from sabotagemedia:
While since Friday, May 18 demos are held in several cities of the province, like Quebec City, Sherbrooke and Trois-Rivières, in Montreal, tens of thousands of people are confronting the Police State defying the new “special law” Bill 78 which requires, among other things, that any gathering of 50 or more people to provide its trajectory to the cops 8h ahead and modifies it at their request with fines that can reach thousands of dollars.
Friday, May 18,
after giving a trajectory to the cops and leaving the Place Émilie-Gamelin at 21h, the demonstration that, at some point had more than 10,000 people of all ages, deviated and improvised its way. The crowd chanted “la loi spéciale, on s’en câlisse!” (We dont give a fuck about the special law!) And anti-government slogans and anti-cops. Some 40 minutes after the start of the demo cops charged against the crowd without warning throwing bombs at head height, as always, and so began the clashes. The crowd responded with rocks, smoke bombs and molotov cocktails, many groups splintered and clashes continued until 3:30am with windows smashed and copcars vandalized. There were a dozen arrests and a man was hospitalized in serious condition after the cops shot him in the liver point blank with a plastic bullet.
Saturday, May 19,
another huge crowd of thousands of people took to the streets being the 26th nightly demonstration in as many nights, no trajectory was given to the cops. The demo left Place Émilie-Gamelin around 21h as every other evening. The SSPVM declared the protest illegal a few minutes after it began and repeated many times the same warning with the crowd chanting “la loi spéciale, on s’en câlisse!”. A convoy of several buses of the SQ riot-squad (provincial police) followed the demonstration by parallel streets. Several people were masked, challenging the new municipal rule, effective the same day, prohibiting the wearing of masks during a demonstration.
A little after 22h cops provoked the crowd with arbitrary arrests and started to gas. The clashes started and barricades were erected, notably one at the corner of Ontario and Saint-Denis, where a flaming barricade was erected and maintained for several hours. Cop cruisers and riot-squad buses were attacked. The SQ came as reinforcement to the SPVM and at some point firefighters arrived and went up to the fire, but they received orders to leave. Probably they wanted pictures of the intervention the riots-quad against a background of fires to legitimize the power-tripping cops attacking everything that moves in the street or on the terraces of bars on St. Denis. In fact the next day, the mayor said to some journalists who questioned the work of cops, that the rioters had set fire to Montreal.
There were 69 arrests according to the cops, arresting just about anyone at any time. 9 of 69 people are accused of assault against police officers, assault with a weapon and arson. Three people still in the cages of the state were released on bail on May 22 (note that another person is still in the cages of the state in relation to charges of mischief and assault against a police officer during the riot on April 20th during the Plan Nord job fair). The owner of a restaurant was also arrested because he wore a red squarre (symbol of the student mouvement) and let people inside while the cops were on a rampage, another announced that he would sue the SPVM after they attacked people on the terrace.
Sunday, May 20,
once again several thousand people in the streets of Montreal, the protest is declared illegal from the get-go. Again many people are masked. The cops tried to disperse the crowd on several occasions, but the crowds dispersed and reformed for 5h while which there were barricades and intense street battles against brutal cops. Shop windows were smashed (which probably gets the authoritarian pacifists all whiny) and attacks on police vehicles including one arsoned due to a “failure” according to the cops… At one point, a crowd of youths who had been caught in between two lines of riotpigs came together and charged at one of the lines of armed cops, breaking and disrupting the lines, and so several escaped. Comrades, your courage really warms our hearts and points towards a new world.
Pigs made several mass arrests, with a total of 300. Amongst dozens injured, several people were seen unconscious after being attacked by the pigs, a man was taken to hospital unconscious after receiving a plastic bullet in the head. Several shitbag cops were injured as well.
pictures of May 20th from Their Press
And it is only the beginning…