Saturday August 6
NADA: revolutionary medicine
(EN, FR, SP) – 10:00
Come receive a NADA treatment (ear acupuncture) or learn how to give a NADA treatment (acupressure with stickers)! NADA is a protocol developed by the Black Panthers and Young Lords to support withdrawal from opiates in the Bronx in the 70’s-80’s. Since then it has been used all over the world to prevent PTSD and support mental health. 5 needles or stickers are inserted in 5 acupuncture points in the ears to regulate the sympathetic nervous system (fight/flight). It is simple to learn, lost cost and very effective when administered frequently in reducing consumption and diminishing side effects of detox.
Hochelaga Community Acupuncture Clinic: A cooperative Chinese medicine clinic offering sliding scale acupuncture and tuina treatments opening it’s doors in September 2022.
What happened to Prisoners’ Justice Day?
(EN) – 11:00
This workshop is an introduction to the prison system in so-called Canada through talking about Prisoners’ Justice Day. PJD is a day when prisoners in federal prisons historically commemorated those who have died in prison by carrying out a one day work and hunger strike. It traditionally takes place on August 10th each year. We will highlight stories about PJD and prisoner resistance as a way to talk about the relationship between prisons and colonialism, white supremacy, and gender-based violence, how prisoner resistance connects with resistance outside prisons, and the state of PJD today.
The collective organizing Prisoner Justice Day 2022 is an ad hoc group of individuals who have been organizing together to make an event happen in Montreal on Prisoners’ Justice Day each year.
Defend The Atlanta Forest: Info Session & Discussion
(EN) – 11:00
In the wake of the 2020 George Floyd rebellion, Atlanta-area officials have planned to build the largest police training compound in the country — by bulldozing the largest urban tree canopy in the country! Meanwhile, film-industry executives plan to clear-cut what remains in order to build « the largest soundstage complex on Earth. » Join us for an in-depth overview and conversation with on-the-ground activists involved in the historic movement to Stop Cop City and Defend The Atlanta Forest.
Defend The Atlanta Forest is an autonomous movement for the future of South Atlanta.
Life, the Universe, and Anarchy
(EN) – 11:00
Like all knowledge systems, science is a mix of observations we make of the world and stories we tell about it. Recent observations tell us that the universe as we know it is 13.8 billion years old, the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, and that life was present here soon afterwards. How do our anarchist values inform the stories we tell about everything that has happened since? To illustrate this cosmic history, and help facilitate a discussion about it, we have installed the width of the park around the bookfair a physical timeline marking the approximate origin times of the universe, galaxy, solar system, and the some significant beginnings and endings of life as we know it. This event will consist of a presentation and discussion that takes place up and down the length of the timeline, from the big bang to the present day, and everything in between.
Cleeyv is an anti-colonial anarchist settler from Montreal who works on free software for money, and reads science fiction for fun.
The 4th industrial revolution and surveillance capitalism
Capitalisme de surveillance et 4ème révolution industrielle
(FR, EN) – 11:00
Every purchase made with a credit card, every search on the internet, every reaction to a publication on social networks, every scan of a vaccination passport, emails, data from health applications, GPS… are collected and analyzed massively because they constitute a mine of information for companies that want to know us better than we know ourselves, in order to sell us solutions to « make our life easier » and to influence our behaviors… The fourth industrial revolution (4RI), promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) since Davos, is well underway. Research and development centers for the deployment of the 4RI have been opened in many countries since 2017 and the WEF can count on its network of « young global leaders » to promote it. Canada is very active in this… The 4RI comes with a list of complex words: IoT, IoB, Blockchain, AI and other nebulous formulas… We will need to understand their plans well in order to continue to cultivate life, its ecosystems and our human relationships. The global pandemic has made us lose our bearings and is, according to world leaders, a « great opportunity »… to save the planet? our lives? but how exactly?
The Projet Accompagnement Solidarité Colombie (PASC) is a collective based in so called Quebec that was born following the great mobilizations against the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Since 2003, PASC has been accompanying Colombian communities and organizations and disseminating information on Colombian social movements while denouncing Canadian interests involved in the social and armed conflict in Colombia.
What is left of the Self at the end of the World?
Qu’est-ce qui reste du Soi à la fin du monde?
(EN) – 13:00
A panel discussion exploring various spheres of the same question: « What is left of the Self at the End of the World? » Exploring this question through radical ecology, Afropessimism, Queer Negativity, Phenomenology, and Critical Art History, we seek outside the limits of liberal humanist understandings of selfhood, towards a multidisciplinary understanding of what it is to ‘be’ at the end of the World—understood broadly as the end of Anthropocene, bordered nations, individual consciousness, and as perhaps the beginning of the Weirdness, the Real, transcendence, continuity, and revolution.
We are a group centering woman-aligned people forming a radical reading/research collective around the question « What is left of the Self at the end of the World? »
Escaping Tomorrow’s Cages, a presentation and brainstorming discussion on how to combat Ontario’s current prison expansion initiative
(EN) – 13:00
The Province of Ontario is in the midst of an initiative to expand the provincial prison system in eastern and northern Ontario. This is an invitation to get familiar with the projects and to start dreaming of ways to oppose them. Regardless of where you live in (or near) Ontario, all of these expansion projects affect you.These structures must not be built. Our hope is to spread opposition to Ontario’s prison expansion as widely as possible, advance anti-prison politics throughout our region, and maybe even stop some prisons being built along the way. Because once a prison is built, it cannot be undone.
While we are focusing on the current Ontario prison expansion, we believe that all anarchists, despite arbitrary borders, should be concerned with how the state develops a narrative for the need to expand prisons. We hope to share ideas, strategies, and inspiration with as many like-minded individuals as possible.
Fighting for Black Liberation and Economic Democracy: The Case of Cooperation Jackson
With Kali Akuno
(EN) – 13:00
The start of the 21st century has been a critical period of regroupment for the broad array of forces on the left, not just in the United States, but globally. The left, in all of its iterations, is still reeling from the many crushing defeats, premature starts, political reversals, and heartbreaking betrayals of the 20th century.
Experimentation is clearly the name of the game in the early decades of the 21st century. In recent years, we have seen a range of political experiments with varying degrees of continuity with the 20th century left, including various attempts to resurrect variants of social democracy in Latin America, Europe and North America; the flowering of autonomist movements in Latin America and Asia; the development of left-leaning social movement electoral experiments in Europe, Africa, and Latin America; countless radical municipalist movements throughout the globe; the rise of Indigenist movements throughout the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania; a number of ongoing armed insurrectionary movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America; and a growing number of national liberation and secessionist movements in every region of the world.
The most promising and original developments on the 21st century left are clustered around anarchists, libertarian socialists, non-statist communists, social ecologists, and Indigenous perspectives and orientations. What makes these movements unique, in comparison to their 20th century counterparts, is how textured they are by deep intersections with questions of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and ecology. Where these movements are challenged is in their understandings of class and their organic connections with the working class, as well as their adoption of various aspects of neoliberalism and postmodernism that fracture their understanding of social solidarity and the necessity of collective action. In order to address the deepening political, economic, and ecological crisis of the 21st century, we have to recognize that we all have something to learn from all of these movements and orientations, with all of their strengths and weaknesses.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cooperation Jackson has advanced the « Build and Fight Formula ». This formula centers around productive/ reproductive activities and social relations that millions of people around the world are currently engaged in, though they remain loosely connected at best. Our theory is that IF these activities were directly connected, federated and coordinated through democratic methods and institutions, they could facilitate the process of building ecosocialism from below. This workshop seeks to explore the viability of this idea in the context of building a greater degree of shared strategy and practice amongst key sectors of the left.
This workshop will focus on the history of Cooperation Jackson and its efforts to build Black working power in Jackson, Mississippi and to utilise this power to achieve Black self-determination and democratize society and socialize production.
This workshop will occur after a week-long work-study encounter in Plainfield, Vermont, hosted by the Institute for Social Ecology, in collaboration with Cooperation Jackson, the People’s Network for Land and Liberation, and the Symbiosis Network.
SITT-IWW Intro
Intro au SITT-IWW
(FR) – 13:00
Introducing the Industrial Workers of the World (Syndicat industriel des Travailleuses et des Travailleurs) – its goals, objectives, operations, structures, victories, key figures and its history here and elsewhere.
Founded in Chicago in 1905, the IWW is open to all workers. Don’t let the “industrial” part fool you; our members include teachers, social workers, retail workers, construction workers, bartenders and computer programmers. Only bosses are not allowed to join. You have a legal right to join a union, and your membership is confidential. It is up to you whether you discuss the union with your co-workers. If you are currently unemployed, you can still join. We are a volunteer-driven union, and this means we, not union bosses, run the union.
The IWW is not controlled by or affiliated with any political party or political movement. No money goes to politicians. Membership dues are used to maintain the union and assist organizing campaigns. As a result, monthly dues are low. The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organise as a class, take possession of the means of produc-tion, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the earth.
Qubes for N00bs: an introduction to the security-focused Qubes operating system for anarchists
(EN) – 13:00
This presentation will provide an overview and tour of the highly secure Linux-based QubesOS operating system and why it should be of interest to anarchists. QubesOS is a unique operating system based on a collection of isolate ‘virtual machines’, with a variety of structural differences from typical operating systems like MacOS, Windows and Linux. It is designed to protect the user from a large range of possible attacks and provide built in tools for privacy and anonymity. We will introduce the concepts and structure behind QubesOS, explain how it is different from projects like Tails, explore how it can apply to different threat models, go over how to install and use QubesOS yourself, and answer any other questions you may have!
We are unaffiliated anarchists who are interested in helping other anarchists leverage cybersecurity knowledge and tools to act safely and effectively.
Fuck the new migrant detention centre in Laval
(EN, FR, SP) – 15:00
A Solidarity Across Borders anti detention committee presentation about the opening of the new migrant detention centre in Laval, in conjunction with a month long August month of action campaign to raise awareness and organise against the opening of said prison.
Sex Worker Movements, Mutual Aid & Solidarity Across Struggles
(EN) – 15:00
Bringing together sex workers organizing mutual aid efforts, pandemic relief and supports for other sex workers across their various communities together with others organizing around anti-poverty movements, resisting police violence/the criminal justice system, racial and economic justice, and other forms of collective organizing/mutual aid to explore and address the disconnects between local movements and sex workers organizing.
Jelena Vermillion, Sex Worker Action Project (Hamilton, ON) Jasbina Misir, Maggie’s Toronto Sex Workers Action Project (Toronto, ON) *waiting to confirm specific organizer*, Butterfly: Asian and Migrant Sex Worker Support Network (Ontario) Ellie AK, Maggie’s Toronto
First Aid Workshop
(EN, FR) – 15:00
Tamia (EMS with Urgences-Sante, Red Cross) and the Montreal Medics Collective will give a training workshop on the basics of emergency first-aid. A short overview of core emergency first aid skills, with emphasis on impact trauma and bleeding control techniques.
Kanien’kehà:ka Kahnistensera and Their Struggle
(EN) – 15:00
While their anticolonial struggle is vast, this talk focuses on their work in the case of the disaffected Royal Victoria Hospital. The Kahnistensera are in the Quebec Superior court right now using Indigenous Law to make arguments as to why McGill’s construction plans with the Royal Vic need to stop because the stewards of the land have never been consulted. The Royal Victoria Hospital site is understood to contain the unmarked graves of Indigenous children experimented on during the CIA project MK-Ultra. Colonial Institutions are once again blatantly disregarding the tangible experience and testimony of Indigenous Peoples as they try to build on land that was never ceded. The Kahnistensera will not let that happen.
The Kahnistensera are a group of Mohawk Mothers that organize under Kaianere’kó:wa, the Great law of Peace. Under this Haudenosaunee law, these Mothers have a duty to protect the land for the unborn children.
The Algorithm: Demystifying data-driven AI
(EN) – 15:00
What are we referring to when we say “The Algorithm”? This is a broad presentation meant to unpack this as an object of speech – what is an algorithm? How does the data we generate – like a photo posted on the internet become useful for different actors? In a world where machine learning, a data-driven corner of artificial intelligence, is experiencing unprecedented development, we will try to open up the black box to discern what can be achieved with the massive harvests of data gathered from our lives. This is not meant to be a cyber security or privacy workshop, but an attempt to proliferate an understanding of this phenomenon so that you will be better equipped to think through and navigate these forces with less anxiety and greater comprehension.
Presented by a Montreal anarchist who begrudgingly completed a computer science degree, and is interested in the problems of expertise that the field of tech raises, but far more so in how our possibilities of intimacy are channelled by this world and can be carved anew.
