Might be a Charles de Gaulle in their someplace. It's happened before.
Might Canada break up before the U.S.?
REH
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell
Sent: Friday, May 25, 2012 10:20 AM
To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Quebec's 'Truncheon Law' Rebounds as Student
Strike Spreads
I think there is a division of opinion in Quebec. Anglophones seem to still
be continuing their studies, while francophones are out in the streets.
Also a division between old and young, both anglo and franco.
Two things to consider: the first protest and the second protest in reaction
to the new law. The second protest is bringing in many from all parts of
the population, or so it seems.
Don't see how this can end in a peaceful way.
arthur
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of michael gurstein
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2012 11:15 PM
To: [email protected]; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Quebec's 'Truncheon Law' Rebounds as Student
Strike Spreads
Interesting how opinions especially in the ROC seem so strongly polarized on
this.
I`m wondering if they are as strongly polarized in Quebec (the article seems
to hint that they are not, that there is significant public support... If
so, I`m wondering what this means and particularly what it means for the
future of Quebec in Canada.
M
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2012 8:07 PM
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION; michael gurstein
Cc: [email protected]; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME
DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Quebec's 'Truncheon Law' Rebounds as Student
Strike Spreads
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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