Student strike against tuition fees hike

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1132798--quebec-students-clas...

Quote:

Along with other groups protesting service fee increases, students surrounded and blocked entrances to the Montreal Stock Exchange and the adjoining Delta hotel Thursday morning. Riot police were called and officers used tear gas and batons in the ensuing scuffles. Four people were arrested.

In the hours that followed, the protesters taunted police. “Let us get an education,” they chanted, “so we don’t become policemen!”

The university and college students are in the early stages of a province-wide strike, which is set to vastly increase in size and scope as more student associations in post-secondary institutions vote to strike.

[img]http://i.thestar.com/images/9e/fc/1c534754418d9ef026810310b35d.jpg[/img]

Outstanding. Students in Québec know how powerful they are (unless they go to McGill).

Simonac, le Québec me manque.

About 200 students have been blocking the entrances at [url=http://www.radio-canada.ca/regions/Montreal/2012/02/24/001-greve-saintla... de St-Laurent[/url] since 3:00 A.M. Even though classes are cancelled, the administration is trying to gain access to the building. Students are accusing management of having locked them out yesterday. The situation is developing, but police are on the scene and there's fear they may be preparing to force their way through the picket lines.

The MSM are also making a big deal out of the fact that one institution - only - has just voted 54% against joining the strike (Université du Québec en Outaouais, in Gatineau). It's one of the few, if not the only one, that didn't vote by faculty or department.

The organization coordinating the strike has also cautiously distanced itself from yesterday's one-hour blockade of the Jacques-Cartier bridge, which is one of the crucial rush-hour arteries. It was a spontaneous action by a few hundred students - they ended up being pepper-sprayed, and I think three arrests. The student leaders are acutely conscious of the need to keep public support onside during this struggle.

[url=http://www.behindthenumbers.ca/2012/02/27/quebec-students-strike-over-tu... background piece by Eric Martin of IRIS (a Montréal-based progressive think tank)[/url]

Concordia students plan 5-day sleep-in to protest fee hikes and urge fellow students to vote for strike:

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Student+protesters+plan+sleep/621684...

The aggressive loudmouth Minister of "Education" Line Beauchamp has sent a letter to school administrations in effect telling them they can "ignore" student votes to strike and continue scheduling classes anyway. This move has been condemned by students and teachers alike:

[url=http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Students+blast+minister+response... blast Quebec education minister for urging schools to ignore strike[/url]

Quote:

Tension is mounting in Quebec colleges and universities as some schools are continuing with classes despite a student boycott – and students are livid that their protests are being dismissed. [...]

Dawson College has its vote on Thursday, while Concordia is to vote March 7. Most other universities are voting department by department.

The so-called directive was at the heart of a tense confrontation at the Université du Québec à Rimouski on Monday, when angry students blocked the entrance to the college and prevented staff from entering.

In the end, students and administrators agreed classes would be cancelled for the next two weeks, said Martine Desjardins, president of the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec. [...]

At Concordia, the administration has said teaching will continue in the event of a strike, though some staff have signed a declaration saying they pledge to accommodate students who boycott classes.

Is there a procedure under the Elections Act whereby I can formally withdraw my 2004 vote for Rebello?

I am apalled, in spite of myself, at those police uniforms. These are the clothes of the stewards of the peace?

Bravo et courage aux étudiants!

ETA. Honestly, when I first saw the second picture, I thought it was a piece of theatrical resistence making a caricature of the state. Little did I know that the state had already made a caricature of itself.

Student unions on strike & vote calendar

Total of student unions currently on strike:

72 students unions
Representing +/- 90 400 students

Total of students unions with a strike mandate – waiting to begin:

26 student unions
Representing +/- 16 152 students

Read more Student unions on strike & vote calendar

Demonstration today at the National Assembly in Québec City - and 98,500 students will be on strike by the end of the day!

[url=http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/societe/2012/03/01/001-manifestatio... 100,000 students on strike today [en français][/url]

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.

Ok - they're reading the amended motion - ready to start the vote.

Result of vote:

In favour of strike: 1,152

Against: 557

Chad says: "Congratulations Concordia, we just made history!!"

Concordia Bog
A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

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

..police and cbc calling students mobs. the repression begins.
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-...

Bravo, Concordia!

Students in Quebec: Paving the Way to a General Strike?
March 1, 2012

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-st...

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:

Quote:

Students must consciously reach out to workers as allies in a common battle and fight to transform the student strike against tuition fee increases into a unified struggle in defense of all public services, all social programmes, and all jobs.

A turn to the working class means not only sending student delegations to workplaces, but first and foremost assisting the workers in breaking politically and organizationally from the trade union bureaucracy, which for decades has isolated and suppressed the struggles of the working class.

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 [url=https://www.facebook.com/ages.cstj/posts/10150712515311944]Facebook[/url] (in French).