Showing posts with label Montreal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Montreal. Show all posts

Sunday 12 April 2015

Quebec Is Rising.

       In 2012, student protests rocked Quebec, Montreal became a battleground as students took to the streets in tens of thousands. At that time it was a struggle to defend education, mainly students with support from various groups. This year, 2015, the protests have again erupted, this time round, the protesters have learned, it is not just a battle to defend education, it is the system that is wrong. Students have linked up with other groups, environmentalists, indigenous struggles, workers, unemployed and others. They have formed a broad grouping and are organising in communities and work places and taking their struggle to the streets in a united front. This is an encouraging change, as individual groups battling their own little corner can soon be picked off one by one by the state. There struggle demands solidarity across all borders.


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Tuesday 19 June 2012

THE ANGER IS GLOBAL



      What seems to be in the spotlight at the moment is the European crisis, but it is not just in Europe that the people are taking to the streets against an economic system that is now seen to be totally unjust and unable to serve the people. It is really across the globe that people are taking to the streets in an attempt to put an end to this continual exploitation of the many by a small group of parasites. What has always been seen, politically, as a quiet backwater, Canada, now has turmoil and anger on its streets. From East to West, the world is in revolt and the anger is directed at the same thing, this exploitative economic system controlled by an unelected, faceless, financial Mafia.


      Early on the student strike in Quebec adopted the slogan “it is a student strike, and a popular struggle” (in French, “la grève est étudiante, la lutte est populaire"). Over the course of this unprecedented strike, the slogan has become a reality, as people from all sectors of society have joined the students in opposition to the neoliberal government of Jean Charest and his Liberal party.
    As this is written, neighbourhood committees are forming in Montreal and daily protests, including the now famous casseroles (pots and pans) protests, are occurring across Quebec – including in small towns and regions not known for their militancy. The legitimacy of the government and its police force is being called into question as tens of thousands defy its “special law 78”, which criminalizes spontaneous protests among other measures. The student strike has indeed become a popular struggle. While no one could have predicted that the student strike would spill across society, this development is not entirely without a foundation in recent struggles. And this foundation is best exemplified by the Coalition Opposée a la Tarification et Privatisation des Services Publics (in English, the Coalition Against User Fees and the Privatization of Public Services).
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Sunday 10 June 2012

THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

The Universal Language:
 “Fuck the Police” (Montreal, Night 47)

            I feel like I probably saw and was in the middle of only a fraction of all the tides of popular protests against the Grand Prix tonight. But to likely understate it, the police (SPVM to SQ) totally lost control and the people totally held the streets. And as one person said to us on the streets as riot cops swarmed by us for the umpteenth time–after about the umpteenth time that nearly everyone (and by nearly everyone, I mean an eclectic mix of thousands and thousands of people, many dressed in fancy Saturday night party clothes, far from “the usual suspects” and not a black bloc in sight) pushed the police back or for all intents and purposes kettled the cops, and after the many umpteenth times that nearly everyone booed at and many threw plastic bottles (or a beach ball) at the police–there’s a universal language on the streets this evening, and it’s “fuck the police.”
          Of course, there was plenty of good reason to speak this global language on Montreal’s streets this evening: tear gas, batons, the incessant beating on shields, pushing, harassment, pepper spray, injuries, arrests. But none of those tactics worked. Nor did the tactic of attempting to divide the thousands of people “marching” or simply filling the streets. Each time the police managed to split enormous amounts of people into two, three, or four groups, or seemed to have dispersed people altogether, seconds or minutes later, there was a new massive group, or several, or another hot spot, with no rhyme or reason, and definitely no coordination. The sheer beauty of a mysterious spontaneity birthed of some sort of popular will and determination. Whether tourist or local, student or person in their seventies, a kid a stroller or an adult in a wheelchair, white or black, out for a drink or out for a protest, and on and on, people just kept coming at the cops again and again and again, with little fear and lots of animosity.

Friday 27 April 2012

WHERE ON THE PLANET IS CAPITALISM WORKING?


         Europe is in turnmoil with every city across the continent having protests, strikes and angry people on the streets, America has the Occupy Movement growing on a daily basis, even sleepy old Canada where a pedestrian crossing the street without using the pedestrian crossing is considered news, is having its problems. Montreal say running battles with the Police at  the proposed North Plan. A plan to allow the corporate mining gangsters to plunder the Northern Territories of Quebec.
      It seems that capitalism is having a hard time at the moment. I suppose it would the kindest thing to keep up the pressure and put it out of its misery.
      This from Contra info:
      A demonstration against the neo-colonial project “Plan Nord” (North Plan), which seeks to exploit to a maximum extent the minerals in Québec’s northernmost territories for the profit of mining companies, has turned into a street battle between insurgents and riot police, with an intensity and length rarely seen in Montréal.
Gathering about 2,000 people including indigenous militants, ecologists, striking students, anarchists and trade-union militants, two demonstrations converged and heavily disrupted the Plan Nord’s Employment Fair taking place inside Montréal’s Palais des congrès (convention center) last Friday 20th of April.
At around 12h30, a group of demonstrators (mainly striking students) has succeeded in entering the huge building, even if it was heavily guarded by riot police.




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