Tag: Hamilton

Statement on the Dissolution of HTSN

Posted on

We are writing this brief message to formally announce the dissolution of the Hamilton Tenants Solidarity Network (HTSN). This is a decision that our members have reached collectively, and without acrimony. Although this announcement may come as a surprise to some of our supporters, we are looking forward to the opportunities that this change will open up, and the new directions that it will allow us to take with our work. When HTSN was first established, our goal was to organize a federated network of tenant committees across the city of Hamilton. Read More …

Keep your fire bright! Solidarity Railway sabotage in Burlington

Posted on

Last night, we did a sabotage at railway bottleneck in Burlington. This place chosen because of the juncture there, with lines from Detroit and Buffalo joining to go forward to Toronto and Montreal. We have heard it’s the busiest intersection of this kind in Canada. This action is in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en people in the front line struggle against the Canadian state and the corporations it supports, in response to a call for actions attacking the railways.

We did this by identifying a signal station and setting a fire under its power supply to destroy the cables that would feed it. Hoping this will take them some time to repair and keeping the line closed for longer. Read More …

Hamilton: Into the Streets: Stand with the Wet’suwet’en – Rally Reportback

Posted on

On Friday, January 10th, around 50+ strong rallied in Gore Park in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en who are defending their unceded sovereign land against violent colonial invasion.

Equipped with a marching band, signs, and a giant balloon banner that read: “STOP CGL”, we proceeded onto King Street, catching cops and bankers by surprise when we detoured into the RBC in Jackson Square to disrupt as they prepared to close for the day. One perturbed employee who tried to head off the procession protested “you can’t do this! We’re trying to do business here!” to which a speaker in our midst retorted that was exactly the point.

And that is exactly the point: Business will not go on uninterrupted and unchallenged while indigenous lives are under attack. Read More …

Hamilton: Charges Dropped Against 2 Pride Defenders

Posted on

After months and months of utter nonsense, it is with great joy we announce today that two of the Pride Defenders have just had their charges DROPPED! While we may never know the reasons for this victory, we know that the public pressure campaign could only have helped so thank you, thank you for your continued support.

Let’s take a moment to celebrate!!!!

But while we’re putting our party hats on, let’s also take a moment to remember that THREE queer comrades are still facing charges. It is important to note that the people still in the courts are the three who are alleged to have defended Pride from the homophobic preachers, while the charges that have been dropped were related to crybaby Fred calling the cops on queers who allegedly delivered him some lawn signs. We are still being criminalized for defending ourselves. Read More …

Hamilton: Simultaneous Rail Sabotage at Bottlenecks in Solidarity with Wet’suwet’en Land Defenders

Posted on

A decade ago in a move that has inspired many, Wet’suwet’en people reoccupied their unceded territories as a way to begun healing and ensuring the land is protected in the ways she needs to sustain Wet’suwet’en people’s lives, practices, and continued existence in their traditional territories.

A year ago the RCMP violently invaded those territories to provide access for industry. 

One week ago, the canadian state criminalized Anuk’ nu’at’en – Wet’suwet’en hereditary law – by granting an injunction which criminalizes Indigenous people and their allies should they protect the Yintah from the destructive forces of industry.

We honour these anniversaries with a giant fuck you to the state. Read More …

Hamilton: For the eleventh year, New Year’s Noise Demo at the Barton Jail

Posted on

For the 11th year in a row, anarchists and other rebels gathered on New Year’s eve to march on the Barton Jail. This is an international tradition, rooted in showing our disgust for prisons and their world and our solidarity with all prisoners, and especially to remember anarchists facing repression.

So we circulated a text by the Operation Renata defendants in Trento, Italy that contains some important reminders: “We have seen the suffering of families, friends, and those who have lost their own children to the hands of the state, and we have also seen most people’s silence and indifference, in spite of how much closer these tragedies are to us than we’d like to believe.” Read More …

Hamilton LRT cancellation: A Christmas Fucking Miracle!

Posted on3 Comments

Working class Hamilton families breathed a collective sigh of relief Monday afternoon, when the Province announced they were killing the Light Rail Transit (LRT) project.  After 10+ years of living in the shadow of the Hamilton renaissance monster, with the housing walls closing in, this is the best holiday news many have heard in over a decade.

Hamilton has been wracking up some seriously shitty stats the last while.  In 2016, the CMHC named Hamilton one of 4 ‘red-flag’ cities with “dangerously overvalued” property, as ECDEV forced our way aboard Toronto’s SS Titanic housing bubble. This year we landed on the list of Top 10 most unaffordable cities for minimum wage workers (folks now working 55-60+ hours/week to afford a basic apartment).  And for the shit cherry on top of this hot shit sundae: we took the top prize this year for the highest one-year rent increase in all of Canada, at 24%. 

So when the announcement came that Metrolinx’s LRT project – the engine that’s been driving this community-wrecking shitmobile – was being shelved?  The joy was impossible to contain.  The joy overfloweth.  It was a Christmas fucking miracle.  Read More …

Like Hand in Glove: on the collaboration between media, police, and far-right in the recent arrests of antifascists in Toronto and Hamilton

Posted on1 Comment

On Tuesday, October 22 and Wednesday, October 23, four antifascists were arrested by Hamilton police, watchdogs of white supremacy, in connection with the counter-protest against Maxime Bernier’s fundraising event last month. Two people living in Toronto came to Hamilton to turn themselves in, while the two living in Hamilton were arrested at their school and home respectively. Cynically, HPS chose to wait until right after the federal election before launching this wave of arrests to avoid further having their complicity in the rise of the far right in Hamilton become a national political issue. By doing so, they make obvious the political nature of these charges: they have more to do with the narrative being produced than with what happened on the ground. 

Two people are charged with intimidation and causing disturbance in connection to an old woman who was yelled at and delayed from entering the venue; another is charged with intervening in an attack by a fascist goon on other protestors; and then, perhaps most strangely, we have one person charged with theft under $5000 for allegedly removing a Canadian flag from an armed fascist’s baton.  Read More …

Hamilton: The Tower’s Statement on Backlash after the Bernier Demo

Posted on1 Comment

In the few days since the counter-demo against the Bernier event at Mohawk College, there has been an intense backlash against antifascists. In particular, we see as particularly vile the targeting of an organizer based in Toronto named Alaa, who immigrated to Canada from Syria. We are enraged to see him subjected to racist insults and threats targeting both himself and his family. This backlash has latched on to a video of an elderly person having an uncomfortable few minutes and being slightly delayed. This person experienced no harm, she’s fine, and afterwards went to a bunch of media outlets where she made comments about how her interest in Bernier stems from concerns about the Middle East, specifically Syrians, and how they have different values from ours.

She says it’s not her idea of Canada that she experiences a little difficulty in supporting an openly xenophobic political party. In this she is correct: racism has been a feature of Canada from the beginning. That so much of Hamilton (starting with its media) is focused on an old white person’s moment of discomfort rather than yet another immigrant family being targeted for harassment by the racist far-right should come as no surprise. This is the Canada she is turning to Bernier to defend. Read More …