COMMUNIQUÉ 

A Report on the Night Demo at mcgill on February 5th

anarchistnews.org

Feb 7, 2025



From MTL Counter-info

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Yesterday in Tiohtia:ke, forty anarchists (and our friends 🙂 ) attacked the buildings of mcgill university. Armed with rudimentary tools, we succeeded in destroying all windows that stood in our way. With the help of hammers, rocks, and glass bottles, we vandalized this symbol of the colonial capitalist system. Within 15 minutes, we smashed over 30 windows on multiple pavillions of the institution, as well as the electronic locks of the administration building. An exam in progress during the protest was cancelled for 350 students. According to a mcgill spokesperson, the damages are estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Two comrades who were momentarily detained by the failed pigs of a private security agency, subcontracted by mcgill, were gloriously de-arrested. The police response was slow and ineffective, the protest led to no arrests or injuries. We dispersed completely before the arrival of the spvm.

Graffitis were left behind denouncing the acquisition of the royal vic hospital (site of unmarked graves) by mcgill for $700 million, and its complicity in the genocide in Palestine. We also denounce the desecration of the tree of peace, planted on the lower field by decolonial activists this summer, as well as the historical complicity of mcgill in psychiatric experimentation on Indigenous children, and the transphobia and racism of mcgill’s administration. For us, mcgill is nothing but a symbol of a colonial and capitalist system, of which we call for the complete destruction.

We encourage our comrades to extend the struggle towards the destruction of all oppressions, and to continue escalating towards revolution.

We’d also like to underscore the categoric refusal of mcgill – and their disdain in the face of student activists’ demands on this subject – to divest from genocide and the military-industrial complex. In a board of governors meeting at the end of the fall 2024 semester, the zionist cronies who sit on said board openly stated that they’d waited until the end of the semester to present the findings from their ‘investigation’ of divestment, when nobody would notice (wishful thinking, deep). In the face of their condecension and their attachment to continuing the genocide, we say: Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable! Our actions last night are in keeping with this line of thought.

Viva Palestina, long live the tree of peace, death to capital and empire, down with colonialism and transphobia, fuck McKill!

Protestors spray paint Glasgow university building over investment in Israeli arms firms

Olivia Barber 

7 February, 2025 
Left Foot Forward

The University of Glasgow has £6.8 million in shares in arms companies such as BAE systems and QinetiQ.

Two activists from Youth Demand, the student branch of Just Stop Oil, spray painted a University of Glasgow building yesterday over the institution’s refusal to divest from Israeli arms firms.

In November last year, the University of Glasgow voted to continue allowing endowment fund managers to invest in companies that earn more than 10% of their income from arms manufacturing.

The University of Glasgow has £6.8 million worth of shares in arms companies such as BAE systems and QinetiQ.

They have also received around £600,000 in research funding from BAE systems and Rolls Royce since 2017.

QinetiQ, a supplier of military robotics, has been criticised for exporting arms to Israel and their involvement in the British Army Watchkeeper Programme which allegedly tested the drones on Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

More broadly, the Youth Demand protest demanded that the UK government impose a trade embargo on Israel, including on arms sales.

Youth Demand, which was formed in April 2024, is calling for an end to all new licences and consents for exploration of fossil fuels in the North Sea and a two-way arms embargo on Israel.

Catriona Roberts, one of the students who took part in the direct action, said: “The Palestinian people are still under siege. No ceasefire will wash away the blame from our genocidal government.

“We demand our government stops arming the Israeli state and imposes a full trade embargo. Our institutions follow the lead of our government, who continue to trade and send arms to Israel, a state guilty of genocide. We refuse to be made complicit in the mutilation of children.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward