Original French text: http://me.voir.ca/blandineparchemal/2012/07/07/le-mouvement-etudiant-quebecois-une-defaite/
In the July 6 2012 issue of Le Devoir you can read an op-ed entitled “Student movement: the electoral challenge”. In addition to raising some important points regarding the risk of a PLQ electoral campaign bearing the themes of law and order and realizing itself on the backs of the students, it seems to me nevertheless that the verdict put forward regarding the student movement is profoundly unjust in relation to the totality of the work that it has accomplished among Quebecois society during the last few months.
The author starts his text in effect by speaking about “defeat in public opinion”, “big disappointment” and ends by declaring that this could be “the biggest defeat of the Quebec student movement” if the Liberal party is reelected. Of course, if the PLQ are reelected in the next election, we will have a very bitter taste in our mouths. Nevertheless, even if this situation has to be, I won’t necessarily speak of the defeat of the student movement but rather the defeat of Quebec society as it was, and this, because it’s the student movement has always strived for a popular challenge to the current government.’
As for the question of public opinion, listen to us say that we have never really known what they think and that it’s probably not one more survey that will allow us to know more. Also, above and beyond general public opinion on the movement, what interested me much more, is analyzing the evolution of the population’s participation in the movement. And yet, when I see the beauty of the casseroles movement for example, all these people who came out into the streets with us many nights in a row, these children, these grand parents, I can’t resign myself to speak of defeat and still less of disappointment. When I see the popularity of the large protests on the 22nd of each month, the flowering of neighborhood assemblies or simply the totality of these red squares worn proudly, I can’t speak of defeat either.
To see to it that the population dares to brave the deeply anti-democratic law by going to protest, to see to it that the population finally dares to express its dissatisfaction with a government adopting socially destructive liberal measure one after the other, for me, it’s already an undeniable victory.
Furthermore, it seems equally difficult to me to speak of a big defeat when we turn to that international visibility that the movement has been able to have. Numerous foreign newspapers have all of a sudden learned of Quebec’s existence and have realized that this isn’t a province as consensual as is happily believed. They have realized that politics is not dead in Quebec and the youth are standing up for themselves. The networks of solidarity have also been created with Chilean, Mexican, Brazilian, American, French and Belgian students and one week of international strike is planned in November. If the Quebec student movement has only been able to encourage other students to revolt and to start a strike against measures privatizing public services like university or for more democracy within the government, it’s also a victory.
It is however true that it is important to be armed against a liberal campaign on the themes of law and order and to do this, the student movement will continue to attempt to follow through with what it has already begun: go see the rural population, take over the festivals and community assemblies this summer, make appeals for social strike and above all inform the population about the liberal governments current and future politics. Continuing to talk about law 12, shale gas, the Plan Nord, corruption in the construction industry, the tarification and privatization of public services, this is what we are going to do.
The simple act of having aroused reflection in part of the population, having driven it to reconsider the way in which it is government and the way in which democracy is currently exercised is a gain. We obviously hope that this reflection will endure ant that the population will now accord more attention to its government and its abuses. We will work hard for this so that there is always justice, equity and collective wellbeing at the end of the day.
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Translated from the original French by Translating the printemps érable.
*Translating the printemps érable is a volunteer collective attempting to balance the English media’s extremely poor coverage of the student conflict in Québec by translating media that has been published in French into English. These are amateur translations; we have done our best to translate these pieces fairly and coherently, but the final texts may still leave something to be desired. If you find any important errors in any of these texts, we would be very grateful if you would share them with us at [email protected]. Please read and distribute these texts in the spirit in which they were intended; that of solidarity and the sharing of information.
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