GIVE IT OR GUARD IT!

Buildings shouldn't be lying empty while people can't find places to live.

ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26th, we will open an empty building for people who need housing. Authorities be warned: you can give it, or you can guard it!

MEET: Parc George-Étienne Cartier, Corner, https://florafox.com/il/
Notre-Dame and Sq. George-Étienne Cartier (Metro Place St-Henri)

DATE: Saturday, October 26, 2002

TIME: 1 PM SHARP

A FREE meal will be served!

Bring your banners, your noisemakers and housewarming gifts.

The cold weather is setting in and Montreal's housing crisis IS NOT OVER. As luxury condos sprout up all over the South-West, increasing numbers of people do not have homes to shelter them this coming winter. At the same time, over thirty buildings lie unoccupied in the South-West alone. These buildings should be housing!

We won't stand by and watch people freeze on the streets of Montreal while empty buildings remain boarded up. We will no longer simply ask the government for more social housing built in our neighborhood (although we want that too!).

On Saturday, October 26th, we will meet at Parc George-Etienne Cartier in St-Henri. We will march to an unused building, and we will open that building for people who need it. We have told politicians and the owners of the building that they can either let us take the building, or they can use the means within their disposal to protect available housing from homeless and poorly-housed people.On October 26, 2002, they can give it or they can guard it.

This action will be carried out in coordination with other "Give it or Guard it!" actions taking place on October 26 in communities throughout Ontario, called for by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty.

It is organized by the Comite Logement of the CLAC and marks the beginning of a broader campaign for universal housing. Our demands for this campaign include:

* Build 400 new units of social housing in the South-West immediately.
* Establish a moratorium on the construction of condos across the Island of Montreal.
* Keep the Lachine Canal public space.
* Establish a rent freeze until the housing crisis is over.
* Make unused buildings legally squattable and require that all repairs and the connection of water, electricity and heating be done at the City's expense.

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Update: Give it or guard it!

On Oct. 26th, 2002, there were occupations of abandoned buildings across Canada. Initiated by OCAP, the Oct. 26th housing actions happened in Toronto, Vancouver, Sudbury, Guelph, Montreal, and Halifax.

In Toronto the demonstration was met with heavy police repression with riot squads from Barrie, York region, and the Ontario Provincial Police augmenting Toronto police, including the mounted unit.

After marching confined to the sidewalk and withstanding several police attacks the demonstration made it to Sherbourne Street in Toronto's gritty east end. As we marched up the street we could see our neighborhood being torn down and hauled away before our eyes with a long abandoned rooming house being demolished. We continued on Sherbourne to Dundas where we meet up with TDRC as well as Flying Squads from the Canadian Union Of Public Employees, Canadian Auto Workers, and The Toronto Teacher's Federation. They were holding vigil at yet another long abandoned building. A few speeches were made at this point, but the day wasn't over yet.

We continued up the street to Gerrard where we tried to turn east only to be blocked by police. Instead of getting into a big fight before reaching our destination Gaetan Heroux from OCAP, and an east end shelter worker, talked about how a women he knew died in the Allan Gardens park which was across from us. While he did so, OCAP members were going through the crowd letting people know that when Gaetan announced that the demonstration was dispersing to go to Parliament and Shutter St to defend a squat there that was occupied by OCAP members.

The ruse worked and we soon found ourselves outside of 213 Parliament Street, a building that was labeled as "surplus housing" by the City in the middle of a housing crisis! We found ourselves split between the east and west side of Parliament cut off by riot police. It was at this point that the police arrested a Ryerson student who was holding a banner reading "Ryerson against war and racism". Toronto police are fuming from a Toronto Star article, backed up by community activists and regular people, that wrote what poor and working people have always known; that the police target people of colour, especially young black men, through racial profiling.

The standoff didn't last long as the City sent the order to evict the building and clear the demonstration from the street. However, as the police were breaking in through the back of the building the activists inside the building managed to escape right through the front door. Protected by the crowd the squatters escaped arrest altogether as the demonstration re-grouped across the street leaving lines of riot police to guard an empty building from people housing themselves.

Three days later OCAP went to the City council meeting to try and address the issue of 213 Parliament being sold as "surplus housing". However the item was moved to the front of the agenda and rammed through very quickly in order to deny us the right to speak on the topic. Angered by this blatant display of disregard for poor and working people OCAP members objected and were then forcibly removed from the city council chambers by police. Before we were cleared out councilors yelled at us to "get jobs". So much for meaningful dialogue with the state.

Dialogue or no dialogue, OCAP plans to follow up on 213 Parliament and other sales of "surplus housing" in Toronto. After all, these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, these buildings are our buildings, and we're not going to stand by while our housing is torn down and replaced by condos for yuppies.

In Ottawa, activists with the Ontario Coalition Against the Tories, and the Anti-Capitalist Community Action held a picket of Home Depot for evicting Tent City.

In Vancouver, the Anti-Poverty Committee (who were involved in the Woodward’s squat) released the location of several empty government owned buildings that should either be converted into social housing or, failing that, squatted by people who need housing.

In Guelph, activists held a march through the small city’s downtown before arriving at a large abandoned building, recently sold by the provincial government to a private developer, where they unfurled a banner reading: “This should be housing”. According to the Guelph Action Network “The City of Guelph had first right to buy the building, but did not. The building is an ideal location for affordable housing or a much needed emergency shelter. Guelph has very few emergency shelter beds, and the shelters are located far away from the downtown core, where resources people living in poverty would use are.”.

In the northern Ontario city of Sudbury, the newly formed Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty held a demonstration that brought out about a hundred people. The demonstration started with speeches and a free meal in a downtown park then activists walked the picket line with locked out workers at the Sudbury Star newspaper before occupying St. Alouysius, a large unused school building. A banner was dropped from the 3rd floor demanding social housing.

In Montreal, the CLAC's housing committee organized a "guided tour" of abandoned buildings in the St. Henri neighborhood. They stopped at the site of the building occupation last May by the Housing Committee for St-Henri and Little Burgundy. Their next stop was 4110 St-Ambroise, an abandoned, rotting building near-collapse, that is attached to 4120 St-Ambroise, an old industrialcomplex. The building was targeted due to the fact that a company that builds luxury condominiums slated it for demolition. The building was occupied briefly and a banner reading "Non aux condos; des logements sociaux" (No Condos - Social Housing) was dropped from the second floor window. The demonstration then went on to the condo developer's office where they sent yuppies running to their SUV's and put them on notice. As a member of CLAC Logement said; "Today we have occupied a building in disrepair that should be turned into housing for people who need it. This is just a first step. We don't think people should occupy disgusting buildings; instead we are announcing to the condo developers that we consider this site to be the property of the people of St-Henri and we refuse to have luxury condos built here. If the developers continue building these condos, than we will consider them ours too and will come back to occupy clean, brand-new luxury housing as the social housing we deserve and are entitled to."

Halifax was the day's biggest success with housing activists barricading themselves in an abandoned hospital for 24 hours, winning wide community support and media coverage before being arrested by police. They were released with no criminal charges, but with trespass tickets totaling over $1000.

A couple of weeks earlier activists from the Suburban Resistance group temporarily opened a squat in Oakville in response to the city canceling a plan to build a shelter for the homeless. Suburban Resistance along with OCAP held a march that was meet with a heavy police presence that stopped the march from reaching the squat by blocking various bridges that activists would have had to cross. While police lines were pushed back in several instances they eventually held and activists were kept away from the building.

By George Sweetman (OCAP, NEFAC-Toronto)