Some Context Concerning the Québec Student Strike – Blog - Association for Canadian Studies. This article is not intended to take any sides in this on-going dispute. We’re not implicated, it doesn’t concern us in any way. That said, we’re located in Montréal, our staff lives and works and plays in this city which has also become the epicentre of the protest movement. And as such we are affected, there’s no way around this. For the most part, I, like the majority of Montrealers, have not been adversely affected by the protest and strike, which is now about four months old. I’ve seen it, I’ve witnessed it in its many different forms.
Only once have I been witness to violence between police and what I assume were protesters. The violence is a disturbing issue, but it is not unique to Montréal, nor to this student movement. Québecois pay the most in provincial taxes than any other province. But if there’s one common denominator here, it’s that the province has been remarkably disinterested from embracing social media and digital communications to plead their case to the voters. Ultimatum anglo. Manifesto for a Maple Spring. The Manifesto for a Printemps Érable (Maple Spring) has recently been circulating through various social networks. It is addressed, according to Michel Lambert of the Quebec-based NGO Alternatives, to two major themes that are being expressed in popular mobilizations this spring in Quebec: the student movement's fight for a freeze on university tuition fees, and the call for protection of the environment and natural resources that brought some 250,000 or more persons into the streets of Montréal on April 22.
"These two calls," says Lambert, "heard by thousands and thousands of Québécois, share a common demand for a vast public debate on the need for a real transformation. " The title of the Manifesto is a play on the words "Arab" and "maple" (érable), which have a similar pronunciation in French. The following is the text of this Manifesto, in a translation by rabble.ca. Its authors describe themselves as "indignés of Quebec, aware that we are living in an historic moment.
Among Protesters in Montreal, Visions of BC Unrest. Tyee columnist Bill Tieleman dives into Quebec's pot banging revolt and files this dispatch. Tieleman joins the fray on Mount Royal Avenue on June 2. "This isn't a student strike, it's a society waking up. " -- Banner at Montreal protest June 2, 2012 As the "casserole" protest with banging pots and pans took over Montreal's historic Mount Royal Avenue, first it was Dollarama store clerks who came out to applaud the marchers. Then it was bartenders and servers standing in their doorways to cheer on 7,500 protestors braving the Saturday afternoon rain.
They oppose not just a 75 per cent tuition fee hike for students but also the Quebec Liberal government's draconian Bill 78, legislation that makes demonstrations of more than 50 people illegal unless police approve in advance. Next came chefs from boulangeries and patisseries in white uniforms, bringing their own kitchenware to add more noise to the rally.
Protest grown beyond tuition, any maybe borders Rite of passage A catalyst called Bill 78. Quebec protests search for strategy. Montreal – With the collapse of negotiations between the Charest government and student leaders last week, and the persistence of the nightly pots and pans protest, the question is what next? With a little borrowing from the Occupy movement, which itself borrowed from the Indignados in Spain and other places, an answer is emerging. Throughout Montreal’s northern and eastern districts, general assemblies are forming. Neighbours, it seems, get to know each other rather well clanging cooking utensils, and now, from Mile End to Rosemont to Hochelaga, demonstrators are moving past a collective manifestation of discontent to put down local organizational roots. Meetings were held last week in city parks, where hundreds of residents of all ages discussed everything from making their streets redder with the insignias of protest to hosting community picnics.
“There is one tendency within the student movement that believes beating the Liberals in an election is their only hope. Student protests and the mirror it's held up to all of us. I find it extremely interesting the number of people willing to pronounce on the student protests in Quebec based on a gut sense of how young people today are and some reminiscences of how they were when they were young. I don't agree with everything that the students in Quebec are asking for, and I certainly don't support the isolated violence that has marked their protests and captivated the press, but the framing of this issue as a binary one where students are a bunch of whiny, entitled, spoilt brats is troubling and diminishes us all. As a person who teaches classes of various sizes and levels at a major Canadian university and spends a fair amount of time around the students of today, but who like many of the pontificating pundits has also worked hard and been moderately successful, I'd like to make a few points here. 1.
Young people are not a homogeneous group. People go to university and work jobs for myriad reasons, all of which defy simple stereotyping. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 'Night of Casseroles': Canadian Protesters Expand Beyond Quebec and Single Issue Focus. The 'casserole' movement in Canada -- a phenomenon that first grew out of student protests against an increase in tuition fees earlier this year and escalated in size and media coverage after the passage of Bill 78 brought unprecedented numbers of people to street marches in Montreal and evening rallies of banging pots and pans across Quebec -- is now threatening to spread across the country as more and more Canadians rally to the cause and adopt it as their own. 'Casseroles' come alive every night at 8pm.
(Rabble.ca) "On Wednesday, May 30, starting at 8pm, people from coast to coast to coast all over Canada are showing solidarity by banging pots and pans everywhere," reads an announcement for 'Night of Casseroles' on a facebook page established to help organize the event. "This will be the first of many casseroles nights across Canada. Once Quebec student students stop the tuition hike and Law 78, we're all going to Stop Harper together.
" 'Casseroles' by Jeremie Battaglia: Amir Khadir arrested, our democracy under siege. It's membership time. Cultivate Canada's media. Support rabble.ca. Become a member. Quebec Solidaire MNA, and co-spokesperson for the party, Amir Khadir has been arrested tonight in Quebec City. A message was posted on the Facebook page of Quebec Solidaire, the left wing political party for which Khadir is the only MNA, explaining that Amir left the National Assembly, heard casseroles and decided to join the completely peaceful march. The demonstration was declared illegal, some part of it was kettled, arrested and loaded onto a bus. All, including Khadir, were charged with a violation of article 500.1 of the highway safety code. The SPVQ (Quebec City police) declared the demonstration illegal because no route was provided. While police in Montreal use a municipal by-law passed concurrently with bill 78, which replicates many of its provisions, to declare demonstrations illegal which have not submitted a route eight hours in advance, I am unaware of a similar by-law in Quebec City.
SEP meeting on Quebec student strike: Socialism and the defence of public education. 6 June 2012 The Socialist Equality Party is holding a public meeting in Montreal on Thursday, June 21 as part of its fight to mobilize the working class in defence of Quebec’s striking students and to make the student strike the catalyst for a cross-Canada working class offensive against all job, wage and social spending cuts.
(For meeting details, please scroll to the bottom.) The meeting will hear a report from a leader of the SEP (Canada) explaining why the students’ just demand for education to be a social right has brought them into headlong conflict not only with the provincial Liberal government, but with the entire Canadian capitalist elite, its courts and police. US SEP Presidential candidate Jerry White will also address the meeting. White’s decision to speak at the June 21 meeting and gain firsthand experience of the struggle in Quebec is an expression of the socialist and internationalist perspective for which he fights.
“Casserole” protests in support of Quebec students spread across Canada. By a WSWS reporting team 5 June 2012 A new form of protest, “casserole” demonstrations, emerged last month in response to the Quebec Liberal government’s imposition of Bill 78—a draconian law that criminalizes the four-month-old province-wide student strike and places sweeping new restrictions on the right to demonstrate whatever the cause. Initially promoted by only a handful of individuals through social media, the call for people to congregate in their neighbourhoods and bang on pots and pans so as to support the striking students and oppose Bill 78 struck a chord. Over the course of a few days, the nightly casserole protest mushroomed across working class districts of Montreal.
Thousands of people poured into the streets, defying the new restrictions on demonstrations and voicing their opposition to the Liberal government. A night demonstration in Kingston Last Wednesday the “casserole” protests spread for the first time beyond Quebec. “Bill 78 has no place in a democratic country. Mass repression in Quebec: A warning to the working class. 28 May 2012 More than 1,200 people have been arrested in Quebec since the provincial Liberal government adopted emergency legislation May 19 that criminalizes the more than three-month-old student strike and places sweeping restrictions on the right to demonstrate.
The mass arrests are testimony both to the depth of popular opposition to Bill 78 and to the determination of Canada’s ruling class to stamp out the student strike and run roughshod over all opposition to its class-war agenda of wage and job cuts and the dismantling of public services. Last Tuesday, the 100th day of the student strike, more than 150,000 people marched through the streets of Montreal in one of the largest demonstrations in Quebec history. Protests against Bill 78 and in defiance of its draconian provisions are now taking place nightly in many working-class neighbourhoods of Montreal, as well as in other cities across Quebec. In response, the government has intensified its campaign of repression. Keith Jones. Quebec students defy cops, call mass protests.
By G. Dunkel Montreal Published May 26, 2012 7:58 AM Quebec students, who have been striking for three months for lower tuition and demonstrating each of the last 25 nights including May 18, have now targeted Law 78, adopted by the Quebec parliament a day earlier. The students, who have demanded a repeal of 75 percent tuition hikes, are defying the new law by demonstrating and holding marches in large numbers in Montreal and Quebec City and in smaller numbers in Rimouski, Gatineau and Sherbrooke. The student movement has issued a call for 100,000 people to come out in Montreal on May 22 to mark the 100th day of the strike. The cops deem these marches illegal. According to television reports, while hundreds gathered in the three small cities, over a thousand protesters gathered in front of the National Assembly, Quebec’s parliament, and marched from there all over old Quebec city and back.
Background of strike Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World. Quebec student group promises a summer of protests after talks fail. Socialist Project | The Bullet. Roger Annis Quebec's student movement and the swelling ranks of its popular allies staged a massive rally and march in Montreal on May 22 in favour of the students’ fight for free, quality public education and against government repression. Estimates by some mainstream news outlets and by independent observers place the number of participants as high as 400,000. It was the largest social protest in Canadian history and amounted to a massive display of civil disobedience against a special law adopted by the Quebec government four days earlier that aims to break a more than three-month long strike of post-secondary students in the province.
Lead banners on the march read, “100 days of strike, 100 days of (government) contempt!” And “Block the sexist tuition fee hike!” Contingents of teachers, professors, high school students, public service workers and other trade unionists joined the march. Cops Wield Truncheons and Handcuffs Repression is Backfiring. Quebec student activists respond to "Open letter to the CFS" The following is a response to Activist Communique: Open Letter to the Canadian Federation of Students, which was published on May 18 on krystalline kraus's blog. The letter called for the CFS to "engage in a consistent and serious mobilizing effort to bring the Quebec student movement to the rest of Canada. " Open Letter to the CFS: A Response from Quebec Activists We write as student activists in Québec who have been involved in organizing the 2011-2012 general student strike - on both anglophone and francophone campuses. We are ecstatic to hear that so many students in the rest of Canada are building a campaign to mobilize similar strikes in Ontario and elsewhere.
We are heartened by the outpouring of solidarity, and we believe that the best way that students outside Québec can join the movement is by mobilizing strikes from the ground up in their own communities. Strike campaigns or votes must not be imposed by student federations, or even individual unions. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 5. 8. 9. Deux employés suspendus pour leur carré rouge. Postes Canada a suspendu deux employés de Montréal, vendredi, puisque ceux-ci portaient le carré rouge en appui au mouvement étudiant. La direction avait préalablement avisé certains employés de vive voix qu'il n'était pas souhaitable qu'ils affichent leur appui à la cause étudiante. Plusieurs d'entre eux arboraient le carré rouge depuis quelques semaines, mais Postes Canada a décidé de sévir vendredi. Selon le syndicat, les deux employés qui ont été suspendus ont ignoré cet avis verbal et ont continué d'arborer le symbolique bout de tissu.
L'un d'eux portait également un macaron pour dénoncer la loi spéciale qui a été votée en juin 2011 pour forcer les 48 000 employés de Postes Canada à mettre fin à leur grève. Suspensions levées Les suspensions ont finalement été levées samedi matin et les deux employés visés par les sanctions se feront rembourser les heures de travail qui leur ont été enlevées. «Pour nous, c'est tout simplement une question de liberté d'expression. M. Quebecers Lead the Way in the Global Rejection of Voodoo Reaganomics. Revised Le Printemps érable in Quebec has become the most recent extension of the movement that started with the Arab Spring and then moved to Spain where the Indignados helped prepare the way for Occupy Wall Street.
The long history of French-speaking resistance to to the English-speaking domination of North America has infused verve into the genesis of this spirited and well organized protest. The Maple Spring in Quebec is peopled by activists who refuse to accept the stale orthodoxies of a failed system of political economy that has run contrary to the public interest for more than a generation. Guillaume Nadeau-Dubois is emerging as the activist rock star of le Printemps érable. The term translates roughly as the Maple Spring or the Maple Syrup Spring. Nadeau-Dubois heads up CLASSE, the Coalition large de l’association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante. Many in English-speaking Canada were quick to point out that Quebec has the lowest tuition fees of any Canadian province. United Nations expresses concern over freedom of assembly in Quebec. David Suzuki: Montreal protesters shine spotlight on government's skewed priorities. Protests Against Brutal Repression and Draconian Law in Quebec.
Casseroles across Canada: Tonight we resist and dream together. The police call out a young demonstrator | News. How the Anglo punditocracy demonizes Quebec’s student protests. It starts in Quebec: Our revolution of love, hope and community. Resistance can be violent. How Students are Painting Montreal Red. Law meant to stifle demonstrations buoys Quebec’s student protesters.
Québec's Student Strike Turning Into a Citizens' Revolt. Quebec Student Uprising. Canadian Association of University Teachers - Quebec special law violates student rights and civil liberties. U.S. issues security memo on Montreal amid warnings of economic disruption. Lessons from Quebec's Student Protests. Montreal Student Protests (April 25) To smash or not to smash? In Montreal, pacifists tell vandals to tone it down :: The Hook. Four people detained in smoke-bomb attack on Montreal metro system. People’s Republic of Montreal? Mayor Tremblay’s protest bylaw threatens rights. Massive student strike begins with port blockade | Canada | News. Chronicle announced a mess - Public Voice - The chronicle of Josée Legault - Voir.ca. Traduction. Quebec government defends police assault on striking students, plans further repression. 'Rêve général illimité' in Quebec. 400,000+ in the streets? Quebec's students are winning... Spread the red square everywhere: Why solidarity with Quebec students is crucial.
Quebec’s Students Revolt - Charles C. W. Cooke.