'Biggest Act of Civil Disobedience in Canadian History'

[DrVolin]

I thought I would address some of the points made in the counterpunch piece posted by Jack

1) The issue is debt, not tuition

Yes and no. Debt is an issue. Higher tuition will mean more former students in more debt for longer. It isn't a coincidence that there is overlap between the upper leadership of Quebec's universities and the boards of directors of the country's major banks, and that the universities have been lobbying Quebec City for higher tuition for years. But very few of the student groups are casting the debate in terms of debt. They have in fact, mistakenly I think, focused on the tuition hike itself. Fewer still have tried to move the debate toward the core issue, which is access to education. Access to education is one of the pilars of equality of opportunity. Even the conservatives can't publically claim that equality of opportunity is a bad thing, and neither can they deny that higher tuition increases inequality of opportunity. So in fact, the real issue is social justice. Tuition and debt are just symptoms of the growing erosion of the gains of Quebec's Quiet Revolution. The students have the right instincts. The Revolution is indeed under attack. But they have been hypnotized by a symptom, rather than by root cause, and few have seen fit to correct them.

This root cause is expressed in the slide from defining education as a public good with community benefit, to defining it as a private good with individual benefits. The calculation has been presented as one of individual investment in the form of tuition and long-term interest payments, against increased life-time earnings. The fact that no voice in the debate has succeeded in recasting it in terms of the community indicates the seriousness of the situation. This is what a minority is rebeling against, even if they haven't been able to express it.

2) Striking students in Quebec are setting an example for youth across the continent

Yes. Not one that is likely to be followed, but an example nonetheless.

3) The student strike was organized through democratic means and with democratic aims

No. Unless you count open votes by hand as democratic. The student associations have actively resisted secret votes, and the general assemblies have been characterised by acrimonious debate, intimidation, and physical confrontation. Student groups that have voted in favour of the strike have repeatedly hard picketed other groups that have voted against it or not voted at all, under the pretext that for the strike to be effective, all students must be on strike, regardless of their vote. The student movement is many things, but democratic it is not.

4) This is not an exclusively Quebecois phenomenon

Quebec's students have taken it to a new level for North America. I hope others are listening.

5) Government officials and the media have been openly calling for violence and “fascist” tactics to be used against the students

Yes. Bill 78 is completely unacceptable in a democratic society. In fact, I am confident the courts will agree as soon as it is put to the test. I could write a lot more about Bill 78. Maybe soon.

6) Excessive state violence has been used against the students

I have been impressed by the restraint of the police. Despite some problems here and there, they have generally been able to balance the right of citizens to demonstrate peacefully, with the protection of civic order. They haven't been perfect, but they have certainly been making an effort. Their refusal (so far) to use Bill 78 is an index of this. The morning news conferences, again and again, pointedly note that arrests were made for violations of city ordinances or existing civil or criminal laws, and not for violation of Bill 78. The message the police leadership is sending to Quebec City so far is clearly that they don't need or want Bill 78, and that they have the tools they need without it to do their job.

7) The government supports organized crime and opposes organized students

The two are not related, but both those statements are true. Quebec and its major municipal administrations have a long and painful history of infiltration and sometimes control by organized crime. I think one of the effects of the printemps erable will be a crackdown similar to the CECO (Commision d'Enquête sur le Crime Organisé) of the 1970s. We have already seen that the former right hand man of the Montreal mayor and his closest collaborators have been arrested. The dominos are starting to fall. The political leadership has realized that people have had enough. I just hope the changes are more than cosmetic.

8 ) Canada’s elites punish the people and oppose the students

Again, both are true. But I need not point out that this is hardly a Canadian invention.

9) The student strike is being subjected to a massive and highly successful propaganda campaign to discredit, dismiss, and demonize the students

To be fair to the demonizers in the National Post and Sun News, the student leaders have been making their job easy. And the national union leaderships who have been guiding the student leaders, cynically and for their own purposes, are using them as pawns to be sacrificed. I wish the student leaders started listening to other voices. There are plenty of professors in the province trying to help them, but as far as I can tell, the students are not in a mood to listen to them.

10) The student movement is part of a much larger emerging global movement of resistance against austerity, neoliberalism, and corrupt power

Amen, and inshallah, we will succeed.

[Laodicean]

[MayDay]

http://www.ainfos.ca/en/ainfos26424.html

(note: Is this how the revolution will start? I. S.) ---- (note for non francophones: Maple Spring is a play on words - 'printemps erable' sounds like 'printemps arabe' (ie arab spring) ---- So it looks like the rest of the world is starting to notice what is happening here in Montreal as what began as 'student protests' just over 3 months ago against a hike in tuition fees snowballs into what is being described by media as a 'general social crisis' but is actually a genuine, powerful and inspiring social uprising like i've never seen up close before. For about a month now I've been mentioning casually to friends outside Quebec that things are 'boiling' and 'becoming revolutionary' in this unusual corner of north america… well as of the last few nights i'd say they are now in full boil or maybe even boiling over.

I just came back from one of the many, indeed many many, neighborhood
'manif casseroles' occurring all over the city tonight. At 8pm people step
out onto their balconies and onto the street banging pots and pans, gather
on street corners and take over intersections and then, leaderlessly,
organically, the massed random groups of neighbors banging pots take to
the streets and start heading off in one direction, gathering people as
they go, joined en route and encouraged by bystanders on balconies, cooks
and restaurant staff stepping out of street cafe's all joyfully banging
away at their own pots and pans and lids and coffee pots.

What is astonishing is how mixed the crowd is - a lot of families, kids,
older quebecois, folks on bicycles and scooters, wheelchairs and yes of
course younger 'students' - everyone wearing the carre rouge (red felt
square) that has become the symbol of this 'greve' (strike). As we
cling-clang-bang-tap-clanged our way through the local residential streets
this evening it was pretty astonishing to see how many people stepped out
on their porches or hung out of windows with their own pots banging -
hassidic families, wealthy french families, pensioners, north african
families. We were a 'manifestation' of about 300 people i would guess (all
spontaneously brought together) and there were several more roaming the
same neighbourhood and then probably tens or hundreds all over the city.

Those separate roving protests have now coalesced. A little while ago (an
hour or two ago) we watched several thousand people joyfully bang and
clang their way past the end of our street - interestingly headed not for
downtown but deeper into the suburbs and neighbourhoods- the manif
casseroles are directly bringing the neighborhoods into this struggle
rather than continuing what was becoming ritualized nightly confrontation
between 'students' and police in the downtown core. The police are
following and right now the air is thick with police helicopters. last
night the casserole protests ended with over 500 arrests when a group were
'kettled' at an intersection (apparently at the start of the night it was
leaked that the police had orders to conduct a mass arrest as a show of
force).. tonight the demonstrations are way way larger and who knows what
the police have in store.

Only a week ago this movement could have gone an entirely different way.
The student protests were getting very little public sympathy despite
thousands marching every night. Their basic demand was to reverse an 80%
hike in tuition fees that the provincial government is trying to impose.
As the government and confused onlookers from the rest of Canada kept
pointing out Quebec has the lowest college and university tuition fees in
north america and the proposed hike would still leave Quebec as having the
lowest tuition fees so the students were painted as whining, 'entitled'
and not facing up to the 'realities' of the world and that framing had
some traction with ordinary working class quebeckers too. Of course the
issue was never really about just 'tuition fees' as such - it was about
crippling student debt and the insanity of a corrupt neoliberal government
increasing that debt while simultaneously handing out tax breaks to
corporations, building contracts to the mafia and generous monies for
forestry and mining companies to industrialize the far north of the
country (known as the 'plan nord'). That there was more at play than just
'student' fees became obvious in late april when the usually tame 'Earth
Day" rally here in montreal attracted 300,000 people, many of them wearing
red squares - Quebec was pissed and a general anger was in the air.

It was also about that government going back on a promise. The reason that
Quebec has the lowest tuition fees is because this province underwent a
huge 'quiet revolution' in the 60's and 70's where a radical movement
threw out the catholic church and an english speaking elite and embarked
on a massive program of introducing european-style social welfare programs
to lift a poor and undereducated population out of poverty. Free education
was one of the promises of that quiet revolution and although it wasn't
quite achieved the reformers promised that they would continue to work
towards free university education as an ideal. When successive governments
tried to break that promise and increase tuition fees students fought back
and in every time won, maintaining a freeze on tuition. Within the last
decade even this government was already forced to back down on this issue
once before.

Probably the most insightful comment i have heard on why the student
protests have arisen here in Quebec and not elsewhere in Canada is an
anglo montrealer on english radio who pointed out that the rest of Canada
(ROC) tends to take USA as its comparison point, whereas Quebec takes
France and Europe as its comparison point. To the ROC it is inconceivable
to imagine free university education since no one in north America has
ever experienced such a thing and it sounds like a pie-in-the sky demand.
To those of us with roots in 'old europe' however, free university tuition
is what we grew up with, its normal and its right. To Quebecers being told
that they should accept the same level of student debt as the rest of
north america and give up on their social ideals is like an organic
farmer being told they should shut up and accept the same level of
pesticide contamination as industrial farmers… this is not the 'rest of
north america', Quebec is a "distinct culture" and it has principles and
they matter to Quebecers. A lot.

In effect what i see as really at play in these protests (and there's a
lot at play and many interpretations and explanations of the general
'colere' (rage) in the air) is a people standing up and defending the
social welfare model that makes their society distinct and special.
Many people in this province are actually proud to pay the highest taxes in
north america (i am) because they can also point to strong social
assistance programs, a thriving educated and cultured population,
excellent arts and culture programs, world leading filmmakers and
musicians, long government supported parental leave, excellent collective
insurance policies covered by the state, a good working healthcare system,
7 dollar a day daycare for all kids and much more. In many ways Quebec is
france.. or denmark or sweden and against all odds it maintains this
progressive -even mildly socialist - political culture surrounded by two
of the worlds most rampant neoliberal anti-welfare corporate economies:
USA and Canada. Taking apart the low tuition fees is rightly seen as the
first move in a much larger austerity package to take apart all of the
social welfare programs and replace them with what? more debt being
collected by the same banks who just reaped billions of free government
dollars from the financial bailout? Fired by both the occupy movement and
the protests against austerity and cuts in Europe the students have
strongly made the connection to the financial crisis and how they and all
who come after them are being asked to finance the mistakes of a
government still in thrall to big business.

I have to say i think they are right. There is a great article by Michael
Rosen, a UK writer of children's poems, who points out that the great
welfare states of Europe (and this is true for Quebec) were built in a
post war economy shattered by real war, poverty and hardship out of a
belief in helping our fellow citizens and all-pulling-together. yet now we
are being told that wealthy countries who haven't experienced war or
crippling general poverty for some time and who recently found money to
bail out banks and major corporations to the tune of several trillion
dollars, just don't have the finances to maintain those same social
welfare programs even though those same programs were considered feasible
back when we were poorer and the economy was truly broken. For anyone with
an inkling of history that argument doesn't wash. What is going on is a
larger ideological project to take apart the welfare state, using the
'shock' of the financial meltdown as an excuse - and that is the
undercurrent to the 3 month fight on the streets.

Last friday however that fight changed. The provincial government brought
in an emergency 'special law' called Law 78 that has been described as a
'truncheon law' - basically a package of draconian measures rushed through
to make the protests illegal and impose harsh fines - especially on
'student leaders'. Law 78 included ridiculous provisions which meant you
could be fined for inciting a protest on twitter, for wearing a red square
or if more than 50 people meet up in a public place without giving police
8 hours advance warning and a route map. It was an attempt to smash the
student protest through brute force.. and far from intimidate and quell
the protests it poured gasoline on the flames -

Actually it kind of poured ammonium nitrate on them.. the result has been
explosive. Basically Quebec people (at least Montrealers) have come out
en bloc against the repressive law. Immediate critics included the Quebec
Bar, the unions, leading legal professors, the Quebec human rights
commission and much more. It was perceived as a direct and
disproportionate attack on civil liberties… particularly the right to
assemble, and the right to protest and free expression. Quite how Quebec
prime minister jean charest could have so badly misjudged how that law
would light a touchpaper in Quebec is beyond me. Quebecers care about
human rights, civil liberties and particularly their rights to get
together and express themselves.

The few days after the bill was rushed through parliament the nightly
protests swelled, the city sent in riot cops and images of riots and fires
in downtown filled the newspapers along with 300 arrests. Then a large
student demonstration already scheduled for a tuesday afternoon (a work
day) turned into a red sea of 100's of thousands of people marching,
dancing, chanting through the streets of montreal against law 78 -
technically the largest act of civil disobedience in canadian history.
That night the 'manif casseroles' began. The next night they swelled.
Tonight - they exploded.. they are popular civil disobedience parr
excellence. There no information given to police ahead of time for the
route - in fact there is no route! the neighborhoods are alive with the
ringing of pots and pans. In my neighborhood at least red squares are
pinned everywhere and on almost everyone. And this is Montreal - a city
that likes to party, a city that likes to be outside. A city thats proud
of its traditions of social activism and a city thats at the beginning of
a long hot summer. Right now its hard to see how this movement can go
anywhere but bigger and louder with the cling clang bang of thousands of
people defiantly banging pots ringing into the night for weeks to come.

For a good overview of what has been happening check out two excellent
articles in teh Guardian by a local friend Martin Lukacs -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/martin-lukacs

And this, which also belongs in the #ows thread:




http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/ ... talks.html

Big march in Montreal after student talks break down
Thousands of people marched through the streets of Montreal with renewed urgency on Thursday night following the breakdown of negotiations between the Quebec government and student leaders over the province's 3½-month-old student crisis.

Protesters take to Montreal's streets on Thursday, the 38th consecutive nightly demonstration sparked by a spike in student tuition. Three separate marches of about 10,000 people converged into one about 10:15 p.m. ET. (CBC)
Three separate main groups of demonstrators snaked through the city's streets before joining up downtown. Once unified, the march had an estimated 10,000 people at its peak.

As has been the norm since the city and province passed emergency legislation on May 18 to cope with widespread protests over the student situation, Montreal police declared the marches illegal for having failed to file an itinerary eight hours ahead of time. But such announcements have become largely pro forma, and the rallies went ahead along René Lévesque Boulevard, Ste. Catherine Street, Sherbrooke Street, St. Denis Street, de Maisonneuve Boulevard and other arterial roads.

The 38th consecutive nightly protest was largely peaceful, although two people were arrested. At a march in Quebec City, police said they moved in to arrest several people for throwing projectiles at officers.

Frederic Pépin, who supported the controversial tuition-fee hikes at the centre of the crisis, said he joined the Montreal "casserole" protest because he thinks the government made a terrible decision by not working harder to strike a deal with the student groups.

"Personally, I'm very angry because I believe the government closed the door on discussions," said Pépin, an industrial engineer. "It's the government's place to do something about it and that's why I'm here tonight."

Pépin said Charest should call an election to let the voters decide on the tuition increases.

Elsewhere
In addition to Montreal and Quebec City, there were protests Thursday night in other Quebec communities, including a modest demonstration in Rimouski and one in Gatineau.

The protests over the past 3½ months began as a revolt against the province's plans to hike university tuition by 75 per cent over the next five to seven years, but have ballooned into a wider social movement encompassing labour, environmental and social justice groups.

The passage of Bill 78, Quebec's emergency legislation to try to tamp down the demonstrations, has spurred the movement even more, bringing in tens of thousands of people to rallies. In recent weeks, many of those people have clanged pots and pans, or "casseroles," drawing on a South American protest tradition called cacerolazo.

[MayDay]

[2012 Countdown]

Quebec Student Strike Gathers Wide Support

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ8Moft5 ... r_embedded


Published on Jun 3, 2012 by TheRealNews
Paul Jay talks to Jérémie Bédard-Wien, Student Organizer, CLASSE

[American Dream]

Meanwhile, in Montreal...

http://www.pmpress.org/content/article. ... 7081702845

by Cindy Milstein

Montreal, Night 44: Some Short Notes on Another Long Evening



Last night I joined about 9 people in a casseroles in Montreal; tonight, consecutive evening number 44, there were thousands, boisterous and carnivalesque, overtaking the streets to the cheers of people in houses and bars and cafes as we marched. I also stumbled across the Ecole de la Montagne Rouge crew at the start of the march. They were all wearing red coveralls with their collective name screened on the back, printing big posters on white paper in red ink to connect cuts to the arts to increases to education, as long lines of folks eagerly waited their turn for a fresh print, which many then pinned to their bodies for the march or took home as a revolutionary souvenir. A couple hours later, when the march passed the art students as they were packing up, I asked them if I could stop by their studio sometime in the coming week or so, and they said, "Come with us now!" reaching out a red-ink-stained hand to shake mine but quickly realizing a hello and smile was a better idea, as I trooped after them to their studio. [More...]

I want to write more on the culture & geography of resistance, and some of what I saw at Ecole de la Montagne Rouge's giant 2-room studio, with their many screen-printed posters crawling up the high walls, and big cardboard posters leaning against walls, with sticks still attached so that two people can easily carry one sign in a demo. But for now, since it's late yet again, seeing this space where striking students have been making art for months now--inspired by May 1968, Black Mountain, and Poland, as one of them told me, but also this movement and their excitement about it--only confirmed what I've felt on the streets when seeing art & revolution: that the two (movement & art) are hand in hand. Here, in this gorgeous studio, with the friendly group of artists happily showing me around, it was clear that their art is of and for the moments, the many moments, of maple spring. As one of them explained, they pull from the ongoing current events, quickly responding by quickly making a new design, trying to use French word plays and double meanings within images that, too, offer double or multiple meanings. We want to keep our art open, said one of the artists, so people can interpret it and make it their own.

One of the Ecole de la Montagne Rouge's recent comrades, a sociology student this fall ("maybe," he joked), went image by image with me, translating the varied meanings of words as well as art, and filling in some history, especially Quebec movement history, for me, such as the "Refus Global" (Total Refusal) manifesto by a group of 16 artists and intellectuals that is viewed as one of the influences for Quebec's Quiet Revolution in the 1960s and, as my guide explained, for the students now. As he talked to me about the Total Refusal's manifesto, he pointed to his arm with a finger, ran the finger up his arm, and smiled, "Look, I have goosebumps just talking about it."

One of the red-outfitted artists, with ink spots decorating his coveralls, said that the student strike had always been about something larger than a tuition increase. The increase, he noted, wouldn't even impact the current students, since it would take several years to go into effect. It was always about future students, he went on, but more than that, about anti-austerity and, indeed, the future. He gestured with his hands, drawing them from his sides upward, saying that this student strike has brought out what was underneath: the feelings, concerns, and desires of people generally. For him, that was also about Quebec removing itself from Canada, not being under Harper, but being, in his words, its own state instead of a province--and a French-speaking one.



He and my impromptu guide both indicated a phrase on one of their posters in particular: "le combat est avenir." It was printed on cardboard, back when they used to print more of their posters in quantity on cardboard as signs for demonstrations (paper is now easier for them to carry and print on in larger quantities, my guide said). I hope I'm not doing an injustice to the translation that they described, but they said "avenir" offered the mixed meaning of "in the future" and "to have" or "with a future," and if I understood correctly, "for a future"--all added to "le combat" or fight. One can then see the waves as moving toward a future or creating waves now to make a better future, or other interpretations. Again, that's the intention, the artist said: that even if I am translating it incorrectly, I'm drawing out my own meaning, engaging with the art and its words through the lens of my (and thousands of others) participation in, to borrow a grammatical phrase in English, a "future perfect."



As for the march itself, there were so many poignant scenes on tonight's manif in Montreal, from hearing and then seeing small casseroles after casseroles at various intersections as I walked about 2 miles to the usual 8:30 p.m. march meet-up spot, including going down one whole block where people filled nearly all the balconies on both sides to bang their pots & pans (all of them cheering enthusiastically when I strolled by and banged on my lone pot in return below them), to finding thousands converging at 8:30 in costumes, with big banners & flags & signs, a variety of instruments, and so much cookware making so much noise it reverberated for blocks away as I approached, to whole open-air bars full of people who stood up to applaud and bang whatever they could when our march quickly & loudly went by.

I felt on a rollercoaster of emotions, propelled by the sense that this is what revolutionary social transformation really feels like. Night after night, and often day after day, people are engaging in widespread direct actions. It is not "just a march." It is a walking toward the future, grabbing the future now. People are daily defying the laws of state--and have been now for months--to begin to make their own promises to each other, from students finding their voices and own education through blockades, pickets, making huge free meals during them, teach-ins and media (the art students showed me a weekly journal/booklet they've been designing for student writers and poets), to the populace now reshaping civic space and creating a people's festival season (as I watch the Grand Prix start its build-up of a festival for the rich), to starting to meet more of one's neighbors and also rethink neighborhoods via the beginning of assemblies. It's hard to capture in words, but being on the street here each evening feels utterly distinct from the word used to describe it: "demonstration." My reinterpretation or misinterpretation of the French word "manifestation" for that English-language term feels closer: something is continually being manifested on the streets.

So especially as the several-thousand-person march I was in almost ran the last long block of St.-Denis toward the Mont-Royal intersection (some 2 miles back right from where I'd originally come) where another thousand people "waited" for us with their march and a sit-in against arrests and repression--with the volume turning up so much I could barely hear myself think--I shed some tears at the beauty of it all. Equally, I felt the joy that accompanies the struggle of change, tonight in many forms, including several instances of anarchopanda echoes on hats, stuffed animals, and backpacks. And I felt awe at how doggedly determined this increasingly dispersed "refusal" and "reclaiming" is when, walking home after midnight from the Ecole de la Montagne Rouge folks--so awe-inspiring in themselves, already having produced this huge, living, useful, agitational, and remarkable body of work that continues to grow, alongside a movement that's growing in similar ways--I ran across a small troop of extremely loud marchers-casseroles-chanters making their way along the bar area of St.-Denis, just as exuberant as when they likely headed toward the future some 4 to 5 hours ago, some many weeks and months ago.

[Luther Blissett]

[DrVolin]

'Total victory' is quite an overstatement and also very premature. The Marois government threw out the Liberal legislation that increased tuition. But the same legislation also increased bursaries and loans available to students. They threw out that part also. They are now talking about indexing tuition, which minus beefing up the bursasries and loans, will come out to about the same as the planned tuition increases. In a couple of months they will 'discover' that the Liberal government had been lying to us horribly about the state of public finances and they will 'have no choice' but to impose a modest increase in tuition, which combined with the indexing and the lack of increase in bursaries and loans will actually amount to more than the initially planned increases. Meanwhile, they will reduce (even more) university funding because we've been 'mismanaging' all the money.

But they will still claim that students 'won'.