Montreal: ça ira!

In the face of continued inadequate media coverage, let’s keep the focus on Montreal. As numerous tweets had it last night, this has gone far beyond a dispute over student tuition fees, as important as that issue has become. It is now a contest over sovereignty: do the people set the boundaries of the force of law or their “representatives” in the state parliament?

Such questions resonate in Quebec because of the long campaign for autonomy from Anglophone Canada and the history of state repression in the 1970s. Yet they clearly have a global impact in the present crisis in which neoliberal technocracy is struggling to maintain the hegemony of its assertion that there is no alternative to austerity and authority. Montreal is now the focus of this global dispute.

For those catching up with the Montreal strike, this video offers a history:

The loi d’exception, the law of exception, known as Loi 78 gave exceptional powers to the state. The May 22 march of over 250,000 people in a city of about 3 million people was an extraordinary statement of refusal to consent to this domination.

May 22 March. Credit: Justin Ling

The next night saw the first implementation of the law. Demonstrators were kettled in the street, using the orange nets first implemented in London. There were 518 arrests Wednesday night in Montreal and another 150 in Quebec City. Protestors were issued with desk tickets carrying fines of $634. The New York Times mentions this briefly on Friday without a reference to Law 78.

Many protestors took to the streets on Thursday night wearing their tickets.

Demonstrator wearing his fine summons for illegal assembly

Montreal responded by holding a much larger demonstration on Thursday night. Heard on the manif (march) Thursday night: “si la révolution nous suit c’est parce qu’elle nous appuie”/ “if the revolution is following us it’s because it supports us.” This is not (just) a tuition strike any more. The song of the march went:

Illégal, tu me fais faire des bêtises dans les rues d’Montréal….quand le peuple se lève, rien ne peut l’arrêter

Or:

Illegal, you make me do stupid things in the streets of Montreal…when the people rise up, nothing can stop them

Estimates suggested about 1500 people were marching in three separate groups that converged downtown.

Marching in Montreal--illegally

Many performed cacerolazo, a banging of pots and pans as a protest that was carried out not only by protestors in the street–who were risking arrest–but by many others from steps, balconies and sidewalks. A musician has made a song out of the sound already: Guillaume Chartain’s casserole song. These sympathizers extended still further the anti-government coalition and the action took place in parts of the city remote from the downtown demonstrations.

The casserole protest aka cacerola

There were other carnivalesque elements, designed to deter the police from making arrests, like the Plus Brigades in NY. Here’s the AnarchoPanda making his/her rounds:

The police seemed uncertain as to what to do. At one point they started tweeting, apparently to warn people of imminent arrest:

Using the #manifencours like the protestors, the SPVM proclaimed that a siren would be sounded as a sign of escalation. In the end, having already made over 2500 arrests during the course of the protests, the police made a token 4 arrests last night. As I mentioned earlier, there is still a popular state of exception–the mass repetition of events, whether technically legal or criminalized. To have enacted Loi 78 last night, the police would have needed to arrest about 2500 people and they seem to have backed down from that.

This could mark a critical turning point. If the demonstrators can maintain their numbers, and the police continue to show reluctance to mass arrest, Loi 78 falls by default. What outcome do the protestors then want? If elections are called it is by no means certain that the right lose, as Wisconsin Democrats are nervously seeing now. Although Gov. Walker faces a recall election, polls show the race essentially tied.

Meanwhile, the Canadian movement is energizing others worldwide. There was a solidarity rally in Paris for the second day in a row.

A rally in Paris in solidarité

They get it in London finally. Small solidarity events are taking place daily in New York, with a larger event being planned for next week.

As the French Revolution chant used to go:

Ça ira! Ça ira! Ça ira!

Here we go! here we go! Here we go!