Brûler/Bâtir is a podcast about reimagining collective safety.
Brûler… because the police perpetuate violence and are a failed approach to safety.
Bâtir… because we can invest in, and amplify, systems of care, justice, and safety without policing.
Every month, we talk to people working to build real safety in Montreal/Tiohtià:ke, and hear about how the police get in the way.
Episode 0: Abolition is Creation
Transforming the ways we address community violence and harm can feel big and daunting, but it doesn’t have to be.
Anti-violent systems of community care and support already exist all around us, and much more could be done with adequate resources.
In this introductory episode, co-hosts Karl and Alia discuss the generative side of abolition, the concrete work abolition requires, and what the podcast hopes to accomplish.
Episode 1: “C’est mettre les gens dehors de dehors”
Annie Archambault on homelessness, between community support and police repression
In the first episode of Brûler/Bâtir, we speak with Annie Archambault, a street outreach worker and TikTok influencer. Annie emphasizes the value of small-scale community-led initiatives that meet people's needs, and that reject policing, surveillance, and control.
We discuss encampment evictions, a cruel practice by the City and police, which waste resources that could be used to address the root causes of homelessness.
We conclude the conversation with a critique of 'community policing' initiatives, like 'mixed squads', which serve to expand police power under the guise of providing community care.
Annie's experience on the front-line echoes abolitionist perspectives: public safety is about meeting everyone’s needs, and will never be achieved through violence, control, and criminalization.
Episode 2: “Abolitionist Intimacies”
"Abolitionist intimacies", within and beyond the prison walls, with the Prisoner Correspondence Project
In the second episode of Brûler/Bâtir, we speak with Maggie and Josh from the Prisoner Correspondence Project: a queer and trans support project for prisoners.
In our conversation, Maggie and Josh highlight that the issues that queer and trans people in prison face are largely the same issues all prisoners face: medical neglect, extreme isolation, and disconnection from their loved ones and larger community.
We discuss the networks of support and mutual aid that ground their project and emphasize the foundational roles these networks play in transformative change more broadly. We address why prison abolition requires addressing violence as the result of failing social infrastructure rather than an isolated problem that can be resolved by detaining and brutalizing some individuals.
We conclude the conversation by highlighting the urgent need to invest in both broad infrastructures of care like housing, health care, education, and job security, alongside more intimate infrastructures of care, support and accountability within our communities, families, and workplaces.
Our conversation ultimately highlights how the intersection of queer liberation and prison abolition creates a more expansive and radical vision of safety and care both within and beyond prison walls.
Episode 3: “Decriminalizing drugs saves lives”
Against the war on drugs and towards a harm reduction approach with Spectre de Rue
In the third episode of Brûler/Bâtir, we speak with Émilie and Eva from Spectre de Rue about approaching the overdose crisis from a harm reduction standpoint.
Throughout our conversation, they emphasize that drugs must be approached as a question of public health, not of public security. The criminalization of drugs has had only deadly consequences, unleashing carceral violence against drug users, contributing to the proliferation of toxic drug supplies, and forcing users to adopt dangerous consumption practices.
Eva and Émilie show us how divesting from these repressive tactics, by decriminalizing drugs, would allow for the expansion of numerous life-saving initiatives like the drug checking services and safe injection sites that Spectre de Rue already runs. We discuss what a harm reduction model looks like in the context of peer support and street intervention work. This requires meeting people where they’re at, allowing people to choose how they want to be supported without imposing normative visions of care and safety onto them, and following the principle of "nothing about us, without us".
The work of Spectre de Rue shows how much we could improve our collective health and safety if we listened to those most impacted by the overdose crisis and invested in locally grounded and community-led solutions that addressed their needs.
Episode 4: Fighting for community safety in Chinatown
With Maka and Wawa
In the fourth episode of Bruler/Batir, we speak with local activists Maka and Wawa about the challenges of uniting Montreal’s Chinatown around an inclusive vision of community safety in the face of a divisive and repressive police campaign.
We unpack recent calls for an increased police presence in response to systemic issues like homelessness, public drug use, and petty crime, and show how this punitive approach perpetuates the myth that safety can be achieved by inflicting state violence against vulnerable community members.
Maka and Wawa detail how the legacy of Chinatown as a district centered on immigrant social aid groups and networks is being challenged by a collaboration between gentrifying stakeholders and the police which targets the very infrastructures (rooming houses and community centers) that have historically held the community together.
Our conversation ultimately calls for reimagining safety, by investing in housing instead of repression. This vision is rooted in empathy, resource allocation, and community empowerment, echoing abolitionist principles that prioritize meeting the needs of all residents over criminalization and state violence.
