Breaking store windows, throwing bricks at police, blocking traffic
and preventing people from going to work (or to the hospital) and
setting cars on fire is not about freedom of speech.
Quoting michael gurstein <[email protected]>:
Quebec's 'Truncheon Law' Rebounds as Student Strike Spreads
A draconian law to quell demonstrations has only
galvanised public support for young Quebecois
protesting tuition fee hikes
by Martin Lukacs
Guardian (UK)
May 24, 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/24/quebec-trunch
eon-law-rebounds-student-strike
At a tiny church tucked away in a working-class neighbourhood in Montreal's
east end, Quebec's new outlaws gathered on Sunday for a day of
deliberations. Aged mostly between 18 and 22, their membership in a
progressive student union has made them a target of government scorn and
scrutiny. And they have been branded a menace to society because of their
weapons: ideas of social justice and equal opportunity in education,
alongside the ability to persuade hundreds of thousands to join them in the
streets.
Under a draconian law passed by the Quebec government on Friday, their very
meeting could be considered a criminal act. Law 78 - unprecedented in recent
Canadian history - is the latest, most desperate manoeuvre of a provincial
government that is afraid it has lost control over a conflict that began as
a student strike against tuition hikes but has since spread into a protest
movement with wide-ranging social and environmental demands.
Labelled a "truncheon law" by its critics, it imposes severe restrictions on
the right to protest. Any group of 50 or more protesters must submit plans
to police eight hours ahead of time; they can be denied the right to
proceed. Picket lines at universities and colleges are forbidden, and
illegal protests are punishable by fines from $5,000 to $125,000 for
individuals and unions - as well as by the seizure of union dues and the
dissolution of their associations.
In other words, the government has decided to smash the
student movement by force.
The government quickly launched a public relations offensive
to defend itself. Full-page ads in local newspapers ran with the headline:
"For the sake of democracy and citizenship." Quebec's minister of public
security, Robert Dutil, prattled about the many countries that have passed
similar laws:
"Other societies with rights and freedoms to protect have
found it reasonable to impose certain constraints - first of all to protect
protesters, and also to protect the public."
Such language is designed to make violence sound benevolent
and infamy honourable. But it did nothing to mask reality for those who have
flooded the streets since the weekend and encountered police emboldened by
the new legislation. Riot squads beat and tear-gassed people
indiscriminately, targeted journalists, pepper- sprayed bystanders in
restaurants, and mass-arrested hundreds, including more than 500 Wednesday
night - bringing the tally from the last three months of protest to a record
Canadian high of more than 2,500. The endless night-time drone of
helicopters has become the serenade song of a police state.
In its contempt for students and citizens, the government has riled a
population with strong, bitter memories of harsh measures against social
unrest - whether the dark days of the iron-fisted Duplessis era, the martial
law enforced by the Canadian army in 1970, or years of labour battles marred
by the jailing of union leaders. These and other occasions have shown
Québécois how the political elite has no qualms about trampling human
rights to maintain a grip on power.
Which is why those with experience of struggle fresh and old have answered
Premier Jean Charest with unanimity and collective power. There are now
legal challenges in the works, broad appeals for civil disobedience, and a
brilliant website created by the progressive CLASSE student union, on which
thousands have posted photos of themselves opposing the law. (The website's
title is "Somebody arrest me" but also puns on a phrase to shake a person
out of a crazed mental spell.)
And Wednesday, on the 100th day of the student strike, Québécois from
every walk of life offered a rejoinder to the claim that "marginals" were
directing and dominating the
protests: an estimated 300,000-400,000 people marched in the streets,
another Canadian record, and in full violation of the new law. They
brandished the iconic red squares that have now transformed into a symbol
not just of accessible education but the defence of basic freedoms of
assembly and protest. Late into the night, a spirit of jubilant defiance
spread through the city. On balconies along entire streets, and on
intersections occupied by young and old, the sound of banging pots and pans
rang out, a practice used under Latin American regimes.
The clarity that has fired the students' protest has, until now,
conspicuously eluded most of English- speaking Canada. This is because the
image of the movement has been skewed and distorted by the establishment
media. Sent into paroxysms of bafflement and contempt by the striking
students, they have painted them as spoiled kids or crazed radicals out of
touch with society, who should give up their supposed entitlements and
accept the stark economic realities of the age.
All this is said with a straight face. But young people in Quebec, followed
now by many others, have not been fooled. They know the global economic
crisis of 2008 exposed as never before the abuses of corporate finance, and
that those responsible were bailed out rather than held to account. They
know that meetings of international leaders at the G20 end by dispatching
ministers home to pay the bills on the backs of the poorest and most
vulnerable, with tuition hikes and a toxic combination of neoliberal
economic policies. And with every baton blow and tear-gas blast, they
perceive with ever greater lucidity that their government will turn
ultimately to brute violence to impose such programs and frighten those who
dissent.
To those who marched Wednesday, and the great numbers who cheered them on,
the fault-lines of justice are evident. This is a government that has
refused to sit down and negotiate with student leaders in good faith, but
invites an organised crime boss to a fundraising breakfast; a government
that has claimed free education is an idea not even worth dreaming about,
when it would cost only 1% of Quebec's budget and could be paid for simply
by reversing the regressive tax reforms, corporate give-aways, or capital
tax phase-outs of the last decade; a government whose turn to authoritarian
tactics has now triggered a sharp decline in support, and which has clumsily
accelerated a social crisis that may now only begin to be resolved by
meeting the students' demands.
As the debate went on at the CLASSE meeting in the church last Sunday, the
students' foresight proved wise beyond their years. "History doesn't get
made in a day," one argued into the microphone. Not in a day, no doubt, but
in Quebec, over this spring and the summer, history is indeed being made.
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