Tent City begins in Montreal -- Resistance continues at Guindonville

by Jaggi Singh (jaggi@tao.ca) for act-mtl, Indymedia Montreal and CMAQ

MONTREAL, July 5, 2003 (7:05pm) -- On a muggy and hot mid-summer afternoon, hundreds of housing activists and their supporters have occupied a section of Montreal's Parc Lafontaine, where a Tent City has been constructed. Hundreds of people continue to occupy the site, enjoying food, drinks, conversation and music, while others are erecting tents and tarps and arranging the site. A Tent City website is online, with web streaming and updated information (tentcity.taktic.org). A general assembly of Tent City participants is planned for tomorrow, and a full schedule of workshops and activities are planned for the entire week. A large crowd is expected to be at the Tent City this evening in support.

The Montreal police have made three announcements with a special sound truck, reminding Tent City participants of various municipal by-laws: parks must close at midnight, no outdoor fires are permitted, and tents are not allowed to be erected in public parks. Police vans and cars are located nearby the Tent City site, but have not intervened. A potential intervention is possible if the police decide to enforce the municipal park closure by-law or remove tents.

Today's action -- organized jointly by the Comite des sans-emploi, CLAC Logement and the Housing Committee of Ahuntsic-Cartierville -- is in response to Montreal's housing crisis, which is marked by vacancy rates of less than 1%, increasing gentrification of formerly low-cost working class areas, as well as increasing homelessness. Every July, hundreds of Montreal residents with expired leases are rendered homeless by the lack of affordable housing, while potentially thousands more are forced into substandard or unaffordable apartments.

The Tent City organizers have three principal demands: Decent housing for all; the end of the criminalization of poverty and homelessness; and the repossession of empty buildings for community use. They are stressing the anti-capitalist nature of their action, critiquing the root causes of the housing crisis in Montreal. According to a flyer being passed out at the Tent City ("Decent Housing for Everyone"):

"Behind the evictions and rent hikes, the homelessness and police, there is a logic -- the logic of capitalism. Under capitalism, things are produced, not because they are needed, but because they can be sold for a profit. It's not that there simply isn't enough roofs to cover everyone in Montreal that there is homelessness. There are unused buildings all across the city. But under capitalism, houses are only made available to people who can buy (or rent) them. The poor don't factor into the equations of supply and demand. When landlords evict their tenants, it is because they want tenants who can pay more -- they want more profit out of their property. When police harass, brutalize and jail the homeless, it is in order to raise the property values of the area."

The flyer ends on the following note:
"Of course our demands won't be welcomed by the slimeball politicians who run this city, or the scumbag landlords who profit off the housing crisis, but that's only natural. They are the enemy. And we look forward to the day when each of their mansions in Westmount will house 30 people, not a few rich bastards."

[Westmount is one of Canada's wealthiest neighbourhoods, and the target of a protest in May organized by CLAC Logement after Montreal's Anarchist Bookfair this year, as well as a protest organized by the Comite des sans-emploi on May 1, 2000.]

Update from Montreal's Tent City: Riot police evict Tent City; several reported arrests

by Jaggi Singh (jaggi@tao.ca) for act-mtl, Indymedia Montreal and CMAQ

MONTREAL, July 6, 2003 (2:57am) -- Riot police evicted hundreds of participants at Montreal's Tent City inside Parc Lafontaine shortly after 12:30am this morning. At least 40 riot police were already placed inside the large park, and using floodlights in the dark, they proceeded to push back Tent City participants with shields and batons. Many people scrambled to gather their belongings, including their tents and tarps, while others maintained a line in front of the riot police, chanting defiant slogans in defence of the Tent City. At least four people were arrested inside the park. According to one legal team member, at least 12 people were arrested in total.

In one reported incident, two members of an activist video collective were arrested as they intervened as police attempted to arrest a mother sleeping in a car with her sleeping young child.

Most tent city participants have regrouped and gathered in the parking area of the Comite Social, a community center in the Centre-Sud neighbourhood and home to the Comite des sans-emploi, one of the co-organizers of today's Tent City. Earlier this evening, several hours before the police intervention, a general assembly was held at the Tent City site, with over 100 people participating. Participants voted overwhelmingly to stay at the Tent City site past the midnight deadline given by the police, and also return again to Parc Lafontaine on Sunday, to resume the Tent City, and to continue a program of pre-planned workshops, activities and communal meals. Some Tent City participants vowed to return every day next week, and stay every night until the police evictions at midnight.

One Montreal municipal councillor, Nicolas Tetrault, was on-hand to defend the police action, and insist that the municipal by-laws that force parks to close at midnight was justified, despite the housing crisis. The councillor, who was denounced as a yuppie by bystanders, was forced to leave the scene.