Month: May 2012

RIP Culture: A Funeral for the Main

I’d like to take a break from the revolution for a moment to say goodbye to a few old friends: several historic buildings that were part of Montreal’s fabled Red Light District. That’s what the activist artists in the Save the Main Coalition did this past Sunday as they staged a Funeral for the Main. The mock funeral, complete with a priest giving the last rights, pall bearers, hysterical mourners, a coffin and everyone dressed in black, drew 40 people in front of Cafe Cleopatre…

#GGI – Hot Streets

A week into the application of Bill 78, which criminalizes public demonstrations and imposes fines for student organizers and any protesters, there have already been over 1000 arrests by the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM). This is more arrests by far than were carried out during the generation-defining 1970 October Crisis in Québec. With over 2500 arrests of protesters since the beginning of the student strike on February 13, the police crack-down represents the largest number of demonstration-related arrests in Québec history over such a short period…

Don’t Believe the Canadian Hype

Noam Chomsky once said “Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the US media.” For Jean Charest, the embattled Quebec Premier, the English Media in Canada must seem like a wet dream come true. Every news broadcast/newspaper I’ve seen in the last month has labelled the students protesting tuition fees and bill 78 as “rioters” “criminals” or “entitled students” at one time or another…

It starts in Quebec: Our revolution of love, hope and community

In almost every report on the social movement now sweeping Quebec, including my own, words like conflict, crisis and stand-off figure prominently. Anger is omnipresent. The anger of protesters, the anger of government, the anger of those supposedly inconvenienced. Pundits scream about mob rule, anarchy in the streets and the dissolution of society as we know it. Don’t get me wrong, there is anger, present of course. But that is not what you see if you take to the streets, or watch CUTV’s live stream. Pundits can’t stop bemoaning the inconvenience to “ordinary” Montrealers posed by these protests. But I wonder, are there any “ordinary” Montrealers left to inconvenience…

How Close to Anarchism has Loi 78 Taken Us?

It’s been over 100 days now since the student strike started and the pressure seems to finally be weighing on some of the stakeholders who were hoping they could just legislate it away. Charest just had to replace his chief of staff in hopes of finding a resolution before protestors run amok of festival season and the tourist dollars it brings in, and what other choice did he have? Since enacting la loi spéciale, things have only gotten worse: there are choppers in the wire constantly, pedestrians have been pepper sprayed, there’s been over 1500 arrests…

Charest’s Political Prisoners

The mood seemed so festive. All the protesters looked like they were having a great time. It wasn’t just the main march, there were impromptu marches and people banging on pots and pans all over the city. While I caught some reports of police repression in Quebec City, what was happening in Montreal was the very definition of a peaceful protest. I went into the kitchen to make a snack. When I came back, the mood had changed…

400 000 in the streets? Quebec’s students are winning…

I started to realize the immensity of the day four or five blocks away when the sidewalks on both sides of the street were packed with one way traffic. Arriving at Place des Festivals at 2PM on the dot, I found a sea of humanity as far as the eye could see. The entire Place, from St. Catherine to Président Kennedy, was packed too densely to allow much navigation. I made my way to a raised photographer’s platform…