As Quebec's historic student struggle enters its 13th week of strike and constant mobilization, the battle has entered a new round. At the beginning of May the provincial Charest Liberals finally sat down with students and other groups to produce an offer that is now being voted on by students at colleges and universities across Quebec.

But already 18 out of 19 student assemblies have rejected the agreement by significant majorities, suggesting the conflict may be long from over. The Minister of Finance has suggested that ultimately, it may be the voters who resolve this crisis.

Student demonstrations have not slowed down either. For two weeks now, the students have been marching late into the night from 9 pm to 2 am. Hundreds of demonstrators snake through downtown Montreal, tailed and often blocked by muscular units of riot police who seem eager to gas the protestors or even beat them up.


Police violence and aggression has reached a new low. On May 4th, several thousand of students, labour and community groups demonstrated outside the provincial Liberal Party's general council meeting in Victoriaville, a small town about 150 kilometres northeast of Montreal.Already the meeting had been moved to this more remote location to avoid protest. But in the charged environment a police riot broke out."One young student has been blinded, another was between life and death after the police charged and refuse to help him. Police refused to call an ambulance for injured demonstrators," Marianne Breton Fontaine, leader of the Young Communist League in Quebec told People`s Voice.

A distributor of the PCQ's newspaper Clarté saw a woman trade unionist protestor have her teeth knocked out by a police officer. Video images of police brutality continue to shock on the internet, while the French‑language Quebec media appear disinterested by the alarming level of violence against the student movement.

Each day produces new graphic stories, like a grandmother being arrested at a feminist demo in support of the students. The left wing political party Quebec solidaire has called for a full public inquiry into Victoriaville and Amnesty International is also circulating a petition against the police violence. Quebec provincial police arrested 106 people after the Victoriaville student demonstration, directly from the bus returning to Montreal and Quebec City, at the same time as negotiations were still taking place in Quebec City.


After major public pressure the Charest government finally caved‑in and agreed to negotiate.
"The government set up a false sense of urgency, but the only real urgency was for Charest to return to his Party's general council meeting in Victoriaville with something concrete to deliver to his supporters," said Breton Fontaine.

Even Liberal Party members are now starting to criticize the government's handling of the conflict. At one point in the negotiations, the government told the students that they accepted their demands for a board to oversee the administration of public funds into university, and a two‑year fee moratorium.

This created a sense of victory for the students. But all this was a trick. The government negotiators spoke separately to each of the student negotiators, changed one word at a time, and so diluted the offer. Then the government made the student representatives from each Quebec national association sign the document separately while the offer was changed! The government quickly coordinated with the media to talk about an agreement in principle and to say that the strike was settled. In fact the effort was to divide, and spread mis‑information.

A Pyrrhic victory?

As a result, students and their allies initially reacted with confusion to the offer. On one hand, the student representatives explained to the media and their organizations that all the tuition increases will be compensated by a reduction of institutional fees, and eventually a reduction of the tuition increase if this was not enough.

In fact, the fees that will be under negotiation are vastly different between institutions, depending on the financial background of the students, and the schools' position with the notorious pecking‑order of Post‑Secondary Education (ie. between the so‑called "red brick" and "ivy league" schools). For example, the Université du Québec en Outaouais in Gatineau charges only $70 for these fees, while McGill in Montreal charges around $1000.

A prairie fire

Meanwhile, students are asking why they fought for so long, sacrificing a session of their education that they paid for, to win such poor results. While many students are beginning to tire,The determination to continue is still among their ranks. As an example, the night demonstrations have been joined by an increasing number of activists who had not participated in any form of protest before.
Another demonstration is the realization, expressed in the CLASSE newsletter The Ultimatum a few weeks ago, that "The right to education movement has gone beyond the simple issue of tuition hikes - it has made it possible to clearly express that we are fed up of sitting back while our collective future is defined by the demands of the political and economic elite."

This was most clear at the April 22 Earth Day rally which saw almost 300,000 students, environmentalists and labour activists together in a huge show of solidarity. The spirit of the demonstrations has also spread beyond Quebec, with a student open letter even calling for strike action in Ontario.

A survey of over 2,000 students by the Globe and Mail across Canada said that 62 per cent of postsecondary students would join a similar strike in their own province. Numbers varied from 22 percent support in Alberta to almost 70 percent in Ontario.

I go to school in Ontario and believe the call for strike action in this province is appropriate at this time to introduce the idea of striking into student consciousness. Certain universities are more radical than others and it's unlikely that there will be an actual strike come the fall but it's worth putting the idea onto the table. This article comes from the Young Communist League whose position is that calling for strike action is premature but I disagree. If not now, while we can still point to Quebec as an active example, then when?

Donald i'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on it and what you think will happen with the Charest government.

shennong posted:

what would the strike demands in ontario be

Tinkzorg posted:

i was listening to a TRNN interview with some of the leaders or representatives or whatever and it was clear that there wasnt that much political consiousness underlying the strikes, other than in a fuzzy, abstract sort of way.

i think more than that is too much to expect at this point. i dont really see where these strikes could ultimately end up going, though, if we're just speaking for immediate material effects.

as french speakers, probablly doing stinky extremist things like cut peoples heads off instead of being resonable

Doug posted:

bwahaha robbespire was the protogoon ahahahhahahaa

this is an interesting comparison, one which I had not considered before, but now seems so evident. thank you for your wisdom, doug.

you too, punk

Edited by blinkandwheeze (May 14, 2012 10:09:58)

Lessons posted:

free doug

thjis

aerdil posted:

that really is some good background! thank you getfiscal! we need more reactionary voices to break up the insular echochamber humdrum of our meek lil' forum here

i don't think you know what reactionary means m8