Stop the charging bison

The following is a call to join Winnipeg in opposing the occupation of our city by an imperialist army, the Canadian Armed Forces. Please circulate this to as many different people as possible, and make plans to be here in this crucial time. Every effort will be made to facilitate lodging and other arrangements. Send back comments and then numbers of people and when your group can arrive so we can organize from our end.

Beginning April 30th of this year, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) will be conducting a week-long, large-scale urban-warfare exercise in downtown Winnipeg. Taking place over May Day, International Worker's Day, this exercise is an outrageous provocation toward people's movements and must be opposed and resisted.

Around the world, the maple-leaf flown by the CAF has come to represent murder, torture and oppression to those unlucky enough to see it flying. In Afghanistan, Canadian Forces are helping to prop-up and defend a vicious theocracy that is completely opposed to the basic interests of the people there. In Haiti, Canadian Forces worked together with France and the US to carry out a coup d'etat against the elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and to install a government of business elites who are opening the already extremely-poor country to even more exploitation.

The urban-warfare exercise, already given the sobriquet 'Operation Charging Bison,' will serve to train the CAF to better carry out their reactionary, anti-people, anti-peace, counter-revolutionary, and pro-imperialist role.

We, the activists of the World People's Resistance Movement (Winnipeg) are therefore calling for massive resistance. In the weeks leading up to 'Operating Charging Bison' we will be conducting mass work in the nearby neighborhoods and communities where the exercises will be taking place. This mass work will serve to build up a basis of support for the upcoming actions as well as give us an opportunity to engage with the masses around the questions of internationalism, anti-imperialism, opposition to unjust war, and the possibilities of a much better world. During the operation itself we will be participating in many diverse actions, including (but certainly not limited to!) a May Day march calling for the withdrawal of all Canadian troops from Haiti, Afghanistan, and our city. It is abhorrent that they will be training to put down legitimate resistance movements and we need to ensure that they are not welcome.
In short, we want to change the whole political terrain, both in this city and around the world. We want to put opposition to Canada's terrible role in Haiti and Afghanistan in the mainstream. We want to make a splash so big that no one in the country will be able to ignore it. We want to send a message to the people of the whole world - from Port-au-Prince to Kadahar to Fallujah that we stand with them, against our government, in unity and in hope for all-the-way liberation. Drop your plans and come to Winnipeg for the weeks leading up to May Day. Help place Winnipeg in the same category as Seattle, Quebec City, and Genoa. Be part of history in the making.

Because the world can't wait.
World People's Resistance Movement (Winnipeg)
WPRMwinnipeg@yahoo.ca