Wednesday May 16th around 9:30 pm. about a hundred people showed up at the Tangay detention center for women on Henri-Bourassa in Montreal. where three young women accused of throwing one of the smoke bombs that paralyzed the Montreal metro last Thursday. The SQ dirt-bags were already on the spot.



The demo was called “…to make some noise and break the isolation of the prison walls, showing to our comrades they are not alone. This is also a demo against the political and police repression happening since the beginning of the strike, against the charges against our comrades, and in solidarity with all those behind bars.”

The crowd approached the doors and communicated with the prisoners by using megaphones, many fireworks were set off and a smoke bomb was thrown to the cops.

The crowd dispersed around 10:30 pm

the following is a text we’ve received:

Since the beginning of the strike, there have been over 1000 arrests, many injuries (two people of which have lost an eye, while two other demonstrators found themselves in coma after being attacked by the police), many are facing charges and increasingly restrictive conditions like curfews and non-association, several comrades are in political exile (they are not allowed to be on the island of Montreal, and are thus also kept far from those they care about), and others are currently in prison. This is happening in a context where the state is becoming increasingly fascist. The anti-mask law the government is trying to pass is exemplary : wearing a mask during a demonstration punishable by a ten year sentence.

Since the beginning, the social peace necessary for capitalism to run has been disrupted by an imaginative social movement. At the same time as the state raises tuition and slashes social services in order to maintain profits for the elite, it is also subsidizing companies involved in resource extraction looking to make profits by gutting Indigenous territories in the north and setting up new security measures and spending millions on the construction and expansion of over thirty prisons; this is capitalism in all its glory.

This system has been imposed on us by force. The police, the courts, and the prisons aren’t there to protect us; they are meant to enforce a system of domination. The same ones throw tear gas and plastic bullets the instant a demonstration escapes their control and support the bosses during each strike. They are the ones who put themselves between the hungry and the supermarket shelves teeming with food, the homeless and vacant buildings, between immigrants and their families.

Their violence is not accidental; it is essential to their existence.This system uses intimidation and isolation to try to discourage any form of resistance. Freedom is held captive in the hands of a judiciary which zigzags between bail, restrictive conditions, criminal charges, and imprisonment.

Faced with this, an active solidarity, involving neither condamnation nor dissociation, with all those criminalized by the State becomes essential. Denouncing the criminalisation of demonstrations, opposing targeted arrests and snitch culture, providing legal, financial, and moral support to the arrested and demanding that the state drops their charges, keeping an eye on police practices, taking care of those injured, supporting each other, as well as continuing, expanding, and intensifying the struggle of our arrested comrades – these are all the foundations of a culture of struggle that we need to build and develop.

Let’s break the isolation of the prison walls. Shut down the prisons that are yet another method that the state uses to try to subject us to its control.

Fuck the prisons!

Long live the strike! (again and always)

related articles / articles relatifs / artículos relacionados: