Northern fights

Montreal North gets organizing in the
wake of August’s shooting and riots

DEMANDS AND DENUNCIATIONS:
Will Prosper and François du Canal

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

For as long as most Montrealers can remember, the distant borough of Montreal North was an afterthought, a multilingual, multihued neighbourhood known, if at all, for its gang and school problems. But last Aug. 9, that changed. It changed when two police officers approached a group of youths playing an illegal game of dice, among them 20-year-old Dany Villanueva, wanted by police for questioning. A shouting match ensued, and in less than two minutes, the police shot and killed Dany’s unarmed 18-year-old brother, Fredy. Two others were wounded.

The shooting sparked off riots that set the borough aflame, with about 20 stores and countless cars looted or burned. The level of anger shocked the city, but came as no big surprise to Montreal North residents, who say they have been the victim of police profiling and abuse for years (the police deny racial profiling, and a Sûreté du Québec investigation into the shooting cleared the two officers of any wrongdoing).

Living in a tinderbox

Later in the summer, out of Montreal North’s ashes, citizen and community groups began organizing. Among them is Montréal-Nord Républik, founded by Montreal North-born and raised Will Prosper. The Radio Centre-Ville host lives in the neighbourhood, and was down on the streets when the rioting broke out. Since the riot, Prosper has been calling for a full inquiry into the shooting and an end to racial profiling. He has also called for Montreal North’s borough mayor, Marcel Parent, to resign. Over the fall, Montréal-Nord Républik has staged a handful of demonstrations, including one at city hall, where security staff chained the door shut against the crowd, and most recently on Saturday, Dec. 13, with a symbolic dice game in a Montreal North park.

“There has not been any kind of resolution between the police and the youth,” Prosper says. “There already was a gap between them, and it’s been widened—it’s going to be hard to bring them back together. The youth don’t trust the police, so [a reconciliation] is not going to happen overnight. We need to build it up. If there’s another incident before that, things here will explode.”

The media coverage during and immediately after the riots bothered Prosper and other borough residents. “The population’s a bit tired of seeing the media here,” he says. “They’re not trying to resolve anything, so residents feel like they’re living in a zoo…. All they talk about is the street gang problem—it’s astonishing.” While Prosper acknowledges the problem, he says it is overblown—as is the amount of money the city administration has thrown at police to solve it. Projet Eclipse, a strategy launched last summer to deal with street gangs, is as unpopular as it is expensive, Prosper says. He would rather see the money go to job creation, which is critical in a borough where almost half the families live beneath the poverty line.

The group doesn’t plan on slowing down in 2009. Its 10–12 member core meet every week or two to plan events, the next one being an outdoor youth music festival (no date has been set yet). Prosper will continue trying to organize community events and put an end to what he sees as “a culture of victimization. I want to tell the kids that they are better than that, that they can build something for themselves.”

Fear and policing

François du Canal, meanwhile, has other plans. The longtime cop-watcher—he’s a spokesman for the Collective Opposed to Police Brutality (COBP)—helped found the Coalition contre la Répression et les Abus Policiers (CRAP), with about 15 community groups, including COBP, Montréal-Nord Républik and the Jean-Paul Lemay community centre, Head & Hands, the Parti communiste révolutionnaire and others (the acronym, du Canal says, refers to the game of craps, which the Villanueva boys were playing when police approached them).

CRAP makes the same demands as Prosper’s group, and, says du Canal, “We denounce injustice and impunity. Police abuse is protected by power.” He also claims that, prior to a march through Montreal North in October—which was announced ahead of time as family-friendly—the police launched “a campaign of fear,” making much of the riotous past of participating groups like COBP and No One Is Illegal. “Their response was to mobilize hundreds of cops for the demonstration,” he says.

In the new year, CRAP will among things monitor the recently announced inquiry into the shooting—which will be presided over by an impartial judge, Robert Sansfaçon, as opposed to the initial SQ investigation—and prepare for the annual March 15 anti-police-brutality demo. “If anything happens between now and then,” he says, “it will be an important demo.”