BY JEFF SHANTZ
MONTREAL — On July 5, under a withering sun, a tent city was erected in Montreal's Parc Lafontaine by hundreds of poor residents, anti-poverty activists and homeless people. Tents and tarps were put up to protect people from the vicious heat. A pirate radio station broadcast news from tent city to the adjoining neighbourhoods.
The action was co-organised by the Comite des Sans-emploi (Committee of the Unemployed), CLAC Logement (Anti-Capitalist Convergence, Housing Committee), anti-capitalist housing activists and the Housing Committee of Ahuntsic-Cartierville. The action was joined by participants from the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty in Toronto and the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee.
The tent city was erected in response to Montreal's worsening housing crisis, which has seen vacancy rates of less than 1%, expanding gentrification of lower-income neighbourhoods and growing numbers of people forced to live on the streets. All leases in Montreal came due on July 1, resulting in an increasing number of people moving onto the streets or into shoddy and over-priced accommodation.
Montreal's cops quickly appeared, using vehicle-mounted PAs to warn that city by-laws relating to outdoor fires and the raising of tents in the park were being breached. Montreal city council recently instituted a bylaw, explicitly targeting homeless people, prohibiting people being in parks past midnight.
Tent-city participants met and, after much discussion and debate, voted almost unanimously to stay in the park after the midnight police deadline. The gathering also decided to return to the park if evicted and resume the many scheduled workshops that were planned. Some committed to continue the tent city each night until the midnight police evictions.
Shortly after midnight, several dozen riot police began pushing the squatters out of the park. Using floodlights to blind the squatters, the police advanced with shields and batons. Squatters held off the cops for more than an hour, using picnic tables and barrels as barricades. The orderly response of the squatters and their defence of the park allowed people time to rescue their tents and gather their belongings, while avoiding more than a few arrests. In the end, a dozen people were arrested with most being charged with obstruction or trespassing.
After being evicted, most squatters marched to the parking lot outside the Comite Social, a community centre which is home to the Comite des Sans-emploi, to discuss strategies for the coming week. On the afternoon of July 6, many returned to Parc Lafontaine to resume the scheduled events.
The squatters are demanding decent and affordable housing for all, an end to the criminalisation of poverty and homelessness, and the right to squat in empty buildings. Significantly, squatters identify the root cause of these problems as not simply rotten landlords or sleazy politicians, but in capitalism's drive for profits.
The Montreal tent city is only one in a series of actions planned across Canada. Recent squats in Peterborough and Kitchener-Waterloo were busted by police the same week as the Montreal tent city opened. A squat has been established in Vancouver to protest the massive expenditure of public funds on the 2010 Olympic Games by governments that claim there is no money is available for any affordable housing.
From Green Left Weekly, July 23, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.