PrisOntario
I had my first van breakdown of the tour last night around midnight. Well, that is if you don't count the tire blowout I had right before getting to Ottawa. My comrade and I were just saying that it was 12:05 AM, and the world hadn't ended as announced by the hundreds of billboards I've seen on American highways in the past three and half months. Weird timing indeed, but thankfully we were about ten minutes from our destination and the problem doesn't look serious. Let's hope it's not an expensive fix..
Anyway, here are some non-sequential thoughts and highlights from the road.
I spent ten days in Montreal. Like New Orleans, there's no other place like it in North America. Listening to people speak French is romantic and all, but the anarchist scene there is tops. Cheap rents allow people maximum time to work on their projects and spaces for folks to congregate abound. Graffiti is prolific throughout the city's industrial sectors and political posters are plastered on every neighbourhood. In an abandoned building, I heard a talk from a comrade about the struggle for space in Vancouver, where the rents are ridiculously high, and city zoning inspectors have a weak sense of humour when it comes to aerosol art. Our sole anarchist social space was shut down a few weeks ago, and I've been dreaming about how we are going to fill that void this summer and beyond.
I crossed back into Obamaland three days ago, and the one thing I had on my mind as I approached the security check point at Niagara Falls, was all the people I met, who are or have been, in one way or another swallowed up by the "Justice" system. Most of those were rounded up in the post-g20 witch hunt of anarchists. Others are long time revolutionaries like anarchist black panther Ashanti Alston and urban guerrillas Ed Mead and Mark Cook of the George Jackson Brigade. Look for those interviews later this summer on subMedia.tv
While in Kingston, a city with seven prisons, I had the pleasure of meeting Ann Hansen of the Vancouver guerrilla group, Direct Action. Hansen gave a talk about the Conservatives' plan to expand Canada's prisons, now that they have obtained a majority in Parliament. [LINK]
The night before I screened END:CIV at the anarchist social space AKA. Aric McBay, who is featured on the film, gave a talk about sustaining communities of resistance. I've been thinking a lot about this lately. I believe that in order to be successful, our communities of resistance have to be multigenerational, need spaces to call their own and support people who are caught up by the system. Aric's talk pretty much sums it up. [LINK]
Finally, last night in Buffalo, Leslie James Pickering, from the Earth Liberation Front Press Office, gave a talk about liberation movements in North America and the about the exploits of the ELF. [LINK]
As I enter the final stretch of this crazy tour, I wonder what would it take for peeps to shit to the next level, to really build a revolutionary movement that dismantles this mad system once and for all. Or is it really going to be the end of the world as we know it?
