Two Moments of Oil Railway Sabotage in Montreal

The infra­struc­tures of State and cap­i­tal con­tin­ue to spread their ten­ta­cles, seek­ing to accel­er­ate the extrac­tion and trans­porta­tion of resources to the mar­ket.

Sep­tem­ber 10th, 2015

from Anar­chist News

The infra­struc­tures of State and cap­i­tal con­tin­ue to spread their ten­ta­cles, seek­ing to accel­er­ate the extrac­tion and trans­porta­tion of resources to the mar­ket. The vast ter­ri­to­ry that is the Cana­di­an North, often sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed due in large part to the dis­place­ment, iso­la­tion, and geno­cide of indige­nous peo­ples, is an immense source of prof­it; oil, gas, forestry, hydro-dams, ura­ni­um mines, etc. Var­i­ous mon­strous infra­struc­tur­al expan­sion projects are cur­rent­ly try­ing to con­nect the Alber­ta Tar Sands through pipelines along the St. Lawrence riv­er to the Atlantic. These projects entail expand­ing and con­struct­ing new infra­struc­ture such as ports, rail lines, and high­ways all along this route on col­o­nized ter­ri­to­ries.

We placed a cop­per wire con­nect­ing both sides of the tracks, thus send­ing a sig­nal indi­cat­ing a block­age on the tracks and dis­rupt­ing cir­cu­la­tion until the tracks were checked and cleared. This train line in par­tic­u­lar is being worked on in order to facil­i­tate the trans­port of oil east­ward to the port of Belle­dune in New Brunswick.

To block train lines, one can :
1. Obtain at least 8 feet of unin­su­lat­ed 3AWG cop­per ground wire (the kind that is used for wiring main ser­vice pan­els in a house).
2. Wrap the wire around each rail of the track, con­nect­ing both sides, and ensure good con­tact.
3. Cov­er the wire between the tracks so that it is more dif­fi­cult to detect.
4. Smile at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of caus­ing thou­sands of tonnes of train traf­fic to be dis­rupt­ed.

This sim­ple act is eas­i­ly repro­ducible, and demon­strates the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of their infra­struc­ture despite their sur­veil­lance tech­nolo­gies and legal appa­ra­tus intent on dulling our teeth. The recent strength­en­ing of the Cana­di­an State’s capac­i­ty for repres­sion through Bill C‑51, now law, includes leg­is­la­tion requir­ing a manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tenc­ing of five years for those con­vict­ed of tam­per­ing with cap­i­tal­ist infra­struc­ture. For us, this leg­is­la­tion fur­ther empha­sizes how inte­gral the func­tion­ing of ‘crit­i­cal’ infra­struc­ture is to projects of eco­log­i­cal dev­as­ta­tion (and the soci­ety that needs them), and how pow­er­ful­ly the sim­ple act of sab­o­tage can con­tribute to strug­gles against them.

We con­ceive of our strug­gle as against civ­i­liza­tion and the total­iz­ing domes­ti­ca­tion it entails; we seek noth­ing less than the destruc­tion of all forms of dom­i­na­tion. As a step in this direc­tion, we hope to con­tribute to the for­ma­tion of a spe­cif­ic strug­gle against these projects of indus­tri­al expan­sion. We want to orga­nize to com­bat these projects in ways that are decen­tral­ized and autonomous, includ­ing with con­sis­tent and wide­spread rail­road block­ades. Autonomous self-orga­niz­ing escapes a mass move­ment log­ic (to impose an agen­da through ‘mobi­liz­ing’ oth­ers while wait­ing for the ‘right’ con­di­tions to act) and the polit­i­cal recu­per­a­tion imposed by reformist envi­ron­men­tal activism. Con­ver­gences can play a cru­cial role in ini­tia­tives flour­ish­ing, but it is equal­ly cru­cial that the strug­gle against these projects does not start and end there. Let’s up the ten­sion against this world, let’s pro­lif­er­ate the attacks.