession of firearms and other tools of repression such as the baton and pepper spray, we are now introduced to a new weapon: the electroshock gun Taser. Responsible for the deaths of over 300 individuals in North-America alone, this weapon was most notable employed by the SPVM in the killing of Quilem Registre in 2007, and remains in use despite Minister of Public Security Jacques Dupuis having ordered an assessment of the weapon. Some of the Tasers in use emit a charge up to 50% higher than expected.
So who protects us from the police? Besides facing the possibility of death or imprisonment, we must also behave and learn to keep quiet to appease these hired guns. No name-calling, as the SPVM is pressuring the city to make it a crime to insult a police officer. One wrong word could soon cost you one more fine. It’s easy for anyone to grasp the fact that the new municipal regulations – anti-mask and anti-insult – suggested by the SPVM clearly target, as stated by their spokesperson Paul Chablo, two protests in particular: the International Workers Day protest on May 1st and the March 15th International Day Against Police Brutality. Besides being illogical and subject to interpretation, the two proposed regulations prove that there is a real danger of political profiling. We just have to look at the case of Benjamin Nottaway, Algonquin chief from Lac Barrière, imprisoned since last November for participating in a peaceful protest denouncing the government’s neo-colonial policies.
The only way to resolve these problems is to face their true causes. The poverty engendered by government reflects the wealth of the calmer, less populated rich neighbourhoods, where some even employ their own private security. Economic and social instability has consequences that are becoming clearer and clearer. Here and around the world, it is the same reasoning that keeps the system in place, and just as our police kill, so it is in every place where they take on the role of oppressors. Two recent events caught our attention; there was the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos in Greece, and that of Oscar Grant in Oakland, California, both at the hands of the forces of order. In both cases, just as we saw in Montreal-North, people took to the streets in revolt, at one point almost culminating in an insurrection in Greece. In the latter case, the two killer cops had criminal charges brought against them. This just goes to show that it is important to act in the face of injustice, that only a strong public outcry can really change things. The International Day Against Police Brutality is the perfect opportunity to show that we refuse to stand for police impunity and to show our opposition to the system that legitimizes their actions. It’s the fist step towards changing a world that has no future ahead of it if we allow passivity to rule.
Justice to all the victims of police brutality and impunity!
No justice, no peace!
-- Collective Opposed to Police Brutality (COBP)
http://cobp-mtl.ath.cx/
KEEPING IT REEL!
QPIRG-Concordia's Subversive Cinema Series
next feature film: P4W: Prison for Women
National Film Board (NFB) Classic Film
Followed by a special lecture by ANN HANSEN,
author of "Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerilla".WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18, 7pm
1455 de Maisonneuve West, H-110
(metro Guy-Concordia)
Welcome to all. FREE. Wheelchair accessible.
P4W: Prison for Women is an NFB classic film that takes shattering look at love and isolation in the most desperate of places. The film centres on five women inmates - their stores, their relationships and their lives - inside Canada's only Prison for Women in Kingston, Ontario. The complex fabric of this invisible community is revealed through the use of interviews, monologues and powerful verité sequences. (Canada, 1980, 90 minutes)
The film is followed by a special lecture by ANN HANSEN. Ann is a former inmate at Kingston’s Prison for Women; and author of “Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerrilla.” Ann was part of the underground anti-war guerilla movement of the 1980s in Canada.
Info: 514-848-7585
info@qpirgconcordia.org - www.qpirgconcordia.org
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