This post has been reviewed by the Vancouver Media Co-op editorial committee.

Bill C-309 Passed: Mask Up Anyway

Blog posts are the work of individual contributors, reflecting their thoughts, opinions and research.

→Dominion Stories

The totalitarian state known as "Canada" passed Bill C-309 implementing a maximum of 10 years for wearing a mask during a riot or an unlawful assembly*. The government hopes to silence all dissent and movements that actually challenge state and capital. The state wants full social control over you. The ability for groups of people to mask up eliminates the state's control over us and opens up possibilities for a strong social revolt, autonomy and ability to anonymously express ourselves and also open the possibility of direct actions without constant repression and imprisonment from the state.

Richards, MP for Wild Rose, Alta., said the bill is meant to give police an added tool to prevent lawful protests from becoming violent riots, and that it will help police identify people who engage in vandalism or other illegal acts. The bill is something that police, municipal authorities and businesses hit hard by riots in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal...." "We can all rest easier tonight knowing our communities have been made safer with its passage,"

The businesses that sustained most of the damages in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal were banks, chained stores such as London Drugs, Bell, Starbucks, Bank of Montreal, Royal Bank of Canada and the police. This is yet another example of the state showing their true colours by implementing harsh laws and punishments aimed at protecting major corporations and furthering the prison industrial complex. In other words, RBC and other corporations can be part of the largest environmental disasters in the world, the tar sands, and be the reason why the indigenous people can no longer fish and live on their lands, but if someone wears a mask and blocks a doorway or smashes a window of a bank they deserve to be locked in a cage for up to 10 years.

Government and police enjoy protests when the organizers work with them and peacefully walk about the streets and allow the flow of capital to continue and normality to be minimally disrupted. If you have been to a protest, you will see that the police tend to not like it if you stop in major intersection for an extended period of time. An example of this is in Montreal, during the student strike, the government implemented an anti-mask by-law in hopes of stifling the anti-capitalist movement which had developed. So when police and politicians say, "crossing the line" or "illegitimate" protest they mean any protest that causes harm to the capitalist system which can be anything from a crowd not applying for a permit to a newspaper box being thrown into the street and property damage or if the crowd is just too angry.

Public reaction online of Bill C-309 bill has been surprising. The top comment on CBC writes, "Does that also cover police who wear masks without ID badges at these same riots?" and "it's okay for armed security to hide behind shields and helmets with face coverings.... Sounds to me like the elite have given themselves another advantage in their efforts to put down civil disobedience and protest against their totalitarian methods of citizen subjugation." These commentators have the right idea. The police are above the law and always will be, after all they are just the dogs of the masters.

Everywhere we go our peace is disrupted by industrial expansion, logging, police repression, intimidation and brutality. Our lives are wasted away by working and paying rent and bills. Our health is destroyed by the pollution of the air by refineries and mining. Our water is ruined by fracking and oil spills. The state should get used to the peace being disrupted because the more the state pushes us the harder were going to push back. Wear your mask proudly and you will never walk alone.

Why We Mask?

Anonymously posted online

We cover our faces and conceal our appearances for the simple reason that we have no need to be identified. In this world where cameras sit on every other street corner, where the police and CSIS use every chance to profile us and to build up files on our activities, where participation in social struggle or public demonstrations can compromise our freedom and ability to act in the future, we see no reason to make their jobs easier for them. Just as we refuse to cooperate with police interrogations and police investigation, we’re also going to make it as hard as we can for the systems of social control to crack down and break us. Developing a practice of (partial) anonymity in situations we choose opens up space for participating in actions for folks who would otherwise be risking too much be it legal status, immigration status, or employment. Not only does it make profiling more difficult, but it also helps to keep people out of police custody. Wearing masks won’t get us home safely all the time, but it does disrupt routine repression and social control. It is time we break them

Instead of letting them break us!"

*Criminal code definition of Unlawful assembly

63. (1) An unlawful assembly is an assembly of three or more persons who, with intent to carry out any common purpose, assemble in such a manner or so conduct themselves when they are assembled as to cause persons in the neighbourhood of the assembly to fear, on reasonable grounds, that they

(a) will disturb the peace tumultuously; or

(b) will by that assembly needlessly and without reasonable cause provoke other persons to disturb the peace tumultuously.

Lawful assembly becoming unlawful

(2) Persons who are lawfully assembled may become an unlawful assembly if they conduct themselves with a common purpose in a manner that would have made the assembly unlawful if they had assembled in that manner for that purpose.

Exception

Persons are not unlawfully assembled by reason only that they are assembled to protect the dwelling-house of any one of them against persons who are threatening to break and enter it for the purpose of committing an indictable offence therein.

64. A riot is an unlawful assembly that has begun to disturb the peace tumultuously.

Sources:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/06/19/pol-mask-bill-royal-ass...

http://yourlaws.ca/criminal-code-canada/63-unlawful-assembly