A lot has changed in the past year. If you would have told me a year ago that the government would ban gatherings in private homes, and given police special powers to forcibly enter people’s homes without a warrant *, I would have assumed that you were a paranoid conspiracy kook. Yet such is the reality in 2021. Read More …
This evening, we dropped a banner over highway 403 going towards Toronto in solidarity with the five people in Minneapolis facing serious felony charges in connection to a New Year’s eve noise demo in that city. Although we’re glad all five are out on bail, the arrests and charges mark a significant escalation of repression against an international anarchist tradition.
In our region, New Year’s noise demos started in 2009 in response to a hunger strike campaign by anarchist prisoners, and we have kept doing them every year since. These demos let us a share a moment of celebration with prisoners, breaking the alienation through direct action. As an international tradition, they are also a thread that connects us to anarchists elsewhere, allowing us to exchange ideas and tactics with people whose contexts are quite different than ours. Read More …
For the 12th* year in row, folks in Hamilton rung in the new year with a noise demo outside the Barton jail. COVID has changed a lot of our organizing context this year, and made a lot of traditions harder to keep, but was too important to miss.
If anything, COVID has exacerbated many of the existing horrors of prison. Barton prisoners saw the loss of visits for big chunks of this year, only winning them back for a period of time through a series of courageous hunger strikes. There is the constant threat of the pandemic spreading through the jail, as we’ve seen at countless other institutions. The administration’s response to the pandemic has been to further erode prisoner’s basic “rights”. Read More …
Thousands of people around Ottawa connected on social media to request help and offer assistance to strangers during the first spike of COVID-19 in March, 2020. They were forming COVID-19 support groups, mutual aid networks, and “caremongering” groups. Membership in these Facebook groups grew to over 4,000 within weeks, and they have remained active since then, with daily posts, comments, news, and updates. Read More …
One week ago today, the 14 day occupation of Hamilton City Hall known as Freedom Camp came down voluntarily. For two weeks, Black and Brown youth organized the tent city and gathering place to demand a 50% reduction in the Hamilton Police budget and to have that money reallocated towards free housing for houseless folks who have been left out in the cold during a pandemic. Meals and shelter were provided to any houseless folks who came to find some help, until of course the city came in and ripped down all of their tents as is their disgusting mission these days. But those youth stayed strong and held out, helping folks come down from drugs in a gentle way, keeping people warm, and pressing the limits of what Sad Fred (the mayor) could handle. At one point, they even brought a coffin to his front yard. Read More …
While North Shore was down in late November and early December, we received three submissions from BC and Quebec about actions taken there in solidarity with the Coast to Call Call to Action being circulated by Wet’suwet’en land defenders involved with Gidim’ten checkpoint. The three are below, all were received anonymously.
BC: Power Lines Feeding LNG Facility Sabotaged — A statement from a few who aim to shut down Canada
BC: Update on Recent Direct Action Against the Coastal GasLink Pipeline
MTL: Solidarity Disruption and Experimentation on the CP and AMT railroad Read More …
As of November 28th, we’ve received reports from multiple sources that the administration is trying to cover up at least 2 new cases of COVID-19 among staff at the Barton Jail. Management is outright denying to both prisoners and staff that there are new positive cases, while at the same time introducing new policies in response to the outbreak. Read More …
Anonymous submission to North Shore MISSED CONNECTION: u were out in the middle of the nite painting over gross anti-choice ads all over town, probably wearing all black, being a total babe. i drove by your handiwork hours or maybe days l8tr. i feel like were into the same kinda stuff, maybe we could grab some coffee or go for a late nite stroll? looking for friendship, a bit of Read More …
Early in the morning on November 9th, a few of us tread into the night to pay visit to Sir John A Macdonald in Gore park downtown Hamilton. With a loaded fire extinguisher, we painted him red, symbolizing his blood-soaked legacy. We did this in solidarity with the land defenders out 1492 Landback Lane, our neighbors from Six Nations, who are facing intense police violence in their attempt to save their land from another cheap and hollow suburban development. Read More …
Anonymous Submission to North Shore UAV Tower Innovations is a drone company that is being paid by the OPP to spy on indigenous land defenders. Their publicly listed address is 403138 Grey Rd 4, Durham. Last night we spraypainted a message on their driveway: OPP COLLABORATORS WE SEE YOU! WE ARE WATCHING YOU NO JUSTICE ON STOLEN NATIVE LAND This is a warning, keep your drones away from the front Read More …
