by Malav Kanuga on May 28, 2012

Over the past 3,5 months, a student strike against tuition hikes in Québec has evolved into one of the biggest anti-capitalist movements in North America.

Originally published by Occupy Theory

Origins of an unlimited general strike (“grève générale illimitée”)

Students in Quebec marked their hundredth day of an unlimited general strike on Tuesday, 22 May, the culmination of the most stunning mass protest movement of recent months and North America’s largest student movement in years. In fact, the mobilizations in Quebec might just be Canada’s Arab Spring.

Red Square Revolt | Quebec Students on Strike from nate on Vimeo.

Students have been organizing against tuition hikes for nearly one and a half years, when the Quebec government first proposed to raise tuition fees by seventy-five percent over five years (amended to eighty-two percent over seven years by the government at the end of April). Before the general strike began in February, protests, demos, trainings, letter writing campaigns, and attempts to negotiate in good faith with the government were consistently met with obstinate silence from the Charest administration. For the students there has been a growing sense of urgency and a shared recognition that increased tuition means a heavier student debt burden, hundreds of more hours a year spent working instead of studying, less access for working class and lower class students, and a shift in university culture toward the market, the commodification of education, the financialization of student life, and the privatization of the university…….  READ MUCH MORE………….

Reblogged with thanks from        http://roarmag.org/2012

Continue reading “Québec: “we didn’t know it was impossible, so we did it!””