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A slogan from the demo: "Un peuple, tout nu, jamais ne sera vaincu" ("The people, naked, will never be defeated")
HA HA HA The people, butt naked (just sounded better), will never be defeated" - yeah, sure hope the day was warm!
The people, undressed, can never be suppressed!
14°C in Montreal at 8 p.m., scattered showers.
Outaouais Cégep forced to cancel classes 3rd day in a row despite injunction
Charest's Liberal Party is holding its general council this weekend in Victoriaville - they changed the venue from Montréal to try to avoid mass protests. But students know how to use Google Maps!
Soyons 200,000 à Victoriaville! [note: this is a Facebook page]
Victoriaville sur les dents
I posted this in the activism thread because of the broader lessons for organizing in general, but I'll post it here again:
The Real News: How did Quebec Students Mobilize Hundreds of Thousands for Strike?
There will be a meeting between Quebec and the four student groups (CLASSE, FEUQ, FECQ, TaCEQ) this afternoon. Also convened: Fédération des cégeps, CRÉPUQ, and CSN/CSQ/FTQ.
Let's hope this won't be just a PR operation for the Liberals' meeting.
The Contentious Quebecois: Province-Wide Student Strike Enters Fourth Month
In arguably the most radical political climate north of the Rio Grande, a strike by university students in Quebec has led to the biggest upsurge in civil resistance Canada has seen in decades. There’s energy and uncertainty in the streets of Montreal, the province’s largest city. The symbol of the movement: the little red felt square (“squarely in the red,” as in, broke), is ubiquitous, pinned on the jackets and backpacks of students and supporters. Protest banners hang from university buildings and posters plaster signposts. Students are everywhere, as are the police, who dart around the city in vans, frequently deploying in full riot gear.
The Quebec government of Premier Jean Charest has proposed a 30 percent increase in tuition fees, or $1,625, over five years. The measure would raise the cost of tuition in Quebec from its current rate of $2,168 to $3,793 by the 2016–17 school year. In response, approximately 170,000 students, nearly half of those enrolled in Quebec’s post secondary institutions, with the number swelling to as many as 300,000 on key days of protest, have refused to attend classes since early February. Instead they have taken to the streets, holding daily general assemblies at campuses to determine strategy, and are engaged in a diverse range of actions — from mass marches to blockades of bridges and the Montreal Stock Exchange. On April 24, students at three Montreal-area high schools voted to begin a three-day strike of their own, in solidarity with their older peers....
https://www.indypendent.org/2012/05/04/contentious-quebecois-province-wi...
Quick follow-up on my post above: the list of invited unions is rather strange... CSN is understandable (Cégep teachers, some lecturers), CSQ... "passe encore" (a couple of lecturers, but not that many)... but the presence of the FTQ is something of an enigma.
The biggest WTF question, however, is the absence of the FQPPU—the federation of university teachers...
PSAC is a FTQ affiliate, and they have some bargaining units at McGill (MUNACA for one...) - maybe part-time faculty, TAs, not sure... And there are USW (Métallos) represented trades workers at Concordia and PSAC research assistants... Bit of a thin connection, but I don't know all the threads.
Good question!