Anti-Capitalist Convergence

Let's chase 'em down!
The Comité des sans-emploi Montreal-Centre (CSE) and CLAC-Logement are launching another issue of their newspaper " C'est arrivé près de chez vous ". This issue launches a new offensive against some well-known and less-known generals in the current anti-social attacks. Last winter (see "C'est arrivé près de chez vous #2"), startled by the violence of the Charest-Séguin-Jérôme-Forget policies, we felt compelled to challenge this ultra-capitalist agenda. The scope of the setbacks already imposed and of those yet to come demanded - and still demands - an anti-capitalist approach and fierce actions.
Resignation
Last April 14th, our demo-action (the march in the underground shopping malls and into the posh St. James Hotel) was very successful and brought lots of hope and expectations that the radical left could sustain the struggle. Especially since last spring, the union and community sectors were already showing clear signs of collapse and resignation (see article "The sunday warriors" on page 5). Indeed, the mobilizations against the upcoming Liberal Congress are mainly organized by the CLAC (Anti-capitalist Convergence of Montreal), while reformist coalitions are content with their symbolic 'actions'. Given that the government attacks each and every public sphere at once, numerous social actors carry on their own battles in isolation. They reconvene once every six months for solidarity through some joint-action but really, the solidarity doesn't last beyond a bus ride somewhere.
The fuckers waste no time
Meanwhile, the Charest government, supported by the business elite and right-wing think-tanks, is transforming public policies into social laboratories and playgrounds for all the new neo-liberal theories that are so in vogue at international trade conventions. We do not compare with Indonesia or Bolivia in the 90s. No. We are in the North, in a country of pretence consensus where political scavengers convince the population and centre-left lobbies without apparent brutality. Let's face it: Charest is doing what Bourassa wasn't fully able to accomplish, what the Parti Quebecois could not bring to completion and above all, what has been done in most Canadian provinces and other countries in the last 20 years. But Charest is only the ambitious puppet -- it is his friends at Power Corporation, Quebecor, Domtar, Merck Frost, etc., who run the show. Charest's agenda is dictated by the vultures who privatize profits and nationalize losses, who hang out with Charest and his ministers on the weekend during political party fundraisers and charity golf tournaments with tax receipts.
Let's chase 'em down
CLAC-Logement and the Comité des sans-emploi are launching a campaign against those profiteers who pull the strings and have the luxury to disregard the consequences of their actions. They are enjoying their greed hidden in their guarded office or in their villa in Mont Tremblant. They are sponsoring the great robbery of public funds while making sure that the once-public services are subcontracted to their subsidiaries. They are pocketing the profits and pointing at us laughing their guts out. We will name them publicly, those assholes in suits, and disrupt them. We will expose their real face, not their image - fabricated by the National Firm - of great visionaries of noble entrepreneurship or of cultivated and wise patrons (see the list of scumbags on page 4). We will also visit their valets who are particularly active at the local level but who spit out the same political discourse. An efficient struggle against this privatization must be more confrontational and united than it has been. Already, after a year of havoc, the anger of the population is fading away and the official position of pseudo-progressives is being relativized. But the worst has yet to come. Trial schemes reengineered by the various ministers are still multiplying, while the recent Forum des Générations has both stepped up the image of the Charest government as well as justified its ongoing looting. The current Xth welfare reform is yet another horror propped up by the dishonest pirouettes of the no-less despicable Béchard (see "Political plan against the poor" on page 6). Are we talking about it? Is it a societal debate that we are having? No, we don't give a shit And that's the danger, that's what's going to make us look like Harris' Ontario much faster than we think.

We are launching this campaign with the hope to draw together as many people as possible against the real commanders of current policy changes so that the Wall of Smoke - sustained by the media amongst others - will be eliminated. We'll begin with the Centre-sud area, which is the neighbourhood most affected by a vicious wave of public space privatization and repression against the poor (see "From gentrification to repression..." on page 7). We will then widen the scope of our fight to target all social parasites that suck up the life out of us Capitalism will not fall on its own. Let's help it!

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