We are calling for an anarchist contingent in the May 1 anti-capitalist demonstration organized by CLAC, starting at 4:30PM at the corner of rues Gosford and Saint-Antoine, near Champ-de-Mars métro station. We shouldn’t be hard to find. The dress code is black, but if your wardrobe isn’t up to snuff and you can’t find the time to go to the friperie, be sure to at least bring a mask and cover your head. Bring friends, flags, plans, umbrellas for either rain or sun, maybe some water or energy bars to share (so that we can continue into the night), and whatever other materials you think might be handy. Make sure you know to stay tight and only throw from the front.

We hope that lots of the people who have been masking up in the course of the student unrest, as well as those who haven’t been, will roll with us. We’re not specialists and we don’t have a membership list or annual dues. Even if you aren’t planning anything particularly crazy, it would be great if you could express your support for diverse tactics by wearing black and if you could normalize the simple act of concealing your identity in the face of state surveillance. That kind of solidarity gets reciprocated.

If you don’t already have May Day plans in your hometown and you want make the trek to here, we encourage you to do so. Montréal should do you well.

We’re looking forward to what our farflung comrades in the struggle are going to bring forth on May Day. From Cairo to Barcelona, from Athens to Oakland, from Asheville to Hamilton to Seattle to Chicago, we here have been inspired by what you’ve done and what you’re doing. We’ll be happy if what we accomplish in Montréal this year can resonate with you, too, and become a bright part in the tapestry of ruptures that will weave itself around the world on this day of struggle we all share together.

As for recent events closer to home, it needs to be said that the strike has been a mixed success. Too often, we have felt weak when we should have felt strong. We have let the phantom of public opinion and the tired dogma of pacifism prevent us from doing what we know is both necessary to defeat our enemies and – even before arms were broken and Francis Grenier’s eye was lost and scores of our comrades were arrested – wholly appropriate. We have let the government, the police, the school administrators, and the media limit our imaginations. May Day is the day to change all that. It is the day when we will take our self-defense seriously, attack our oppressors and the systems that control us, and do what we can to open space for us to live freely and with dignity. When riot cops turn around and run from us, we have created a new kind of relationship between us and the dogs of the bosses. When security cameras or turnstiles in the métro are disabled, we have changed the relationship that everyone has with the urban environment that is usually so carefully controlled. No matter what happens, if we act together with integrity and courage in the face of state repression, we will carry that feeling into the battles that will come after.