An Autonomous Social Center ?

CENTRE : Space. To meet and converge, create and exchange, change and transform.
SOCIAL :: Collectivity. The ASC only exists because of our encounter, only because of our will to be together to build this reality.
AUTOGÉRÉ :: Liberation. From hierarchical structures and merchant exchanges, to build there the project wich we dream of, by ourselves, for ourselves.

ASCs are spaces of conviviality, self-managed, more often established in abandonned buildings in different urban areas around the world. They are centers of cultural, social and political activities. The particuliarity of ASCs, wich differentiate them from community centers, is altogether their autonomy from the State, their refusal of hierarchy and of illegetimate authority, and their their management by direct democracy.

Pointe-Saint-Charles, located near Montreal downtown, is more and more coveted by capitalist developpers who's sole purpose is to get rich. They have assaulted the edges of canal Lachine by transforming Redpath and Belding Corticelli factories in luxuous condominiums.

The project to move the Montreal Casino on the CN lands was fortunately abandoned after a hard fight… since tehn, however, projects are multiplying : the ancient Northern Electric's tranformation in condominiums, Samcon's projects, the Griffintown village… There are condominiums projects on the CN lands…

Public authorities support those projects without scruples. Generaly, and in spite of some concessions to community claims, those projects are realised isolated from the neihbourhood.

In a context of a lack of spaces available to alternative cultural activities, for social housing, for proximity services, it is inacceptable for Point Saint-Charles' lands to be sold to rich !

We dram and work in the ASC, since an historical public assembly hold on may 2007 initiated by activists from the Point. We dream and work on projects responding to needs we consider unavoidable to our collective being : a repair and exchange bike workshop ; a popular education group who give knowledge instead of selling it ; a show place with a bar wich would also offer free practicing spaces for local artists ; an independant media center fed by the free creativity ; a moving cinema who get the movies who inpired us in the street ; a collective kitchen freed by urban agriculture and food recuperation.

We also dare to dream about a popular university, about an autonomous day nursery, about a large public market, about joinery workshops, about an inn... Because all our spaces are to be invested, and it is ours to do.

An official launch of the ASC, Reclaim Your Point, has been held on june 2008, in spaces lended to us by community groups.
communautaires. This has been the beginning of a stable activity program wich holds until our moving to our permanent location, during srping 2009.

Let's re-appropriate our city, but with other values !

Against capitalism who invades all other spheres of life, we beleive it is necessary to fight for spaces who keep it at bay, with all of its productivist and discriminatory logic. We want to build a space self-financed by recuperation and our revalorisation spirit, where the satisfaction of our needs doesn't depend on any authority, where collective autonomy will at last be possible and where democracy will regain its noble spirit by direct application. As public and private authorities claim so easily this collective dignity of all people and impose to us fake democracies, we beleive we have to maintain a confrontation attitudes with them and encourage reclaiming and social disobedience. By re-appropriating each of us our territory, in insufling life to it with principles not dictated by the State and the market, we may be able to to get this « legal » theft to an end and institute a legitimate collective property.