Tag Archives: Protests

Quebec Students Endure Despite Police State Repression

Posted on April 27, 2012 by | Comments Off on Quebec Students Endure Despite Police State Repression

Photo by Peter McCabe, The Gazette

After 11 weeks of the student movement in Quebec, marked by 185,000 in protests and strikes, momentum is increasing as the Charest government is nervously clamping down. With all of the ingredients of a revolution, police state tactics are marring what would otherwise be forceful, yet peaceful, dissent in a mass movement for political change.  Joel Bergman reports that

The scope of the repression by the police is almost unheard of in Quebec — one would have to go back 40 years to see anything of this magnitude.  Over the course of one week alone, we saw upwards of 600 arrests at various campuses and demonstrations.  At the Université du Québec à Outaouais (UQO) on 19th April, the police broke the picket lines and locked the students out of the campus.  A few hundred students soon arrived on buses to demonstrate in solidarity with their brothers and sisters. Teachers soon joined, as well.  The police unleashed brutal repression on them with a few students and professors left bloody from baton hits to the head.  The demonstration of around 800 students then held a mass assembly and decided to march on the police lines and reclaim the university. They marched on the police, beating them back and they managed to reclaim the university for a short period of time before more police forces were called in and mass arrests commenced.  Approximately 300 ended up arrested at UQO.

Over the last 3 days, police have been especially brutal in clamping down on the protesters.  Yet despite the pattern of intimidation and arrests, the movement is growing in momentum and will.  High school students, looking at their future, are joining in with a presence in the movement that we’ve not seen in North America since the 1960s.

Read more In Defence of Marxism and Montreal Gazette

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Posted in Free speech, Organizing, Protests, Strikes, Student Movement, Students

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Quebec Students Marathon Protest, Confrontation at Concordia

Posted on April 12, 2012 by | Comments Off on Quebec Students Marathon Protest, Confrontation at Concordia

Photo by John Kennedy, The Gazette

Breaking rules and records two months into a strike and protest against rising tuition costs, students marched on Montreal for 12 hours on Wednesday 11 April. Smaller groups of students extended the march to 15 hours on the city streets and landmarks.  Gridlock and blocked streets have become routine in downtown Montreal while strikes and protests have brought campuses to near standstill.  Today  at Concordia University police rolled in to break up a student blockade.

Photo by Jan Ravensbergen, The Gazette

“I was astonished by how quickly everything happened,” an eyewitness said Thursday morning after Montreal police broke up a brief student blockade downtown of the main Concordia University campus building. “The students appeared from nowhere. Then these police just started flooding in. “The whole thing happened in just a matter of minutes, the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.” About two dozen Montreal police officers equipped with helmets and shields had pushed a crowd of protesting students away from the front of the Henry F. Hall Building westward along de Maisonneuve Blvd. W. on Thursday at 8:55 a.m., after which the crowd dissolved.

Read more: Montreal Gazette

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Quebec Liberal Government Criminalizing Student Strikes

Posted on April 10, 2012 by | Comments Off on Quebec Liberal Government Criminalizing Student Strikes

Read More Richard Dufour, Quebec authorities seeking to criminalize student strike

Quebec’s Liberal government is using repression—arrests, court injunctions and the threat of cancelling the winter semester—to force an end to a nearly two-month-long strike of university and CEGEP (pre-university and technical college) students. Nevertheless, almost 200,000 students are continuing to boycott classes to oppose the Charest Liberal government’s plan to raise university tuition fees by 75 percent over the next five years, beginning in September.

Early last Wednesday, riot police chased and arrested more than 60 students who continued to demonstrate in downtown Montreal after the police had declared their demonstration illegal. The reason given by the police for dispersing, and later arresting, the student protestors was that they had perpetrated acts of “vandalism”, such as toppling tables and displays while moving through the chic Queen Elizabeth Hotel and the Eaton Shopping Centre.

Despite police statements to the contrary, there is no evidence to prove that the students committed any criminal acts. The arrests were filmed by CUTV, the Concordia University students’ community television station. The video, broadcast on the Internet, shows police shoving students prior to their arrest and ignoring students who questioned why they were being manhandled and arrested.

Montreal’s riot police have repeatedly used batons, tear gas, pepper spray and sound grenades to attack protesting students.

CUTV cameraman, Laith Marouf, was arrested for filming Wednesday’s arrests. CUTV reporter Sabine Friesinger, who was with Marouf, recounted what happened later the same day: “We were broadcasting live. Students were surrounded and pushed by police. They were also hit. The cameraman said several times: ‘I am media, we are on live.’ They definitively did not want us filming that. I have finally been able to retrieve the camera, but he (the cameraman), is still under arrest.”

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Quebec Student Strike Intensifies, Longest in Province History

Posted on April 10, 2012 by | Comments Off on Quebec Student Strike Intensifies, Longest in Province History

Photo by Peter McCabe, The Gazette

The Quebec student strike is now in its eighth week and has gathered nearly half the higher education population in the province.  There are about 185,000 students on strike out of 400,000. “About 90,000 of them have agreed to an unlimited strike that won’t end until the government rescinds its plan for a $1,625 tuition increase over five years.” The students have sustained a series of demonstrations, protests, and strikes against the tuition hike.  Monday April 9 saw mass demonstrations and “Wednesday will be another big day for protesting students as they launch a 12-hour-long demonstration that will begin at 7 a.m. at Victoria Square. The “unlimited protest” is supposed to show the students’ unlimited resolve in the face of tuition increases and the Quebec government’s unwavering stance on the issue. A continual loop of students will take turns marching for an hour at a time throughout the day.”

Today, the resolve of striking students at the Université de Montréal was tested, “as the university sent out an email last week saying if students aren’t back in class by then, they can’t guarantee that all courses can be completed by June 15, the end of the extended semester. That means some classes could simply be suspended, as the university asserts there will be “no compromise” on the quality of the education.”

Read more: Montreal Gazette Story 1 and Story 2

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UQAM Resorts to Intimidation Against Striking Montreal students

Posted on April 4, 2012 by | Comments Off on UQAM Resorts to Intimidation Against Striking Montreal students

Photo by Anne Sutherland, The Gazette

The Montreal Gazette reported that the Université du Québec à Montréal obtained a temporary injunction Wednesday ordering the strikers to allow employees and other workers to enter the university’s buildings and residences unimpeded.  The UQAM is “fed up with striking students blocking access and harassing staff.”

Strikes and protests continue to escalate across the province and 71 students were arrested today in Montreal for storming the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. “Two security guards at the hotel were injured in the melee. A buffet table was overturned and dishes were smashed.  A crowd of fleet-footed students estimated at 100 or more later roved through downtown Montreal, tieing up traffic and chanting their opposition to the planned university-tuition hikes.”

Read more: Montreal Gazette

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Posted in Free speech, Organizing, Protests, Solidarity, Strikes, Student Movement, Students

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Quebec Students escalate Boycott and Protests

Posted on March 29, 2012 by | Comments Off on Quebec Students escalate Boycott and Protests

Photo by Phil Carpenter, The Gazette

Students stormed the Quebec Liberal party office in Montreal this morning and again a large mass  marched down Pie IX Blvd. to the intersection with Notre Dame St. and blocked the entrance to the Port. Demonstrations are now nearly daily and at Concordia alone, about 10,000 students out of 30,000 undergraduates are boycotting classes. “Education Minister Line Beauchamp stated that students will need to choose between boycotting and their diplomas, saying they ‘can’t have it all’.”

The students have re-adopted the red square to symbolize their protest and remind the government of the force and successes of the 2005 strike and raise spectres of socialism and Marxism.  The government’s plans to raise costs of education, students said, “would leave them ‘carrément dans le rouge’ or squarely in the red, the colour of debt.”

Photo by John Kenney, The Gazette

Read more Montreal Gazette

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Quebec Students Rolling Protests while Universities Resort to Intimidation

Posted on March 27, 2012 by | Comments Off on Quebec Students Rolling Protests while Universities Resort to Intimidation

Photo by Phil Carpenter, Montreal Gazette

Quebec students have planned a series of rolling protests while claims of Concordia and McGill university intimidation tactics against the students increase.  Tensions on the campuses are escalating as the students are moving into their second month of activism against rising tuition and other costs to education.  Students are reporting that the more the universities face the student activism the nastier the administrative and police tactics are getting. Three McGill students were banned from campus for protesting while others faced off with security guards.  “This is completely a new level of political repression,” said Kevin Paul, a cultural studies and philosophy student at McGill. ”

Joel Pedneault, vice-president of external relations for the Student Society of McGill University, got a letter saying there were “reasonable grounds to believe that your continued presence on campus is detrimental to good order.” He is planning to contest the disciplinary action.

“This seems to be a real crackdown on students for the strike,” he said.

Teachers also reacted. David Douglas, of the Concordia University Part-Time Faculty Association, said the university’s decision to issue the directive in response to a peaceful demonstration last week was “interpreted by students and many within the university community to be an ill-timed and regrettably hostile gesture.”

A small group of professors at McGill also wrote to the administration to deplore the disciplinary action against the students, saying the student code of conduct was being misused “to persecute students at will.”

Read more, Montreal Gazette 

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Quebec Students Flood Montreal in March Against Tuition Hikes

Posted on March 22, 2012 by | Comments Off on Quebec Students Flood Montreal in March Against Tuition Hikes

Photo by Dave Sidaway, The Gazette

Historically, at least over the last fifty years, Quebec students have been immensely successful in checking the powers of government and universities from unilaterally raising tuition and other expenses for higher education.  Large, focused, unified, and sustained protests by Quebec students over the years have been influential in keeping tuitions among the lowest in Canada.  Knowing this, there is no way the students will back down from this latest and increasingly vocal series of small resistances and large demonstrations, protests, and strikes.

Today in Montreal, “tens of thousands of activists filled Montreal’s downtown core Thursday to protest tuition increases. Students demonstrating Thursday in Montreal and across the province, say higher fees mean higher debt for them and their parents. The protesters reject the government’s position that student aid, offered to about 35 per cent of students and based on a system of loans, will ease the debt burden.”

Read more Montreal Gazette 

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Posted in Accountability, Government, Protests, Student Movement, Students

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Montreal Students Blockade Champlain Bridge

Posted on March 20, 2012 by | Comments Off on Montreal Students Blockade Champlain Bridge

Photo Montreal Gazette

Education Minister Line Beauchamp, who promised the government won’t budge in its plan to raise university tuition by $1,625 over five years, told protesters to stop inconveniencing the workers whose taxes pay for their studies. Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay said the five weeks of strike activities were having a negative effect on the city’s economy, and called on Quebec to help pay the expenses.

Coming on the heels of recent demonstrations that blocked the Metropolitain Expressway and Jacques Cartier Bridge, and led to vandalism and 226 arrests when combined with the march against police brutality, the student protests have been facing a growing chorus of negativism from a disgruntled populace.

But rather than hurting the cause, the public backlash will actually help propel it forward, communications specialists predicted.

And organizers said the disruptions will escalate soon unless the government starts negotiating.

“ For the general population (blocking the Champlain Bridge) might seem overboard,” said Anna Kruzynski, head of the graduate program at Concordia’s School of Community and Public Affairs and a strike supporter. “But if you look historically over time, you’ll see these kind of strong tactics … and other actions that aim to disrupt the regular functioning of society actually end up having good effects after the fact. They do contribute to the government responding positively to demands that are legitimate demands.

Read more: Montreal Gazette

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150 Arrested in Montreal Student Movement

Posted on March 15, 2012 by | Comments Off on 150 Arrested in Montreal Student Movement

Montreal Gazette — More than 100 people were arrested and two were injured after a protest by Montreal students turned ugly on Thursday evening, with police firing tear gas into the crowd. The protest, a joint demonstration against rising tuition fees and police brutality began at about rush hour, but was confronted by Montreal police outfitted in riot gear. About 2,000 protesters headed north through the city, then west along Sherbrooke Street, but no police were visible along the route, although they were positioned on adjacent streets and in the city’s subway system. When about six officers did appear, a few protesters started throwing rocks at them. At one intersection, police fired off two loud stun grenades, sending a panic through the crowd. Protesters ran in all directions, but riot police formed a line, and banging on their shields with their batons, marched forward, shoving demonstrators north…. A young woman, who didn’t want to give her name, held a bag of ice to her right eye after a police officer whacked her with his baton. “(Riot police) were coming towards us and my friend dropped his cellphone so I bent down to pick it up with my arms raised in the air, so one hit me in the face and my back,” she said. Police made the majority of the evening’s arrests in front of a downtown library…. those arrested were just standing still, arms locked, in front of the library chanting. “They were the least provocative of the whole march.”

Photo by Graham Hughes, Montreal Gazette

Read more: Montreal Gazette

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Students 1-day Occupy Montreal Street and University

Posted on March 13, 2012 by | Comments Off on Students 1-day Occupy Montreal Street and University

Last week ended in violence as police clamped down on students in Montreal.  The student movement in Quebec is in full career, now three weeks in, as protests escalate against rising tuition and other costs to education.

Image from The Link

This week began with L’Université du Québec à Montréal students occupying a campus building and street. “When the administration caught wind of the students’ idea, they closed the building that the demonstrators planned on using.  They responded by breaking into the building, taking back their art supplies for the “creativity night” and moving the event to the DS building on Ste. Catherine and Sanguinet St.”  More at The Link.

 

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Changing Nature of Campus Protests Frustrates Administrators

Posted on March 13, 2012 by | Comments Off on Changing Nature of Campus Protests Frustrates Administrators

The Chronicle: In California and Beyond, the Changing Nature of Campus Protests Frustrates Administrators

Campus protests don’t always arise locally or focus on discrete issues or demands. Sometimes, they’re not even led by students.

Those characteristics vex some senior student-affairs administrators in the University of California system, where a tumultuous combination of steep tuition increases and the high-profile national “Occupy” movement resulted in demonstrations that have ensnared at least two campuses—Berkeley and Davis—in lawsuits.

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ICES Appeal to Boost Support BCTF Petition to 500+

Posted on March 13, 2012 by | Comments Off on ICES Appeal to Boost Support BCTF Petition to 500+

Post-secondary Support of Teachers / BCTF Petition

We want to forward this petition to the Ministry at the 500+ mark today or tomorrow morning.  Please circulate and let’s boost this to 500+!  We are currently at 399 signatures…

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Posted in BC Education, Employment rights, Free speech, Government, Organizing, Protests, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Unions, Working conditions

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“Proverbial snowflake, hellbound” is Liberals’ Fate in BC

Posted on March 7, 2012 by | Comments Off on “Proverbial snowflake, hellbound” is Liberals’ Fate in BC

For two solid days in dozens of cities and towns across British Columbia, tens of thousands of students, parents, faculty members, peer unions, and the BC Federation of Labour turned out in support of the BCTF and teachers.  For the rally in Victoria yesterday, the President of the Canadian Federation of teachers flew across the country to be there, as did peer teaching union presidents and representatives from as far as Nova Scotia.  This is bigger than the BCTF BC Fed President Jim Sinclair announced over the last two days.  For the BC Fed and everyone showing their solidarity, this is about standing up for the province, for what is right and just, for rights, for workers, for people young and old struggling from day to day as citizens.  This is about democratic rule and the BCTF and BC Fed are in this for the long haul.  BCTF President Susan Lambert rallied today in Vancouver, promising the BC Liberals’ as they move on oppressive, debilitating legislation, that this governing party’s chance of re-election is that of a “proverbial snowflake, hellbound!”

BCTF President Lambert Speaks out at Vancouver Rally

That’s powerful and resonates with the vast system of public support that is turning out for the rallies across the province.  To try and govern workers– to try and suppress a labour movement that is ascendent and increasingly unified– with this might of legislation, Bill 22, is foolish.  The opposition party, the NDP in BC, is doing all it can to undermine and debate this anti-democratic legislation that is Bill 22.  Adrian Dix, Leader of the NDP, guaranteed the labour movement yesterday in Victoria that his party was not resting and would do everything in its power to give teachers the fair right to bargain– a right that every public or private sector union or professional association deserves.

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Posted in BC Education, Employment rights, Government, K-12 issues, Organizing, Protests, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Unions, Working conditions

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This is What Solidarity Looks Like

Posted on March 6, 2012 by | 1 comment

15,000-20,000 rallied across the province while about 6,000 marched on BC legislature in Victoria to support BC teachers and stand up for BC.  The BC Federation of Labour organized the rally and with short notice the BCTF and peer unions in the BCFed summoned the show of force.  Parents and their children showed up by the thousands at today’s rally.  The halls of legislature shook, with the government nervously hearing BIll 22 while thousands joined in unison to drown out the oppressive measures, including outrageous fines for doing exactly what the BCTF and its widespread public support was doing. “Shame” on the BC Liberals the crowd chanted as speaker after speaker described the debilitating conditions under which the teachers and the BCTF are now placed.

“This is what solidarity looks like” announced BCFed President Jim Sinclair moments before bringing on BCTF President Susan Lambert.  Past BCTF President Irene Lanzinger, now secretary-treasurer of the BCFed emceed the rally.  More to follow from ICES…

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Posted in BC Education, Employment rights, Free speech, K-12 issues, Labor Programs, Organizing, Solidarity, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Unions, Working conditions

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