Anonymous Submission to North Shore Counter-Info

Earlier this week a branch of Quantum Murray Environmental in Stoney Creek, Ontario had several of its windows smashed in the middle of the night. Quantum Murray is a construction company that specialized in dealing with industrial-scale environmental problems and infrastructure, but that has more recently gotten into the business of encampment evictions in Hamilton.

For anyone not paying attention, the past two years of covid pandemic have exacerbated problems of homelessness, addiction, and poverty in cities across the world, leading to a growth of encampments in urban parks and green spaces where people live in tents and makeshift structures. Though not an ideal solution, these encampments offer an alternative to the bloated, dangerous, and often dehumanizing shelter system, one that allows some autonomy over movement and safety. Many of us have welcomed these new neighbors, forming bonds of friendship and solidarity, sharing meals and resources. Others have sought to make their lives even more precarious, cold, and impossible. Most prominent among these are the Hamilton Police who have been parading from park to park evicting people with brute force. In some recent downtown evictions, as friends and neighbours stood up to the police and tried to stop this inhumane spectacle, we couldn’t help but notice the presence of a company called Quantum Murray that was helping to destroy and dispose of people’s possessions. And while our rage has been mainly focused on the politicians who create these brutal conditions, the police who enforce them, and the cold-hearted neighbours who can only think about property values, we left these altercations feeling a particular anger towards the QM workers who for some unspeakable reason have decided to ally themselves with this cause. While they should be out fixing cooling towers and dealing with industrial waste sites, instead they are here in these parks ripping apart tents and licking cop boots. There is no reason why Quantum Murray, a nation-wide company with no shortage of work, should spend its time attacking poor and working class people. Because that’s what an eviction is. It’s an attack. And so we attack back. We destroy your property, and send you a message that once you saddle up with shitheads of the world you get treated like one.

Just stop.

Go back to the cooling towers.

And next time your boss asks you to work overtime kicking poor people out of their homes on freezing cold nights, just go home. Call in sick. Call your union and tell them you’ve been asked to perform unsafe work. Do anything except spend your time evicting homeless people and destroying their tents.

More park evictions are planned for the coming days in Hamilton. Let this be a warning to eviction collaborators and a call to our friends to find our own ways to attack.