Statement from the Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance in Defence of our Comrades

July 01 2010 Infoshop News

This last week has been witness to some of the most powerful protests that Toronto has ever seen. We saw rallies for the environment, queer liberation, disAbility rights, indigenous sovereignty, economic and migrant justice, community power, and more. The state responded to these actions as its internal logic dictated it must. When people reached out for more control over their lives, the marginalizing state struck back with vicious force. As an institution established by violence, perpetuated by violence, and sustained by violence, its response could only be violent. Martial law descended on our city. The cops arrested anyone and everyone they chose to. The riot squad punched pacifists and stampeded demonstrators. They detained 1100 people. Our friends were locked in cages, denied food, water and toilet paper, humiliated and degraded. The officers stood by, abused and taunted, and said they were just doing their job, as do the Eichmanns of every generation.

They have targeted twenty of us, long-term community organizers, as the so-called “ring leaders” of the protests that they hope to scapegoat. Even this act shows how little they understand us. We have no leaders. These twenty are our teachers, friends, and mentors. And although they are invaluable to our lives, they are not “SOAR”. Nor are we. This anarchist network, like others, is not primarily composed of individuals, but of ideas. It is the ideas that bind us – of the injustice of capitalism and colonialism, and the belief that a new world based on self-determination, freedom, and mutual aid is possible. That is why they can spend a billion dollars on the biggest jails, and the fascist police force, but they can never stamp out our movement. They cannot erase us, because our ideas cannot be destroyed and because we revolutionaries are the inevitable outgrowth of a society that is fundamentally broken. Out of the putrid manure of capitalism, flowers of resistance inevitably bloom.

They will try with all their might to break us. But we cannot be broken. Our comrades stay strong in prison and we will not be disheartened. As long as a single one of us remains free under the sky, our voices and our songs and our fists will be raised in defiance.

We are not the first anarchists to be targeted by the state. We remember Haymarket. We remember Sacco and Vanzetti. We recognize the continued attacks on all anti-authoritarians, particularly our indigenous brothers and sisters who face the colonial monster every single day. Yet at the same time we recognize that they attack us because they fear us. They have to imprison us because we are building freedom in our communities. They have to slander us because they know we speak the truth. And so despite the rhetoric of the politicians and the apologetics of the academics, the brutal police response to the protests makes one thing crystal clear: we are winning. Every day our movement grows. Every day people are awakening to the brutal structural violence upon which liberal democracy rests. Every day people are coming to reject the deadening tyranny of hierarchy that rules their lives. Every day people are coming to recognize the fences and the borders that imprison us all, and their voices are joining ours in saying NO MORE!

Our comrades have been targeted for obvious political reasons and are being held on bullshit charges. The “justice” system integral to state power is fundamentally illegitimate and we will not leave our brothers and sisters to fight it alone. And so we will struggle and organize until they are free. We are calling on anarchists and anti-authoritarians everywhere to support us.

We will support our friends and comrades to our last breath, and show the world that our solidarity is stronger than their terror.

Free them now! No one is free until every person is free!

All the power to the people!

FUCK THE POLICE!

The Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance