The royal Bank of Canada is at the head of a group of 27 banks who lend the 6.8 billions that are needed for the construction of Coastal Gaslink.. In Canada, the banks taking part in the agreement are ATB Financial, Bank of Montreal, Scotia Bank, CIBC, the Canadian Western Bank, Export Developpement Canada, the National bank and the Toronto Dominion. In short, the whole banking sector is supporting pipelines.
The struggle for self-determination of the Wetsu’wet’en people is not a new one. Since the late 1990s, the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan peoples have been waging a legal and political battle for recognition of their territorial rights. In 1997, these two peoples obtained recognition from the colonial legal system that their territory had never been ceded, and that their hereditary system of governance had never been extinguished.
The spring of 2020 saw one of the largest Indigenous mobilizations since the Kanehsatà:ke resistance in 1990. The Wet’suwet’en nation’s opposition to the Coastal GasLink project currently being built on their territory has inspired many other communities, both Indigenous and non- Indigenous, to take direct action across Canada, thereby blocking the national rail system, the backbone of Canadian colonial capitalism.
Another big protest for climate, what's the point?
Of course it'll be nice to have as many people as there was in 2019, but in the end, even Greta couldn't make our governments change their policies. Well, ok, it falls a few days after the federal election, and we can hope that it can put some pressure on the bewly elected officials... But we know it won't: whoever is in power after the elections, nothing significant will be done, nothing significant has ever been done for climate in so-called Canada. Since the beginning of colonization, the State steals, exploits and destroys the land on which we live and which, ironically, ensure our survival.
Les ateliers se tiendront un samedi sur deux, a partir de la mi-juillet, à 19h dans la cour du DIRA (2035 Saint-Laurent):
17 juillet : Historique du rôle des infrastructures de transport et de communication dans le projet capitaliste colonial québécois
31 juillet : Réaménagement du territoire en cours et à venir : la stratégie maritime du Québec
14 aout : Résistances à la réorganisation urbaine, stratégies et pratiques
The pandemic we are mired in precarize everyone and highlights serious injustices. The stimulus wished by the leaders is an economic stimulus which is not addressed to us. It is not addressed to the artists and other people who don’t make enough profit to merit the right to exist. It does not concern sex workers, whose existence itself is still criminalized. This stimulus ignores handicapped people, the marginalized, those with mental health issues. The stimulus they talk about, it is for the oil companies, the Bombardier corporations, the party friends like Guzzo, but it is not for us. To let the governments save us from the crisis they created themselves through the constant cuts to healthcare and through their "snowbird" lives, would be to accept death. What we need to stimulate is not the economy, but the struggles for our rights and the end of capitalist exploitation.
Ecofascism is an ideology that merges neo-fascism with environmentalism. Ecofascists share many of the same concerns as radical leftist environmentalists in that they want to protect the Earth, as well as animals, from the ecological destruction that has been brought on by capitalism. Where they differ, of course, is that ecofascists aim to do so through tactics that spawn from racist and white supremacist principles.
This text was originally written in French
Intersectionality is mentioned in about all of social science literature nowadays. Typically, this concept shows the interdependent relation between generic situations and how different domination systems can overlap. Intersectionality is however, as it presents itself historically, an analytical tool developed especially with the aim to build an understandable holistic view of the critics of capitalism, patriarchy and racism. It is why this concept is so important for environmental struggles.
This text was originally written in French
Racialized people are victims of many forms of discrimination. For instance, during the 2016 census, the income of people reported as belonging to visible minorities was 30% lower than white people. Another example is the fact that polluting factories and city dumps are often found on land populated by Indigenous and racialized people. One may assume that capitalist developments simply prefer territory inhabited by poorer people, but wealth does not explain what is seen in the field. In practice, capitalist developments are often used as a pretext to enforce racist ideology. [1]
The perception that our consumption is abnormal is always based on comparisons between ourselves and people around us. However, consumption of goods, products and services depends first on transport and communication infrastructures. These infrastructures were built through the spending of billions of dollars each year, each time by stepping on local communities and ecosystems. It is therefore important to think about the colonization steps of the territory in order to put our consumption into context.
Given the current situation, the day of workshops "Ecology, anticapitalism and resistance" planned for Saturday, March 28th at the SCPA is postponed to a future date. The date will be announced when it gets clearer what this future has in store for us.
I remember the first time I killed a deer. I don’t know why, but before we started skinning or anything, I walked up to that deer and I put my hand on it. I could feel that the deer was still warm. In that moment I knew that he was the same as me. As I had taken his life, now I owed him mine.
The fight against climate change must break out of its rut. It must also fight the system of borders which benefits certain lives more than others. It must crush this capitalist economy which is always looking to produce more, more and more. It must fight the migrant prison being built in Laval, in which children are raised behind bars. It must fight imperialism which forces countries of the South to produce for a pittance what we consume here in the North. It must fight white supremacy, whether it takes the form of neo-fascist militia, conservative talking heads, or colonial governments which impose their law on unceded native lands. It must fight those who benefit from poisoning the Earth and from the exploitation of our sisters and brothers.
May 1st was created out of workers' struggles leaded by immigrants. The struggle took place on this continent more than a hundred years ago. Today, globalized imperialist capitalism created conditions which forces millions of people to leave their home in order to find a refuge to survive. These millions of people are place in situations of extreme vulnerability, creating a stateless and exploitable population. According to an article published in the Devoir today, the risk to suffer from workplace accident causing severe wounds or death is twice as high for foreign workers.
When looking at a map of the world, one sees that territories have been assigned to states. The underlying ideology of this situation becomes clear when we think about how static these maps are, while the colonial project in so-called Canada is actually quite dynamic. From piplines to dams that reach further and further north, a map that would accurately depict the evolution of Indigenous and settler occupation of these territories would refute any pretentions that colonialism is over.