Student strike against tuition hike #4

CLASSE will organize a demo in Montréal every evening at 8:30 pm until at least May 4. 

Manifesto for a Maple Spring

This evening's demonstration has already been declared "illegal" by the fascist pigs. This has become standard operating practice.

Chile to Raise Corporate Taxes as Students Reignite Protests

Chile’s President Sebastian Pinera will raise corporate taxes to fund education as he looks to head off a repeat of last year’s students protests that shuttered schools and led to weekly confrontations with police.

The government will increase the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 18.5 percent, while reducing income taxes and the stamp duty on loans, Pinera said in a televised address to the nation last night. The state will also cut fuel costs through a sliding tax rate and increase taxes on hard liquor. The measures will raise as much as $1 billion a year, Pinera said.

The government decided to overhaul the tax system after students led seven months of demonstrations last year to pressure authorities to increase spending on education. Protests resumed this week with at least 48,000 students marching through Santiago, the biggest demonstration in seven months, according to police estimates.....

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-27/chile-to-raise-corporate-tax-ra...

Proposal for a Social Strike (by AFESH-UQAM)

Whereas the student strike movement has reached a historic magnitude and the obstinacy of the ruling political class is equally historic in its refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of student demands,

Whereas the student strike movement aspires in its struggle to a radical social transformation and as such goes beyond mere corporatist interests,

Whereas the hike in tuition fees represents only one aspect of a much large plan of austerity measures aimed at privatizing a growing number of social spheres and bearing in mind the related or connected issues of the health tax, the hike in electricity fees and the hike in cost of rents,

Noting the climate of anti-unionism aided by the relentlessness and mediocrity of many politicians and leaders, which is expressed through widespread lock-outs, restrictions on the right to strike and the tacit support of strike breakers,

Noting further that it is a matter of utmost urgency that we step up the strike movement in the face of government inaction and that the student movement has the potential to act as a catalyst for other social struggles, (your student association) calls for a social strike for May 1st and 15th of this year, so that these dates become days of general social strike and economic disruption;

Given that the organization of this social strike is a matter of emergency in order to ratchet up the pressure on the government, be it further resolved that (your student association) will without delay reach out to various provincial and regional unions and community groups;

Be it resolved that (your student association) call on its member associations to make contact with their regional unions and community groups;

Be it resolved that (your student association) promote the social strike to the wider public by whatever means available;

Be it resolved that (your student association) explain and popularize the idea of a social strike to its members and in its appeals to the public in general;

Be it resolved that the days of social strike be in solidarity with the striking workers at AVEOS and Rio Tinto and all other currently active social and union movements;

Be it resolved that (your student association) also bring all these demands to CLASSE.

http://rougesquad.org/en/content/proposal-social-strike-may-1st-and-15th

The Doors Open
Charest, Beauchamp Offer Alternative to $1625 Hike

Quebec Premier Jean Charest and Education Minister Line Beauchamp announced a tweaked alternative to planned tuition fee increases at a press conference on April 27.

In an attempt to calm the waters of a province stricken by 11 weeks of non-stop student action, the Premier announced a set of alterations to its intended $1625 tuition increase over five years—stretching instead an increase of $1778 over seven years.

In addition to a slower tuition increase, the government is offering an extra $39 million to bursaries and loans, as well as making loan payments proportional to income....

http://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/2978

Highly reputed Québec actor, author, and playwright [url=http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_Martin]Alexis Martin[/url] was attacked and arrested April 25, even though he wasn't participating in that evening's demo and never heard the police declaration that it was "illegal".

Although in no way resisting, he was struck in the arm and the abdomen while trying to explain to a riot cop that he wasn't part of the group. He was made to sit in the road for 45 minutes before being searched, handcuffed, and boarded onto a bus where he was made to wait for 2 hours, his hands cuffed behind his back. He was released in the early hours of the morning after being handed a $146 "contravention".

Alexis Martin said in his public statement [my translation]:

Quote:

For the good of everyone, the government must negotiate the tuition fee hike with the students. That's my personal conviction. At the same time, the students don't need me to express their demands. They are doing so with great intelligence. [...] [My two hours in the bus] at least allowed me to discover, to my satisfaction, the calm, intelligence, and humour of these young men and women who show a profound understanding of the essence of democracy: Speaking out.

The story is detailed [url=http://www.ledevoir.com/culture/actualites-culturelles/348680/le-comedie....

Freedom 55 wrote:

Great job, Lex!

[url=http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/1221254309/ID=2227975595]Concordia student union representative Lex Gill responds to the Quebec government's offer[/url]

I am really impressed with this young activist.  She certainly is persuasive.

Thousands of students have been marching in the streets of Montréal. At about 10:15 pm, as usual, the demo was declared "illegal" - there had been one arrest and apparently two windows broken. And some graffiti! Horrors! But the demo continued, and the riot squad was too chickenshit to launch a full-scale attack on such a huge group. Now there seems to have been a charge at the front of the demo (it's on Ste-Catherine St. near Place des Arts, on the way back to the Émilie-Gamelin square starting point), but I don't know more than that yet.

One thing is clear. The student movement has powerfully answered "NO!" to Charest's mockery and cynicism. It makes you proud.

Via Dru Oja Jay

Quebec student fight gains international attention

video

MONTREAL — What began as a provincial policy spat over tuition hikes in Quebec has transformed, in just over a year, into a movement of broader student unrest now receiving some international attention.

In the last few days, Quebec's student protests have received coverage in French news outlets like Le Monde and Agence France-Presse, in Australia, in New Zealand, and in the U.S., including on CNN.

A New York Times blog suggested tuition fees and student debt could become a key theme in President Barack Obama's bid for re-election as the president tries to energize young voters. The "French-Canadian students" were cited as an example in the tuition debate, as part of an international outcry against the high price of education.

The annual tuition for a private university in the U.S. is over $30,000 a year, with collective student debt poised to reach $1 trillion -- which is even more than all the credit-card debt in that country. So why should Quebecers be complaining about a comparably measly $1,625-a-year hike?

Protesters say it's because they want their education system to move in the other direction -- away from the U.S. model and closer to a system like Sweden's, where post-secondary education is free.

The opposition has grown steadily, ever since the Quebec government announced its $325-a-year, five-year increases in the March 2011 budget. While the move would still leave Quebec with some of the lowest tuition rates in the country, protesters say they're fighting for principles......

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20120428/quebec-student-fight-gains-international-attention-120428/#ixzz1tMKLedH4

[url=http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/March+anger+targets+Charest+offer/65... march anger targets Charest's offer[/url]

Quote:

For the third night in a row, students took to the streets in downtown Montreal Friday, venting a fresh sense of betrayal and with no end in sight for the 11-week-old strike by 180,000 students across the province.

Police made 35 arrests. Of those, 24 were men, 11 were women and three were youth, according to the Montreal police.

Premier Jean Charest and Education Minister Line Beauchamp earlier on Friday made public the government's offer to the students, which includes $39 million more for bursaries, increased eligibility for student loans and phasing in the tuition hike over seven years rather than five.

But student leaders rejected the proposal, and titled the nightly demonstration's theme as "It's not an offer, it's an insult." Protesters expressed deep disappointment with the government which, until Wednesday had been in face-to-face talks with the three main student groups.

"I don't feel it was an honest offer," said Étienne De Sève, a 31-year-old Université du Québec à Montréal student, about the proposal, saying that it does not deal with the students' core demand - a freeze in tuition fees at 2012 levels.

Breaking: Quebec Students Call for Saturday Protests

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/04/28/quebec-tuitin-pr...

"Student groups reject concessions, call offer 'an insult' - begin nightly march in downtown Montreal.."

This is the kind of reaction the Liberal-NDP Ontario austerity budget should have been met with. Good to see there are still people who get it..."

Police Brutality Fuels Fire of Student Anger in Canada (and vid)

http://tv.globalresearch.ca/2012/04/police-brutality-fuels-fire-student-...

"Desgagne added that people were 'infuriated' by police brutality towards peaceful protesters, stressing that it would only' fuel public misconduct' and support for the student movement.."

More news:

[url=http://www.newswire.ca/fr/story/963727/le-gouvernement-charest-ajoute-l-... categorically rejects the Charest government offer[/url]

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:

Quote:

"Charest - dehors! On va te trouver une job dans le nord!"

To Quebec Students

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

in sol!

 Quebec student strike makes international news, but "Charest just isn't listening"
 Student groups, police agree vast majority of protesters are peaceful

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.”...

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Quebec+student+strike+makes+international+news+Charest+just+listening/6536473/story.html#ixzz1tQOvPl60

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.3724987128188.259150.138117985...

NDPP wrote:

Young NDP MPS Left Sitting On Their Hands in Quebec Tuition Protests

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!

Quebec student group rejects Liberal proposal to end strike

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...

The CSN has called on its members to stage symbolic pickets outside their workplaces at lunchtime on May 1.

Appuyons les étudiants

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=78704D92AE017908C27...

edit..fucking great video!!!

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

Lipdub ROUGE

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

M. Spector wrote:

NDPP wrote:

Young NDP MPS Left Sitting On Their Hands in Quebec Tuition Protests

Yup, typical bureaucratic NDP attitude.

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.