what i'm reading / marxism 2012 program notes: "too many people?" population, immigration, and the environment

I've just finished reading Too Many People? Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis by Ian Angus and Simon Butler. Co-author Angus spoke at the 2012 Marxism conference; I wasn't able to attend his talk, but Allan did, and afterwards bought the book for me.

The clarity of the authors' arguments, their unassailable reasoning, their thorough research, the full transparency of their worldview, and the readability of their writing, make this one of the best nonfiction books I've read. If you care about both the environment and reproductive justice, this book is a must-read. If you, like so many well-intentioned people, subscribe to - or wonder about - the notion that population control and curtailed immigration are even partial solutions to the environmental crisis, I hope you will read this book.

Here, I'll try to summarize Angus and Butler's principal points.

The populationists

Throughout the history of the modern environmental movement, there has always been a school of thought that the central problem (or at least one huge part of the problem) is overpopulation. Under this view, in order to preserve natural resources, we must slow global human population growth.

Historically and today, this involves changing reproductive patterns in developing or third-world nations, here called the global south. In short, women in the global south must have fewer babies, for the sake of the survival of the planet.

Further, we must prevent people from the global south from emigrating to the global north, or at least greatly slow the rate of immigration. The more people who move from low-consumption lifestyles in the south to high-consumption lifestyles in the north, the more pressure is put on the environment. Therefore, we are told, we must stop or sharply curtail that movement.

The problem, in this view, is too many people. Reduce the numbers of people, therefore reduce CO₂ emissions, therefore slow or even reverse climate change.

Historically, many promoters of these ideas have had strong, although often covert, ties to racist, white supremacist, or eugenicist movements. But many within the environmental movement believe in and promote these populationist ideas with no racist intent. Many of the same people support reproductive freedom in a general sense, but believe that the urgency of the global environmental crisis outweighs reproductive freedom in certain parts of the world (i.e., the parts of the world they don't live in). [See below for notes on terminology.]

Numbers and their misuse

Too many people? Which people, how do they live, and what do they consume?

Angus and Butler dismantle and completely disprove these populationist arguments, often by dissecting their statistics and supposed facts. The numbers may be accurate - yet completely irrelevant. The measurement may be correct, but what is being measured proves nothing. Correlation is confused with causation.

Two prime examples of this are statistics about global population and global emissions, and per capita emissions.

The more people who live on the planet, the more CO₂ emissions there are. That's easy to show. The correlation between population growth and emissions growth seems obvious. On further inspection, though, the link proves to be illusory.

Consider these facts:

• Between 1980 and 2005, Sub-Saharan Africa had 18.5% of the world's population growth, and accounted for just 2.4% of growth in emissions.

• During that period, the US had 3.4% of the world's population growth, and 12.6% of the growth in emissions.

• Low-income nations accounted for 52.1% of the world's population growth, and 12.8% of the growth in emissions.

• High-income nations accounted for 7% of the world's population growth, and 29% of the growth in emissions.

Almost all the growth in emissions is occurring in countries with little or no population growth. And almost all of the population growth is occurring in areas with extremely low growth in emissions.

Emissions are a problem of rich countries, not poor countries. The 19 countries in the G20 produced 78% of the worldwide total carbon dioxide emissions - four times as much the rest of the world combined. Seen on a per capita basis, emissions from the US alone are, for example, 197 times greater than those from Mozambique and 400 times greater than in Mali.

And those figures above are significantly understated, since they don't take into account the US' global footprint, from both the military and international air travel.

There is actually no correlation between population growth rate and emissions. In fact, there is usually a negative correlation - most of the big polluting countries have a birth rate at or below replacement levels, or nearly so. If we thought correlation equals causation, as the populationists do, we'd conclude that low population growth causes high emissions or high population growth causes low emissions! That's ridiculous, of course. Because both emissions levels and population growth are shaped by other social and economic factors.

Smaller families in Africa or South America are not going to change global emissions or slow climate change. The countries where women have a relatively high degree of control over their reproduction are also the countries that are doing the most to destroy the environment. From Fred Pearce in his book Peoplequake:

The poorest three billion or so people on the planet (roughly 45% of the total) are currently responsible for only 7% of emissions, while the richest 7% (about half a billion people) are responsible for 50% of the emissions.

A woman in rural Ethiopia can have 10 children and her family will still do less damage, and consume fewer resources, than the family of the average soccer mom in Minnesota or Manchester or Munich. In the unlikely event that her 10 children live to adulthood and all have 10 children of their own, the entire clan of more than 100 will still be emitting only about as much carbon dioxide each year as you or me.

So to suggest, as some do, that the real threat to the planet arises from too many children in Ethiopia, or rice-growing Bangladeshis on the Ganges delta, or Quechua alpaca herders in the Andes, or cow-pea farmers on the edge of the Sahara, or chaiwallas in Mumbai, is both preposterous and dangerous.

The "per capita" problem

A country's emissions are often expressed per capita - the total emissions from that country divided by its total population. But per capita figures are a convenient way to make any social problem appear to be an individual problem.

Take the per capita emission output of Canada, often said to be the highest in the world. From progressive environmentalist Jeff White:

Per capita figures are statistical artifacts that tell us the ratio of a country's total emissions to its populations. But they don't tell us about individual contributions to the country's total emissions. For example, if I tell you that Canada's annual per capital emissions are 23 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, it doesn't tell you how much of that 23 tonnes I, as an average Canadian, am personally responsible for. It includes, for example "my" per capita share of the emissions caused by the mining of the tar sands in Alberta, the manufacture of cement in Quebec, an the industrialized livestock production in Ontario - none of which I have any personal control over.

If half the population of Canada suddenly disappeared, my per capita share of emissions, and that of very other remaining Canadian would increase dramatically overnight, without any change being made in my - or anyone else's - personal levels of carbon consumption. The population fetishists would realize their fondest wish (a dramatic reduction in population levels) while the per capita emissions levels would soar! What could demonstrate more clearly that per capita statistics tell us nothing about "overpopulation"?

But isn't the planet running out of food? (Short answer: NO.)

It can be shown in several different ways that the earth is still capable of producing enough food for every person on it. The problem is not a shortage of food, but a for-profit system that sees food distributed according to one's ability to buy it, rather than according to need.

Food follows the money, and this is as true globally as it is within countries. Remember, in the richest country in the world (the US), even by conservative estimates, 17% of all children are hungry or malnourished.

In the industrialized food chain, most grain is used to feed animals. The use of sustainable farming practices would allow us to retain half our supply of meat, while freeing up a tremendous amount of nutrition in grain - not to mention the huge health and environmental benefits (and further not to mention the benefits to animals).

Then there are biofuels, thought by many to be the promise of fuel independence and the end to resource wars. In 2007, vehicles in the US burned enough corn to cover the entire import needs of the world's 82 poorest countries. In 2009, more corn was processed by ethanol makers in the US than the combined grain production of Canada and Australia. Mark Lynas:

What biofuels do is undeniable: they take food out of the mouths of starving people and divert it to be burned as fuel in the car engines of the world's rich consumers.

And finally, huge quantities of food are destroyed, thrown away, and wasted in industrial food production, packaging, and distribution. As the authors say:

Blaming food shortages on overpopulation downplays the fact that the existing global food system is grossly inequitable, wasteful, and inefficient. Plenty of food is grown, but it isn't available to hungry people.

Population control is a war on the world's poorest people

Throughout modern history and in the not-distant past, "population control" usually meant forced sterilization. Representatives from wealthy nations, usually under the aegis of well-intentioned foundations, forced men and women to submit to sterilization practices without anything resembling informed consent.

Imagine giving birth and waking up to find your reproductive organs had been removed, or you had been implanted with a tamper-proof IUD! Imagine consenting to a procedure you were told was temporary birth control, until after it was performed, when you were told it was permanent! There are scores of examples of this being done to huge populations. Millions of women and men in India, South America, Africa, the United States, and in indigenous communities all over the world include this in their history. "Those people" - those brown people, those poor people, those others - should not be having all those babies! So we'll come in and decide who has babies and how many they have.

When governments or organizations have enforced measures to control reproduction, the world's poorest people have lost their freedoms, and poor women of colour have suffered the most. This is true whether the goal is to restrict the fertility of poor women or to stop the poor from migrating to the rich world:

Population control schemes inevitably treat the victims of social and economic injustice as obstacles to a sustainable society.

These days, population control rhetoric is less overtly racist and the tactics are less blunt - but only by degree. Population control, when dictated from above or from outside the individual and the community, always involves force or coercion. In some countries, sterilization became a condition of land allotment, electricity, ration cards, pay raises, and promotions. Entire villages would lose government benefits if families had more than the prescribed number of babies.

These schemes amount to one group of people deciding that another group of people are "surplus".

For the planet-destroying rulers of the world, the excess people are never themselves. The excess people are always somebody else.

It is the worst kind of victim-blaming, and an absolutely immoral practice.

Of course everyone should have access to safe, legal birth control, including safe, legal, and easily accessible abortion services. But women and men must be free to decide for themselves when and how many children to raise.

Women limit their reproduction when they have an interest in doing so. When educational and economic opportunity increase, when child mortality rates fall, when large families are not needed for agricultural labour, when the Catholic Church gets out of the picture, then birth rates fall. By choice.

The lifeboat mentality: immigration control is the wrong focus

Historian Robert Biel writes:

It is not just that there is one group of countries in the world which happens to be developed and another which happens to be poor. The two are organically linked; that is to say, one part is poor because the other is rich. The relationship is partly historical - for colonialism and the slave trade helped to build up capitalism and this provided the conditions for later forms of dependency - but the link between development and underdevelopment is a process that continues today.

People seeking to leave the global south and emigrate to the global north are often the victims of environmental degradation and social dislocation caused by that process.

Anti-immigration policies say, in effect, "I deserve to live a privileged life, because I happened to be born here, because (in all likelihood) my ancestors came here, but these people do not."

It is a lifeboat mentality. The earth is the sinking ship, and we're not letting anyone else in the lifeboat.

But our ship will sink or continue to float only if we all work together to save it. Kicking people off the lifeboat or throwing people overboard will not prevent or even forestall disaster.

The world over, indigenous people are fighting back against monumental environmental disasters, many of which barely graze our radar screens. To use just one example, each year more oil is spilled in the Niger delta than was spilled in the Gulf of Mexico disaster in 2010. Despite the brutal repression that led to the execution of environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Nigerian people continue to campaign and to fight for environmental justice.

That story is echoed in India, Ecuador, China, South America, and so on. The people of the global south are allies in our fight to save the planet. "Born here" vs. immigrant is another wedge used to divide and divert.

Support for immigration controls strengthens the most regressive forces in our societies and weakens our ability to deal with the real causes of environmental problems. It gives conservative governments and politicians an easy way out, allowing them to pose as friends of the environment by restricting immigration, while continuing with business as usual. It hands a weapon to reactionaries, allowing them to portray environmentalists as hostile to the legitimate aspirations of the poorest and most oppressed peopled in the world.

Angus and Butler expose the links between the anti-immigration environmental movement and right-wing hate groups: "the greening of hate". However, there are many sincere environmentalists who do not share those ties.

Whether intentionally or not, linking the environmental crisis to immigration is another way of shifting blame. "Those people" are the problem.

"It's up to each of us": the myth of consumer sovereignty

I've blogged many times about planned obsolescence, advertising propaganda, and the mistake of blaming consumers for outcomes largely outside of their control. This is a theme I think about frequently, but I had never seen so fully unpacked before reading Too Many People?.

Here in North America, we are frequently admonished to change our lifestyles, and told that our individual choices account for environmental destruction. I agree that living more simply, wasting less, and making green choices are all healthy goals. But the 99% are not to blame for the environmental crisis, and all of us "doing our part" will not solve it.

After the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989, Greenpeace ran ads blaming the spill on North Americans' addiction to oil.

This perspective completely overlooks the fact that it was Exxon that chose to use single-hulled ships, that failed to manage the drinking habits of its ship captain, that has worked and lobbied persistently to maintain America's need for a large supply of petroleum, and that pressed to open up the Alaskan oil fields in the first place against the protests of environmentalists.

Similarly, we can reply to those who blamed BP's Gulf of Mexico disaster on our supposed addiction to oil: even if we accept the far-fetched idea that oil companies drill new wells only to please consumers, no one can reasonably suggest that consumers somehow forced BP to cut every possible corner, suborn regulators, or violate safety guidelines. Those decisions were made in BP's executive offices, and consumers had no say.

I am reminded of a bumpersticker that we've discussed in wmtc: "Out of work? Keep buying foreign!" As if consumers decided that everything we purchase should be made in countries without labour and environmental protections to maximize corporate profits! As if there is some alternate store in our neighbourhood selling only products manufactured in Canada or the US! As if we have a choice!

First, blaming individual choice for the environmental crisis ignores gross income equality within the global north. Poverty is rampant. Millions of people are struggling to eat and keep a roof over their family's heads. When we hear and read about how much Americans (Canadians, Australians, etc.) consume, we generally hear averages. But in the US, the wealthiest 20% of the population receives and spend 60% of all income. The average means very little.

Second, most people have very little choice about whether and how much fossil fuel they use. Most Americans and Canadians have no choice but to drive, if they are to participate meaningfully in their society and community. They may be able to choose between Ford and Toyota, but they're not able to choose government policies that fund decent, affordable public transportation. They're not able to buy products that last for 20 years, or 10 years, and these days, two years. Planned obsolescence and policies that support the production and consumption of fossil fuels are built into the capitalist system.

Third, individual choices, while important and valid, can have only a marginal impact on the environment, as long as corporate decisions remain untouched - as long as global capitalism remains intact. To illustrate, Angus and Butler detail the mind-bogglingly profligate lifestyle of one American trillionaire. It reads like a cartoon, a person who has more wealth than he can consume in hundreds of lifetimes, and the tremendous waste that he leaves in his wake. Then they detail the waste, pollution and environmental degradation generated by that person's corporation - and his lifestyle is dwarfed in comparison.

Ultimately, believing that "we all" caused the environmental crisis and we as individuals can address it is the environmental equivalent of "bright-siding": a individually-based false solution to a problem that must be addressed collectively. Perpetuating the idea that consumer choice can save the environment serves as a convenient cover for the status quo.

The problem is capitalism: grow or die

When industrial disasters like Bhopal or the BP disaster come to our attention, the stories are often framed as exceptional - a horrendous mistake.

It's important to expose the arrogance and indifference to human life that lead to criminal acts such as the Bhopal and Love Canal disasters, but it's even more important to understand that corporate environmental destruction doesn't typically involve outright lawbreaking. In most cases, polluting is business as usual.

Environmental destruction is built into the global capitalist system. The real culprit of the environmental crisis is not an Ethiopian woman with 10 children, or immigrants to North America who are picking crops, driving taxis, or cleaning offices, or middle-class Canadians who drive to work.

Blaming overpopulation or immigration or our own lifestyles shifts our focus from what is really killing the planet: an unsustainable system with a mandate of constant growth, a system that devours resources not for the continuation and improvement of life on earth, but for one reason only: for profit.

Read this book. It will make it all perfectly clear.


----
Language notes:

- Arguments that attribute environmental ills to human numbers are often referred to as Malthusian, after Thomas Malthus, who wrote about about the supposed human population crisis in 1798. Malthus' theories are seldom, if ever, read today, and are widely mischaracterized. Angus and Butler use the more precise term populationist.

The global north is shorthand for the industrialized nations of Europe, the United States, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. The global south is shorthand for what is often called under-developed or third-world countries.

Emissions and footprint are used as shorthand for the total greenhouse gases released by people or practices. They are imprecise terms, but are adequate for the present discussion.

we must stand up for the most vulnerable among us: please contact the senate about bill c-31

This week, all political eyes in Canada will be focused on the C-38, the massive "budget" bill through which the Harper Government seeks to remake Canada. The Opposition in the House of Commons will be stalling, and the opposition on the ground will be supporting them, and pressing Conservative MPs to break ranks. (That campaign is here.)

But another terrible bill also continues its way into law today. This bill will directly affect fewer Canadians, and fewer people are resisting it, but the bill will bring profound changes to Canadian culture - and will irreparably harm the most vulnerable people among us. I refer to Bill C31, through which Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney want to dismantle Canada's refugee system.

Under the guise of cost-saving measures, this bill targets the world's most vulnerable people, and gives the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration unprecedented power to decide who is allowed to stay in Canada.

Bill C-31 may have third reading as early as today, June 11. It is unlikely to be defeated, and so will proceed to the Senate. At that point, the Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology will study the bill and hear testimony.

We can all contact the members of this committee and urge them to reject this dangerous bill. As the Canadian Council for Refugees notes, "Senators, like MPs, have the responsibility to adopt laws that comply with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international law."

Please email, write, or call Senators to voice your concerns about this bill. "If we are successful in convincing Senators," says CCR, "we may be able to stall the bill before the government’s target deadline of 29 June 2012."

This summary is from the Canadian Council for Refugees.

* * * *

Bill C-31 must be withdrawn and replaced with legislation which is fair, affordable,
and independent, and which complies with the Charter and Canada’s international
obligations.

Bill C-31 reforms Canada's refugee determination system to be unfair to refugees from designated countries of origin and with strict, speedy timelines.

- In 'designating' countries of origin to fast-track the cases of certain refugee claimants, the government is creating a discriminatory, two-tiered system. Canada's refugee determination system needs to give everyone a fair hearing, based on the facts of their case and regardless of their country of origin.

- By establishing overly short timelines before refugee determination hearings, not all refugee claimants will be adequately prepared. Strict, shortened timelines will seriously disadvantage refugees who have experienced serious trauma such as torture, refugees who lack important documents and refugees who need to build trust to freely tell their story before the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB). Women and men who have experienced sexual violence and LGBT persons would be among the most vulnerable.

Bill C-31 permits unchecked ministerial powers over refugee status determination in Canada.

- Bill C-31 eliminates the committee tasked with overseeing which countries are 'designated countries of origin’, a measure that was included in Bill C-11 (2010). Instead, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration will have the sole discretion to designate countries of origin. Canada's present system of independent decision-making for refugees then becomes vulnerable to political interests.

Bill C-31’s measures to 'curb human smuggling' will do nothing of the sort. Instead, they punish refugees.

- With Bill C-31, the government plans to jail refugee claimants, including some minors, without review for a minimum of one year. This is contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international law. These claimants will also be denied the right to family reunification and the right to travel abroad for over 5 years.

- Australia tried punishing refugees to deter them: it hasn’t worked. Australia is now adopting a model for refugee determination based on Canada’s present system.

- Jailing refugee claimants is extremely expensive in the short and long term. The cost of keeping an individual refugee claimant in detention for a single day is around $200. For a single year, that amounts to over $70,000 per person.

- Recent research has demonstrated the heavy, long-term mental health costs of detaining refugee claimants in Canada.

- Smuggling is already punishable by life imprisonment under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and mandatory minimums have been shown not to work as deterrents. Refugees know little or nothing about the laws before they arrive in a country of asylum like Canada, and even if they know, fear for their safety, or even their lives, forces them to do whatever they must to flee persecution.

Bill C-31 introduces the concept of 'conditional' permanent residence, which means that refugees could lose their permanent resident status.

- By granting permanent residence to refugees without the possibility of it being revoked, Canada has offered security and the ability to resettled refugees to fully contribute to Canadian society. These positive aspects will be lost by making permanent residence ‘conditional’ in Bill C-31.

- Making permanent residence ‘conditional’ adds barriers to integration for resettled refugees and permanent residents.

* * * *

More background:

I wrote about this extensively when the bill was originally tabled as Bill C-11: stand up for justice: say no to bill c-11, and stephen harper dismantles canada's refugee system; jason kenney attacks canadian democracy, are just two of the many wmtc posts about this distressing bill.

The government originally tried to ram C-11 through Parliament with no debate or amendments, to great outcry from Amnesty International and former Immigration Ministers, among others. The bill died when an election was called, and then resurfaced in the more extreme form of Bill C-31.

Another current piece on C-31 is running at The Mark: "Canada's refugee health services are under serious threat from both Bill-C31 and changes to the Interim Federal Health Program", by Dr. Danyaal Raza.

This page contains many useful links about C-31, including this on- page summary: "Bill C-31 must be withdrawn and replaced with legislation which is fair, affordable, and independent, and which complies with the Charter and Canada’s international obligations" (pdf), copied above.

puppies!!!

Congratulations to Pooh Bear! and dogsled_stacie. Yukon Yahoos has its first litter of puppies!

Readers of Stacie's blog have been following this saga since that fateful day Woody and Pooh Bear! got busy. (If you're not familiar with Stacie's blog, you'll really want to click on that one!)

A few days ago PB! started to pant and look for a place to give birth. And today there are four healthy pups - two males and two females. There was also a pup that did not survive. It was born first, which must have been incredibly stressful and sad. But now both moms - fur and human - are doing great.

I am really looking forward to watching these guys grow up. Even at this stage, blobs of fur blindly nursing, they are beautiful and amazing to see.




Image by Cathy Lester.

sevens are wild: join us for wmtc7

On the seventh day of the seventh month, at the seventh hour... well, it's really the 19th hour, and anyway it doesn't matter because those time divisions are arbitrary... but if you're a wmtc reader and you're not a troll, and you don't work for Jason Kenney, the CBSA, the FBI, or the DHS, join us for wmtc7!

July 7, 7:00 p.m. at a secure location in Mississauga. Email me for details.

why is someone from the house of commons and office of privy council reading my blog for hours?

Progressive bloggers, check your stats.

The Statcounter for wmtc shows "multiple visits spread out over several days" from an IP address in the House of Commons, and a separate visit from the Office of the Privy Council.

This visitor or visitors spent time at several of my "greatest hits" posts, information about my new career, my bio at The Mark, various essays, and a good deal of time searching for "ndp cooksville east mississauga kaminker" and "kaminker member ndp", and the like.

The entry post was this: july 1 2012: national stop harper day. I noticed this post was tweeted a lot yesterday by many anti-Harper Twitter accounts. No doubt government operatives are monitoring those tweets.

Sorry for the small font. There were so many, I could barely fit it in one snip.


Is the Harper Government^TM trying to show a connection between National Stop Harper Day and the NDP? (I have no idea if there is a connection.) Do they think "Stop Harper" is meant to be taken literally? Should I expect a visit?

Anyone else seeing this in their stats?

marxism 2012 program notes: the quebec student strike, or why every canadian needs to bang on a pan

I want to begin my posts from Marxism 2012 with the Quebec Student Strike, because it's currently the most important progressive development unfolding in Canada.

By now it should be obvious that the Quebec student strike is not only a student strike and is not only about Quebec. It should be obvious, if the corporate media wasn't ignoring, minimizing, scoffing at, or narrowly spinning this major story.

I posted ten things everyone should know about the Quebec student strike, cribbed from the Montreal Media Coop. It's a good list, and the full story is worth reading. But here's the most important takeaway: this is not only a student movement against an increase in tuition fees. It is a widespread, student-led movement against the austerity agenda, and against the attempt to transform Quebec from a socialized culture where services are universally accessible, or nearly so, to a privatized, user-payer system where access can be purchased by those who can afford it.

That's a fight for every one of us.

What follows are my notes from an inspiring panel discussion about the Quebec Student Strike, then an item from Socialist Worker analyzing the strike in relation to English Canada.

I do my best to accurately represent the Marxism talks based on my notes, but any errors or misrepresentations are mine.

Xavier LaFrance
Student Organizer

The student strike launched in February, but the campaign against the tuition increases was going on for months prior to that. There were months and months of meetings, and there were smaller, local days of actions, and occupations of government and university offices - a continual escalation of pressure on the government.

The student unions held a series of general membership meetings ("G-Mems") in order to gauge the interest in and mandate for a strike. The strike was over the $1,625 tuition hike, but it was also much broader than that. The strike aims to make more students and the general population aware of the government's bid to create a "user-payer culture", in place of our culture based on social payments. The government says it's in the midst of a cultural revolution - using these austerity measures to reshape Quebec society.

This is the largest student strike in Quebec history. In 2005, there was a strike for seven weeks. Right now, the 2012 strike has been on for 16 weeks. At its peak, on March 22, 300,000 students demonstrated through the streets of Montreal, many of them on a one-day strike. Since then, 190,000 to 200,000 students have been on continuous strike. There have also been hundreds of local creative actions.

For two months, the government refused to bargain, then said it would bargain, but not with CLASSE [the more militant, broader-based union]. The two other student unions, FECQ and FEUQ, which in the past had been more conservative, more like lobbyists than unions, stood in solidarity and refused to bargain unless CLASSE was at the table.

[FECQ = Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (in English : College students federation of Quebec)

FEUQ = Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (in English : University students federation of Quebec)

CLASSE = Coalition Large de l’Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante]

There has been tons of police repression - arrests, police-led violence, court injunctions, and of course the "special law" 78. But it's still going on "and I don't see it stopping any time soon". For 32 nights in a row [as of the date of this talk, May 26], there have been nightly marches, and now we've added the clanging of the pots and pans, as many of you know. "The spirit is incredible. The sense of collective power that you see and hear is absolutely amazing."

CLASSE continues to defy Law 78 both in courts and in the street.

The basic organizing principles of the Quebec student movement has two currents. On one hand are lobbyists. These are more corporatist, not combative, and not especially democratic. The other is the activist, combative, democratic student unionism. The basic tenets, principles, and tactics of this current were inspired by combative labour unions.

CLASSE:

We believe in education as a right, to be publicly funded, accessible to all. We see this as a social responsibility, and we have a broader perspective which leads to specific demand.

We mobilize membership with specific interests to defend.

We keep the student population as informed as possible, in order to mobilize, thus building a base of power.

We don't just send representatives to the media or to meetings with their own ideas - the model of executives holding meetings detached from the membership base. Here, the leaders are connected to the base democratically and collectively. Representatives only have power through the base.

We connect our struggles to other struggles, and form alliances with other social groups with similar aims.

They key is that we are a democracy. This is the key difference between the student movements in Quebec and Ontario. In Ontario, people are against the tuition hikes, but they have nowhere to take their opposition, no effective mechanism of protest. There are no general membership meetings here, so there is no way to collectively, publicly react.

This is most crucial. A mobilization committee is needed to rebuild tradition of general membership meetings. Through that process, through struggle, people transform themselves individually and collectively. "I knew this theoretically, but I saw it for myself in 2005. Now, through this process, the two more corporatist, lobbyist unions are becoming both more democratic and radical."

Sibel Epi Ataogul
Attorney representing CLASSE, member of the International Socialists

The strike is the workers' most powerful tool. It is the one concession the ruling class has made to unionized workers, and they don't want to see it expand into other realms of society. As a lawyer, I got involved with the Quebec Student Strike when the injunctions started coming in.

The strike evolved completely organically, through a system that has been established in francophone educational institutions. The student associations all have strike protocols in their charters. The CEGEPs, where many students attend between high school and university have strike protocols, in which teenagers are negotiating their own agreements. So the concept of a strong student union and a student strike are part of the culture.

The instructors - also in unions - mostly honoured the student strike and didn't teach during the strike. Teachers also acted as mediators between students and those teachers who continued to teach and didn't honour the strike.

The injunctions came because the strike went on for so long. Some students wanted to return to class, even though they are still adamantly against the fee hikes. The students who wanted to go back to class were in minority. They were not winning votes. This was a clash between people's personal plans to continue their education, and the majority wishes within a culture of direct democracy.

The government was and is trying to frame the strike as a "boycott," which is an option of individual choice. A boycott is based on a consumer model: "You paid for your chocolate bar and you can eat it anytime you want, and no one can stop you from eating your chocolate bar."

But this was and is not a boycott! A strike is a collective action. It's not "I won't go to class". It's "there will be no class". A strike says you see yourself not as consumers of an educational product, but intellectual workers. It says, "We are part of the process and if we’re not part of the process, the process will stop."

An injunction is the edge of the rule of law. It is so completely discretionary. An injunction seeks to preserve the status quo until evidence can be heard from all sides, and a final decision will come later, balancing interests. In some cases, an injunction is necessary. Someone wants to cut down a tree. Someone wants the tree preserved. It could take a long time for the parties to gather evidence and the court to hear all the evidence, and by that time, the tree has been cut down, and the argument is moot. An injunction says: preserve the status quo. Don't cut down the tree, and the court will hear all the evidence and rule on it later.

In this case, the injunction was being served between a democratic mass movement versus an individual student who wanted to go to class. This views the action as a boycott, not a strike. "They can have that ideology, but it’s not going to change the reality."

So people did not respect the injunctions, and the injunctions became more and more restrictive, ordering school administrators to call the police to arrest striking students. Despite this, because there was so much unrest and turmoil, classes did not take place. So despite the injunction, the view of the class as an individual right did not prevail.

Then came the special law. Special Law 78 requires schools to suspend sessions unless an agreement is made with the student union. It recognizes that right now the situation is too volatile for there to be classes.

It also places huge limits on the right to protest. It forces teachers to teach and not respect the strike. It contains clauses saying there cannot be a student protest within 50 metres of any educational grounds if the protest has the effect of denying anyone access to class.

The main problem with the law is the general provisions regarding the right to protest. Any gathering of more than 50 people has to be communicated to police. Not to the City, not to any elected official, but directly to police. The police then have the unilateral right to say no, to change the route, at their own discretion. It gives the police the power to decide where and how people will express themselves.

Special Law 78 is the movement of power within a representative democracy to the armed wing of that system.

And from the reaction of CLASSE and the reaction on the streets, you can see the law is having the exact opposite effect. The law does not work. "People who would have never gotten out of their houses to support the students are now saying, I’m going to go outside with my pots and my pans...!"

Two groups of people did give their route to the police, but then the protest didn’t follow that route. 200,000 people went on their own route. The police couldn’t arrest them all.

Sibel told a great story of her own experience on the first night of the "casseroles" demonstrations. She went outside, very tentatively, with one friend, and they kind of sheepishly banged a little on their pots and pans. Then three people came along and joined them, and the five of them had a little more confidence to bang away. Then someone came along and said, "It's happening in front of the church on such-and-such street." They all ran off, a few blocks away, and there were 100 or more people banging on pots and pans! And more and more kept coming out, until there were too many to all stand on the sidewalk and they spilled over to the street...

Monique Moisan
Montreal-based activist, leading member of Quebec Solidaire

The strike is not students vs non-students. It is a class struggle. Many parents of students are involved. At times parents have acted as shields between students and the police.

Students organized a day to talk about a social strike with community groups. People in the community are often isolated. They have many issues but are not prepared politically. 230 people attended this meeting! They understood that the student struggle is their struggle, too.

When there are more than 200,000 people in the streets, they can't all be students! In a city of 1.5 million people, it couldn't be. But the media still calls it a "student strike". The students in Quebec are leaders of a social movement that is much wider than the student struggle. It has caused people to think about the problem as a whole - not only fees, but the entire culture of a user-payer society.

People understand that if the students lose this struggle, the rest will follow: health care, transit, city services - all will be privatized.

From the discussion...

The students haven't won yet, but Charest's plan has been completely destroyed. He wanted to provoke the student movement and use public opinion to his own advantage. He knew if he announced a 75% tuition increase there would be a student strike. Then for two months he ignored the strike. So that part of his plan worked. But then he couldn't control it. He couldn't divide it. And now he can't even end it with repression.

His plan was to destroy his political opponent on the right. He thought he would win over their base by being tough on students and unions. He had no idea that he would provoke the biggest social movement since the 1970s!

And he didn't count on another political party: QS. Quebec Solidaire is "a fish in water" in this movement.

[Ed note: this shows you an important tenet of activism. You never know.]

* * * * *

There have been massive job losses in Quebec over the past year, just as there were in Ontario in 2008. Now links are being forged between students and the labour movement. Busloads of students went to Alma, Quebec to support the locked-out Rio Tinto workers, and labour unions have donated money and other help to the striking students.

These are the methods and mechanisms that we need to learn and adopt in Ontario. Demanding that the student union leadership call a strike won't work. A strike that is not built and prepared will end up in a setback, potentially disastrous. In order to be successful, it has to arise from a process.

* * * * *

Quebec Solidaire has a representative in the National Assembly of Quebec, Amir Khadir, and what a difference that has made! To have a spokesperson at that level, to get that media coverage, to get the real story and demands into the public view. Membership in QS has soared since the student strike.

We must press the NDP to do the same!

* * * * *

"General Membership Meetings are the same thing as pots and pans. That's the real social media." We can't just transplant the Quebec experience to Ontario.

The strike arose from the Quebec tradition of mass demonstrations among students. It doesn't exist in Ontario yet: but it can be built. It won't happen from the top down. We have to build from the base.

* * * *

From Socialist Worker:

How do we spread the Quebec Spring?

The Quebec student strike is inspiring people across Canada who would like to see a similar mass movement against austerity. But how we spread the Quebec spring?

Some say the Quebec spring is unique, and Quebec certainly has its own particular conditions that are important to understand.

From the experience as an oppressed nation within the Canadian state, the people of Quebec have a strong history of resistance—including the biggest anti-globalization protests in 2001, the biggest anti-war protests in 2003, and the biggest May Day protest in 2004.

Quebec students also have a tradition of mass strikes, most recently the 2005 strike that forced the government to give back $103 million in cuts.

That experience cannot be spontaneously summoned across English Canada, but that doesn’t mean that the struggle can't spread.

The Quebec Spring is a combination of past local experiences along with inspiration from global revolt. That people in Quebec have called the strike wave the "printemps erable" — meaning maple spring but sounding like Arab Spring — shows the links with the global revolt. But how do we spread it?

Some are impatiently demanding that the leadership of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) simply call a strike, or arguing that radical students organize on their own— counterposing the Quebec student organization CLASSE with other student unions. But this ignores the way in which the Quebec student strike — and strikes in general — are built.

Hundreds of thousands of students didn't go on strike because CLASSE told them to. The strike was built from below since the end of last year, and CLASSE—which numbers in the tens of thousands—has built unity with other student unions FECQ and FEUQ.

We can't turn our backs on mass student organizations or expect them to call a strike that has not been built from below (which would invite failure).

The CFS organized a pan-Canadian day of action against tuition fees on February 1 and occupied the Ontario Education Minister's office on April 5. If we want to spread the Quebec spring we need to learn the lessons and build a mass student movement from below, uniting with and strengthening the CFS.

viral video too good to be true: the frankfurt police did not join the demo

The photo is real. The interpretation, unfortunately, was not.

Police in Frankfurt, Germany, did indeed remove their helmets, and they were walking ahead of Occupy protesters. However, they were not escorting, they were using a blocking technique similar to kettling. They also arrested hundreds of people who were peacefully demonstrating, and bashed a few heads in the bargain. A discussion is here, with links to more info.

Organizers in Germany are upset that the photo was misinterpreted as the police identifying with and demonstrating with the 99%, and I can understand that. But we were given a brief glimpse of a possible future.

blackout speakout a success: government truthspeak squad dispatched to spread lies

I can't find exact numbers on how many websites and blogs went dark in yesterday's BlackoutSpeakout campaign, but conservative mainstream media is saying that more than 500 websites and 18,000 people participated.

Another marker of success is the government's reaction: 10 Members of Parliament were dispatched to media events to, Joe Oliver said, "set the record straight". That is, to counter the truth with lies. Bob Rae described it as a "truly Orwellian moment".

Resisting this majority government can feel frustrating. But the fight has broad, mainstream support, and it's picking up steam every day. When your opponent organizes a simultaneous counter-campaign on the same day as your event, he is fighting on your turf. You have made an impact.