"The single biggest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history."
That's how yesterday's Montreal protest is being described today. Hundreds of thousands red-shirted demonstrators defied Quebec's new "anti-protest" law and marched through the streets of downtown Montreal filling the city with "rivers of red."
Tuesday marked the 100th day of the growing student protests against austerity measures and tuition increases. In response to the spreading protests, the conservative Charest government passed a new "emergency" law last Friday - Bill 78.
Since Bill 78 passed, people in Montreal neighborhoods have appeared on their balconies and in front of their houses to defiantly bang pots and pans in a clanging protest every night at 8 p.m.Bill 78 mandates:
Fines of between $1,000 and $5,000 for any individual who prevents someone from entering an educational institution or who participate in an illegal demonstration.
Penalties climb to between $7,000 and $35,000 for protest leaders and to between $25,000 and $125,000 for unions or student federations.
All fines DOUBLE for repeat offenders
Public demonstrations involving more than 50 people have to be flagged to authorities eight hours in advance, include itinerary, duration and time at which they are being held. The police may alter any of these elements and non-compliance would render the protest illegal.
Offering encouragement for someone to protest at a school, either tacitly or otherwise, is subject to punishment. The Minister of Education has said that this would include things like 'tweeting', 'facebooking', and has she has implied that wearing the student protest insignia (a red flag-pin) could also be subject to punishment.
No demonstration can be held within 50 meters of any school campus Bill 78 not only "enraged civil libertarians and legal experts but also seems to have galvanized ordinary Quebecers." Since the law passed Friday, people in Montreal neighborhoods have appeared on their balconies and in front of their houses to defiantly bang pots and pans in a clanging protest every night at 8 p.m.
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* * * The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) reports:
CLASSE spearheaded Tuesday's march, aided by Quebec's largest labor federations. The province's two other main student groups, FEUQ and FECQ, also rallied their supporters.
CLASSE said Monday it would direct members to defy Bill 78, Quebec's emergency legislation.
The special law was adopted last Friday, suspending the winter semester and imposing strict limits on student protests. Organizers have to submit their itinerary to authorities in advance, or face heavy fines.
CLASSE spokesman Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said the special legislation goes beyond students and their tuition-hike conflict.
"We want to make the point that there are tens of thousands of citizens who are against this law who think that protesting without asking for a permit is a fundamental right," he said, walking side by side with other protesters behind a large purple banner.
"If the government wants to apply its law, it will have a lot of work to do. That is part of the objective of the protest today, to underline the fact that this law is absurd and inapplicable."
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The Montreal Gazette reports:
A protest organizers described as the single biggest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history choked the streets of downtown Montreal in the middle of Tuesday's afternoon rush hour as tens of thousands of demonstrators expressed outrage over a provincial law aimed at containing the very sort of march they staged.
Ostensibly Tuesday's march was to commemorate the 100th day of a strike by Quebec college and university students over the issue of tuition increases. But a decision last Friday by the Charest government to pass Bill 78 - emergency legislation requiring protest organizers to provide police with an itinerary of their march eight hours in advance - not only enraged civil libertarians and legal experts but also seems to have galvanized ordinary Quebecers into marching through the streets of a city that has seen protests staged here nightly for the past seven weeks.
"I didn't really have a stand when it came to the tuition hikes," said Montrealer Gilles Marcotte, a 32-year-old office worker who used a vacation day to attend the event. "But when I saw what the law does, not just to students but to everybody, I felt I had to do something. This is all going too far."
Tuesday's march was billed as being two demonstrations taking place at the same time. One, organized by the federations representing Quebec college and university students and attended by contingents from the province's labor movement, abided by the provisions of the law and provided a route. The other, overseen by CLASSE, an umbrella group of students associations, deliberately did not.
By 3: 30 p.m., a little more than 90 minutes after the marches began to snake their way through downtown, CLASSE, which estimated the crowd at 250,000, described the march as "the single biggest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history."
Other crowd estimates varied between 75,000 and 150,000 protesters. Montreal police do not give official crowd estimates but the Place des festivals, which demonstrators easily filled before the march began, holds roughly 100,000 people.
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Sea of red as hundreds of thousands protest Quebec's austerity cuts and new anti-protest law, May 22, 2012. (Photo by @philmphoto on instagram)
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The Canadian Press reports:
[...] Shortly before the evening demonstration commenced, supporters in central Montreal districts came out onto their balconies and in front of their homes to bang pots and pans in a seeming call-to-arms.
As well, the powerful Montreal transit union also gave protesters a boost when it called on its members to avoid driving police squads around on city buses during the crowd control operations. Montreal police have for several years used city buses as well as their cruisers to shuttle riot squad officers around to demonstration hotspots and as places to detain prisoners. [...]
The daytime march was considered to be one of the biggest protests held in the city and related events were held in New York, Paris, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. [...]
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, co-spokesman for the hardline CLASSE group, described Tuesday’s march as a historic act of civil disobedience and said he was ready to face any legal consequences.
“So personally I will be ready to face justice, if I need to.”
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
When will conservatives discover that draconian laws only catalyze civil libertarians into action with a just cause, and convert an entire generation of educated students to the organized opposition.
peartreed wrote:When will conservatives discover that draconian laws only catalyze civil libertarians into action with a just cause, and convert an entire generation of educated students to the organized opposition.
Hmm. Since conservatives today seem all about conserving calcified points of view — and not nearly so much about discovering... well, anything — I doubt they'll ever really discover much. (Even if they stumble over it.)
And if such "conservatives" ever actually "discovered" something substantive (say... by tripping over it), and then realized that they had discovered that substantive thing, could they still remain conservative?
"The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego."
Op-Ed Contributors Our Not-So-Friendly Northern Neighbor By LAURENCE BHERER and PASCALE DUFOUR Published: May 23, 2012
...
For a change, Americans should take note of what is happening across the quiet northern border. Canada used to seem a progressive and just neighbor, but the picture today looks less rosy. One of its provinces has gone rogue, trampling basic democratic rights in an effort to end student protests against the Quebec provincial government’s plan to raise tuition fees by 75 percent.
On May 18, Quebec’s legislative assembly, under the authority of the provincial premier, Jean Charest, passed a draconian law in a move to break the 15-week-long student strike. Bill 78, adopted last week, is an attack on Quebecers’ freedom of speech, association and assembly. Mr. Charest has refused to use the traditional means of mediation in a representative democracy, leading to even more polarization. His administration, one of the most right-wing governments Quebec has had in 40 years, now wants to shut down opposition.
The bill threatens to impose steep fines of 25,000 to 125,000 Canadian dollars against student associations and unions — which derive their financing from tuition fees — in a direct move to break the movement. For example, student associations will be found guilty if they do not stop their members from protesting within university and college grounds.
During a street demonstration, the organization that plans the protest will be penalized if individual protesters stray from the police-approved route or exceed the time limit imposed by authorities. Student associations and unions are also liable for any damage caused by a third party during a demonstration.
...
Freedom of speech is also under attack because of an ambiguous — and Orwellian — article in Bill 78 that says, “Anyone who helps or induces a person to commit an offense under this Act is guilty of the same offense.” Is a student leader, or an ordinary citizen, who sends a Twitter message about civil disobedience therefore guilty? Quebec’s education minister says it depends on the context. The legislation is purposefully vague and leaves the door open to arbitrary decisions.
...
Bill 78 has been fiercely denounced by three of four opposition parties in Quebec’s Legislature, the Quebec Bar Association, labor unions and Amnesty International. James L. Turk, the executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, called Bill 78 “a terrible act of mass repression” and “a weapon to suppress dissent.”
May 24, 2012 ***UPDATE: May 24, 2012. 8:40 a.m.*** Montreal police spokesman Ian Lafrenière told CBC Daybreak's Mike Finnerty this morning the number of people arrested at last night's protest is currently 518. Lafrenière also said a Molotov cocktail was thrown at police, as well as several rocks. Lafrenière said one officer was transported to hospital.
Surrounded by a small army of riot police, hundreds of protesters sat down on Sherbrooke Street Wednesday night and chanted “let’s stay peaceful.”
Within an hour 400 of them were rounded up, handcuffed and stuffed into city buses to be detained until Thursday morning. It was the largest number of arrests in one night since the beginning of the more than three-month-old Quebec student strike, which is being called the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history.
About 4,000 marched boisterously through Montreal’s streets for three hours, Wednesday, drawing cheers of support from apartment balconies and front stoops throughout the city’s downtown core. But the peaceful protest came to an end after stones and an incendiary device were thrown at police on St. Denis south of Sherbrooke, said Const. Daniel Fortier of the Montreal police.
Moments after the altercation, riot police came storming in from every direction, surrounding a section of the crowd within seconds.
It was the fifth night of demonstrations under two controversial new laws: Bill 78, a Quebec law that prohibits spontaneous protests, and municipal bylaw P-6 which prohibits the wearing of masks and requires protest organizers to provide an itinerary to police beforehand. Both laws were designed to put an end to the unrest that has gripped the city since March but, so far, they only seem to have galvanized the protest movement.
“This is about more than just university tuition at this point, it’s about a basic civil right, the right to free assembly,” said Vincent Rioux, a student at CEGEP de St. Laurent. “I think this has really energized a lot of us and motivated us to stay in the streets and keep fighting. I want this to be a peaceful fight but it’s still a fight we have to have.”
Since Saturday, four out of five night marches have ended in violence and mass arrests. On Sunday, 300 were detained after clashes between police and protesters caused about 20 injuries. Saturday, fringe groups of protesters lit bonfires on St-Denis Street after heavy fighting with the city’s increasingly deployed riot squad.
The skirmishes between police and protester have highlighted just how battle-hardened both groups have become.
Last year, a flash bang or tear gas canister fired off by police would have spelled the end of a demonstration. But the use of chemical irritants and even plastic bullets has become an increasingly common, almost banal feature of the city’s nightly protests.
These days protesters are bringing makeshift first aid kits to protests, painting red crosses on protesters trained in first aid and standing their ground when police use chemical irritants to disperse the crowd. It isn't uncommon to hear someone scream "medic" when a person gets injured, only to see the wounded patched up and sent on their way moments later.
“I bring wet rags, vinegar and other first aid supplies to a protest because I know how badly things have degenerated,” said Audre Charon, a CEGEP du Vieux Montreal student. “If I get hurt I know someone’s going to call for a medic and help me out and if I see someone whose hurt I’ll move in and help them. It’s kind of unfortunate that it's come to this but this is the reality we face now.”
On Wednesday, no chemical irritants were deployed into the crowd and there were no serious clashes with police until the very end of the protest. The march was festive for the most part, with some showering confetti onto the massive procession and dozens clanging pots and pans together from their windows to encourage the demonstration.
“This was peaceful, this was God damn beautiful and all it took to end it was maybe one or two projectiles,” said one of the evening’s detainees who wished to be referred to as “Mr. Potato Head” for fear of losing his job if his name was published. “Can you tell me why one or two idiots throw something and hundreds of us have to be arrested for it? Where were the warnings? Where’s the justice here?”
Similar protests were held in Rosemont and on the Plateau Mont-Royal, with the latter merging with the main protest around 11 p.m. Police declared the marches illegal from the beginning because organizers failed to divulge their route beforehand.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
Jeff wrote:More than 500 arrested, and reports are calling it a "quiet" night.
"What you don't know can't hurt them."
"The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego."
About six weeks ago, from a speech by Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, spokesperson for the student union CLASSE. Perhaps as deserving of renown as Mario Savio's "Machine" speech.
Martin Lukacs guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 May 2012 10.26 EDT Thousands of demonstrators march to mark the 100th day of a student strike against tuition hikes in Montreal, Quebec, 22 May 2012. Photograph: Olivier Jean/Reuters At a tiny church tucked away in a working-class neighbourhood in Montreal's east end, Quebec's new outlaws gathered on Sunday for a day of deliberations. Aged mostly between 18 and 22, their membership in a progressive student union has made them a target of government scorn and scrutiny. And they have been branded a menace to society because of their weapons: ideas of social justice and equal opportunity in education, alongside the ability to persuade hundreds of thousands to join them in the streets.
Under a draconian law passed by the Quebec government on Friday, their very meeting could be considered a criminal act. Law 78 – unprecedented in recent Canadian history – is the latest, most desperate manoeuvre of a provincial government that is afraid it has lost control over a conflict that began as a student strike against tuition hikes but has since spread into a protest movement with wide-ranging social and environmental demands.
Labelled a "truncheon law" by its critics, it imposes severe restrictions on the right to protest. Any group of 50 or more protesters must submit plans to police eight hours ahead of time; they can be denied the right to proceed. Picket lines at universities and colleges are forbidden, and illegal protests are punishable by fines from $5,000 to $125,000 for individuals and unions – as well as by the seizure of union dues and the dissolution of their associations.
In other words, the government has decided to smash the student movement by force.
The government quickly launched a public relations offensive to defend itself. Full-page ads in local newspapers ran with the headline: "For the sake of democracy and citizenship." Quebec's minister of public security, Robert Dutil, prattled about the many countries that have passed similar laws:
"Other societies with rights and freedoms to protect have found it reasonable to impose certain constraints – first of all to protect protesters, and also to protect the public."
Such language is designed to make violence sound benevolent and infamy honourable. But it did nothing to mask reality for those who have flooded the streets since the weekend and encountered police emboldened by the new legislation. Riot squads beat and tear-gassed people indiscriminately, targeted journalists, pepper-sprayed bystanders in restaurants, and mass-arrested hundreds, including more than 500 Wednesday night – bringing the tally from the last three months of protest to a record Canadian high of more than 2,500. The endless night-time drone of helicopters has become the serenade song of a police state.
In its contempt for students and citizens, the government has riled a population with strong, bitter memories of harsh measures against social unrest – whether the dark days of the iron-fisted Duplessis era, the martial law enforced by the Canadian army in 1970, or years of labour battles marred by the jailing of union leaders. These and other occasions have shown Québécois how the political elite has no qualms about trampling human rights to maintain a grip on power.
Which is why those with experience of struggle fresh and old have answered Premier Jean Charest with unanimity and collective power. There are now legal challenges in the works, broad appeals for civil disobedience, and a brilliant website created by the progressive CLASSE student union, on which thousands have posted photos of themselves opposing the law. (The website's title is "Somebody arrest me" but also puns on a phrase to shake a person out of a crazed mental spell.)
And Wednesday, on the 100th day of the student strike, Québécois from every walk of life offered a rejoinder to the claim that "marginals" were directing and dominating the protests: an estimated 300,000-400,000 people marched in the streets, another Canadian record, and in full violation of the new law. They brandished the iconic red squares that have now transformed into a symbol not just of accessible education but the defence of basic freedoms of assembly and protest. Late into the night, a spirit of jubilant defiance spread through the city. On balconies along entire streets, and on intersections occupied by young and old, the sound of banging pots and pans rang out, a practice used under Latin American regimes.
The clarity that has fired the students' protest has, until now, conspicuously eluded most of English-speaking Canada. This is because the image of the movement has been skewed and distorted by the establishment media. Sent into paroxysms of bafflement and contempt by the striking students, they have painted them as spoiled kids or crazed radicals out of touch with society, who should give up their supposed entitlements and accept the stark economic realities of the age.
All this is said with a straight face. But young people in Quebec, followed now by many others, have not been fooled. They know the global economic crisis of 2008 exposed as never before the abuses of corporate finance, and that those responsible were bailed out rather than held to account. They know that meetings of international leaders at the G20 end by dispatching ministers home to pay the bills on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable, with tuition hikes and a toxic combination of neoliberal economic policies. And with every baton blow and tear-gas blast, they perceive with ever greater lucidity that their government will turn ultimately to brute violence to impose such programs and frighten those who dissent.
To those who marched Wednesday, and the great numbers who cheered them on, the fault-lines of justice are evident. This is a government that has refused to sit down and negotiate with student leaders in good faith, but invites an organised crime boss to a fundraising breakfast; a government that has claimed free education is an idea not even worth dreaming about, when it would cost only 1% of Quebec's budget and could be paid for simply by reversing the regressive tax reforms, corporate give-aways, or capital tax phase-outs of the last decade; a government whose turn to authoritarian tactics has now triggered a sharp decline in support, and which has clumsily accelerated a social crisis that may now only begin to be resolved by meeting the students' demands.
As the debate went on at the CLASSE meeting in the church last Sunday, the students' foresight proved wise beyond their years. "History doesn't get made in a day," one argued into the microphone. Not in a day, no doubt, but in Quebec, over this spring and the summer, history is indeed being made.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
Jeff wrote:About six weeks ago, from a speech by Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, spokesperson for the student union CLASSE. Perhaps as deserving of renown as Mario Savio's "Machine" speech.
Now hear the word of the lords:
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966
I really hope these protests will have some actual lasting effect. In ̶B̶̶r̶̶i̶̶t̶̶a̶̶i̶̶n̶ England, students are currently quiescent again, or simply exhausted and resigned, or else they are not students at all because they can no longer afford it.
^^ That was a thing of beauty and a joy forever, back in October 2010; a real victory over barbarism. Sadly, it has remained merely symbolic, so far. (Symbols are real, though, at least sometimes.) But Rome wasn't razed in a day. I think one of the effects was to strengthen the movement for Scottish independence.* The barbarism of the fees-hike did not go unnoticed in Scotland, where the education system is still largely independent and the political/ethical baseline is still far to the left of Westminster and the Home Counties. (This is not to idealise Scotland, which resembles Utopia only insofar as it cannot issue passports.)
I know next to nothing about Canadian politics, but I'm wondering what effect this is having on Quebec, on the movement for Québécois independence, and on the rest of Canada.
*Maybe Ahab would care to comment on this.
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966
May they succeed. I wish the students at the local U would react SOMEHOW to the recently announced 40% tuition hike- one of several in recent history- funny, if you added them together they'd probably come out to 75%. Perhaps the quebec government attracted unwanted attention by doing it all at once.
“The Radium Water Worked Fine until His Jaw Came Off”
