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Throughout the week, general assemblies and meetings of nearly a dozen student associations will be taking place to discuss strike mandates against tuition increases.
While the Concordia Student Union will discuss and vote on a one-week strike at a General Meeting on March 7, the smaller assemblies are also gathering to discuss their stand and come to internal decisions about student action moving forward.
And while the CSU and the Mob Squad have been engaged at the departmental level in many cases—such as with the Political Science Students’ Association—some of the momentum behind the GAs come from concerned students or the departments themselves, though the motivations differ from one group to another.
The Women’s Studies Student Association, for example, took their cues from the Simone de Beauvoir Institute—which took an official position on the tuition increases earlier this month.
“As an institute, we’ve framed our position on the very significant impact this tuition increase will have on women and their children. That was an important place for us to start,” said WSSA External Executive Gabrielle Bouchard, who is helping to organize the GA that will see women’s studies students vote on an open-ended strike Feb. 29....
http://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/2670
Further to epaulo's post above, 6 Concordia departments have gone on strike as of this morning (representing about 6500 students). The big CSU vote, on behalf of the whole university, is on Wednesday. It's very confusing, but I guess you have to be a university student to figure it out.
At least this smashes the right-wing media trope that: "Oh well, so far it's only the French-language schools that have joined the strike", just as previously they were saying: "Oh well, it's all arts types on strike, not the professional/science faculties".
Victory to the student movement!
Sorry, shoulda posted this before, but I'm watching the live feed of Concordia - they're about to vote!!!
http://cutvmontreal.com/live
ETA: Voting on a strike to go from March 15 to 22 (I think), then another assembly to decide whether to continue. March 22 is the national day of protest.
Almost 2,000 students are participating in the meeting - in four different locations.
Ok - they're reading the amended motion - ready to start the vote.
Looks like it will pass massively. There was a stupid amendment that was narrowly adopted, saying "students will not make a line to prevent other students and profs from entering" - but there have already been speeches from the floor talking about creative ways to do stuff anyway.
Result of vote:
In favour of strike: 1,152
Against: 557
Chad says: "Congratulations Concordia, we just made history!!"
..here's the report from "the link". their exploring direct democracy it seems.
Strike Three Vote for One Week Strike Passed at CSU General Assembly“It was definitely an interesting process, but I think that at the end of the day, the students spoke,” said Concordia Student Union VP External Chad Walcott after the vote. Walcott gave a presentation before the vote and fielded questions from students.
The show of hands, which took place in four separate rooms spread across Concordia’s two campuses, yielded 1,152 for a strike, while 557 voted against.
Discussion preceding the vote saw two changes made to the original question.
The first moved the date of the strike—which was originally set to begin on March 22—to a new date on March 15. The purpose of the change was due to the presentation of the provincial budget being moved to March 20. The new dates coincide with the last week of campaigning for the CSU general election. Polling begins on March 22....
http://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/2719
Wow. Way to go!
Whether it’s Peter Kruyt shouting down student reps, Rita de Santis peacocking about the board room and calling students “losers” or Robert Barnes telling students to stop “pissing people off,” meetings of Concordia’s Board of Governors are rarely dull.
But The Link was curious. These governors are volunteering their time and efforts, for no obvious gain—and in the process they gather no small amount of bad press. So why do it? What kind of people are on the Board?
We were a little surprised. Some of them have done great work. Others, like the three profiled below, have definitely not....
http://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/2672
Riot police use tear gas to control student protest Students clash with police during tuition hike protest Wednesday
video
Four people were injured during student protests over tuition-fee hikes as clouds of tear gas wafted Wednesday over downtown Montreal.
All the injuries were minor, although two of the people – one police officer and one protester – were whisked to hospital by ambulance to be treated for trauma.
Students converged Wednesday on several provincial buildings, including the liquor commission and the education minister's office, and they momentarily attempted to occupy the Loto-Québec headquarters which is home to the organization representing university rectors.
Helmeted and shield-wielding police charged a line of students near the Loto-Québec headquarters after they pushed down a row of metal barriers.
Several students were arrested, some tackled by police who fixed plastic ties around their wrists before hauling them away.
The boom of volleys of tear gas echoed through the street as riot-squad officers laid down a curtain of gas among the protesters, sending many stumbling away coughing and rubbing at their eyes....
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/03/07/student-protest-...
video
Montréal) De 500 à 600 étudiants et élèves en grève ont bloqué mercredi après-midi l'entrée de l'immeuble de Loto-Québec, au centre-ville de Montréal, pour protester contre la hausse des droits de scolarité, avant d'être évincés par la police de Montréal qui a dû user de la force pour les disperser. Cinq manifestants ont été arrêtés et quatre personnes, dont un policier, ont dû être transportées à l'hôpital.
http://www.cyberpresse.ca/actualites/quebec-canada/education/201203/07/0...
Bravo, Concordia!
March 2nd, 2012
On February 16th, 2012, the Dawson Student Union received a petition signed by 5% of the membership calling on a Special General Assembly to vote on Student Stike. At that point, the DSU Executive was legally bound to attempt to host a meeting on the subject.
On March 1st, 2012, over 1,100 students crammed into the 3rd floor cafeteria. However, an additional 1,500 students were unable to enter the meeting. At that point, the DSU Executive suggested that the meeting be called to order only to be immediately adjourned out of respect for the students who would not have had the opportunity to debate and vote on the strike motions.
To respect the spirit of the petition, the DSU Executive has called an emergency referendum for March 5th and 6th, 2012. Polling stations will be open from 9AM to 9PM and will be situated in the lower atrium, the upper atrium cafeteria, and the 2G Wing by the de Maisonneuve entrance.
The results of the referendum will be announced Tuesday evening.
http://mydsu.ca/section/3
quote:
Quebec’s Liberal government is committed to raising tuition fees by 75 percent or $1625 over the next five years. The tuition fee hikes are part of a sweeping austerity program involving steep social spending cuts, the imposition of a new health care tax, electricity rate increases, a hike in the regressive sales tax, and new or increased user fees for other government services.
The corporate media is uniformly against the strike, but polls show the students enjoy the support of the majority of Quebecers.
In a cynical pre-election maneuver, the Official Opposition Parti Quebecois (PQ), which has repeatedly denounced the Charest government for not eliminating the deficit fast enough, now claims that if elected it will freeze tuition fees at the current $2168 per annum through its first term.
The same newspaper editorialists who have pressed for tax cuts for big business and the wealthy are demagogically denouncing “privileged” university students for trying to make tax-payers pay for their education. The reality is that increases in tuition fees, various administrative fees, the price of text books, and the general cost-of-living are forcing ever-increasing numbers of students to incur large debts or abandon their studies. Due to two decades of cuts by Liberal and PQ governments alike, three-quarters of students are not eligible for student aid.
The student strike was initiated February 13 by the smallest of the province’s three student associations, the Coalition large de l’association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (CLASSE—The Broader Coalition of the Association for Student-Union Solidarity.
As its name would suggest, CLASSE portrays itself as more militant than FEUQ (the Québec Federation of University Students) and FECQ (Quebec Federation of College Students), both of which have close ties to the trade union bureaucracy and to the PQ. But fundamentally the perspective of all three is the same: to pressure the big business Liberal government into reconsidering its five-year tuition fee hike scheme through a single-issue protest that separates the struggle against the tuition fee hikes from a broader struggle to mobilize the working class against the austerity measures being imposed by the Charest Liberal and federal Conservative governments....
http://404systemerror.com/quebec-students-paving-the-way-to-a-general-strike/
Yeah, damn these students for failing to mobilize the way we want them to! Not a single one of these groups is redeemable!
What a load of crap, this article.
You think that's a load of crap? Look at the article on the same page right after it - and they were apparently distributing this to striking students:
Perhaps students and workers could unite and chase these armchair revolutionaries out of town?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Back to the strike:
A 22-year-old student Francis Grenier, who was injured by a police stun grenade yesterday in downtown Montréal, may have lost his sight in one eye. I haven't found any internet media reports yet (anyone?), but here is something from Facebook (in French).
There's one here. He's been operated on this morning. Note: the (graphic) picture on that page is displayed according to the wishes of the injured student. He wants people to see what the SPVM did.
Here's another one, from McGill Daily:
Outside McGill, student protestor severely injured
what is it with these anglophone schools?
The Dawson student body voted Monday and Tuesday on this issue. The results are finally in and according to Dawson Student Union’s twitter, the vote went In disfavor of the strike. The numbers went accprdingly:
On the question of a One-Week renewable Strike:
Yes (851), No (2537), Abstain (148).
On the question a 3-Day Strike:
Yes (1022), No (2065), Abstain (123).
On the questoin of a 1-Day Strike:
Yes (1285), No (2049), Abstain (163).
Global national has a video showing the police breaking down their own barricades to attack the students (March7 newscast)...pretty disgusting...as the students were being contained on the other side ...shows how the police have just deteriated to a lawless gang.
Unfortunately the reactionary wing tends to be better organized than the progressives at some schools. I don't have an inside report yet on what went wrong at Dawson. But if you watched the Concordia live feed yesterday, you could see a few eloquent speakers from the floor making legitimate-sounding statements, like the one on the picket-line amendment: "It is illegal to prevent people from going about their business, going to class, etc." The stupid amendment (which should have been ruled out of order, since it was not consistent with the spirit of the main strike motion) ended up passing narrowly. At a general assembly, unless the sabotage is opposed with facts and passion, it can succeed. Organization is everything.
Meanwhile, there's a demonstration about to start at Sherbrooke city hall, and more demos planned for Montréal this afternoon and evening.
..unionist, my french is not very good so i am limited to what i can dig up in quebec. i was wondering where is labour in regards to the students and the austerity measures in general. here in bc there is poltential for major confrontation as a number of major contracts have/are expiring at the end of march. i believe the teachers stirke will lay bare labour's intent in bc. this is not to say that they cannot be pulled into action by events occurring in another part of the country. i get a sense of intensity coming from the bc fed. there must be pressures building and they have to come up with a plan. they can see greece very well. otherwise i see buisness as usual from them for now. like the students, teachers have public support. that's a good sign.
!
Well, labour is with the students and against the last Charest budget. Everyone was there more or less in force for the big demos last year. What I don't see is concrete joint action right now. But that's hard to do, unless you're planning something big and have really mobilized the troops. Hasn't been done.
As for words:
[Biggest labour central, the CSN, release dated today]: Repression of students is not the solution
This was November, when demos were beginning - from the FTQ, with about 600,000 members among its affiliated unions:
Tuition hikes: FTQ in the street with the students!
Let me know if you want more info or translations.
Thousands marched again today in Montréal to mark both the student strike and International Women's Day.
..txs unionist. in fact there is. there's this. i'll appreciate anything you have time for.
http://vimeo.com/38126546
I had a look at it. It's basically a 7-minute ad for this proposal, which the author wants students to submit as a motion at their general assemblies. The motion, if passed, would essentially create an association, or coalition, of student groups who agree to reject, in advance, any deal that would fall short of complete elimination of the government's 5-year phased tuition increases. It would require breaking relations with any association that agrees, or has agreed, to put such proposed deals before their membership. It accepts the possibility of jeopardizing the 2012 winter session as being the strongest weapon the students have and invites others to do the same. And it mandates a per capita of $0.25 toward the new coalition.
The video itself shows how the whole strike movement, like previous ones, gets played out in a tightly scripted environment. The MSM pretend to have a dialogue. The left (and he singles out QS for some reason) and the right (both right-wing ideologues among the students, and the state) use bureaucratic methods or force to limit the movement. And the movement gets betrayed and doesn't achieve its aims.
More or less.
ETA: He also talks about free tuition as a goal, and has a brief section talking about the whole socio-economic system, the gap between rich and poor, the commodification of human beings, and the need to destroy the state and its power. But the aim seems to be to encourage students to start with a concrete act - and that's the "proposal" which I described above. I don't know when he first launched it. Oh, and I think from a stylistic viewpoint, the video is very well done, though the sound track is a bit jarring in places. He's a 27-year-old immigrant from France...