Quebec protests reach rowdy new level (with updates in comments)

MONTREAL -- Federal spies are in Quebec to gather intelligence on subversive groups suspected of infiltrating student demonstrations to instigate violence, QMI Agency has learned.

Source say CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) is probing possible threats to national security posed by groups, including the Black Bloc.

The masked nihilists have attacked civilians and police officers in several Canadian cities.

Black Bloc members have been visible this year at dozens of protests by striking students in Quebec.

Also of interest, sources said, are three communist groups - the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR-RCP), the CLAQ (Confrerie de la librairie ancienne du Quebec), and the Union Communiste Libertaire.

Sources say CSIS is also keeping an eye on the Reseau de Resistance du Quebecois, a separatist group whose manifesto calls for "rebellion against the imperial occupier," namely the English.

The scope of the repression by the police is almost unheard of in Quebec — one would have to go back 40 years to see anything of this magnitude. Over the course of one week alone, we saw upwards of 600 arrests at various campuses and demonstrations. At the Université du Québec à Outaouais (UQO) on 19th April, the police broke the picket lines and locked the students out of the campus. A few hundred students soon arrived on buses to demonstrate in solidarity with their brothers and sisters. Teachers soon joined, as well. The police unleashed brutal repression on them with a few students and professors left bloody from baton hits to the head. The demonstration of around 800 students then held a mass assembly and decided to march on the police lines and reclaim the university. They marched on the police, beating them back and they managed to reclaim the university for a short period of time before more police forces were called in and mass arrests commenced. Approximately 300 ended up arrested at UQO.

The CARRÉ NOIR Manifesto

On co-option and infiltration

We are students. We are workers. We are the unemployed. We are angry. We are not co-opting a strike. We have been part of the movement from the beginning. We are one of the forms this movement has taken, a form as valid as any of the others. We are not extremists, we have a radical critique of this society of which we are a part. We do not infiltrate demonstrations, we help organize them, we bring them alive. We are not sabotaging the strike, we are one with it, we are helping organize it, we keep its heartbeat alive.

We are organized to fight against this violent and oppressive system. We believe that the violence of the system that attacks social classes and entire populations justifies violence that targets objects and the political agents that the cops are. We shroud ourselves in black to try to escape the repression of a system that has proven its intolerance of dissent (Toronto 2010, Montebello 2007, Québec 2001, every March 15th, March 7, 2012, etc.). Our black flags are a rejection of that fleur-de-lys adorned flag whose symbols—the king and the church—horrify us. The black bloc is not a group. It’s a tactic, a tactic that contrasts the docile obeying of laws and norms with civil disobedience and direct action.

On public opinion and the myth of unity

Radicals reject the “imagists” in this strike who demand pacifism. The public opinion that so influences the behaviour of these imagists is imaginary. Our battlefield is in the streets, in General Assemblies, in occupied offices, in liberated spaces, and not in the media. We denounce the illusion that things can be changed without disruption.

We reject the myth of unity that dominates the imaginations of our contemporaries and instead believe in solidarity—the interests of Quebecois are divergent and non-homogenous. Is the unity of any movement really something to strive for? Isn’t part of its strength that it is so diverse, that some are willing to take more risks than others as well as take the precautions necessary to do so?

On violence and non-violence

We believe there is a huge difference between the nature of violence that targets objects and that which targets human beings. At the risk of repeating ourselves, we attack objects. This is a political, symbolic action. In doing so, we expose ourselves to a much greater violence: getting beaten with batons, gassed, criminalized, and profiled by GAMMA—and now, facing internal repression. We believe that a person wearing armour, who is ready to violently attack others simply to follow an order, has temporarily become the exception to our principle on the use of violence against human beings.

When we look a little deeper into the pages of history, the importance vandalism has always had as a legitimate weapon used by social movements, suffragettes, unions, racialized minorities, indigenous peoples, etc. becomes evident. No social gain has ever been made without disruption. Although the real economy plays an ever-smaller role in the total “money made,” private property remains the foundation of the house of cards made of capitalism and neoliberalism, systems which are currently attacking both the accessibility of our education and our everyday lives. It’s this very foundation we attack through our actions.

March 16, 2012, Montréal.

ANARCHISTS AMONG MANY OTHERS!

Original source (French): CMAQ

“Force étudiante critique.” The group has characterized as too moderate the work of more mainstream student federations, including one called CLASSE, which has itself been criticized for its calls for civil disobedience and its refusals to denounce violence.

Members of this group, some wearing masks and hoodies, loudly disrupted a recent press conference given by the other associations.

Graffiti lines the hallways around the second-floor café at the university, and the majority of it is highly political.

The anti-capitalist messages and anarchy symbols have multiplied since the student protest began, several students said.

“Revolt!” one says, atop the anarchist “A” symbol. Another message states: “On the one hand we want to live communism, on the other we want to spread anarchy.”

The Université du Québec à Montréal has always been considered the Quebec institution with the highest concentration of leftist and ultra-leftist students and faculty."

Smoke bombs cripple Montreal subway system

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 113 words

SMOKE bombs set off at multiple points in Montreal's subway system during the morning rush hour yesterday briefly cut off services bombs were tossed onto the tracks at three stations along the transit network that connects numerous neighbourhoods in Canada's second largest city, sending clouds of smoke billowing through stations at key transfer points, said police. They are searching for at least four suspects.

Quebec Premier Jean Charest condemned the attack. 'It's inexplicable, he said. 'There's no reason to commit acts of intimidation and violence.' Subway services have been interrupted in recent weeks as the city deals with student protests over planned tuition increases.

Notice to tourists: in Quebec, the political occupation of public space is liable to corporal punishment ranging from simple shots of sticks to the amputation of eyes or the fracturing of skulls #SPVM #republiquedebananes #1984 In addition, certain techniques of punishment of the masses are used by various toxic gases. Use the greatest caution in the expression of your views.

It keeps getting worse...this student lost his eye after Quebec police shot him with a plastic bullet. Another was shot in the head and was in a coma for a night. We came this close to seeing a protester killed in our streets. Yet, the media talks about broken windows.

New projection of We Are Art on the offices of the Surete du Quebec (Provincial Police). In response to the manifestation of Victoriaville Friday, May 5, 2012 at the Congress of the Quebec Liberal Party. 400 injured people as emergency services present, with very serious injuries, some of which have been hit by plastic bullets of the SQ. Many blame the police and misuse of weapons of repression as irritating gases and so-called "less lethal weapons". Our Prime Minister, Jean Charest, has praised the work of the SQ, calling it "remarkable" "given the circumstances" ...

There's a NCAFC Demo in London on the 16th May in solidarity:

Demo: Support the Quebec students' movement - no to police violence!

SOLIDARITAIRE!

Quebec tonight: 8,000 in the street in Montreal, thousands more in the streets in Quebec City, Gatineau and elsewhere. Police surrounding the national assembly. Government announced the suspension of the semester.

"I am 67 and at first I thought that students were exaggerating ... no more, a special law is not the solution! Last night my wife and I went to join the kids in the streets. A policeman treated my wife like an old hag, so I approached him to say what I think and he pepper sprayed me. It was a Black Bloc who came to help me and put liquid in my eyes that eased my pain.

Before I was afraid of young masked Black Bloc ... Not anymore. Now I'm scared of young masked SPVM."

And

"At our last assembly, someone proposed to disrupt the Grand Prix. The proposal was rejected because it was considered too radical for the time being ...

I bet that this proposal will come back on the table and will be adopted in force at the next Assembly. I who voted against it then will vote for it now."