By Catherine Duchastel

I am a Quebec student doing my masters at York. I have watched and supported my friends in Montreal who have worked tirelessly in the student movement over the past few months. I have seen them organize demonstrations, raise awareness in their departments, and educate themselves and others about democracy. I have offered as much solidarity as I can from Toronto, and I have also wished I could go back to Montreal and be directly part of the student movement many times since last February.

But, my desire has been tempered by my awareness that I need to be here, because I need the knowledge and experience in disability rights activism and scholarship that I am gaining here at York. I am in Critical Disability Studies, a field that does not exist as such in Quebec, yet. I need to do this because the student movement in Quebec and everywhere else in Canada is ableist. This can be said of all student activism. In fact, it can also be said of social movements everywhere. This needs to change.

In Quebec, if you are a disabled student that can medically prove your disability, you receive bursaries instead of loans. This can seem like a really good deal, and a reason not to include disabled students as part of a student movement that is fighting for lower tuition. After all, you do not end up with the same crushing debt that nondisabled students have at the end of their studies. You also do not end with a job afterwards. But, surely, that’s a social problem, not one that student activism should be faulted for failing to address, right? Well, we receive the same amounts nondisabled students do, but also incur extra costs, and often take longer to finish our degrees. And of course, in order to get bursaries, we have to qualify. (I qualified my first year of undergraduate studies, but not the following 5 years.) We have to contend with inaccessible campuses, classrooms, and course material, as well as inaccessible student events and groups. We deal with isolation, poverty, discrimination and inaccessibility every day, yet our experience is neither valued nor acknowledged by other students. When nondisabled students discuss issues of inequality and discrimination, they are about inaccessibility in education, but when disabled students bring them up as part of their reality, which are being compounded by student groups themselves, they are treated as only disability related and outside the scope of the student movement.

But, really, who do you think knows more about inaccessibility than disabled folks?

I spoke with Laurence Parent about ableism in student and activist communities. Laurence is an alumnus of York who completed her Masters in Critical Disability Studies, and her major research paper won the Critical Disability Studies Program Human Rights Prize. She is now completing her PhD at Concordia in the Humanities department. She is the vice-president and a co-founding member of RAPLIQ (le regroupement des activists pour l’inclusion au Québec), an activist disability rights group, for and by disabled people. She also participated in the student strike in Quebec.
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Laurence Parent: RAPLIQ is a disability rights group, I would like it to be more like a visibility justice group, but it’s hard. Our goal is to eradicate discrimination based on disability, and that kind of discrimination is not well-known in Quebec. It’s not understood, you know, and there’s no concept to talk about it. I would say that this is the biggest obstacle that we are facing right now: to let [people] know that this thing exists [discrimination based on disability]. So it’s hard to connect with other social justice groups.
I feel like we are just at the beginning and just fighting for basic, basic things, like access to public transit which is one of our big, big issues, and access to housing and accessibility in general.

As a student with a disability and an organizer and activist, how were you involved with the student strike?

I was more involved through AEAIPS (l’Association des Étudiants ayant des incapacitées au post-secondaire). For example, we wrote a press release to talk about how the tuition hike would affect people and students with disabilities because it wasn’t included or talked about at all. […] Getting attention for us was impossible but we tried. We were at every monthly mass protest. I know that in Quebec people with visible disabilities are still not visible, so despite not being a huge number of disabled people on the streets, we were enough for people to be aware that we, we were there.

Also the strike started in winter so it’s very difficult [for people with disabilities] to get around because it’s not accessible, and then the strike got very dangerous very quickly for people with disabilities [who may not be able] to run away fast. So it’s not really welcoming for people with different abilities to join the protest and we never knew where the protest would go, and stuff like that.

Did you feel that there was an awareness on the part of nondisabled students or organizers, as to why the demos would be dangerous for disabled people? In part because of how aggressive the police were, and also not knowing when or where the march would end?

I think that they didn’t understand, but it [the student strike] was like a war, a real war, and the organizers themselves didn’t know where the march would end. It was like a state secret, so it was really hard to know who was really in charge. I guess it was because students with disabilities were not there at the higher levels of student organizing.

What do you think contributes to the fact that the disability rights movement has not worked in Quebec?

The [disability rights] movement [in Quebec] is really apolitical.

People want to advocate for disability rights, but they want to be neutral. How can you be neutral when you fight for human rights? You cannot be neutral. You cannot be neutral. I think there have been some people who have tried to build bridges but they have been excluded. Like disabled women, I don’t know if you know [the] group, Action Femmes Handicapées de Montreal? Well, when they founded [the group], the first thing that they tried to do was to be included in women’s groups but they faced discrimination, or they were included but in a paternalistic way. They founded that group [Action Femmes Handicapées de Montreal], and still today, they are excluded by other women’s groups. 25 years later.

It’s a trauma that I guess we have. When you are rejected and excluded, it has an impact on you. You know, you don’t feel like going back to a place where someone has excluded you. I also think that the people who are working in disability rights groups are often the people who have been able to go to school and get diplomas, and so they are like in the upper class of disabled people. So the system worked for them, so then some disabled people don’t really feel any need to change the system.

So what do you think would need to change for there to be collaboration between disabled activists and nondisabled activists?

Maybe to make them [nondisabled activists] realize that disability is not something far, far, away. That it’s everywhere that we don’t see it, but it’s there. Even though the student movement was opposing the system, it got so big that it started to reproduce how society was organized and those that were marginal were, you know, ignored. It was like a generation protesting, but we haven’t heard that much about racism either, for example, in that strike.

And it’s too bad because there are many links to be made about disability oppression and what happened, like the fact that they would prohibit protest near the university campuses. Like blocking access. This is something people with disabilities experience every day – being denied access. And, all those metaphors about access to education; I feel disabled people have more in common [with the student strike] but not metaphorically, concretely.

And the problem that we have, when we talk about education, is that it’s pretty new to have disabled people go to university. And, for many disabled students I don’t think they see this as a right. It’s more like, “I’m the lucky one who has been able to make it. I receive services, and I should be grateful.” And some people who are recognized as having a permanent disability, then all the government aid you get is transformed into bursaries. So we don’t have loans, and a big issue of that strike was students getting [into] debt and that the government would increase the amount of loans. So I felt that a lot of students with disabilities felt that it was not their fight. Because they were not affected by that measure, but in fact, they are already the poorest.

The thing that we don’t say is that they will have so much trouble to get a job after their education. Most people that I know, I explain to people how it works, most of them would be, “Oh! You’re lucky. You’re lucky that you don’t have loans and debts.” And, I’m like, that’s not what I want you to understand.For disabled people rights are privileges, not entitlements. So that [a] citizenship right, like education ends up being a privilege, not a right, if you are a person with a disability.

What would you like to see for the disability rights movement in Canada?

I think that one of the problems that we had, and that we have, is that students with disabilities are not well organized on campus. It’s much better at York. I mean, I know it’s not perfect, but I can compare [it] with Concordia and UQAM – we are not organized, we don’t know each other, we are not proud of who we are, there’s just no solidarity.
… So, what do I wish for the disability rights movement in Canada? Well, yeah, to fight back.
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Universities are great places to foster activism, and more and more disabled students are joining, but when you bring up accessibility issues, you get this pained look of contrition from students politicians and activists: “We know we’re not accessible, but we don’t have the money to be, we feel really, really bad about it, but there’s just no way. It’s just impossible.” The thing is, no one understands more about how lack of resources, monetary and otherwise, affects the activities you can or cannot do, than someone who has to negotiate how much pain or energy it is going to cost them to participate, or whether or not there’s a bathroom they can use wherever they want to go. So I am going to say this once, but I am going to say it loud, because you need to hear it, think about it and act on it:

YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT ACCESSIBILITY IS!

Accessibility is having all the documents on your website in both Pdf and Word so that people who use screen readers can access them. Accessibility is having half your printed material available in large print and half in smaller print. Accessibility is typing the discussion in your meetings and presentations if you can’t afford an ASL interpreter. Accessibility is asking yourself why you don’t have money for ASL interpreters. It means giving a full description of the space you’re holding events in so disabled people can decide for themselves whether they want to go or not. It means having a no-scent policy, and an acknowledgement that 5 hour meetings are just not productive. It means removing the phrase, “We regret that this event is not wheel-chair accessible” from your vocabulary and instead starting to ask disabled people not only what their accessibility needs are, but what they think could be done to remedy this lack of accessibility in your organizations. None of these cost money.

[Accessibility] means to stop expecting disabled people to be included in your struggle, and to become part of theirs, as well as to include their struggle as part of yours.

It means understanding that accessibility to education means much more than having the money and time to go to school, it means being able to get in the school, and be included in the society that getting a degree is supposed to give you access to.

Catherine Duchastel is a Ph.D. candidate in Critical Disability Studies, a member of RAPLIQ, and a student activist.

By Francis Dupuis-Déri

For weeks now, debates have been raging over “Black Blocs,” described as “Anarchist groups,” “vandals,” “masked, hooded, black clad and waving black flags.”

I have witnessed several incidents during demonstrations where demonstrators have insulted and physically attacked Black Bloc members in the name of non-violence.

Black Blocs can also, of course, simply march in the demonstration as union, NGO, and political party contingents do, crammed together behind their banners, following their leaders. I have seen Black Blocs in Montréal and elsewhere do just that, marching calmly, an expression of their radical critique of capitalism or of the State through their mere presence. But it is usually when Black Blocs use direct action that the media notice their existence. And yet Black Blocs are not a new phenomenon. A look back on an eventful history…
Their Origin

The Black Bloc tactic first appeared in West Germany around 1980, in the “autonomous” (Autonomen) movement, whose Far-Left politics and quest for autonomy from all institutions (States, parties, unions) set them apart. The autonomous movement was made up of hundreds of squats which were true spaces for collective living and experiments in counterculture. Whenever there was an attempt by authorities to evict squats, Black Blocs, sometimes made up of over 1,000 activists, would confront the police and defend the squat.

The Black Bloc tactic then spread throughout punk, anarchist, and anti-fascist scenes. It seems that the first Black Blocs to appear in North-America were in the 1990s in the radical anti-racist scene and in mobilizations against the first Iraq war. The Black Bloc phenomenon has been getting more attention over the last ten years or so in the mass mobilizations against international institutions associated with neoliberalism and the spread of global capitalism (Seattle in 1999, The Summit of the Americas in Québec in 2001, etc.). More recently, Black Blocs have done direct actions during the G20 Summit in Toronto (2010) and in “Occupy” movement demonstrations, particularly in Oakland and in Rome.

It is clear that the Black Bloc is not a permanent organization and that it is therefore more logical to refer to Black Blocs (plural). Before and after a demonstration, the Black Bloc does not exist.

“Black Blocs are certainly anarchist, communist, ecologist or radical feminist and most of the time –according to their communiqués – against all authorities and hierarchies.” (Photo Source: Photographer Unknown/ The Daily Bleed/ Wikicommons)

Polemic
We are often told that Black Blocs “infiltrate” demonstrations. Black Blocs have even been referred to as the “cancer” of the Occupy movement. Through making such condemnations, social movement spokespeople are able to remain respectable in the eyes of the elite at the risk of undermining solidarity and condoning police repression and the criminalization of dissent. But such statements are also confounding in that it is unclear on what basis it can be claimed that members of Black Blocs don’t participate in social movements. In order to do so, you would have to determine to whom movements belong to, and what right those people have to claim such ownership.

To respond to this critique, “anarchists, amongst others” who participated in Black Blocs and who wrote the “Manifeste du Carré Noir,” published in March 2012 in the context of student mobilizations in Quebec, declared:

“We are students. We are workers. We are the unemployed. We are angry. We are not co-opting the strike. We have been part of the movement from the beginning… We don’t infiltrate demonstrations, we help organize them, and we bring them to life.”

Their detractors also accuse members of Black Blocs of having no political cause to defend, since all they want to do is “break everything.” There are obviously some who join Black Blocs without strong political convictions, but let us not forget how many politicians work for political parties not out of conviction, but rather to seek personal profit or the glory of power.

The Target is the Message
It seems that members of Black Blocs are actually generally individuals with activist experience and political awareness. Members of Black Blocs do not believe that it is always necessary to resort to force in demonstrations, nor do they believe that using force is the purest form of activism.

This being said, on certain occasions, they do find it useful and justifiable to disturb social peace and express legitimate rage, not to mention that liberal “social peace” is itself inherently violent: war and police brutality, various inequalities, isolation and poverty. Who in Quebec knows that between Westmount and Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, there is about a ten year gap in life-expectancy? Smashing a window? That’s not violence, then, they say, or at least it’s nothing compared to the violence of the system.

Besides a few rare communiqués, it is through their graffiti and their choices of targets that we are best able to grasp the political thought of Black Blocs. It is never – or rarely – “senseless violence.” Their targets are associated with capitalism (banks, multinational corporations), private and public mass media, the State (especially the police) and, sometimes, patriarchy (during the G20 summit in Toronto an American Apparel shop and a strip club were targeted by a Black Bloc, which counted many women in its ranks).

Black Blocs seem, in this way, to be reiterating a statement made in the early 20th century in Britain by Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the suffragette movement, for whom “the argument of the broken pane of glass is the most valuable argument in modern politics.” She thus justified the collective action of hundreds of activists who, in March 1911, had smashed dozens of windows in London commercial districts. After their mass arrest, one of the prisoners would say: “We tried everything—demonstrations and mass meetings—but those didn’t work.”

“Black Blocs are the best political philosophers of our time,” according to political scientist Nicolas Tavaglione, because they ask societies to decide whether the protection of material goods is worth police brutality, or whether the maintenance of social order is worth sacrificing liberty and equality.

Black Blocs are certainly anarchist, communist, ecologist or radical feminist and most of the time –according to their communiqués – against all authorities and hierarchies. In the communiqué “Pourquoi étions-nous à Gênes,” sent out after the G8 summit in 2001, Black Bloc members declared: “We are not seeking a place at the table in discussions between the rulers of the world; we want there to no longer be any rulers of the world.”

Remaining Critical
I do not claim to have revealed the whole truth about Black Blocs here, nor do I claim to know all there is to know about them, and their spokespeople. Black Blocs can also be criticized on moral grounds: “Peaceful protest!” (but who gets to decide what is good and what is evil?), on legal grounds: “It’s against the law!” (but who judges which laws are just?), on strategic grounds: “They’re hurting the movement!” (but who decides which tactics are “efficient” and which aren’t?)

This being said, it is important to know that hundreds or thousands of protestors are also in favour of Black Blocs. What’s more, “violence” at demonstrations is not exclusively perpetrated by Black Blocs, as police violence is always more brutal.

Seeking to truly understand the history and actions of Black Blocs and taking the time to read the communiqués they release over the course of mobilizations may allow us to remain critical of the simplistic discourse of opinion-makers, politicians, and police, who delight in making all sorts of false and gratuitous statements about them – although I find “gratuité” to be an admirable principle.

Francis Dupuis-Déri is a political science professor at UQAM and the author of the book Les Black Blocs (Lux, 2007).

Nadim Feitah

Activists outside of Quebec have been closely watching the student movement that struck with full force against the tuition hikes earlier this year. Many of us were in awe at the Quebec students’ capability of rallying so much support in the streets – not just with the student populace, but with the general population as well. Of course, a romanticization of the movement occurred in our hearts, and who could blame us? For the first time in a generation, we have witnessed a mobilization en masse in Canada, one unlike any before witnessed in our country. We would wear our carré rouge proudly in the streets en route to our weekly casseroles, banging pots and pans yelling “Solidarité”. As we walked, as we chanted, as we watched, read, and heard stories, we began to think a very simple and powerful notion – that we can do the same thing right here in Ontario.
This idea was also springing up in much of Quebec. Many activists would set up conferences, trainings, and workshops not just in Ontario, but other provinces as well, in order to spread the means upon which the mass mobilization took place. Three main points were stressed.

First, general assemblies are the only way to ensure that the masses are behind the strike. The unions cannot push the student strike. Direct democracy is the only way to build a bottom-up strike mentality. This ensures participation of all the students and the inclusion of every idea.

Second, the initial goal cannot be entirely revolutionary or radical. It must be a simple one: one that seems easily achievable and can rally the students together. For example, free tuition as a primary goal from the onset may not get students behind a movement if it is deemed too radical. Radical sentiments will organically grow within the student population. There needs to be instead, a plausible and overarching goal upon which the students can rally around.

Finally, the strike cannot be the goal – it is a means to the end. The end is the final goal and must always be fought for. Any actions, strikes, economic disruptions, etc. must be coordinated in order to ensure that the goal is nearing.

There are a few differences though, that separate Ontario from Quebec’s circumstances. The most notable of which is the massive tuition hike that was imposed by Charest’s Liberal government. Most movements around the globe are reactionary. The Quebec Student strike is no different. It reacted to an implementation of two decisions: the tuition hike (75 per cent in five years) and the implementation of Bill 78. The emergency law, Bill 78 (or “the special law”), was implemented as a means to ensure that the strike could not “impede” with students wanting to go into their school. It stated that no protest/demonstration could be on or near university campuses and that, any demonstrations that consisted of 50 or more people needed to submit their route to the police for approval. This law, widely considered a restriction of human rights, radicalized a larger population of the students than ever before. Hundreds of thousands would take the streets in protest of this law within the coming months, including a group of lawyers from Montreal.

We however, have a very difficult time ahead of us. Our movement is not reactionary, but rather a proactive one in execution. This is a very difficult task for a number of reasons. How many people are willing to fight against something that has been a status quo for sometime? If there is not action that instigates our rage and a movement growing from the pangs of our discontent, then a proactive movement must grow. This is not to say that this task is impossible, but rather that it is an incredibly difficult one.

What we do have on our side however, is a simple poll expressing that the number one concern of every student going to school this year is the debt that will be imposed. This will be the fuel to the fire, which we all must be helping to create. We need to connect to every student who is worrying about their future, who is studying for a better one, and instead are being suppressed through burden of debt This coupled with Canada’s ever growing youth unemployment and a diminishing prospect for a decent job after graduation, can theoretically ignite a student movement here in Canada.

The difference then will be massive. Consider this: when fighting in reply to a governmental decision, is it not easier to appease the general populace by reneging on the original decision? This may have been the reason why the student strike in Quebec slowed down: due to the brilliantly placed election, they were appeased by the possibility that the tuition hike would be dismantled. This is not to say that the movement is over, but rather that it is slowing down until further notice.

A proactive movement cannot be as easily appeased. As it continues to grow in numbers and power, so too will the goals grow. As the goals grow to a more radical sentiment (like free tuition), so too will the resolve of the students to ensure it is followed through. A reactionary movement like Quebec’s though, has the initial spine of fighting the tuition hike, which implemented the spark to the fury that occurred within the past few months in Quebec.

This gives us an advantage (albeit a tough one to achieve) by creating a proactive student movement. The other advantage we could create is simply by learning from anything that may have gone wrong in the Quebec student strike. This is not to say that we must focus on the failures, as there were many victories. Mobilization en masse was one of them – but we do need to learn from mistakes, of which there were few.

After spending some time in Montreal throughout this summer, a single question seemed to always linger in the air for me: Why is it that it is necessary for a student’s education to be jeopardized while fighting for the right of education? This seems a little hypocritical for a movement whose fundamental message is that education is a right and not a privilege. I of course, understand the necessity for economic disruption, but how does alienating the students who are needed within the movement help by any means? Within the past two years, we have seen a revival of the “occupation” tactic, but with a lovely twist: the people of the occupation would live the world they wanted to see. This tactic does two things.

First, it shows to occupants or outsiders that another world is possible – as was the case in Tahrir Square (Egypt), Puerto del Sol (Spain), and all throughout the “occupy movement” which spread around the globe. Second, it showed the elite that we do not need them in order to achieve our goals. Our world, a world we have been told non-stop by every authority in our lives, is not only possible, it is possible without those whose corruption, greed, and misguided actions have made our radical actions necessary. All those who were lucky enough to witness the society in these squares/parks were witness to a beautiful and incredibly powerful time. These occupations created solidarity, destroyed barriers, and sent a message. So, while dissecting the Quebec student strike, would it not be necessary to do the same of other movements/revolutions whose tactics helped implement change or at the very least created mass mobility?

Can we not implement such a tactic within our own student movement? It only seems rational. To stand up and fight with the idea that education is a right, then implement that right being given to anyone and everyone within the community is not only economic disruption but also solidifying the public’s view of how much the students care for education (“we believe in free education so much that we created it!”). It would be as simple as taking over a university/college campus, holding picket lines or blockades to stop administration from coming in, and literally setting up free classes open to the public.

But why stop there?

The educational model that is pushed onto its students is incredibly limiting and forces a model of conformity onto young minds. This inevitably leaks not only into their social lives but also in their careers as well. One could even go as far as saying that the 2008 economic collapse was due to this conformity – an employee who simply followed orders or a CEO denying ethical ramifications in order to appease the shareholders. The educational model we currently have is cold, sterile, and submissive. People learn at different rates, in different ways, and with different understanding. This is a fact that no one can deny – so, with the student movement we hope to start, why not change it all?

By the time any strike will be implemented, there will already be a necessity for general assembly occurring in every faculty in the university, allowing for every voice to be heard while allowing for separate needs to be fulfilled for each faculty. Then, why not have the general assemblies discuss how a new educational model could be created within each faculty as a means to ensure that new techniques are used to help educate the students? And since the entire movement is founded upon participatory democracy, why not create a faculty-specific model to ensure democratic classes are conducted? There are already a growing number of cases of democratic classrooms around the world. Studies have shown that within these classrooms, there are higher student attendance, higher student achievement, greater creativity and conceptual learning, as well as an increase in motivation for further learning.

What we would have then, is a movement fighting for the right to education for all, giving education to all, and in a means that everyone can learn with. It seems only fitting for students to show the reality of education – the corporatization of education not only limits who can study, but how they do so. Yes, it is a radical notion and one that will take a long time before needing real consideration, but it is an idea that needs to be said. Much of the criticism against the Quebec student strike was that the students were all “a bunch of lazy, white, middle-class kids who don’t care about education” (actual quote from someone I met). This seems to be about the only way to prove the critics wrong.

Megan Kinch

April 2012, Montreal: I am standing in the middle of a street. Tear gas fills the air as cops with batons advance down the street. There are more cops around the corner, and they are hammering their shields with their batons. I remember this building from a small protest of maybe a hundred people last year, when Plan Nord announced a resource extraction plan for even more mining, hydroelectric dams and logging in Quebec’s north on native lands. A year later, this protest has a new face. I pull my scarf over my face because of the tear gas, and I follow the remnants of the crowd as it melts away from the cop lines, filters through multiple alleyways and reassembles. The cops have lost control of the streets and the crowd coming from all directions. This is the Quebec student strike but this is also an economic blockade.

The impressive Plan Nord protest, involving more than 2000 people, was actually multiple protests at once (to the confusion of the police) by students and green anarchists. A third group included families who had shown up in solidarity with Innu indigenous women who had walked approximately 900 miles from their reserve to Montreal. The Innu indigenous women had previously done a blockade on their land against a hydroelectric project and many were arrested. I spoke to one of the Innu women, Annie Elyse Vollant, through a translator: “I decided [that] I have to stand up and do something. I cannot be quiet. I decided to organize something. The walk after the blockade was to denounce Plan Nord, and of course [to earn] the recognition of our ancestral rights, and to protect the land, the mother earth.”

I asked Annie how her march related to the student movement. She told me: “The idea for the march came from the students. I was watching [the protest] on the news and I noticed that the students were protesting every day. [In] that moment, [I decided] we should do something and be a part of this movement. All first nations, Quebecois and everyone else [were welcomed to join us] and fight together to protect the land and to denounce Plan Nord.”

In a photo that went viral on the internet, yellow-vested cops ended up running from protesters (fully clad riot cops did as well), as the balance of forces in the streets changed. I interviewed Claude, a 41-year old veteran protestor present as this unfolded and he commented, “I don’t know exactly what was the turning point, what made the police turn and run. Actually, I was running from the policeman! Then I saw people all around me turn and start running the other way. So I turned as well, and started running after the police….the energy was so strong from our side that we could beat the police. But it lasted like 30 seconds (laughter), and then tear gas came in and we ran from the police (more laughter).”

That Sunday, the April 22nd Earth Day protests, some 200,000 to 300,000 people gathered in downtown Montreal for a massive family-friendly protest. The Montreal Gazette reported, “Many before had never attended an Earth Day event…Earth Day organizers themselves were stunned.” The NGOs that organized Earth Day were floored, not quite realizing that the massive showing was in solidarity with the student strike as well as for the environment. Even the CBC reported the large non-militant Earth Day protest separate from the student strike, “The focus Sunday was on environmental issues, highlighted every year during Earth Day events around the world.”

Were these protests really separate from each other? Although there were a number of people who were clearly at the protest for Earth Day, there were also enormous contingents of students and unionized workers, including people wearing the symbolic red square everywhere. There were also people from leftist political parties, as well as sovereigntists opposed to Charest’s Liberal government. Somehow they all became part of the same movement: anger against Plan Nord, corporate corruption and the lack of democracy. Because one was a family-friendly march with massive attendance, and the other was economic disruption, the commonalities became obscured. The student strike showed that environmentalism has to be political, and the self-appointed organizers of Earth Day (like the organizers of the mainstream environmental movement in general) has not even realized yet that they have been bypassed.

A people’s strike: Étudiants, environment and economic justice
Why would students risk so much in their fight against mining and extraction? Wasn’t the Quebec student strike against tuition? Well, as the popular slogan goes “La grève est étudiantes, la lutte est populaire!” (The Strike is Students, but the Struggle is the People’s). The economic demands of the student strike went beyond lowering tuition. The red squares on every jacket started originally as part of an anti-poverty movement and the fight against Plan Nord represented demands for a different kind of economy altogether, one not based on extraction and dispossession.

These kinds of broader demands have not come through in the English language press and for a reason – they are too dangerous. Since the provincial election where Charest was booted from office, the PQ government has cancelled the tuition hikes and even approved the shut down of Quebec’s only nuclear power station, and the new minister of natural resources has said that ‘fracking’ (a toxic method of extracting natural gas) is not safe. They finally admitted that asbestos is harmful and that shipping it to developing countries is not okay.

This is a testament to the power of the environmental demands of the student movement and the power among street protests, strikes and economic disruption. Broader environmental demands to shift the economy away from mining, and respect indigenous land rights isn’t going to be something that can be won through electoral struggles, but will through solidarity in the streets.

It is doubtful that all components of Plan Nord will be scrapped. The PQ generally goes along economic nationalist (minerals for Quebec) lines rather than indigenous sovereignty lines. Ending abusive extraction in the north is going to require a profound change in economic policy that can only be brought about through more massive social mobilization and organization.

The Quebec student strike was about far more than just tuition increases and anglophone youth have a lot to learn. Katie Nelson is an Alberta student who has been in Quebec taking part in demonstrations since this earlier this summer. She said: “The success of the strike not only affected the educational trend of Quebec but province-wide political climate. It introduced students to alternative political identity and to anti-capitalism, leading youth masses into boycotts far larger than simply tuition, but as well Plan Nord and the questioning of democracy and the use of violence against political dissent.”

Lessons for Environmental Justice Struggles in Ontario
Right here in Ontario, extraction plans similar to Plan Nord are being implemented. Ramsey Hart, from Mining Watch Canada, follows mining development in Northern Ontario. He said: “While both Ontario and Quebec have looked to mining in the north as a solution to economic woes, Ontario has not been as ambitious in developing a region-wide approach. Ontario is betting on developments in the area dubbed the “Ring of Fire” by the industry while negotiating major infrastructure to support the ring behind closed doors with the lead proponent, Cliffs Natural Resources. While flawed in many respects, at least the process of developing the Plan Nord has generated increased interest and awareness of proposed developments in the north of Quebec. Most southern Ontarians are not aware of the massive projects and proposal for hundreds of millions of subsidies to the “Ring of Fire.”

The “Ring of Fire” project has 20 mining companies making claims on the mineral resources, and is being opposed by First Nations, including the Matawa First Nations Council in the area. They announced an “immediate moratorium on all mining exploration and development” as they are not being consulted regarding the mining plans. Indigenous land defenders are being politically persecuted all around the province: the KI in the north and Ardoch Algonquin First Nation near Ottawa have faced arrests for trying to protect their land from logging and mining projects, and the 6 Nations have also been targeted for protests against encroaching suburban development. Jaime Knee, also from Mining Watch Canada said: “I’d venture to say that while the policy objectives are no different between Charest and McGuinty, Ontario doesn’t have a concrete grand plan, possibly hoping to attract less criticism by preferring to throw money at proponents — and ignore indigenous land rights — on an opportunistic basis rather than a systematic one.”

Student unions in Quebec of course, function more like workers unions than what we call ‘student unions’ in Ontario. At York University, the closest equivalent in some ways is CUPE 3903, which is organized as a worker union of graduate students and adjunct faculty with the general membership meeting as the highest decision making body. One of their working groups, the First Nations Solidarity Working Group, has been a key organization against racism in solidarity with 6 Nations land defenders. There is not any equivalent fighting organization like this at York University for undergrads as of yet. In Quebec, department by department organizing has been key to building strong fighting organizing. There are now efforts to start departmental general assemblies at Ryerson University. As a democratic organization with meetings and assemblies, they connect university worker and graduate student struggles.

Democratic participatory assemblies have been critical in organizing the Quebec student strike. Benoit Marson, who was involved in the founding ASEE (which became CLASSE, the left wing student union coalition in Quebec during the strike), told me, “All the structures, the decision-making process, the means of action that are usually taken, is a copy of what is done in the worker unions.” This includes calling enforceable strike votes at general assemblies just like workers unions do in their workplaces. They use an adapted version of the decision making process that Quebec worker’s union the CSN uses, involving 50% majority voting for strike. Part of the power of the Quebec student movement is that its more than just protests – students organized in unions can actually shut down the university or individual departments in the form of economic disruption.

I asked Sakura Saunders, who organizes in part with Toronto-based Mining Injustice Solidarity Network (MISN), about the relationship between student movements and mining activism. MISN has worked with the ‘Munk Out of U of T’ campaign against corporatization and mining money at the University of Toronto, through the U of T General Assembly. Sakura told me: “I appreciated that the Quebec student strike educated their assemblies not only on student fees, but also on the corporatization of the university…there are direct links between the university and extractive industries. I think that the more people are engaged in political decisions that impact their life, the more control they feel over other things like the future of their environment and natural resources.”

Quebec students lead the way in linking up student movements with environmental justice and solidarity and indigenous communities. They are not perfect; there are many issues to be resolved including an over-representation of white Quebecois students and corresponding under-representation of immigrant youth, and the continuing presence of sovereigtists economic nationalism. Even still, the environmental justice victories of the student movement so far have been impressive and they are not ending. CLASSE is still out protesting for free tuition, and others have called out a new demonstration against Plan Nord for September, 2012. Ontario students can learn from the more advanced movement in Quebec and self-organize to beat our own province’s abusive extractive plans. The surprising victories of the Quebec student movement point to the possibility of other ones: another world is still possible.

Padraic O’Brien

If anything, the student protests in Québec and massive social mobilization they generated should make student activists elsewhere in Canada reflect on the approaches of student activism on their campuses.

In English Canada, student activists tend to join numerous, relatively small campus clubs centered on raising awareness around issues such as the environment and identity politics. Whereas, in Québec, it is the issue of accessibility to education, central to the identity of students as a group, that draws the majority of radical students into a single, broad movement capable of mobilizing large numbers of students in campuses across the province.

This singularity is at the roots of the wide gap in terms of student mobilization that exists between the two distinct student bodies, and results in the comparatively more accessible education found in Québec due to its rich history of student struggles. In Ontario, militancy efforts are spread across different organizations that are able to create safe spaces for the social groups they represent and give a certain visibility to those issues, but at the same time fall short of reaching and instilling a sense of student politics in the general student population.

Québec student movements have been criticised meanwhile by certain English Canadian observers for failing to draw sufficient attention and reserving space to issues that specifically target marginalized groups like women, First Nations, racialized and LGBTQ people. But the success in terms of mass mobilization and generating a society-wide debate brought by the Québec student movement forces us to reflect on which approach is more efficient at challenging the unjust status quo, which remains the core objective of radical student activists across the country.

What has been perhaps most interesting of the Québec student strike is that it opened up a space to debate widely about issues that had been previously perceived to be overshadowed by the central question of accessibility to education. Students who had previously not been exposed to those issues and who would only mobilise when it came to fighting against tuition hikes were able to witness the connections between them and the cause they were fighting for along with their connections to state repression which they were experiencing first-hand. Through the course of the strike, a series of events catalyzed these processes. I will outline a few of them here.

The first such incident perhaps was the clumsy comment made by student spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, on the set of a popular TV show, when he suggested the opening of Northern Québec to large-scale extractive resource investments, under the controversial government policy called Plan Nord, could serve to fund free tuition, attracting heavy criticism from the left, including from within student ranks. The spokesperson was called out not only for failing to represent his association’s viewpoint, but also for implicitly lending his support to a colonial policy that was perpetuating and extending the exploitation of First Nations and their land and resources by the government and mining corporations. Rank-and-file militants quickly and successfully agitated for the CLASSE, the radical student association, to take a stand against the Plan Nord and the spokesperson had to retract his statement.

Plan Nord then became a favourite target of student protesters, especially following the incidents of April 20th, when the students fuelled a protest initially launched by Innu women against a trade fair where Premier Jean Charest was giving a presentation on the plan. The protest gave way to one of the most riotous scenes of the student strike, and both Charest and his Plan Nord did not win any more supporters after the premier made his infamous joke about offering jobs in the North to those people “knocking at the doors” of the conference. The involvement of the student movement inflated coverage of criticism of the Plan Nord, while allowing discussion of colonialism to be disseminated within the mass body of students.

The student strike has also created a space to discuss issues of race, class and gender. While the Québec student movement continues to be white male-dominated, over the course of the strike the situation of marginalized groups has been an important topic of discussion, being brought up by groups such as Students of Colour Montréal which found in the strike an unprecedented opportunity to reach out to a wider audience, particularly following the infamous participation of blackface protesters at the March 22nd demo. As a result of the militancy from groups like Students of Colour, the CLASSE adopted anti-racism as one of its principles.

The participation of members of these groups no doubt contributed to enlarging the tuition debate, by stressing the necessity to tackle the broader issues, namely the neo-colonial, patriarchal, racist structure in which policies like tuition fees are disproportionately affecting minority groups. These groups have been struggling against those measures and other issues, such as police brutality, for decades. While the more-privileged white students were going through this struggle, it became a lot easier for them to relate with the experiences of people from marginalized groups who they literally found on the same side of the barricade.

The culmination of student action showcasing interconnectivity of issues was probably the movement against the F-1 Grand Prix last June, which saw students joined by environmental, feminist and other militants to mobilize in large numbers to seize the event as a platform and denounce the outrageous practices associated to it, such as environmental destruction, the promotion of the sex industry and the extravagant consumerist lifestyle of the elite. In this case, the mobilization against tuition fees evolved into an action against the capitalist system, targeting one of its ostensibly popular “cultural” manifestations. This would have been unimaginable even a year ago in Québec. In face of this escalation, it can be said that anti-colonialism, anti-racism and anti-patriarchy have made dents in the collective mind of Québec’s youth, like militants could never have hoped before.

It is no surprise that mobilization around accessibility to education was able to generate such radicalization of people’s consciousness. While, on the one hand, education may constitute a means of empowerment for marginalized groups, on the other hand, reducing access to it affects these groups disproportionately. Women, Indigenous people, racialized groups and people from rural areas have lower incomes than the average, which means that uniform tuition hikes represent a harsher setback for them. As such, access to education lends itself perfectly for a broader discussion on the theme of discrimination, allowing it to be brought to the fore in the context of mass student mobilization, as happened in Québec.

Meanwhile, through their struggle and involvement in a wider societal debate, more-privileged students are able to make connections with those other phenomena which they are not necessarily proximately connected to, such as discrimination and social inequality. There are lessons to be learned here for student activists in Ontario, who for years have worked tirelessly to raise awareness about issues such as tar sands development and discrimination against marginalized groups, but so far failed to generate sustained interest among the general student population.

And so, it appears that participating in mobilization around issues that students can immediately relate to, and that also falls under the umbrella of social justice, such as the ballooning student debt and outrageous tuition fees, may be a more effective way of finally raising social consciousness and political action on a massive scale among students.

Through tireless grassroots organizing efforts and months of intense, street struggles against the forces of the state, the students in Québec are now at the forefront of social resistance against austerity policies in North America; English Canadian students interested in joining them there should at least take a page or two from their book. So, whether you are interested in defending migrant workers’ rights, fighting for racial and gender equality, checking tar sands development or resisting corporate control over our food system – you should look into the effort to build a student movement for a Free, Accessible and Public Education!