Contributed Anonymously to Infoshop News Tuesday, March 23 2010 @ 02:09 AM UTC

Another March 15th passed in Montreal and not much has changed. The COBP who called the demonstration asked us to be peaceful, to show "the public" that we are different from the police, that we are "better" than them. Clashes with the cops took place and the COBP, once again, denounced the violent "provocations" of the police - hoping, as organizers of the demo, to save face in "the public's" eye. As participants in the action, we feel otherwise.

The reason we aren't like the police is not because we don't want to provoke conflict. The conflict already exists with the existence of the police and the society that needs them. What separates us from the police is our desire to see the end of arrests, detention, prison and the exploitative system they maintain; not sometime in the future, but here and now.

We went to that demonstration intending to attack the police. Apart from all the weapons we brought, we carried with us a desire to no longer see a single cop walk the streets the next day; at least without a limp, a headache and a feeling of fear that no overtime pay could reconcile. We went out into the streets to hit them as if we could actually smack them the fuck out of our lives, with no guilt, remorse or shame about it. While acknowledging that we have yet to realize the depth of our desires (cops aren't yet running for their lives), we can still move our lives and projects in that direction.

It's in this direction that other conflicts arise.

The more we attack the police, the more absurd we find the claims made by the COBP regarding the non-violent-until-provoked-by-police nature of the demonstration and demonstrators. We were there. We cast the first stone. We ARE offensive, not victims or cowards, and people can see that. After witnessing street fighting on this day for several years, who can take these claims seriously? We certainly cannot.

The COBP are trying to make their organization, and the demo it organizes, appear legitimate and credible to "the public," media and suit-wearing bureaucrats. In this context, they will always separate themselves from the people who attack the police because they share something in common with those to whome they make appeals. They don't see the value in open attacks against property and police. At least in the context of the demos they organize, our attacks push them (and us) away from the undignified people they want to get close to, and certainly not to punch in the face.

Here, again, is the conflict. The only thing the COBP said, after the anonymous attack against a police station on March 13th, was that they didn't do it and were worried that, after this attack, the police might provoke demonstrators on the 15th. Provoke them into doing what? Undesirable things like attacking the police? Exactly what some people did to that police station! (http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/M...story.html)

Instead of fighting alongside the enemies of police, they choose to represent them in the media while distancing themselves from the undesired methods they employ. It's clear that they would rather organize others to support their cause (in non-violent ways) than to organize themselves to attack the police as our accomplices. Trapped in Medusa's gaze, they wait for political gains or the next police murder that will boost the turnout at next years' demonstration.

Rather than wait, we choose the method of open conflict and will always support the actions of people who express this tension in the things they do. This is why we support the action on March 13th, as well as other past actions that have openly targeted the police. These acts speak louder than words and certainly aren't asking anything from the people who keep us down every day of our lives. Refusing to demand anything of the police means to be locked in permanent conflict until one side is destroyed. It means we don't distance ourselves from potential companions to save face in the media or to "the public", because our faces are masked and we speak with our bodies. Let the gorgeous side shine!

Every police car that is put out of service is one less car that can drive the guns of the state to their next execution. It's one less police car that can drive an asshole around to harass the undesirables in the neighbourhoods that are getting gentrified. It means less police presence and less people getting thrown through the courts and into prison. Like in Vincennes (in France), when the detention centre for migrants was reduced to ashes, things changed in the streets. Significantly less people were arrested and detained because they had no place to put them. Imprisonment, like exploitation, ends when the places, tools and people that carry it out are put "out of service."

Their repressive tools and strategy are always adapting and changing to better control us. We cannot wait for the numbers or the right social conditions before we change our methods and get seriously uncontrollable.

At least one anarchist faces trial for the street actions and attacks against police on March 15th in Montreal.

It's time we abandon our roles as spectators and organizers, find our accomplices and pass to action. Our power grows when theirs is weakened.