(detail from “Four Visions of the Hereafter” (1505-1515) by Hieronymus Bosch)
from Paterson by William Carlos Williams (1946):
“We go on living, we permit ourselves
to continue—but certainly
not for the university, what they publish
severally or as a group: clerks
got out of hand forgetting for the most part
to whom they are beholden.
. . .
Who restricts knowledge? Some say
it is the decay of the middle class
making an impossible moat between the high
and the low where
the life once flourished . . knowledge
of the avenues of information—
So that we do not know (in time)
where the stasis lodges. And if it is not
the knowledgeable idiots, the university,
they at least are the non-purveyors
should be devising means
to leap the gap. Inlets? The outward
masks of the special interests
that perpetuate the stasis and make it
profitable.
They block the release
that should cleanse and assume
prerogatives as a private recompense.
Others are at fault because
they do nothing.”
The working class of industrialist Québec was integrated into the state project of Canada – the inclusion of a French workforce of “civil servants” in the federalist project – as an act of securing the legitimacy of a unified Canadian state. The federalist vision is dependent on a pacification that is bought by the inclusion of the working class and the poor in the further development of the state, via employment that provides them with marginal benefits that are otherwise not afforded or systemically denied. When there was resistance from Algonquin communities to the development of yet another inaccessible and consumerist project constructed on a sacred site, Windmill seized the opportunity to integrate a “progressive” employment policy that would allow underemployed Algonquin workers a chance to participate in the construction of a “world-class sustainable waterfront community”. In order to employ a quota of Indigenous workers, Windmill and the Gatineau municipal governments have created a special administrative zone to bypass regulations on the certifications, practices and working conditions set in place by the Commission de la construction du Québec (CCQ). “For tradespeople and construction workers from Kitigan Zibi, it has been almost impossible to work off reserve because of complex Québec construction regulations. Windmill is negotiating to have parts of its site declared a special administrative zone. That would allow Algonquin tradespeople to work there.” [Zibi Press Release, Jun. 30, 2015]. There would be no need for this benevolent creation of a special administrative zone by Windmill and the Gatineau municipal government for the employment of Algonquin workers, if these barriers weren’t already entrenched within systemic practices of discrimination, and absence of required training, certification and employment resources.
Speaking of their collaborators, the Zibi developers write,
“For tradespeople and construction workers from Kitigan Zibi, it has been almost impossible to work off reserve because of complex Québec construction regulations. Windmill is negotiating to have parts of its site declared a special administrative zone. That would allow Algonquin tradespeople to work there. Historically, many people from Kitigan Zibi have gone to the United States to work in construction because they were unable to find work near home.” [Zibi Press Release].
“The video shows water pouring out of a ceiling light, a ceiling torn open to fix faulty electrical heating/cooling panels and master bedrooms so small that a closet door hits a bed when the door is opened.
“It’s not my fault — I just paid $1.3 million,” one owner says on the video.”
“Judas Ier à été l’objet de pressions irrésistibles (prison, camps, torture), il a donc cédé. Judas II a été vaincu par sa propre peur devant l’État-colosse, qu’il n’aurait jamais réussi à faire bouger. Judas III à pratiquer la soumission inconditionnelle. Judas III est victime des conditions misérables dans lesquelles il a grandi. En tout cela, «seul l’État est responsable».”
– Tzvetan Todorov on Grossman, Face à l’extrême, 1991.
“You cannot say it all in three columns of text. You can only sketch things out, and so have to expect misunderstandings, one-sidedness. What if this paper were to really open up to discussions, really listen to how people across the land are criticizing its articles, fearless and unedited? It is opportunistic to claim to be struggling against the conditions that one is actually reproducing. It is opportunistic to use the methods that stabilize a system and claim to be seeking change. It is opportunistic to clamp down on editorial freedoms and the extra-parliamentary opposition and cave into the market, i.e., to profits. It is opportunistic to limit the anti-authoritarian position to the authoritarian form of the column.”
… Fresh water itself, however, as opposed to hydro-electricity, was excluded from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which is currently threatened by renegotiation or dissolution between Canada, the United States, and Mexico. It is also significant that under Canada’s second largest trade agreement after NAFTA, the Comprehensive European Trade Agreement (CETA), Canada is currently obligated to treat European companies bidding on contracts in the country equally as Canadian companies.
“The result: provincial and municipal governments will have to treat EU companies the same as Canadian ones when it comes to awarding service or procurement contracts […] Jacqueline Wilson, a lawyer with the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA), said that there could be a path to commercialization of water resources. She pointed out sections of CETA (Annex II) that uphold EU companies’ immediate rights to water resources if those water resources are commercialized by a Canadian government.” (Water Canada, How CETA Will Impact the Water Sector, Jan. 19, 2017) …
“Certainly, there are comrades, who, though they stand at the very head of the syndicalist movement, remain sincere and enthusiastic Anarchists. Just so are there labor organizations inspired by Anarchist thoughts. But bringing forth the thousands of cases in which there men and these organizations act in contradiction to the Anarchist principles, in every day practice, would be too easy criticism. A pitiful necessity, we admit! One cannot act purely as an Anarchist when one is compelled to bargain with employers and the authorities; one cannot make the masses do things for themselves when the masses refuse to do them and request, nay, insist on having leaders. But why confuse Anarchism with what is not Anarchism; and why assume, as Anarchists, responsibility for compromises made necessary by the very fact that the mass is not anarchistic even if it has written an Anarchist program into the constitution of its organization?”
…
“Anarchists should oppose the narrow trade-union spirit and all pretexts to monopolize the organizations and the work. They should prevent the members of the unions from becoming mere tools in the hands of politicians for electoral or otherwise authoritarian ends; they should preach and practice direct action, decentralization, autonomy, free initiative; they should endeavor to make the members of the unions directly take part in the life of the organizations without the need of leaders and permanent functionaries.”
…
“The Anarchist idea is no more secured from corruption than the Liberal idea has proved to be, yet the beginnings of corruption may be already observed if we note the contempt for the masses which is exhibited by certain Anarchists, their intolerance, and their desire to spread terror around them.
Anarchists! let us save Anarchy! Our doctrine is a doctrine of love. We cannot, and we ought not to be either avengers, nor dispensers of justice. Our task, our ambition, our ideal is to be deliverers.”
