Student strike against tuition hike #4

More news:

TACEQ categorically rejects the Charest government offer

TACEQ is one of the four organizations that were briefly involved in the negotiations earlier this week.

Also - I love the slogan that has been picked up at demos since Charest made his disgusting "joke" last weeking about finding demonstrators a job as far north as possible (when they were demonstrating against his Plan Nord roll-out at the convention centre). Now it's his turn:

To Quebec Students

Please come to Ontario and teach the locals how to protest weaponized provincial 'austerity' attacks!

in sol!

MONTREAL - After 11 weeks of demonstrations, picket lines and other acts of civil disobedience, the debate over rising tuition fees has spread beyond Quebec and onto the international stage.

News of Quebec’s rising tide of protests has made headlines on major cable networks like CNN, the BBC and Al-Jazeera and in newspapers across the world. But as students prepared to pour onto Montreal’s streets for a fourth consecutive night on Saturday, some quipped that their message has yet to reach Premier Jean Charest’s radar.

“I think we’ve seen that no matter how far reaching the movement is, Charest just isn’t listening,” said Martine Desjardins, president of the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ). “After months of taking to the streets, it’s encouraging and surprising to see the struggle catching on like this. It’s been tiring for students to have to keep marching and striking but this gives us new hope moving forward.”...

Resistance is not violence

Putting property damage and economic disruption in perspective

quote

There seems to be a widespread belief that, in order to be legitimate, a protest must maintain civility at all times, abide by the rules, and even turn the other cheek when met with increasing hostility from the powers that be. In other words, the legitimacy of the cause is said to be determined by the way in which it is expressed. In the feminist blog spaces I frequent, we call this a tone argument: women are often told they must be less “shrill” to be heard, and people of colour are told they’re too “angry.” Whether the topic is an individual complaint or a 300,000-person movement, this argument only serves as a way of shutting down dialogue. If you truly believe someone is right, you don’t call them a liar because of the tone they use. If you truly believe a cause is justified, you don’t say things like “I used to oppose the tuition hikes, but now students’ tactics have turned me against them.”

Because the thing is, those rules about how to behave? They’re created by the people who profit from the status quo. The people who benefit from women being silenced and people of colour being oppressed and universities being havens for the rich and ruling-class. You can’t win with them: no protest will ever be peaceful enough, docile enough, non-threatening enough to suit their wishes. Expressions of anger against the status quo will always be called disruptive, even violent. Meanwhile, we live in a system that privileges the accumulation of capital over the value of human life, and oppresses us according to our gender, race, ability, age, or class in order to sustain that accumulation. This system enacts daily violence on both those who defy it and those who simply live within it. This violence may be physical – such as the police brutality, surveillance, and disproportionate arrests experienced by student protestors and also by communities of colour, queer communities, and others on a routine basis. Or it may be less tangible but equally destructive, such as the effects of being systematically excluded from higher education, higher-paying jobs, and the possibility of economic “success.”

It should be obvious to everyone that smashing a window is hardly equivalent in severity to using riot shield or baton to beat a student and send them to the hospital unconscious or with a broken limb. But while students have been demonized for the former, police have regularly done the latter with impunity from the government and most media. However, beyond the distinction between property damage and physical harm, we must recognize that one is an act of resistance, which seeks to open up new spaces of possibility, while the other is an act of oppression reinforcing and upholding the unequal status quo. Moving beyond the idea of violence as an individual action allows us to focus on the systemic oppression perpetrated by policies such as the proposed tuition hikes, which would restrict education and opportunity only to those whose families are already in positions of privilege. By naming that oppression, we can recognize the necessity of actions that resist those policies – whether they are free teach-ins organized outside the oppressive framework of institutional education or physical attacks on the structures that uphold and promote an unequal society.

Student democracy in action (pictures of recent student general assemblies).

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3724987128188.259150.1381179851&type=3

Yup, typical bureaucratic NDP attitude. An historic radicalization is taking place and masses of people are in the streets of Quebec demanding change, but the NDP wants nothing to do with them, and has nothing to say about the issues other than "Let's hope there will be a settlement".

Stop rocking the boat, people, and let us get on with the parliamentary dog & pony show! We abhor any kind of violence, unless it's being committed by NATO troops and aircraft or Israel. Oh, and don't forget to vote for us again next election!

MONTREAL — Quebec’s most hard line student association has rejected the government’s proposal to end the student strike in a unanimous vote at a weekend congress.

The Coalition large de l’association pour une solidarite syndicale etudiante (CLASSE), characterized as too radical by the Liberals who have refused to include the group in negotiations, debated the offer this weekend.

The outcome of that debate wasn’t surprising considering the group’s initial reaction on Friday was dismissive of the proposal, which, among other things, would spread the tuition increase over seven years instead of five.

There were reports that the CLASSE was also going to vote to replace its spokesman, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, at the weekend congress, but CLASSE officials flatly denied that and said there was no question of replacing him for the moment.

Nadeau-Dubois has taken a lot of heat for the association’s stance on vandalism and violence. A Facebook page set up calling for his resignation has obtained more than 7,500 likes in just a few days.

Protesters have been holding daily protests lately, some resulting in arrests, including over 30 on Friday night, when acts of vandalism are committed.

Fearing more trouble in Montreal, where a recent riot resulted in over 80 arrests, the Quebec Liberal Party has moved next week’s scheduled party general council meeting out of town.

In a statement issued Sunday morning, the party said “following recent demonstrations and after consultations with the Centre Mont Royal, the direction of the party has decided to move the event.”

The Liberals will now meet in Victoriaville, which lies about halfway between Montreal and Quebec City.

Students groups were planning to disrupt the demonstration in much the same way they disrupted the recent Plan Nord job fair a week ago.

In the wake of the news about the move to Victoriaville, the CLASSE tweeted that they intend to follow the Liberals to the new location.

The Liberal meeting takes place May 4-6.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/29/quebec-student-group-rejects-lib...

video

La grève des étudiantes et des étudiants entre dans sa 12e semaine. Il s’agit du plus important conflit étudiant de l’histoire du Québec. En éducation, comme en santé, et dans bien d’autres secteurs de la société, le gouvernement cherche à faire porter de plus en plus la facture des services publics sur les utilisateurs de ceux-ci. Pour la CSN, l’éducation doit être une priorité nationale.

Le mardi 1er mai, si le conflit est toujours en cours, portons le carré rouge et démontrons notre appui aux étudiantes et aux étudiants en grève. Sur l’heure du dîner, organisons des piquetages symboliques à l’extérieur de nos lieux de travail.

http://www.csn.qc.ca/web/csn/menu_accueil;jsessionid=78704D92AE017908C274CBE5FB923F92

edit..fucking great video!!!

The latest strike video to go viral (in French).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9YVprVrnfZ0#!

I should add, the NDP would be hypocritical to support the Quebec student strikers because NDP governments in Manitoba and Nova Scotia, where tuition fees are much higher than in Quebec, are continuing to increase tuition fees. And supporting the student strike in Quebec would undermine those NDP governments who support higher tuition fees, as it is harder for them to get away with increasing tuition when there are jurisdictions like Quebec and Newfoundland where it is low.

The Liberal Party of Quebec Premier Jean Charest, faced with a student-protest movement that has often turned violent, said Sunday it was relocating its annual convention to a city outside Montreal.

The party had been scheduled to hold its party meeting at the Centre Mont-Royal in Montreal May 4 to 6.

Instead, it will hold the convention in Victoriaville, 170 kilometres to the east, the party said in a statement.

Since mid-February, the provincial government has faced a stiff challenge from students angry over plans to raise school fees as part of an effort to rein in the budget deficit.

After talks with the government broke down, students took to the streets, resulting in violent clashes with police and smashed storefronts in Montreal.

Charest on Friday offered a compromise - to stretch out the tuition hike over seven years - but the students wouldn't budge, and again took to the streets Saturday night.

On Sunday, CLASSE, the organization that represents half of the 180,000 students still on strike, rejected the government's new offer.

Meanwhile, the only glimmer of hope for a resolution heading into Week 12 of the dispute is the possibility of mediation.

Charest's offer was "insulting," student leaders said. "Our only choice is to continue to be on strike and in the streets," said Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, spokes-man of student organization CLASSE.

"There is a lot of panic in the Liberal government. We are beginning to seriously destabilize them. They soon won't have a choice but to back down."

Stories circulated on the week-end after a Facebook page calling for Nadeau-Dubois's resignation received more than 7,500 likes in a few days. Not so, Nadeau-Dubois said, noting a Face-book page devoted to Charest's resignation has more than 123,000 likes.

But overall cost of living is as cheap and prolly cheaper in NDP Manitoba compared to PQ. Of course, the anti-NDP party would never mention that. Not everyone is a student in Canada.

The students are providing pretty good diversion for the Charest crooks and their well connected friends embroiled in corruption charges. And the newz media are playing right along.

Workers at several social agencies in Montreal will be going on strike May 1 and May 15 answering the call of la CLASSE for social strikes on those days.

Salut aux permanents et permanentes des groupes communautaires qui brandissent fièrement le drapeau de la grève sociale en solidarité avec la lutte étudiante!

Plusieurs groupes ont déclaré la grève pour les premiers et 15 mai prochain en solidarité avec la lutte étudiante et le mouvement de contestation social en général! Par exemple: Les employéEs du Réseau D’entraide de Verdun d’Halte-Femmes de Montréal-Nord, de l’Organisation Populaire des Droits Sociaux – Région Montréal et de l’Acef du Nord....

https://sitt.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/des-groupes-communautaires-de-mont...

I'm tired. Too much going on here. Of three demonstrations (one run by the unions and women's groups, the usual nightly one by the students, and one by CLAC and black bloc types etc.), of course the police geared their violence and the MSM turned their full attention to the third one - 107 arrests out of a couple hundred participants. The other marches and rallies, regrouping thousands, were left alone and seem to have unfolded without incident.

The Charest government is getting more desperate by the minute. Its fight for public opinion is based on spreading the lies that the students are inflexible, that their demonstrations are violent, that they hurt the interests of the "taxpayers", and that they are divided. Unity is more important than ever, and the students are doing an incredible job to maintain their stand of principle, their democratic decision-making, and their unity in the face of nonstop provocation.

The Gazette.

Sorry for this crappy MSM link, but if you read between the lines you can figure out one or two factual things. The real student march was obviously only getting under way when that story was filed.