The Anticapitalist Convergence (Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes, CLAC-"Montreal") now publishes its articles on the Contrepoints.media news platform, available at https://contrepoints.media/ in addition to its own website. The objective of the Contrepoints.media project is to offer a mobilization platform for small and large collectives, and to avoid the repetitive effort necessary to produce and maintain various websites. In their own words:
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In music, counterpoint is the relationship between melodic lines that are harmonically interdependent, but have independent rhythms and pitches. The assembly of the different lines includes distinct melodies, which are arranged within a united and coherent whole. To organize ourselves in counterpoints is to compose our struggles as autonomous melodies, which unfold, intertwine, and intensify as they combine.
CONTREPOINTS.MEDIA is a collaborative web platform for the dissemination of revolutionary, autonomous, and anti-authoritarian information, discourses, and practices. This project was born from a desire to allow different groups, collectives, and trends to share ideas and practices, to take the time to think about the present and to refine strategies to wreck this world and build those that will follow. This platform wishes to participate in the effort to redefine a revolutionary horizon and to live up to our common intelligence. It is an invitation to invest in the heterogeneity and diversity of current inclinations in the struggle, focusing on alliance and connection rather than centralization.
In this sense, the content of the platform is produced by a multiplicity of autonomous collectives, projects, or sections that contribute on a permanent, intermittent, or ephemeral basis. The objective is to bring together groups that choose their own level of visibility, their organizational form, their degrees of openness, and how they wish to communicate their discourses and practices. This project is a junction that allows us to bring together our struggles and practices, to inspire each other, but also to name and understand the conflicts that unite or separate us. This platform thus aims to broaden and consolidate the constellation of the various forces organizing against the colonial, capitalist, and heteropatriarchal projects that constitute the dying empires of "Quebec" and "Canada".
- Let's organize in counterpoints - Let's make our struggles resonate - Let's multiply the networks of resistance
Why a new web platform?
1 - We aim to provide secure and stable web infrastructure for campaigns, projects, and collectives Rather than having to be satisfied with Facebook or building and publicizing a new website for everything, new activist projects, campaigns of struggle, or collectives will be able to use the platform to disseminate their material. By having access to an already functional and, hopefully, widely consulted website, we will save time and resources.
2 - The site can concentrate information on revolutionary, autonomous, anti-capitalist, and anti-authoritarian struggles in the same place, without centralizing the ideological line The platform's formula allows groups of various tendencies to share a web space. Despite our political or organizational differences, we recognize that it is beneficial to help each other and that we can collectively give each other more strength, without trying to resolve these differences. By concentrating information in the same place, we take advantage of each other's reach out, small groups can, for example, increase their reach by taking advantage of the web traffic generated by large campaigns.
3 - This project could expand our networks by allowing groups that organize themselves on various liberatory autonomous bases (ie, no white people, no cis men, etc) or groups outside of Montreal to participate in the platform We do not all organize ourselves on the same bases, and we are not necessarily in the same cities or regions. The platform's formula aims to allow groups maintain their organisational autonomy. It also makes it possible to connect groups that are organized in Montreal or Quebec City with those in other cities or regions.
How does it work?
The platform operates in an autonomous and decentralized way. Groups producing content on a regular (or periodic) basis will have access to publishing directly on the site, without any moderation. Thus, the "Collective X", known to other groups and projects, benefits from its access, allowing it to choose when its content is published, in what form, etc. Submissions that are anonymous or not from an established collective are accepted and moderated according to criteria determined between the groups participating in the project. An internal forum is set up to allow groups and collectives to coordinate and/or share resources. Three working committees ensure the operation and maintenance of the platform: Web Infrastructure, Broadcasting, Support and coordination.
The success of this project depends on the diversity and heterogeneity of the groups involved. To participated to the platform, you can contact us at contrepoints-media@riseup.net.
