One year ago to the day, my colleague Jeanne Reynolds and I announced the start by the CLASSE of an unlimited general strike against the 75 per cent increase in tuition fees announced by the Charest government.

On February 14, 2012, there were barely 20,000 people who began to walk out. At that point we did not have the least idea that we were at the birth of what would become the greatest citizens' mobilization in the history of contemporary Quebec. Where are we now, one year later?

As many of you know, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, the ex-spokesperson of CLASSE, was recently in town. Some of us had the opportunity of having a much more in depth conversation with him where we discussed, in some detail, the structure and strategy employed by CLASSE. There are some great lessons to be learned.

The greatest thing that we can learn from the Quebec student uprisings is that if we are able to mobilize en masse, if we are able to get thousands and thousands of people to coordinate activity, we can take down the government and bring about the changes that we all envision.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets here yesterday for the monthly protest march of Quebec's student movement. The movement has organized monster, monthly marches on the 22nd of each month since March of this year.

The march was an impressive display of militancy and determination just 12 days before a provincial election to take place on September 4. Some members of the radical CLASSE student association said that 100,000 people took part. A "professional counter" employed by the state broadcasting network Radio Canada gave a figure of 12,500. The broadcaster has routinely downplayed or not reported at all the size of past marches.