Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info (French)
Let the axe
Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall
On Sunday, May 5th, five incendiary devices were placed at the Northvolt construction site in Quebec. This action was taken to damage machinery and reduce the project’s ability to continue. Unfortunately, these devices failed to ignite. If there is one takeaway to share, when choosing materials consider how weather (high humidity or rain) might decrease the chances of a device igniting. The longer the timer, the longer the device will be exposed to environmental factors thereby decreasing the window of success.
Why choosing to attack and damage property? While Northvolt, a transnational corporation, sells themselves as the leader of the green transition, they are in fact its headstone. The electric vehicles the company plans to provide with their batteries are a false solution to the environmental destruction caused by industrial society; rather this expension of the automotive industry is only allowing the devastating impact of car infrastructure to continue. With this project, Canada’s insatiable appetite for natural resources will only grow. Lithium mining, which is essential in the process of producing Northvolt’s “green” Lithium Ion batteries, is poisoning human communities and entire ecosystems across the land. Lithium is already being extracted from unceded Indigenous territories here in “Quebec”, with many new mines planning to start operating in the next few years. With this kind of mega project, lakes, forests and wetlands will disappear under new roads and pit mines. First Nations will loose access to their traditional territories and with that loss, the ability to practice and sustain their ancestral ways of living and relating to the land. They will be surveilled and harassed by workers and security. The animals of these territories will die or will have to migrate elsewhere as their homes are destroyed.
Has anyone else noticed how quiet the land around Northvolt has become since they chopped down the trees and destroyed the wetlands? It’s eerily silent.
Capitalism and the State are in league, dumping public funds into private corporations that will only worsen the ecological crisis across the globe. This is why we must act, and more often than not, we must act beyond the laws imposed on these lands by governments. The Quebec government has already dropped regulations put in place to protect the environment and looked the other way while Northvolt violates numerous laws and codes. This is because Legault’s government (like any colonial gorvernment), is politically invested in making this project happen. However, the future remains to be written. We still have choices to make. We still can act! We must not be guided by crooked laws, but by the love and care we and others have for the collective health of all beings, the land, the water and the desire for a better world through struggle against colonial structures. Armed with our convictions, let us go into the night and choose to take the necessary risks to fight for a livable future.
