Montreal: Call for Solidarity with Arrestees in the Smoke-Bomb Trial

Force Etudiante Critique
The Show Must Go Down
The mainstream media swat team, with at its frontline newspaper La Presse and its journalists Gabrielle Duchaine, Vincent Larouche and Daphné Cameron, have finally succeeded into isolating the scapegoat that for long they’ve been looking for. Within the storm of securitarian mayhem that swept over Montreal since the morning-time paralysis of the Metro service, our groupe became the target of these mediocre journalists as the usual scarecrows, a den for radicals in all-out revolt, a headless chicken that’s agitating itself in all directions with the objective of maximal disruption of everything that society has in terms of bridges, tunnels, railroads, and what else?
The rules of the game: ours
We won’t deliver ourselves as pasture to journalists, who are desperately looking for ways to contact us to obtain our comments, because we refuse to take part in the circus of the mainstream media. The information on us that they are looking for is already available on our website and these are accessible to anyone who has the smallest interest in our project. We have nothing to add to what was already written, and the whole of the texts already published seem to be enough to satisfy curiosity towards us.
We are rather calling for active solidarity without any distinction nor condemnation with all those individuals criminalized by the State within the framework of the actual student strike movement, may it be for actions of disruption, protests or those in the many situations of injunction (a despotic measure still used by the courts to force teachers to give classes during the strike, countered repeatedly by the active blocking of colleges/universities by protesters). This solidarity expresses itself by the collective accountability in regards to the fate of each and every one. Denouncing this criminalization through protests or vigils, opposing the targeted arrests and snitching, bringing legal, financial and moral support to the arrestees and pressuring for the cancellation of their charges, watching the Police practices, giving first aid relief to the wounded, to hold on to each other. All this represents the basis of a culture of struggle that we must maintain and further develop. Police repression and its short/middle/long term consequences is an attack that has no common measure with the actions that punctuated the ongoing movement. We are all bathing in this same shit basin. We will let no one drown into it.
Staging a show of smoke (and mirrors)
Nous are reacting as such to the media and police treatment that now prevails. We noticed that even before the formal accusations were brought by the Montreal Police Department (SPVM), the persons suspected of having carried out the action on Thursday morning in the Montreal Metro were served with an worrying accusation of guilt, relayed without any hesitation by the mainstream media. Their personal addresses were made public, their private lives put under the microscope, the nasty remarks by their false friends were publicized like an unquestionable Truth. Their political opinions were ostracized, albeit the presumption of innocence that, in a country where the political elite and media consortium are bragging about it all the time, appeared to have been curiously swept away by the mediocre investigators and the low-grade columnists.
The perverted desire of the journalists and their bosses is to demonize the militants first, then a political group after, and then extending this to all the groups who are positioning themselves at the left of the CLASSE and the student federations. It consists, beyond any doubt, of a political attack by-the-book. The defamation and stigmatization play an integral part in the repressive process, because they are proving it with a bail-out. By choosing this way, La Presse and its sheep are demonstrating, once more, on which side of the barricades they position themselves: that of the baton, the arrests, the nerve gases, the pepperspray and the plastic bullets. Their little desktop leaders support the erosion of our liberties as projected through the House bill on mask-carrying and the obligation to provide the Police with a protest route. Is it surprising, in that context, to notice that Jean Charest himself is benefiting from the luxury of this toilet news paper’s owner (that ultra-rich globalist Paul Desmarais), by repeatedly taking vacations in his posh villa of Sagard, Qc?
We are condemning with strength the fascistic methods that are currently multiplying in Quebec when it comes to treating these events of social disruption. We are estimating that in comparison with the State brutality towards those who dare opposing its authority, the actual social movement is more submissive than it is disruptive. The acting minority who are committing acts for which they are facing criminal charges are unsurprisingly trailed in the mud by the purveyors of easy-thinking opinions, the lackeys of the big media industry, herself at the service of higher interests. We are claiming the right to resist for all for all those who are fed up with a society muzzled by the continuous disinformation of the mainstream media, who are incapable of enduring the antisocial policies of the government. For all those who are pissed off of being harassed, injured or insulted by the police forces - who leave between life and death protesters that many will stop caring about later - for all this mass of people who, around the world, are struggling against all the violence imposed by capitalist restructuring, for all those people, we are claiming the right to legitimate wrath, to direct action and to revolt against a political, economic and social system who’s dumbing down consciousness and destroying lives.
By seeking to criminalize all forms of protests, by seeking to terrify the protesters in the hope of feeding-off the fantasies of witch-burning through a controlled “public opinion”, the State, in a totalitarian leap, is consolidating its authority with shots of so-called legitimate violence.
It doesn’t step back, nor discusses, neither it shakes itself out of measure in the face of the outcome of its recklessness. It is rather focussing all its resources at its disposal to shut up once and for all a social movement that has numerously proven itself. It hopes that one day it will be done with marginalizing, dividing and ridiculing the critics that are arising in the face of its tariffing policies -in which the neoliberal project consists- it will have the free way to pursue its purge of social services that we’d like to keep away from the private sector, accessible and of quality... We will not let ourselves fall in this trap.
Unity through tearing apart
We are addressing the struggling movement. Let’s not let our focus be taken away by the lens of the mainstream media a the service of the dominant ideology. In symbiosis with power, the snitch media are targets of choice for upcoming actions. The State will desperately try to find those responsible and will go after the most combative among us: its repression is political and it will find all the necessary pretexts for attempting to force those who confront it into submission, may it be in the street, in the general assemblies, in the action and mobilization committees or just in their writing. We are attempting to present as more legitimate the tendencies that are the lesser demanding, the lesser dangerous for the maintaining of the status quo in order to divide the movement and isolate the more radical tendencies from the more reformist. Let’s cede nothing. It is only through the continuity of the movement, the expansion and intensification of it that we can aspire to a fairer kind of society.
The show must go down. The struggle continues.
We are calling for solidarity actions in support of the 4 arrestees in the context of the smoke attack case, and with anyone prosecuted or hurt in the context of the ongoing struggle. Our picketing will take place on May 14th, 11:30, in front of the Palais the Justice (City Court), on St-Antoine.
http://www.forceetudiantecritique.org/2012/05/show-must-go-down.html#Sho...