The Biggest Student Uprising You’ve Never Heard Of
Print This
By Marc Bousquet
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Thursday, Apr 26, 2012
On an unseasonably warm day in late March, a quarter of a million
postsecondary students and their supporters gathered in the streets of
Montreal to protest against the Liberal government’s plan to raise
tuition fees by 75% over five years. As the crowd marched in seemingly endless waves from Place du Canada, dotted with the carrés rouges,
or red squares, that have become the symbol of the Quebec student
movement, it was plainly obvious that this demonstration was the largest
in Quebec’s, and perhaps Canadian, history.
The March 22nd Manifestation nationale
was not the culmination but the midpoint of a 10-week-long student
uprising that has seen, at its height, over 300,000 college and
university students join an unlimited and superbly coordinated general strike.
As of today, almost 180,000 students remain on picket lines in
departments and faculties that have been shuttered since February, not
only in university-dense Montreal but also in smaller communities throughout Quebec.
Aerial news footage of the March 22nd Manifestation nationale
The strike has been supported by near-daily protest actions ranging
from family-oriented rallies to building occupations and bridge
blockades, and, more recently, by a campaign of political and economic disruption
directed against government ministries, crown corporations, and private
industry. Although generally peaceful, these actions have met with
increasingly brutal acts of police violence: Student protesters are routinely beaten, pepper-sprayed, and tear-gassed by riot police, and one, Francis Grenier, lost an eye
after being hit by a flashbang grenade at close range. Meanwhile,
college and university administrators have deployed a spate of court
injunctions and other legal measures in an unsuccessful attempt to break
the strike, and Quebec’s premier, Jean Charest, remains intransigent in
spite of growing calls for his government to negotiate with student leaders.
So, why haven’t you heard about this yet?
While the Quebec student strike is comparable in scale to student
movements in Europe and Latin America, it is entirely unique in the
context of Canada and the continental United States, which makes the
absence of media coverage outside the province puzzling at best and
disturbing at worst. As the veteran Canadian activist Judy Rebick
observed in a recent rabble.ca column, “it is incredible that there has
been almost no coverage of this extraordinary uprising of young people in Quebec in English Canada,” and, save for a brief mention on Democracy Now!,
the movement has been ignored by even the independent American press. A
key factor, certainly, is language: Quebec is a predominantly
French-speaking province with a fully separate media infrastructure, and
its famously militant
student unions, which are responsible for organizing the strike,
operate largely independently of the academic and activist networks that
link the rest of the continent. In this sense, English and French
North America exist as two solitudes
in much the same way that English- and French-speaking Quebecers once
did—that is, they live in close quarters but don’t actually talk to each
other very much.
Still, language differences are no excuse for overlooking this
important student movement. Montreal, the province’s cultural capital,
is a bilingual city and student leaders have made efforts to ensure that
strike information is available on English Web sites, Facebook
groups, and Twitter feeds. Further, the English student media, based
at Montreal’s Concordia and McGill universities, have provided
consistent and often excellent coverage of the strike and related
protests. Even the national Canadian press has finally picked up the story, albeit without addressing the larger historical and political context
of the strike or its connection to the austerity measures that are
being imposed on students and workers across Canada and around the
world. More promisingly, next weekend’s Edufactory conference, The University is Ours!,
is holding a special plenary session on tuition struggles in Quebec,
which will help to raise awareness of the events that have fueled le printemps québécois.
At the very least, the student strike should serve as inspiration to
social movements far beyond Quebec’s borders, as well as an urgent call
to solidarity.
If you appreciated this article, please consider making a donation to Axis of Logic.
We do not use commercial advertising or corporate funding. We depend solely upon you,
the reader, to continue providing quality news and opinion on world affairs.Donate here