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Representatives of CLASSE will tour Ontario July 12-20 to meet with student associations and trade unions, with a view to exchanging experience, methods of mobilization, and strategies.
More...
I saw a post from Casseroles on Facebook noting there's a mass demonstration July 22 - but no further information, nothing. Is this a student demonstration or something else? General Strike? (we can only hope...)
It's the standard 22nd of every month march, Boom Boom - started March 22.
Oh - okay.
Been a while since I posted this classic:
I'm not going to excerpt this. Just read the whole thing.
Share Our Future – The CLASSE Manifesto
From the speaking tour I was fortunate to attend last week:
What is a Student Strike?
Back to Class Means Back on Strike
The P&P panel - especially Martin Patriquin - this week speculated that Charest will use the student strike to get elected to a fourth term in office. He has nothing else he can run on, and he wants to get the election over with before the Charbonneau Commission is fully up and running.
Sorry if this has been posted somewhere else on babble, it's summer and I haven't been following all threads as closely.
I quite liked this piece, although it comes off as slightly dry at first ;)
http://societyandspace.com/2012/07/06/jean-michaud-the-return-of-darkness/
JEAN MICHAUD ‘The return of Darkness'
"This brief history of the logic behind low tuition fees for higher education in Québec helps to realise that: 1) universal access to tertiary education in Québec is not a new fad germinating in the unripe brains of young leftist agitators, and that: 2) it was the state's very own idea on the recommendation of a Royal Commission, a choice that was respected and prized for four decades."
The Commission des droits de la personne et de la jeunesse published today their analysis of Bill 78... and it is a pretty scathing indictment of this terrible legislation.
Basically, they found that sections 12 to 31 of the law, taken together, violate such fundamental freedoms as freedom of conscience, freedom of opinion, freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association and that these violations are not justified.
The Commission has no power of invalidation, but their opinion obviously carries considerable weight, so this is a pretty big deal.
Here is their report and here is a press release about it. (No English version for the moment.)
Ummm: "Even on a cursory read this law was condemnable. We called on people to peacefully disobey it. Today, the Commission validates our reaction of that time. It is imperative that the government repeal this law, or at least delete the sections which are not in accordance with the Charter."
ETA: And CLASSE weighs in.
- Vancouver Island Casseroles this Sunday in solidarity with Quebec! Casserole Cowichan Sunday at 19:45 at Providence Farm
- Manifestation nationale de la CLASSE : le 22 juillet, les néolibéraux... DEHORS ! Sunday at 14:00 at Place Emilie Gamelin
80,000 demonstrated today in Montréal, with demos also in Québec City and Trois-Rivières.
Red squares despite the heat
Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erivf37HkWE
Police declared the Montréal demo illegal before it started, of course, because no one told them where the student movement is headed! But they "tolerated" it because the students didn't carry out any suicide bombings or tactical nuclear attacks, contrary to their well-known terrorist proclivities.
Sensible comments by rabble correspondent Ethan Cox on The Current this morning, about the role of the student movement in the upcoming election - especially, their need to be "warm and cuddly".
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/in-quebec-election-three-wa...
a good run-down of the battle grounds, that.
Red squares follow Charest to Vermont!
Get this... 1,000 people demonstrated in the streets of Burlington, Vermont, on the eve of the conference of eastern premiers and New England governors. Many wore red squares and condemned Charest, expressing support for Québec students. Also targeted were the Plan Nord and Hydro-Québec's attempts to expand its market.
Watch the video!
A class action lawsuit has been launched against the city of Montreal on behalf of protesters who were arrested May 23 during a mass demonstration of student tuition fees.
Lawyer Marc Chetrit has filed the case in Quebec Superior Court alleging that the city and its police department violated Charter Rights during the arrest and detention of more than 500 people.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/07/31/class-action-lawsuit-student-protest.html
I think all students need a concerted effort for protesting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa where the federal purse minders are at.
Surely you mean the White House, where they phone Harper and tell him how much he can give Charest in transfer payments for education?
I'm just gobsmacked that all the provinces have such vastly different tuition fee schedules, given that Parliament Hill runs the show.
The aspect of the story getting lots of attention from the Québecor media and other right-wingers is that the two individuals who filed the request are the lawyer Marc Chetrit (once a Liberal activist, supposedly) and Jean-Pierre Lord, a PQ riding president.
Apparently some of us require no schooling in neoliberalism.
Quebec students seek to broaden strike, but CLASSE leaders capitulate to union opposition
I feel badly for them. The big business-friendly PQ will likely betray them, again.
United we stand.
The fact that all the provinces have such vastly different tuition fee schedules seems, on the face of it, evidence that Parliament, though a sponsor, does not run the show.
In other words, there really is a point to students acting at the provincial level. They don't need to truck off to Parliament Hill, as Fidel suggests, or truck off to the White House, as you would (tongue-in-cheek, I'm sure
) would have them do, eh?!
That's right, Canada is a region of loosely affiliated northern colonies and territories existing for the convenience of corporate America to raid our resources at will. It's a kind of northern "ice box" administrated over by loyal appointees obedient to the corporatocracy and Uncle Whiskers. Canadians would replace the Harpers if we could figure out what they do. Apparently funding education is not one of their many colonial administrative tasks. The F-35's are really a Canadian-made warplane, and who needs billions in core funding for post-secondary? - not
Canadianuniversities and colleges here in the ice box apparently. And apparently PQ can afford free tuition all the while subsidizing the warplanes made in America, the tar sands, and U.S.-based auto industry to the tune of 20%. Neoliberalism? What's that eh?That's so 90's Unionist, since Obama got elected Comrade Harper takes his orders from Beijing now, Washington is a has been.
And Diefenbaker wasn't a sellout, either. Old Dief stood up to the Mericans when Tories of the day sent thousands of jobs and an entire aircraft industry to the states. And what a bargain those dud Bomarc missiles were. F35's are just today's version of the Bomarc lemons.
And today Canadian taxpayers, Quebecers, too, continue subsidizing U.S.-based manufacturing and energy companies. And today's Tories are no different when allowing Canadian flagship companies to break up and be pawned-off to the four winds same as Avro, and same as Newbridge Networks and Nortel. And it looks like RIM will be the next target for predatory foreign takeover. Come take us over and hollow out the country some more, is what our two old line parties might as well say to the rest of the world.
We export Canadian based tech and innovation and jobs so that the country does not become so prosperous as to climb out of national indebtedness to private banks and foreign lenders and other superrich friends of the party. What does Ottawa's ability to pay the bills have to do with funding PSE? Plenty.
In fact, neoliberalism and defunding higher education to the tune of billions of dollars since the 1990's is part of the grand central plan to undermine Canada's economy and make us even more reliant on old world colonial-extractive resource intensive economies. Our two oldest political parties in Ottawa have made special efforts to defund basic research and home-grown innovation in order that Canada's remains a hewer and drawer economy. That's Uncle Sam's and the corporatocracies central planning not our dougheads in Lib-Tory federal government. Our corrupt stooges haven't had an original thought in their empty heads for a very long time.
Tories are not shrewd business types. In fact, they shouldn't be trusted to manage a lemonade stand. It's time to clear do-nothing lemons from the halls of powerlessness and political impotence in Ottawa.
Divided we fall.
Scene from today's demo of several hundred students, "mères en colère" (angry mothers), and others, against a host of neoliberal policies. The demo was illegal, of course, because people are not allowed to assemble and express themselves without licking the boots of the authorities.
Just saw this: Protesters disperse after Montreal police fire projectile
excerpt:
Moments later, police issued a dispersal order saying projectiles had been thrown.
The riot squad moved in, firing at least one gas projectile.
Concordia University student David Rankin said he was disappointed the police responded with such force when students were totally non-violent.
"They came in from all sides, intimidating the students and banging their batons on their shields," he said. "We weren't doing anything violent. The police just want to silence students."