Six Montreal Police Cars Torched: Anti-Capitalist Collective Claims Responsibility

What follows is a news item from CMAQ, the Quebec Indymedia, with quotes from a communique claiming responsibility for an attack on empty police cars belonging to the SPVM, the Montreal Police Department, on the morning of March 14th. The news item was translated by yours truly, the original can be read in French here.

Ruling class media news reports on the torching of the cop cars can be seen at:

• Police cars set on fire in east end
  The Gazette, Friday, March 14.

• Des autos-patrouille du SPVM détruites par le feu
  Le Soleil, vendredi 14 mars 2008.

CMAQ did not publish the communique claiming responsibility for this in its entirety, clearly fearing police repression, though perhaps also feeling liberal squeamishness. Their claim that they are not publishing the call to torch police cars and the homes of the rich for “legal and ethical” reasons is confusing, to say the least. If their only fear is repression, that is acceptable and respectable, but they should say so straight out. If they have moral qualms about reprinting such a communique one must wonder what they’re doing running an Indymedia node.

(Note: To be clear, if anyone ever has such a thing to post, don’t send it to me. Find some place safe and untraceable where it will be posted in its entirety and send it there, and once we find out about it many of us on the net will be happy to repost it.)

The Mercier/Hochelaga Maisonneuve neighbourhood is a predominantly working class Quebecois neighbourhood. To see such an act in such a neighbourhood should not be surprising, but it sure does warm the heart.

The CMAQ news piece is reprinted as follows:

On Friday March 14, at 5:50am, a “group” sent a message to Indymedia-Quebec (http://www.cmaq.net) claiming responsibility for setting six SPVM (Montreal Police Department) police cars on fire. The message was signed “Collectif Ton père” (Your Father Collective) and explains that this was an “Action against the greater and greater levels of oppression in the neighbourhood and everywhere where exploitation exists and reproduces itself.”

This act, if you recall, was carried out in the rear parking lot of neighbourhood police station number 23 on Hochelaga street, in the Mercier/Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighbourhod, around 3am according to the SPVM. The six police cars were totally destroyed.

The aforementioned communique declares:

We are acting in solidarity with Native political prisoners in America who are still struggling for their freedom and their autonomy.

We are calling on all populations to take back their time, space, the street, the city, and to torch every representative of authority.

The city is us, it is not a prison belonging to capitalism.

We are not slaves, and yet we build their houses, their banks. their roads, we look after their children and serve them their coffee every morning, we pick the fruit and vegetables that they eat……..*

The communique ends by calling on people to burn not only police cars, but also the capitalists’ houses and hotels. For both legal and ethical reasons, the volunteer Indymedia-Quebec collective cannot directly publish the original communique.

The Centre des médias alternatifs du Québec (CMAQ) has never heard of the “Your Father collective”. The message was sent via an online form, and was anonymous, with no email address, and the connection came via France, Germany and the United States.

– collectif Centre des médias alternatifs du Québec (CMAQ)

info [at] cmaq.net

Note: The Centre des médias alternatifs du Québec (CMAQ), a volunteer collective responsible for Indymedia-Quebec, is sharing this information as a journalistic article which could interest the public, and obviously does not support acts which could put people’s lives in danger.

* Editors note: the text as reproduced here was neither corrected not altered. It is only missing two or three sentences, which we have summarized at the end of our article.