Quote of the week

“There will never be a one-size-fits-all solution because it is dangerous. ” —Quebec Bar representative Pierre Chagnon, at Tuesday’s hearing on Bill 94, stressing that the reasonable accommodations bill changes nothing, while a case-by-case strategy ensures minorities’ protection from “the law of the jungle.”

Anarchy in the Plateau

The streets of Montreal have seen over a century of anarchist history, and this Saturday afternoon, the public is invited to tour the movement’s local hotspots.

L’Union Communiste Libertaire is offering a free walking tour of many sites significant to social struggles and anarchist groups throughout the decades.

Some of these include buildings on St-Laurent Blvd. that used to house Yiddish anarchist libraries and printing presses, as well as the site where famous American anarchist Emma Goldman spoke.

“In order to appreciate today’s social movements, you must study their genealogy,” said Aaron Lakoff, one of the tour’s organizers. “The anarchist movement in Montreal never died,” he says.

The tour will also visit the HQs of more contemporary movements like CLAC, an anti-capitalist coalition founded around the time of the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City.

The Jewstice League Klezmer ensemble will accompany the tour partway, and a street theatre group will entertain at different spots along the route.

The tour begins at 1:30 p.m. at the Anarchist Library at 2035 St-Laurent, corner Ontario. If it rains, the tour will be rescheduled to Sunday, same time. Daycare will be provided.

GIUSEPPE VALIANTE

RIP Green Room

Only a year and a half after winning a court battle to regain the right to host live music and DJ nights, the Green Room suffered another, potentially fatal blow when a major fire destroyed the Mile End venue on Sunday morning.

“It’s bad,” says Green Room managing director Dan Webster. “The fire burned straight up through the roof. It’s a serious burn, everything in the Green Room is completely destroyed and there’s smoke damage to the Main Hall building as well.”

Rumors suggesting arson was the probable cause for the blaze hit the net within hours of the first fire bell sounding, but Webster is dismissing said accusations as ridiculous. “The official report isn’t in yet but it’s pretty clear it was an electrical fire. Nothing criminal took place, arson wasn’t possible, the place wasn’t broken into or anything like that. The fire’s not at all suspicious.”

As for the possibility of the Green Room reopening, Webster says it’s doubtful. “It’s not like it was making great money, you know? But the good thing is that there are more venues for live music in Montreal than ever before. Hopefully some of them will pick up the slack so the Green Room won’t be missed too much.”

CHRIS BARRY

Queer trek

Living on the outskirts of society is tough enough for mere anti-capitalists, but being queer, feminist and anti-capitalist is a whole ’nother story. And, on top of that, trying to mobilize other queer, feminist anti-capitalists to get on a bus and make (in their words) “a Priscilla, Queen of the Desert-esque trek” to Toronto to protest next month’s G20 meeting? Oy vey!

But queer activist Chacha Enriquez says his group PolitiQ is up to the challenge. They believe capitalism oppresses women and queer people in particular, pointing to the Conservatives’ decision to cut the $400,000 it doled out for last year’s Toronto Pride—a move widely perceived by the public and the media as a matter of ideology, not finances.

And so Enriquez and a merry band of Pink Bloc-ers will join the Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes (CLAC) Toronto envoy to raise hell—and awareness, of course—on June 25 and 26 during the always-controversial G20 meeting.

“It’s important that queer people go. We have to be visible in this struggle,” Enriquez says.

Anyone interested in joining PolitiQ in Toronto is invited to an organizing meeting at 2075 Plessis on Tuesday, May 25, 7:30–10 p.m.

TRACEY LINDEMAN

City’s what you make it

Give’r your two cents at a pair of public consultations this week, each calling for proposals on urban redevelopment projects. This Tuesday, May 25, Montrealers are invited to City Hall (275 Notre-Dame E.) for talks on Accès Culture’s 2010–2014 Action Plan. The open discussion allows citizens to step up to the mic with suggestions on which cultural and artistic activities the city should fund, and which Maisons de la culture need renovations. More info about the condition of the Maisons is available at ville.montreal.qc.ca/ culture

On Wednesday, May 26, the Charlevoix Annexe (633 De Courcelle) hosts the St-Henri Community Café. People living or working in the neighbourhood are invited to exchange ideas and help plan a block party to take place in the parking lot of 780 St-Remi, a loft building slated for demolition under the current MTQ plans for the Turcot.

“The Community Cafés were initially organized in hopes of creating a network of St-Henri residents who are active in their community and who might benefit from the sharing of their initiatives, their experiences and resources,” says Jody Negley of the Comité des citoyens du village des Tanneries.

An RSVP is required to attend the St-Henri Community Café: contact forumcitoyens.sthenri@gmail.com. Both events start at 6:30 p.m.

LINA HARPER

Rear-view mirror

11 YEARS AGO - MAY 20–26, 1999

On the cover: Lemmy Kilmister from Motörhead, celebrating the band’s 25th anniversary with a tour due to descend on Metropolis. “The media says rock’n’roll is dead, but… as long as there are 17-year-old kids with a rotten job in a factory, there will always be rock ’n’ roll.”

• After the previous week’s controversial cover story about shoplifting, which included a How-to guide, The Front features a rundown of the legal and social consequences of theft, including this stat: 23,430 Montrealers were caught in the act in 1998.

• According to a Rant Line™ caller, “midget fever is sweeping Montreal” due to a secret “midget city,” or “magical palace” for little people in the Old Port.

• Reporting from the Cannes film festival, Joanne Latimer spies William Shatner at a “kickass cocktail party” in his honour. “A bunch of Trekkies showed up in costume and giggled in a huddle. Shatner’s bodyguards knew them all by name.”

• Motion Picture Purgatory tackles The Phantom Menace. “Half-baked, nauseatingly cute plush dolls goofily strut about Menace, yammering gentle gibberish crucially calculated to coddle the kiddies!”

Angel >> The Boreal Forest A pleasantly surprising pact was made this week between 21 forestry companies and nine environmental groups. The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement will halt new logging on nearly 29 million hectares of boreal forest—good news for such threatened species as woodland caribou and wolverines, not to mention the carbon-dioxide-stained atmosphere. In return, Greenpeace et al. will end their “Do Not Buy” campaigns against northern wood. But environmentalists promise vigilance, to ensure that the area’s ongoing forestry practices are sustainable, to re-implement boycotts should the industry renege, and to fight for Canada’s other endangered forests.

Insect >> The Stephen Harper Show Using characteristically Bush-lite tactics to separate dissent and state, a quasi-town hall was televised on Monday, wherein Conservative Senator Mike Duffy read questions to Stephen Harper from youth delegates who sat silently in the background. All the questions, which were pre-selected and rewritten by Harper’s staff, concerned the economy, because the media’s other pet issues—such as the divisive (Conservatives vs. the majority of Canadians) defunding of family planning programs in third world countries, and climate change, which Harper recently refused to add to his G20 agenda—are “sideshows,” according to the PM, who rumour has it was once employed as a fat man in a circus.