Direct Action – The Hungover Pundit

On Hospital Protests

If someone tells you who they are, believe them.

This statement goes around on the internet occasionally, and despite being a bit trite and cliché I’ve come to recognize it as fundamentally sound.

So when anti-vaxxers rally outside hospitals, screaming abuse at workers and slowing ambulances, then they’re telling us exactly who they are… even when they’re claiming to be someone they aren’t.

Today and though in the week, the anti-vaxxers have planned another series of protests outside hospitals right across Canada. The first round, of course, included infamous scenes of anti-vaxxers spitting and coughing on counter-protesters; of ambulances being blocked and delayed; of cancer patients forced to run a gauntlet of unmasked and agitated protesters; and worst of all of front line health care workers being targeted by the mob.

Activism, Tactics and… Football?

Rather than go down to Hamilton’s City Hall this past weekend, my spouse and I took the weekend off. At a certain point you’ve got to take a breath and get some self care in… and it’s peach season here in the Niagara. There’s a narrow window when the peaches are perfect and I’ll be goddamned if Justin Long and his little coterie of fascist dipshits costs me a years’ worth of my spouse’s famous spiced peach jam.

As it turns out it, it was just as well that we didn’t go down to City Hall because the Yellow Vests weren’t there. On the advice of Duke Willis, white nationalist vlogger, they’ve apparently decided to start a series of protests around the city rather than staying at City Hall, trying to avoid the counter-protesters who by now are consistently outnumbering them. This week’s “demonstration” was at the corner of Ottawa St N and Cannon Street E, just outside the Ottawa Street Farmers’ Market.

No Hate In the Hammer Reportback, Part II

In Part I of this post, I gave a detailed reportback (as the activists parlance puts it) on the No Hate In the Hammer rally at Hamilton City Hall last Saturday, August 10th 2019. In this part I’m going to do some analysis of both the rally and its position within the larger crisis in Hamilton.

To start with, a quick update: Six days after the rally and its violent, chaotic climax (or nadir, if you prefer) there’s been a lot of ongoing discussion in the community following last Saturday’s rally. Unfortunately, very little of that discussion has been optimistic. There was a suggestion, early in the week, that since so many people supporting the “No Hate” crowd have kids, that perhaps a kid’s area should be created at the counter-protest; one person even volunteered to host a “Drag Queen Story Hour”, which I consider an absolutely charming idea.

Sadly, though, the discussion quickly morphed from creating a child-friendly space to whether it would be a child-safe space… which then shifted to whether City Hall can be considered a safe place to bring children at all. And in light of previous threats and attacks against counter-protesters’ children, the fact that a disturbed white supremacist drove a bus up onto the curb to intimidate protesters, and the utter failure (or perhaps refusal) of the Hamilton Police Service to cordon off or contain the Yellow Vesters, I’m sorry to say that the general consensus is that no, the forecourt of City Hall is not currently a safe environment for children.

No Hate In the Hammer Reportback, Part I

Alright, it’s been three days since the No Hate In the Hammer counter-rally (and the Tower’s legal-support tattoo fundraiser) and frankly, it’s taken me this long to process the day. Or rather, to begin to process, because goddamn. This has also turned out to be a super-long post, so I’m going to split it into two parts for this week. Today’s post will be my account of the day, warts and all. The analysis of events will come later.

As I wrote last Friday, I’d intended to go down to Hamilton and participate in The Tower‘s tattoo fundraiser: I had an idea on what new ink I wanted and it was for a cause I supported; fundraising for the Pride Defenders who’ve been arrested by the Hamilton cops who’d rather go after anarchists and anti-fascists than their hate-group buddies. We arrived about fifteen minutes before the door was scheduled to open (and about thirty minutes before it actually did) and the lineup literally stretched around the corner. Before I even got in the door one of the artists was booked solid for the day. I was fortunate enough to get a 14:30 appointment time with Kevin from Community Ink Tattoos, who’d made the long trip up from London in order to help with the charity event. Shortly after I made my appointment, the other two artists were booked solid and the organizers started putting people on the wait-list. (Note to The Tower: Do more of these. Inexpensive, high-quality ink from amazing artists? It’ll take an awful lot of these events to saturate the activist market.)

With a few hours to kill, my spouse and I realized we’d be able to attend the No Hate In The Hammer counter-rally against the Yellow Vest hate group after all.

On the Grave of Old John Brown

On Saturday, July 13th my partner and I woke up at seven in the morning, dressed carefully for the heat, packed sunscreen and filled our water bottles, and headed out on a drive to Hamilton’s City Hall to participate in the “Hamilton For Who?” rally in support of the city’s embattled LGBTQ+ community.

My partner and I went to the rally, met up with friends, listened to music, bought t-shirts, drank water, danced and generally had a good time, as protests go. We also flipped off the violently islamo- and homophobic “Yellow Vest” hate-group which was forced out of the City Hall courtyard by the presence of both the rally and the weekend-long “Camp Chaos Gayz” occupation; making it the first Saturday in months that the Yellow-Vesters haven’t had a city-sanctioned presence at City Hall… which was one of the things the rally had been intended to achieve. We followed up the demonstration with a visit to the Art Gallery of Hamilton with some friends, then an early breakfast-for-dinner date at a diner and drove home in the long summer evening, footsore and sunburnt and feeling very good about the day.

At roughly the same moment I had gotten out bed that morning, Willem Van Spronsen was shot to death by police officers during his attack on the privately-owned and -operated prison for migrants called the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma Washington.