(version française à venir!)
Friday 17th 2011
A subversive attack was carried today, in the early hours of the morning against the tourist/real estate industry right in the middle of the Eastern Townships, Qc.
The Mount Orford Park has become over the past few years one of the main cornerstones for the invasive suburban developments in the region. A tourist attraction for the rich, the Sherbrooke-based Orford Express train, was the target of “unthinkable” graffiti, painted on the concrete walls of the new railroad pass right under highway 10, which is symbolically the main entry route for motorists in the region.
The Orford Express quickly became a well-respected and valuable asset for the region’s tourist industry. Now the hundreds of bourgeois/suburban consumers who were having a posh dinner in the luxurious, old-style train/restaurant were forced to witness barbaric graffiti, directly aimed at them… words like (in French) “Orford: Suburbia” and “the Earth is not for Sale!” (in reference to the many “Land for Sale” panels still mostly left unspoiled everywhere in the region), along with a circled “A” sign, and a frightening, pitch black Jolly Roger. We can only hope it’ll last for the weekend, if not longer…
This action was made amongst an ongoing string of small “defacing” actions carried out in the Eastern Townships by different people. Especially as the busiest period of the tourist season begins, its is very likely to be followed by more attacks of the same nature as it is open season for us green & black insurgents.
We believe that the “face value” is the most sensitive part in this industry, as the more the investors and the invaders will feel compromised, the lesser they’ll be drawn to here and the easier it’ll be to force development to a standstill. That is our long term battle strategy, and this same logic can be applied wherever the same kind of capitalism-driven development spreads.
The background
The Mt. Orford Park is centered around a protected area of rich and diverse ecosystems and beautiful wildlife, of typical Appalachian splendor, that is being discreetly attacked by filthy corporate/mafia interests, as towns and villages are rapidly becoming interconnected by a grid of roads and ugly plastic houses, and in the process nature being routinely destroyed and polluted. Wildlife is fleeing to uncertain areas of survival, when not simply dying out of the sudden, forced changes. Social life for humans is also dying, with tons of new non-centralized neighborhoods surrounding the country places we used to call “my small town”, now crowded with antisocial people, mostly unknown to each other, living in bubbles and unable to do anything without oil or cash.
Since the Park was brought to fame for its brutal targeting by a huge tourist/real estate development project, then beaten out of popular outrage and pressure on the government for its devastating effect on the environment. Nonetheless, horizontal developers are on full battle mode and having their way with Mother Nature by multiplying overwhelmingly destructive horizontal developments everywhere around the Park, up to the very few inches bordering its official limits. This is a situation most of us already have witnessed in their area, so to fight it here means the same than fighting it in your neighborhood.
As long as tourism is a vehicle for more invasion and destruction of life, it’s got to be subverted, disrupted or destroyed, by any way we find.
Savagery is the only answer to the hypocrisy of civilization.
In solidarity with Marie Mason and Eric McDavid, the fighting Native people and with all the anarchist prisoners of the Western imperialist wars, here and abroad, who stood up for their love of life and freedom.
– the Appalachian Hydra
member of the E.L.F./I.A.F.
(update(s) and photo(s) might follow)