The CLAC took the streets, just as planned!
In spite of police provocation, intimidation and repression, 2000 demonstrators expressed their anger in the streets of Old Montreal! TheSPVM protects the crooks!

Montréal, May 1st, 2013 – For the sixth consecutive year, Montréal’s Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC) organized an anti-capitalist demonstration to commemorate the International Workers Day on May 1st.

The demonstration left the City Hall at 6pm with the objective of making its way to the infamous private club 357C, the crooks 's club.

A politicized police force ever at the service of the corrupt political and financial elite and willing to use disproportionate force in doing so, the SPVM has once again denied the public the right to express its discontent with injustices and abuses. Once more, they decided quite arbitrarily to brutalize and criminalize more than 400 people whose only crime was to denounce the suffocating status quo. Municipal by-law P-6 is used as a pretext to shutting down dissent.

The austerity measures currently enacted by both the federal and provincial governments (such as Unemployment Insurance reforms and cuts to social security), clearly show that those in power are simply doing the footwork of capitalist interests, interests they defend tooth and nail over the social rights hard-won throughout history by
a constantly put-upon working-class.

This May 1st, the CLAC has decided to do a symbolic march to highlight the path from City Hall to the private club 357C. This den of thieves perfectly represents the “culture” of secrecy and cronyism that reigns among the ruling class, the political class, and the world of organized crime. According to Emma Smith, co-spokesperson for CLAC,
“…in order to justifty exploitation and injustice, the elite have always used secrecy, corruption, manipulation, and violence. Collusion, cronyism, and scams of all kinds are not the exception… these are the basic rules of the capitalist game.”

In this time of polarized class interests, it isn’t surprising to see governments enact laws that quash popular resistance to their abuses of power and repress anyone that tries to disturb the dominant political and economic order. The insistence of municipal officials (notably the members of the thoroughly corrupt Union Montréal Party)
on upholding the liberticidal P-6 bylaw is only the latest instance of the repressive tendencies of the political elite.

“Historically, May 1st has always been a day of international anti-capitalist resistance and struggle. CLAC firmly positions itself on the side of this proud tradition of popular and worker’s resistance,” said William Tremblay, co-spokesperson for CLAC.