From Embers

This episode features a talk entitled Autonomously and With Conviction: A Métis Refusal of State-Led Reconciliation given on October 12, 2018 at the 13th annual Decolonizing Thanksgiving Dinner in Guelph, Ontario on traditional Neutral/Chonnonton, Anishinabec, and Haudenosaunee territory. It also includes a short interview with the presenter, where we discuss questions about Canada's project of reconciliation, the state, nations and nationalism, and anarchist possibilities for the future.

Read a transcript of the talk or download a printable version here.

Music in this episode:

Burn Your Village to the Ground by A Tribe Called Red NASA x John Mohawk – "War, Peace, Natives" x 2oolman – "Lost in America" (featured on the Indigenous Futurisms Mixtape)

An interview with the Punch Up Collective, a small collective of anarchist organizers based in Ottawa, Ontario. We talk about living in the capital of Canada, forming collectives, formality and process, and strategies for sustaining movements in the long term. We also discuss their recent workshop about organizing collectives.

Links:

Full curriculum for the collectives workshop(the link will download a pdf)

A Briarpatch article about the collective

Radical events in Ottawa

Organizers with Alliance Against Displacement share stories about the Schoolhouse Squat as well as DisconTent City and a few other tent cities on unceded Coast Salish territories. We talk about the context of the housing crisis, how homeless indigenous and working class people are organizing to meet their immediate needs for shelter, safety, and community, building a revolutionary political force in the streets, legal and political strategies, resisting isolation and exclusion at the hands of cops and supportive housing organizations, urban indigenous political identity, ongoing state repression from city and provincial governments, community self-defence and care....and more.

Donate to support organizers targeted by misogynist harrassment and replace belongings seized by the RCMP.

If you're on the facebook, check out:

DisconTent City

Nanaimo DisconTent city is camp set up to protest the injustices forced upon people experiencing homelessness, and demand affordable housing not shelters!

Namegans Nation

Saanich Tent City (known as Camp Namegans - we are all one) started in May 2018. On Sept 15, it became Namegans Nation, the first urban reserve in Canada.

Anita Place Tent City Maple Ridge (closed group for supporters)

Anita Place tent city started May 2nd, 2017 to give homeless people in Maple Ridge a place to stay, a place to be, and a place to be safe… and a place to advocate for the social housing we so desperately need.

Music in this episode is Down to Ride by Rapsure Risin, and the artwork is fan art created for the Schoolhouse Squat by Catherine Hart

A conversation with podcaster and anarchist organizer Aaron Lakoff about his new podcast Changing On The Fly. We talk about sports and anarchy, the intersections between hockey and radical politics, and what to do about Canadian nationalism.

A few weeks ago the From Embers crew took a road trip out east for the Halifax Anarchist Bookfair and to visit friends and family. We had the opportunity to visit the Treaty Camp established by Mi'kmaq people to protect the Shubenacadie River from an Alton Gas Natural Gas Project.

I sat down with Dale Poulette who is one of the people holding down the camp on a daily basis. He cut his teeth at the anti-fracking reclamation camp in Elsipogtog (Rexton).

Dale describes daily life at the camp, tells some funny stories, and opens up about the importance of ceremony, where he gets his strength and his take on the future of this world.

The song at the end is "We Shall Remain (It Wasn't Taken Away)" by Kalolin Johnson from Eskasoni, Cape Breton.

Conversation with a former political prisoner in canada about her experiences in the federal system and her recently published prison memoir. We discuss changing prison conditions in the now-closed Prison for Women (P4W) in Kingston and Grand Valley Institution in Kitchener, the importance of relationships with other women in prison, legal and political strategy following her arrest, the difficulties of telling stories about one's life and other people in it, and more.

Her memoir is available from Between the Lines Books at btlbooks.com

An interview with a member of a Montreal-based collective that is researching and raising awareness about police crackdowns in gay cruising areas.

Links:

Cruise Control collective page (facebook link)

Ultra Red audio activists, Los Angeles, USA

We return to the rising wave of renters struggles across the province of Ontario.

On May 1st, tenants in the Stoney Creek Towers in Hamilton declared a rent strike, demanding that their corporate landlord drop an above-guideline rent increase of almost 10% over three years, and that the property managers perform numerous needed overdue repairs to their units.

I first interviewed Jason of the Hamilton Tenants Solidarity Network back in May. The HTSN helped initiate the rent strike and works to support tenant self-organization and struggle across the city of Hamilton, and increasingly in coordination with like-minded groups across Ontario. In this follow-up interview we discuss the East Hamilton Rent Strike as it enters its fifth month.

The second interview in this episode is with a tenant organizer in the neighbourhood of Herongate in Ottawa, where another massive real estate company is attempting to conduct the largest urban eviction campaign in Canada, after having bought up a literal quarter of the neighbourhood. But the residents of Herongate aren't going to leave without a fight.

All the music tonight is by Lee Reed, who actually just released an EP to fundraise for the rent strike - check it out!

The audio clip at the end is Ikram Dahir, a resident of Herongate. It is part of a series of resident statements collected by Neal Rockwell.

This episode first aired in May 2018 and featured two interviews with tenant organizers in Ontario.

The first interview is with Jason from the Hamilton Tenants Solidarity Network about the East Hamilton Rent Strike launched on May 1st.

The second interview is with Adam from the Limestone Solidarity Network in Kingston.

Conversations about prison organizing in Canada - interview with a Halifax organizer about the Burnside Jail protest and conversation about Prisoner Justice Day organizing in Nova Scotia and Ontario

Burnside prisoners' statement:

https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/province-house/the-prisoners-at-the-burnside-jail-are-engaged-in-a-non-violent-protest-here-is-their-statement/

Info on the US prison strike:

https://itsgoingdown.org/prisonstrike/

https://incarceratedworkers.org/campaigns/prison-strike-2018

Conversation about PJD organizing included thanks to CKUT Prison Radio -

Prison Radio airs the second Thurday of every month from 5-6 pm Eastern and the third Friday of every month from 11 am-12 pm Eastern. Montreal listeners can tune in to 90.3 fm or listen online at ckut.ca. Check out their website at prisonradioshow.wordpress.com

Black Power Hour is a weekly show airing Wednesdays 9-10 pm Atlantic on CKDU 88.1 fm in Halifax. The show "blends conscious hip hop with discussions of political, cultural, and social issues relevant to Black people" and maintains lines of communication with prisoners inside Nova Scotia prisons and jails. Listen online at ckdu.ca