September 3, 2011

Common Cause, an Ontario organization of working-class anarchists, would like to commend you as you embark on your historic strike against your employers.

Many of us are current or former college students and workers in the education sector and some have been on strike ourselves as unionized workers at Ontario universities.

We know that your fight is just and support you 100% as you fight for better wages and working conditions from the wealth that as workers you helped produce.

We are walking the same picket lines that you are at colleges across Ontario because while we may not be part of your bargaining unit we are all part of the same class – the working class.

We will stand with you no matter what your employers or the government try to do to break your strike and bust your union.

This summer we stood with the striking workers at Air Canada and Canada Post as the federal government forced them back to work with legislation.

June 3, 2011

Denis Lemelin
National President
Canadian Union of Postal Workers
377 Bank St.
Ottawa, ON K2P 1Y3

Brother Lemelin,

We wish to send all of the 48,000 members of CUPW our solidarity in your struggle against Canada Post's attack on CUPW member's working conditions and wages.

We are with you in your fight to prevent a two-tiered workforce where new hires are only paid 75% of what other workers make for doing the same work. Equal pay for equal work is a corner-stone of the labour movement and must never be compromised.

"Genuine change can only come from ourselves", a joint initiative of Common Cause and Union Communiste Libertaire

Every election time comes with its load of promises. They say that this time is the right time for change. Again. All parties, and even the one that's been governing since the last election, assure us that they'll make it all better.

Opposite of other electoral websites, we don't have anything for sale. We're not aiming at convincing you to trust us. We don't want your vote.

Here, we'd like to offer a different perspective of elections and politics in general, starting by asking the question "Voting, what's the point?"

Read more: http://www.genuinechange.info/

When Mohammed Bouazizi set himself alight he unwittingly ignited a wave of popular uprisings and rebellions that have spread like wildfire across North Africa and the Middle East, the heat of which can be felt as far afield as Zimbabwe where, on Saturday 19th February, 46 pro-democracy activists including students, workers and trade unionists were arrested in Harare. According to police documents they were arrested for plotting an Egypt-style revolt to overthrow Robert Mugabe, who has been in power since 1980, at a meeting to discuss the fall of Hosni Mubarak and events in North Africa and the Middle East. The arrested, who represent the Zimbabwean Federation of Trade Unions (ZCTU), Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZNSU) and the International Socialist Organisation (ISO), had just watched documentary news footage on the uprising in Egypt and, according to state prosecutors, were there to "organise, strategise and implement the removal of the constitutional government of Zimbabwe ...

On Tuesday, January 11, 2011, the Jewish Defense League of Canada (JDL) will be hosting a rally in support of the Islamophobic English Defense League (EDL) in Toronto. The JDL is hosting an online address from Tommy Robinson, the leader of the EDL. Both groups have a history of violence aimed at Arab and Muslim people. We are community groups that work daily to fight racism. We have come together to condemn the Jewish Defense League for their Islamophobia and for their support for the racist English Defense League.

Who is the English Defence League (EDL)?

by Direct Support Committees of G20 detainees

While G20 leaders met behind a steel cage and a 1-billion dollar Fortress Toronto operation, we witnessed an unprecedented coordinated police operation in the city of Toronto. Police brutality against protest participants, journalists, legal observers, medics, and random passersby came in the form of indiscriminate arrests, beatings, pepper spray, rubber bullets, police horse charges, illegal searches and seizures, and extended arbitrary detentions.  While in custody, people were forced into steel cage cells with up to 40 people per cell; made to sleep on concrete floors with open bathrooms; denied food, water, toilet paper, and sanitary products; subjected to sexual harassment, threats, humiliation, and intimidation; and refused access to medical attention, phone calls, and legal counsel.

July 1, 2010

From June 25-27, elites from the world’s most powerful economies met in Huntsville and Toronto to draft policies to further exploit the environment and people, bolstering the systems that sustain colonialism, wars and displacement.

With global attention on Toronto, tens of thousands of people mobilized in a historic week-long convergence in opposition to these policies. Daily demonstrations highlighted struggles for Indigenous sovereignty; environmental justice; migrant justice; an end to war and occupation; community control over resources; gender justice; and queer and disAbility rights.

Also unprecedented was the over $1.2 billion spent on security, the most in G20 summit history, which paid for a dizzying array of weaponry and nearly 20,000 police—plus a security fence that turned Toronto into a fortress to host a select few and a police state to terrorize the rest of us.

Everyone out against police brutality and in solidarity with the Toronto 900! A protest outside police headquarters in every city!

Saturday July 17, 2010 Protest in Quebec City, Montreal and in many Canadian cities

The events of the past week in Toronto have been unprecedented in Canadian history. Over 900 people were arrested, the biggest mass arrests ever in Canada, for daring to protest against the destructive policies of the G20.

Protesters and local residents were subjected to violent baton attacks, snatch squads, tear gas and rubber bullets. Sleeping people have been pulled from their homes at gunpoint in the middle of the night. Many have been beaten. People who have been arrested have been strip-searched and held in cages, facing long delays in obtaining legal support. We have heard numerous accounts of sexual abuse by police from women who were arrested. Journalists have been punched, arrested and had their equipment broken.

Breaking news: CP24 now reports the total number of G20 arrests is 604. 253 today alone according to police.

Appeal for broad political support for the G20 arrestees
By The Movement Defence Committee

June 27, 2010, 3:00pm

The MDC’s Summit Legal Support Project is appealing to the movements it supports to mobilize a show of political strength and solidarity for the nearly 500 people arrested in the last four days. The Toronto Police and the ISU appear to have lost control of their ‘prisoner processing center’, denying arrestees meaningful and timely access to counsel while beating and arresting those peacefully protesting their detention outside.

Despite assurances to the contrary, only a handful of people have been released, including those held for many hours without charge. Arrestees are given incorrect information about the bail process they will be subjected to, and friends and family members gather hours early at the courthouse, located far from the city center and inaccessible via transit. Our lawyers call in and are told that there is no one available to make decisions or wait for hours at the detention centre, only to be denied access to their clients. Almost 500 people are in custody and we know from experience that the vast majority of those charges will disappear and yet the cell doors remain shut.

We need to step it up and build a political response. We need many more voices – especially prominent ones – to say that the abuse and incompetence at 629 Eastern Avenue must stop. We must demand that all levels of government take control of the police forces under their command. We need to ensure that courts and crown attorneys act to enforce constitutional rights rather than collude in their violation.

Free the Toronto 500!

The Movement Defence Committee

All in the Name of the Beautiful Gain
A ZACF statement on the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa

The 2010 Soccer World Cup must be exposed for the utter sham that it is. The ZACF strongly condemns the audacity and hypocrisy of the government in presenting the occasion as a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity for the economic and social upliftment of those living in South Africa (and the rest of the continent). What is glaringly clear is that the “opportunity” has and continues to be that of a feeding-frenzy for global and domestic capital and the South African ruling elite. In fact, if anything, the event is more likely to have devastating consequences for South Africa’s poor and working class – a process that is already underway.