Bicycle demonstration in Montreal to protest the Grand Prix

Montreal’s Anti-capitalist Convergence (CLAC) is inviting residents to take back the streets!

Montréal, June 5, 2013 – For the second consecutive year, the CLAC is calling for the disruption of Canada’s Formula 1 Grand-Prix activities in Montreal. More specifically, CLAC is calling on the residents of the greater Montreal area to take back the streets by participating in a “critical mass” or spontaneous bicycle demonstration (or any other motorless vehicle) without a pre-established itinerary on the evening of June 7th, starting at 17:30.

“We’ll be taking the streets to remind capitalist promoters and race-car enthusiasts that the city belongs to those who live in it,” explained Nicolas Lanoue-Larue, spokeperson for the CLAC. “Modern cities were conceived to accommodate cars and car culture, when cities should be built for humans! Cars stink, they kill, and they pollute. Car culture is a culture of death. City life can and should be better, and that starts with drastically reducing the number of cars in our cities, freeing ourselves from car culture, and ending our collective addiction to fossil fuels once and for all.”

“The Grand Prix is the perfect symbol of the capitalist system and of modern, western decadence,” added Amy Laliberté, another spokesperson for CLAC. “Luxury and gluttony, the cult of speed, image, and celebrity, the unbridled commercialization of the female body and of female sexuality in order to sell anything and everything, ridiculous glamour, a complete lack of introspection and the absence of historical and environmental perspectives… they’ve got it all! There’s nothing of interest in their capitalist circus, it’s just a grotesque and empty spectacle.”

Let’s not forget that the Grand Prix was brought back to Montreal in 2010 at a cost of $75 million dollars, to the tune $15 million a year every year until 2014. The F1’s big boss, Bernie Ecclestone (who initially demanded a whopping $175 million to bring the F1 back to Montreal!) is now asking that the rate of this recurrent yearly funding be increased by 5% as well as demanding that parc Jean-Drapeau be rehauled to the tune of an additional $27 million.

“We need the Grand Prix in Montreal like we need a hole in the ozone layer!” said Lanoue-Larue. “Politicians and businesspeople go on about how the GP weekend is the biggest weekend for tourism revenues, that it “stimulates” the local economy, and that the economic impact is huge. But the interests of the chamber of commerce should never be confused with the collective interest of the majority. People who live in this city, regular people, don’t get anything out of the Grand-Prix weekend besides environmental and noise pollution and the streets of downtown being overrun with arrogant tourists. We’re not interested in their ridiculous Grand Prix!”