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Moments of Excess: Essential reading for Occupy and Quebec student activists

Moments of Excess: Movements, Protest and Everyday Life

by The Free Association
(PM Press,
2011;
$16.95)

As attention turns toward the mass student strike on the streets of Montreal, ongoing for three months, the Quebec student movement clearly exemplifies the power that activism holds to shape our collective imagination.

The student protests distant from the halls of political power in Quebec City, are largely setting the terms of political debate on moves by the Quebec government to significantly hike post-secondary tuition fees.

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student activism quebec student strike protest politics Occupy Wall Street occupy grassroots organizing G8 protest books anarchism activism
in her own words

Police bring weapons and attitude to anarchist gathering

Image from a video shot by Will Dean, of a police officer attempting to gain entrance to the North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference in Toronto on Jan. 15, carrying a shotgun. He and another officer were denied entry by attendees.

The second annual North American Anarchist Studies Network (NAASN) Conference was held in Toronto at the Steelworkers Hall on January 15 and 16. 

The conference was a chance for anarchists or activists interested in anarchism to meet post-G20, with opportunities for sharing wisdom and education taking place between new and old anarchists, including those radicalized at last June's summit. It was a non-violent, private event.

But the police, riding on a post-G20 high, showed up by the dozen, with some officers not revealing themselves right away, but clearly knowing the event was happening and monitoring it. So goes activism and organizing in a post-G20 world.

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police accountability police g-20 anarchist anarchism
Columnists

The G20's symbolic violence

This week's mass processing inside (and outside) a Toronto courthouse helped clarify June's Jailapalooza festival during the G20, the largest mass arrest in our history. Of 1,100 detained, all but 227 had the charges dropped or were never charged. Most had no links to burning police cars or battered bank machines. They were picked up while protesting peacefully or looking on.

Why? Police say they wanted to prevent recurrences, after the dramatic events. Some intimate they were embarrassed by criticisms of their earlier inaction, and overreacted. Why had police gone missing at the crucial time? There's been no clear answer. One possibility: to justify the vaulting security costs via shocking images of violence.

Tags:
violence Toronto surveillance security G8/G20 G20 Policing G20 mass arrests anarchism

Related items

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G8/G20 Communique: Understanding anarchism through the veil of misinformation -- follow-up on the G20 in Toronto

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CRAC-K's (Collective de researche sur l'autonomie collective) reflection on the G20 Summit from an anarchist lens.

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Anarchism: Its Time has Come Again

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This column has no, as they say, hook, other than a fear the news media will begin to discuss anarchism rather than just referencing it.

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babble: G20 "Independent Civilian Review"

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They announced the review and then didn't allow any input from anyone there, and I'm not sure if the public will have any say at all on the terms of reference.

G20 police let rioters run amok and then struck back hard at all activists

This is what a rubber bullet wound looks like. Photo: Yee Guan Wong.
Police waited over 30 minutes, until major damage had been done to property. I have been in demonstrations in Canada, the U.S., Europe and South America, I have never seen such a dereliction of duty.

Related rabble.ca story:

G20 police let rioters run amok and then struck back hard at all activists
Tags:
protest police brutality police G8-G20 G20 riots civil rights anarchism
rabble news

The 'Sacco and Vanzetti' of Ottawa's bank arson case

On Aug. 23rd, 1927, Ferdinando Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Massachusetts. The two were convicted of a double-murder committed during an armed robbery. The trial and media coverage focused on the political ideology of the two men, treating as secondary the material evidence related to the crime itself. The two men were members of the Galleanist Anarchist movement, and the trial was a watershed moment in the campaign to delegitimize the global anarchist movement as a whole.

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RBC police ottawa media G8-G20 anarchism
Krystalline Kraus

Activist Communiqué: The Carre Noir Manifesto

By Krystalline Kraus
| May 18, 2012

The CARRÉ NOIR Manifesto

On co-optation 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.

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Meghan Murphy

Being anti-state does not equal being pro-freedom: Misogyny and the imagined 'Circle of Protection' in progressive communities

By Meghan Murphy
| May 4, 2012

This post is not intended to be a blind celebration of the police. Let’s not pretend as though the police are not largely representative of white male power and authority. But that does not mean I am anti-criminalization or anti-state. As feminists and as women, we need the state on our side.

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forum

Manarchism

...read more
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feminism anarchism ryan gosling

Seeing the Strings: A Series of Teach-ins on the Oppressions that Hold Capitalism Up

Mar 23 2012 - 7:00pm
Mar 23 2012 - 9:00pm

Location

Vancouver Public Library, Central Library: Alma VanDusen and Peter Kaye Room
350 West Georgia Street
Vancouver, BC V6B 6B1
Canada
49° 16' 48.468" N, 123° 6' 52.9632" W
See map: Google Maps

As Occupy protests have erupted across the world to decry the injustice of our current economic system, the question arises: What are we fighting against? At present, Vancouver lacks any adequate forum for broad-based deliberation about what capitalism is and how it functions. It is for this reason that we are hosting a series of teach-ins to explore how capitalism operates, its inherent violence, and how it intersects with other forms of oppression.

 

Contact email: 
seeingthestrings@gmail.com
Tags:
workshop race patriarchy occupy Indigenous rights gender feminism education democracy Capitalism anarchism ableism

London anarchist book fair

Mar 31 2012 - 11:00am
Mar 31 2012 - 7:00pm

Location

Canadian Union of Postal Workers Hall
520 Wellington St. Unit 7 next to City Hall
London, ON
Canada
42° 59' 15.7236" N, 81° 14' 47.9004" W
See map: Google Maps

With the attention focused on anarchists recently it is important to offer folks outside of our communities a chance to see what it really is all about and dispel media myths.

Contact name: 
Sean Forrester
Contact email: 
londonanarchistbookfair@gmail.com
Tags:
occupy LGBTQ labour feminism anti-racism anti-capitalism anarchism
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