L'Insomniaque

Mise en place et éviction du Tent City

Voici deux articles à propos du Tent City qui s'est établi hier après-midi à Montréal, et qui a été "détruit" suite à une opération policière la nuit dernière.

Quebec's Housing Battles:

Tent City begins in Montreal

Resistance continues at Guindonville

MONTREAL, July 5, 2003 (7:05pm) -- On a muggy and hot mid-summer afternoon, hundreds of housing activists and their supporters have occupied a section of Montreal's Parc Lafontaine, where a Tent City has been constructed. Hundreds of people continue to occupy the site, enjoying food, drinks, conversation and music, while others are erecting tents and tarps and arranging the site. A pirate radio station is broadcasting about the Tent City (104.9fm in Montreal), and a Tent City website is online, with web streaming and updated information (http://tentcity.taktic.org). A general assembly of Tent City participants is planned for tomorrow, and a full schedule of workshops and activities are planned for the entire week. A large crowd is expected to be at the Tent City this evening in support.

The Montreal police have made three announcements with a special sound truck, reminding Tent City participants of various municipal by-laws: parks must close at midnight, no outdoor fires are permitted, and tents are not allowed to be erected in public parks. Police vans and cars are located nearby the Tent City site, but have not intervened. A potential intervention is possible if the police decide to enforce the municipal park closure by-law or remove tents.

Today's action -- organized jointly by the Comite des sans-emploi, CLAC Logement and the Housing Committee of Ahuntsic-Cartierville -- is in response to Montreal's housing crisis, which is marked by vacancy rates of less than 1%, increasing gentrification of formerly low-cost working class areas, as well as increasing homelessness. Every July, hundreds of Montreal residents with expired leases are rendered homeless by the lack of affordable housing, while potentially thousands more are forced into substandard or unaffordable apartments.

The Tent City organizers have three principal demands: Decent housing for all; the end of the criminalization of poverty and homelessness; and the repossession of empty buildings for community use. They are stressing the anti-capitalist nature of their action, critiquing the root causes of the housing crisis in Montreal. According to a flyer being passed out at the Tent City ("Decent Housing for Everyone"):

"Behind the evictions and rent hikes, the homelessness and police, there is a logic -- the logic of capitalism. Under capitalism, things are produced, not because they are needed, but because they can be sold for a profit. It's not that there simply isn't enough roofs to cover everyone in Montreal that there is homelessness. There are unused buildings all across the city. But under capitalism, houses are only made available to people who can buy (or rent) them. The poor don't factor into the equations of supply and demand. When landlords evict their tenants, it is because they want tenants who can pay more -- they want more profit out of their property. When police harass, brutalize and jail the homeless, it is in order to raise the property values of the area."

The flyer ends on the following note:

"Of course our demands won.t be welcomed by the slimeball politicians who run this city, or the scumbag landlords who profit off the housing crisis, but that's only natural. They are the enemy. And we look forward to the day when each of their mansions in Westmount will house 30 people, not a few rich bastards."

[Westmount is one of Canada's wealthiest neighbourhoods, and the target of a protest in May organized by CLAC Logement after Montreal's Anarchist Bookfair this year, as well as a protest organized by the Comite des sans-emploi on May 1, 2000.]

• Previous, Current and Upcoming Housing Actions in Montreal and across Canada

One of the co-organizers of today's protest, the Comite des sans-emploi (The Committee of the Unemployed), has been active for a decade in fighting against poverty, centred mainly in the poor Centre-Sud neighbourhood of downtown Montreal. In 1997, members of the Comite entered the Queen Elizabeth Hotel and removed steaming platters of food, which they proceeded to serve to the poor outside. More recently, in the summer of 2001, the Comite initiated a housing action that squatted an abandoned downtown building. The squat, known as Overdale, lasted for several days until it moved to an empty municipal building (the Prefontaine Squat) that lasted for three months until a police intervention. [Squat article links are included below.]

There have been several squat projects across Canada in the past two years, including the Pope Squat in Toronto, the Woodwards Squat in Vancouver, the Chevrotire Squat in Quebec City, the Seven-Year Squat in Ottawa and many other actions. These public squat actions have sometimes lasted for several months, but in the end, the police or city have always intervened -- sometimes quite brutally -- to prevent autonomous groups and projects from reclaiming abandoned buildings.

CLAC Logement (the Housing Committee of the Anti-Capitalist Convergence), is a relatively young group, and has been focussed on opposing gentrification in the St-Henri neighbourhood of Southwest Montreal. Last fall, CLAC Logement organized a campaign against a local condo developer -- Quai des eclusiers -- that is developing upscale condominiums on the Lachine Canal. Due to the campaign, Quai des eclusiers was forced to take out a temporary court injunction against protests by CLAC Logement.

Organizers of today's Tent City action expressed their solidarity with an ongoing Tent City in downtown Vancouver, as well as a squat action in Peterborough, Ontario. Meanwhile, another Tent City is planned for Sherbrooke, Quebec later this month. Earlier in the week, another squat was cracked temporarily in Kitchener, Ontario (the "Robbie Guest Squat", named after someone who died in the custody of Family and Children Services).

• Lockdown continues in Guindonville ...

Montreal Tent City participants were joined today by supporters of Guindonville, a community several hours north of Montreal near Val-David in the Laurentians. Residents of Guindonville are resisting the razing of their low-rent and low-cost homes. The homes are slated for demolition by local municipal authorities in order to build a parking lot to allow access to local hiking trails and provincial parks.

Some of the homes at Guindonville are more than 60 years old, and are made of stone and wood. Municipal authorities decided to raze the homes because they were the cheapest to expropriate, and because some officials considered the unique homes an eyesore (presumably in comparison with more modern condos, cottages and parking lots).

The struggle at Guindonville now involves tree and roof occupations. Several residents have set up shelters on treetops beside their homes, while one resident -- Kathy Pitre -- has settled on her roof, ready to attach herself to a 600 pound barrel of concrete to prevent any sort of police intervention. One observer joked that "monkey police" will be need to remove the resisters at Guindonville.

• > For updated info about the situation in Guindonville, visit: http://www.guindonville.ca.tc

• > For updated info about the Tent City in Montreal, visit: http://tentcity.taktic.org

• > Pirate Radio about the Tent City is accessible at 104.9 FM in Montreal

• > For previous articles on the Overdale and Prefontaine Squats (Summer and Fall 2001), consult the following links:

http://www.cmaq.net/fr/node.php?id=6474 http://www.cmaq.net/fr/node.php?id=6482 http://www.cmaq.net/fr/node.php?id=6497 http://www.cmaq.net/fr/node.php?id=6507 http://www.cmaq.net/fr/node.php?id=6835

[by Jaggi Singh (jaggi@tao.ca) for act-mtl, Indymedia Montreal and CMAQ.]

Update from Montreal's Tent City: Riot police evict Tent City; several reported arrests

MONTREAL, July 6, 2003 (2:57am) -- Riot police evicted hundreds of participants at Montreal.s Tent City inside Parc Lafontaine shortly after 12:30am this morning. At least 40 riot police were already placed inside the large park, and using floodlights in the dark, they proceeded to push back Tent City participants with shields and batons. Many people scrambled to gather their belongings, including their tents and tarps, while others maintained a line in front of the riot police, chanting defiant slogans in defence of the Tent City. At least four people were arrested inside the park. According to one legal team member, at least 12 people were arrested in total.

In one reported incident, two members of an activist video collective were arrested as they intervened as police attempted to arrest a mother sleeping in a car with her sleeping young child.

Most tent city participants have regrouped and gathered in the parking area of the Comite Social, a community center in the Centre-Sud neighbourhood and home to the Comite des sans-emploi, one of the co-organizers of today's Tent City. Earlier this evening, several hours before the police intervention, a general assembly was held at the Tent City site, with over 100 people participating. Participants voted overwhelmingly to stay at the Tent City site past the midnight deadline given by the police, and also return again to Parc Lafontaine on Sunday, to resume the Tent City, and to continue a program of pre-planned workshops, activities and communal meals. Some Tent City participants vowed to return every day next week, and stay every night until the police evictions at midnight.

One Montreal municipal councillor, Nicolas Tetrault, was on-hand to defend the police action, and insist that the municipal by-laws that force parks to close at midnight was justified, despite the housing crisis. The councillor, who was denounced as a yuppie by bystanders, was forced to leave the scene.

A previous article about the Tent City is included below.

A Quicktime movie about the squat, by Kevin Walsh, is linked at: http://montreal.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=8631&group=webcast

The Tent City website is at: http://tentcity.taktic.org

[by Jaggi Singh, for act-mtl, Indymedia Montreal and CMAQ]