BRITAIN CELEBRATES THE RIGHT TO LIVE UNDER A BRIDGE, THE RIGHT TO PROFIT OFF THOSE WHO DO, AND GOD SAVE THE QUEEN

If you happened to turn on the TV news over the weekend, you could not have missed all the senseless pageantry in London celebrating the Queen.  What you did miss is that some of those who made up the workforce that made the pageantry possible weren't getting paid and were living under a bridge.


So while celebrating Royalty, it seems the brits were also celebrating capitalism, that great economic system which gives everyone, rich and poor, the absolute right to sleep under a bridge.


Truthfully, this is not a funny story.  This is a story of what the British call Workfare.  Workfare demands that people who receive welfare work unpaid jobs.  As Boycott Workfare points out, "Workfare profits the rich by providing free labour, whilst threatening the poor by taking away welfare rights if people refuse to work without a living wage."


Workfare, of course, does not only impact those workers without jobs, it impacts those with them.  Also, as reported by Boycott Workfare:

In February of this year, the following account emerged from one MP on the Public Audit Committee:

“… the situation that I am observing in retail where people are being placed for free in retail operations for work experience….

…squeezing out permanent employment in relatively low-paid retail. I have noticed companies such as Tesco making their standard contracts four-hour contracts. WH Smith has a zero-hour contract policy, as do places such as Primark in my constituency. I have constituents who have worked in those places and who are not getting the hours of work that they used to have, which is obviously having very substantial follow-on impacts on tax credits and so on….

…In my constituency, one of the things that is happening is that many people are being given work experience-unpaid-in retail,…when they [retailers] are offering jobs, a company such as A4e, which operates in Slough, can say to Primark, “If you want more of our free workers, I hope you are going to give our people 20-hour jobs…

…I want to know how – it is not even in the Report – we protect against the risk of job substitution as a result of this programme, because it is not factored into how people are paid.”

So while the Royals make lots of money and don't do any work, lots of others do work and make no money, so that some others can make money off the labor of others, and lay off some who work and make some money, so they can become others who do work and make no money.....

CAPITALISM: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT!

The following is from the UK'S Guardian.

Unemployed bussed in to steward river pageant

Coachloads of jobless people brought in to work unpaid on river pageant as part of Work Programme

Call for inquiry into use of unpaid jobseekers as jubilee stewards

• 
  

• Shiv Malik
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 June 2012 17.29 EDT
• Comments (2109)

Some of those hired as stewards had to spend the night before the pageant sleeping under London Bridge.

A group of long-term unemployed jobseekers were bussed into London to work as unpaid stewards during the diamond jubilee celebrations and told to sleep under London Bridge before working on the river pageant.

Up to 30 jobseekers and another 50 people on apprentice wages were taken to London by coach from Bristol, Bath and Plymouth as part of the government's Work Programme.

Two jobseekers, who did not want to be identified in case they lost their benefits, said they had to camp under London Bridge the night before the pageant. They told the Guardian they had to change into security gear in public, had no access to toilets for 24 hours, and were taken to a swampy campsite outside London after working a 14-hour shift in the pouring rain on the banks of the Thames on Sunday.

One young worker said she was on duty between London Bridge and Tower Bridge during the £12m river spectacle of a 1,000-boat flotilla and members of the Royal family sail by . She said that the security firm Close Protection UK, which won a stewarding contract for the jubilee events, gave her a plastic see-through poncho and a high-visibility jacket for protection against the rain.

Close Protection UK confirmed that it was using up to 30 unpaid staff and 50 apprentices, who were paid £2.80 an hour, for the three-day event in London. A spokesman said the unpaid work was a trial for paid roles at the Olympics, which it had also won a contract to staff. Unpaid staff were expected to work two days out of the three-day holiday.

The firm said it had spent considerable resources on training and equipment that stewards could keep and that the experience was voluntary and did not affect jobseekers keeping their benefits.

The woman said that people were picked up at Bristol at 11pm on Saturday and arrived in London at 3am on Sunday. "We all got off the coach and we were stranded on the side of the road for 20 minutes until they came back and told us all to follow them," she said. "We followed them under London Bridge and that's where they told us to camp out for the night … It was raining and freezing."

A 30-year-old steward told the Guardian that the conditions under the bridge were "cold and wet and we were told to get our head down [to sleep]". He said that it was impossible to pitch a tent because of the concrete floor.

The woman said they were woken at 5.30am and supplied with boots, combat trousers and polo shirts. She said: "They had told the ladies we were getting ready in a minibus around the corner and I went to the minibus and they had failed to open it so it was locked. I waited around to find someone to unlock it, and all of the other girls were coming down trying to get ready and no one was bothering to come down to unlock [it], so some of us, including me, were getting undressed in public in the freezing cold and rain." The men are understood to have changed under the bridge.

The female steward said that after the royal pageant, the group travelled by tube to a campsite in Theydon Bois, Essex, where some had to pitch their tents in the dark.

She said: "London was supposed to be a nice experience, but they left us in the rain. They couldn't give a crap … No one is supposed to be treated like that, [working] for free. I don't want to be treated where I have to sleep under a bridge and wait for food." The male steward said: "It was the worst experience I've ever had. I've had many a job, and many a bad job, but this one was the worst."

Both stewards said they were originally told they would be paid. But when they got to the coach on Saturday night, they said, they were told that the work would be unpaid and that if they did not accept it they would not be considered for well-paid work at the Olympics.

Molly Prince, managing director of Close Protection UK, said in a statement: "We take the welfare of our staff and apprentices very seriously indeed.

"The staff travelling to the jubilee are completing their training and being assessed on the job for NVQ Level 2 in spectator safety after having completed all the knowledge requirements in the classroom and some previous work experience. It is essential that they are assessed in a live work environment in order to complete their chosen qualifications.

"The nature of festival and event work is such that we often travel sleeping on coaches through the night with an early morning pre-event start – it is the nature of the business … It's hard work and not for the faint-hearted.

"We had staff travel from several locations and some arrived earlier than others at the meeting point, which I believe was London Bridge, which was why some had to hang around. This is an unfortunate set of circumstances but not lack of care on the part of CPUK."

The company said it had spent up to £220 on sponsoring security training licences for each participant and that boots and combat trousers cost more than £100.

The charity Tomorrow's People, which set up the placements at Close Protection under the work programme, said it would review the situation, but stressed that unpaid work was valuable and made people more employable. Tomorrow's People is one of eight youth charities that were supported in the Guardian and Observer's Christmas appeal last year.

Abi Levitt, director of development services at the charity, said: "We have been unable to verify the accuracy of the situation with either the people on work experience or the business concerned.

"We will undertake a review of the situation as matter of urgency. Tomorrow's People believes strongly in the value of work experience in helping people to build the skills, confidence and CV they need to get and keep a job and we have an exemplary record going back nearly 30 years for our work with the long-term unemployed."

FROM ISRAEL TO HUNGRY AND BEYOND, THE WORLD STINKS OF "BLOOD AND SOIL"

There is a lot of scary stuff going on in the world these days, per usual, I guess.  Some of the most rotten is the racist violence and the racist rhetoric which has erupted in Israel toward African immigrants lately.  The country's Internal Affairs Minister said just the other day, “Muslims that arrive here do not even believe that this country belongs to us, to the white man.”  Not scary enough.  His quote came out early Sunday in a Haaretz article about a new law that came into effect, regarding detention of migrants,

"A law granting Israeli authorities the power to detain illegal migrants for up to three years came into effect on Sunday, in the wake of widening public controversy over the influx of African migrants who cross into Israel along its border with Egypt.

The law makes illegal migrants and asylum seekers liable to jail, without trial or deportation, if caught staying in Israel for long periods. In addition, anyone helping migrants or providing them with shelter could face prison sentences of between five and 15 years.

The law amended the Prevention of Infiltration Law of 1954, passed to prevent the entry of Palestinians as part of emergency legislation. The law is expanded to address migrant workers or asylum seekers who enter Israel without posing a threat to Israel’s security.

According to the law, migrant workers already here could be jailed for the most minor offense such as spraying graffiti or stealing a bicycle – infractions for which they would not have been detained before.

So far, all migrants who have been caught by the Israel Defense Forces on the Israel-Egypt border have been transferred to the Saharonim detention facility which holds 2,000 spaces."

This follows recent racist attacks and riots aimed at the African community within Israel.


Let's face it, when your country is pretty much established on a reactionary ideology like zionism and pretty much anchored in race, religion, and ethnicity, what can one expect?  When you have been treating the Palestinian population based on the South African model of apartheid, what can one expect? 


As a human being, I am disgusted.  As a long time foe of white supremacy, nationalism, racism, fascism, and nazism, I am angered.  As a Jew, I am embarrassed.


BUT, that is not what the post below is all about.  Instead, we head north to Hungary in a Europe rife with the same crap. 


It's a dangerous world out there.


The following comes from Searchlight.

Hungary experiences nationalism renaissance

• 
• 

Written by Keno Verseck

Nationalism is on the rise in Hungary. The works of a far-right poet are to be taught in schools, while his remains are to be buried in his hometown in neighboring Romania - against the will of the Romanian government.

Jozsef Nyiro was born in 1889 in Szekler Land, a Romanian region of Transylvania, which at the time was a part of Hungary. He was not only a simple "blood-and-soil" poet, but one of the leading cultural ideologues during the rule of Hungary's national socialist Arrow Cross Party from October 1944 to March 1945, when tens of thousands of Jews were massacred or sent on death marches.

Nyiro served in the Arrow Cross Party's parliament, and he remained faithful to Ferenc Szalasi's fascist regime up to the end of the World War Two. After 1945, he was hunted as a war criminal by both Hungary and Romania, but he was able to flee to Germany and then to Franco's Spain in 1950. Today, his works are compulsory reading for Hungarian school children.

The Romanian government recently banned a re-burial ceremony in his honor. According to Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta, the decision was issued in order to prevent the poet's grave from becoming a pilgrimage spot for far-right extremists.

The Arrow Cross Party ruled Hungary from 1944 to 1945

In its place, an ecumenical service was held on Pentecost Sunday at the poet's birth place, attended by the Hungarian State Secretary for Culture Geza Scocs and Parliamentary President Laszlo Kover. The latter declared that the planned re-burial would take place sooner or later, even if was against the will of the "uncivilized, hysterical, paranoid, barbaric" Romanian government. He added that the people, "who had a son whose ashes were feared," would be "victorious."

Smuggled ashes

Szocs has since admitted, in online Hungarian publication index.hu, that the urn containing the fascist poet's ashes had been smuggled into Romania. He said that despite the conspiratorial operation, "nothing illegal had happened," but that he no longer knew the ashes' location.

The planned re-burial of Nyiro's remains is part of Hungary's recent nationalist renaissance, successfully driven by the country's far-right, and it now boasts the whole-hearted support of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his conservative nationalist Fidesz party.

Kover called the Romanian government hysterical and barbaric

Orban is re-assessing relations with those neighboring countries that still have significant Hungarian minorities: Slovakia, Serbia, and Romania. After two decades of working to re-establish friendly relations while still attempting to gain better rights for minorities, Fidesz is now following a new revisionist policy. At least for now, the party is unlikely to risk the taboo of renegotiating borders - or revising the 1920 Treaty of Trianon where Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory - but it is significant that Fidesz, more than any other post-communist Hungarian government, is emphasizing the unity of all Hungarian people in the region.

Fascist ideology rehabilitated

Hungarians everywhere are being reminded of their "holy duty" to their nation - either through the "Day of National Solidarity" on June 4, meant to commemorate the "tragedy of Trianon," or through the new constitution - which came into force at the start of the year - or in the controversial media law.

At the same time, Orban is intervening in domestic politics in Slovakia and Romania by supporting the Hungarian minorities there - often by helping them to re-found parties. In some instances, like the aborted burial of Nyiro, Fidesz politicians indulge in more or less open electioneering in their neighboring country.

Romaniais holding municipal elections on June 10, when the Romanian-based Hungarian minority party MPP hopes to overtake the more moderate Democratic Union of Hungarians (RMDSZ). For many years, the centrist RMDSZ was the only political representation of Romania's Hungarian minority. It even took part in several government coalitions between 1996 and 2010.

Hungary is about to celebrate a day of national solidarity

Parallel to this political revisionism, Hungary is also in the process of rehabilitating Miklos Horthy, who governed the country from 1920 to 1944 with an authoritarian, ultra-conservative clerical regime. Horthy, a notorious anti-Semite, was responsible for the deportation of over 400,000 Hungarian Jews in the spring and summer of 1944 - they were eventually murdered in Auschwitz. Now new plaques and statues are to be unveiled in his honor.

Nationalism hurts Hungarian minorities

But the success of this new nationalist, revisionist line remains in doubt. Hungary has become isolated in the EU, where the country is considered a destabilizing force in central and southeastern Europe. On top of that, Orban and his party may have permanently weakened the representatives of Hungarian minorities in those neighboring countries.

The Hungarian Coalition Party (MKP), supported by Fidesz, failed to enter the Slovakian parliament in a recent election there. As a consequence, the Hungarian community's political representation in Slovakia sank from 14 percent to 9 percent.

Orban has isolated Hungary in the European Union

The Hungarian minority in Romania faces an even bigger disaster in November's parliamentary election. Around 400,000 Hungarians have left Transylvania in the past two decades. As a consequence, the community's political representation could diminish to the minimum of mandatory delegates that every minority in Romania is entitled to.

Not only that, but no fewer than three Hungarian parties are standing in the election, and the number of Hungarian votes will barely be enough to allow one of them to clear the 5 percent hurdle necessary to enter parliament.

But perhaps, viewed cynically, this is precisely Orban's plan - to encourage as many disenfranchised and disappointed Hungarians to return to Hungary as possible. That would secure Orban's party a stable and long-term voter base. It would also ease Hungary's chronic demographic problems, without relying on the immigration of non-Hungarians.

Credit: Deutsche Welle

AUTONOMIA: SNAPSHOTS OF THE STUDENT MOVEMENT IN MONTREAL

The student movement in Quebec has been on fire for a while now.  The post below, for theoretical weekends at Scission, is an analysis of the organization of that movement.  But it is more than that.  It is a look at a form of organization and organizing that could easily be implemented far beyond a student movement.  It is a form that is dear to the heart of an autonomous Marxist like myself.


The following is from Recomposition.

Snapshots of the Student Movement in Montreal

May 27, 2012 | Filed under Our writings

At the bottom of this article are links for how your trade union or community group can support the students’ struggle. That will help tremendously, but spreading the struggle to your own job or school will do even more. This article is meant to help explain how, by showing how students in Quebec were able to organize their general strike.

Snapshots of the Student Movement in Montreal
Written on a hot May 23, 2012.
By P. Gage

I arrived in Montreal the night the government of Quebec had turned the province into a police state. Jean Charest had passed a law declaring any demonstration over 50 people not pre-approved by the police to be an illegal gathering punishable by up to $1,000 in fines for individuals and $125,000 in fines for any organisation endorsing the action. That night, over twenty five thousand students and supporters defied the law and marched through downtown Montreal. We marched under banners dropped from apartments, past bar patrons cheering with raised fists, and among cars honking in support. In that and other nightly demontrations, I saw random beatings on the streets by a police force run amok. While we marched, the student delegates met all weekend in their congresses and debated whether to endorse the demonstrations.

There is a strong temptation to write a protest tourism piece that says “I was there,” and no doubt that phrase still makes me smile a couple days after having left Quebec for New York. I am still in awe, but this piece is not intended to talk about how amazing it all was. That does not do students, working families, and the unemployed any good.

Instead, this article is intended to convey to militants in the rest of the world a few of the things I saw and heard about in Quebec that I thought were tremendously strong developments, and things that any organization in the class struggle could learn from. The more questions I asked, the more the mask of Quebec exceptionalism fell away to reveal a real practical movement that succeeded not because they were at the right place at the right time but because they did things right. Below I will outline three explanations for why this movement has been so successful: the class analysis of the Quebec students, the elevation of rank-and-file assemblies over executive power, and the central role direct action plays in the movement.

The Student Union System in Quebec
Like in the rest of Canada, student unions in Quebec are united into various federations of campus unions. In English speaking Canada, the two main federations are the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), who generally line up politically with the New Democratic Party and the Canada Labour Congress, and the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA), a more right-leaning federation with ties to the Canadian Liberal and Conservative Parties. Quebec is an exception, however: neither of those student federations has a strong presence there. Instead the three main Federations are ASSÉ (l’Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante), the FEUQ (Fédération Étudiante Universitaire du Québec), and the FECQ (Fédération Étudiante Collegiale du Québec).

The FEUQ and the FECQ both have strong ties to the Parti Québecois, a nationalist populist party in the province. The FECQ (Federation of Quebec College Students) is based in the Cégeps, a school system that sits between high schools and the post secondary system that many Quebecers go to before moving on to a trade school, a career or university. The FEUQ (Federation of Quebec University Students) is based in the universities.

ASSÉ (pronounced ah-say, a play on the French word for “enough”) is different in that it hostile to political affiliation and openly anti-capitalist, feminist, and anti-colonial. They have no formal connection to the mainstream labour movement, though many workers are now looking to the students for how to move their own struggles forward (this worker included).

CLASSE is the “coalition large” of ASSÉ and allows the members of the other federations to affiliate with ASSÉ through their local. During strike mobilization, student associations joined the coalition as a way of strengthening their numbers and improving coordination of the strike. This allows the militant anti-capitalist politics of ASSÉ to influence the politics in other federations while at the same time keeping their separate organizational identity, their militant autonomy from the official left, and their radical politics intact.

It has also allowed ASSÉ to spread the assembly system of decision-making and organization to schools where the students were represented by other student federations. As the strike gained momentum, more and more student organisations claimed dual affiliation with ASSÉ through the CLASSE coalition. The strict requirements placed upon this affiliation shifted the decision making power in the local organisations: all associations that joined had to hold regular general assemblies and these assemblies had to be the highest decision making power in the association, even above the local union executive.

This took control of the strike and the collective actions of the students out of the student politicians’ hands and placed it firmly in the hands of the rank-and-file. Soon ASSÉ transitioned from being an anti-capitalist student union to also being the central hub in a network of student militants fighting against the steadily rising debt load of student graduates.

The Assembly System
There can be no doubt that the charismatic, articulate and brave leadership in ASSÉ and CLASSE has played a major role in the public perception of the strike, and these spokespeople should be commended for putting forward a point of view that runs counter to that of every powerful person in our society (that is a lonely place to be). However, the strength of the student movement lies in the limits it has placed on reliance on leadership, and the way that its politics revolves around direct action rather than charismatic personalities.

The assemblies are organized either by department (like biology) or faculty (like sciences) that meet regularly. For example, the geography department at Concordia has very strong support for their strike, and they meet every week to debate the strike’s effectiveness, tactics, and demands, and vote on whether or not to renew the strike for another week. Other departments or faculties, like the science faculty at McGill, decided not to strike and classes continued there.

The assemblies are run on a majority rules system with clear rules of order spelled out in a constitution, however there are some hallmarks of consensus such as designated people who watch the room for students who might be upset, or not speaking up, and who can alter the meeting stack according to these dynamics. Many of the assemblies have a huge turnout, especially around strike votes, but they also grow and shrink depending on what is going on. The faculties that are on strike have strong strike mandates, often well over eighty percent. This is a typical outcome of the practice of voting by a show of hands and why trade unions traditionally took strike votes this way. Often it is the fear of being alone, more than the fear of taking action, that affects the outcome of a strike vote. Seeing those around you willing to openly show their willingness to strike by raising their hand emboldens everyone. In fact, the McGill administration tried to reduce momentum for the strike by requiring strike votes to be taken online – not too different from government-supervised strike votes for union workers. (This failed when students voted overwhelmingly in favour anyway.)

Trade Union Bargaining and Direct ActionMany commentators have raised the issue whether students can really form effective unions the way grocery store clerks or steel workers can. Of course this shows a certain short-sightedness in how we as a society define a union. Fortunately, working people don’t generally let semantics get in the way of what they want.

As far as effectiveness is concerned, a union is a collective body of working class people organized to exert pressure on the capitalist system in order to extract concessions in the short term, and to advance the political interests of its members in the long term. The student movement in Quebec is a union movement because it is organized on a class basis and uses direct action to achieve its goals. In fact, by these lights, the student movement is a better example of a union than many unions in North America.

Student unions in Quebec are regulated by laws and register and certify like other unions. However, they have no collective agreements or grievance procedures, and they do not have the legal right to collectively bargain like workers in an auto plant or grocery store. They only have negotiators now because the government asked for someone to bargain with once the strike started.

In general, the way that unions advance their agenda is through disruption of capitalist profit. If businesses don’t make money, either by striking, sabotage, boycott, or social disruption, they are brought to their knees very quickly. The students’ capacity to bargain likewise comes from their capacity to create a disruption. They have two main fronts in this disruption: their picket lines on campus and their demonstrations in the streets, especially in Montreal but also at Jean Charest ‘s office and home (the Premier of Quebec), or at Liberal party gatherings like in Victoriaville, where a police riot ensued.

As far as picket lines go, some militants I spoke with felt that the best pickets let students cross but block professors, often other union members who were sympathetic anyways. This was very effective because it minimized the group of angry anti-strike students stubbornly trying to get through the classroom doors while ensuring class wouldn’t happen anyway.

As far as demonstrations go, these had been happening for thirty straight days by the time I arrived in Montreal, and continue at the time this article is going to press. Students have now been joined in the streets by the “casseroles” marches, which involve other Quebec residents who object to Law 78. There have also been weeks of targeted economic disruption – blockading the National Bank building early in the morning, blocking delivery routes to the port, blocking doors to the Ministry of Education’s office, blocking the doors of Hydro Quebec, or the headquarters of the SAQ, or the Association of Cegep Administrators… the list goes on and on and on.

Decision-making in the Assemblies
The discipline required to carry out the strike on such a massive scale relates directly to the way decisions are made in the assemblies. Even those who were opposed to the strike were encouraged to attend and debate. At the end a vote would be taken that was considered binding on everyone. This sort of collective, horizontal discipline is the root of all unionism and also probably why consensus decision-making was not adopted.

One practice that made all of these separate votes and separate picket lines work together on a larger scale was a practice called “the floor”. Basically student groups would vote to strike but hold off on walking out of classes until enough other students likewise voted in favour of striking in their own assemblies. So, for example, one association might vote in favour of a strike, but pass a motion not to walk until at least 2,000 more students, in other assemblies at that school, voted in favour of striking. This would contribute to the sense of momentum while at the same time allowing for a high degree of coordination among a large group of students.

It is telling that there were attempts to break up this kind of organization and encourage the more “moderate” student unions to take the lead, with the Charest government eventually kicking CLASSE out of negotiations. But barring them from the negotiating table more than anything proved the strength of ASSÉ and the CLASSE, since it showed that the capacity to negotiate came from the power to disrupt, and an end to disruption was only likely to come through the assemblies.

The assemblies, as a place for decision-making that included everyone, short-circuited the crisis of leadership that exists, and has existed for decades, in most union and left-organisations in Canada. Rank-and-file students were radicalized by their own sense of power and at their first taste of an actual, living democracy they began to become less and less interested in cutting a deal regardless of what their leaders might think. The student leaders, some emboldened and others held hostage by their radical constituents, have become caught up in a process that is much bigger than any single personality. In fact when CLASSE was barred from negotiations the two more moderate federations stopped negotiating in solidarity. This move is especially significant considering the bad blood between these groups based on political differences.

ConclusionsBy the end of my weekend in Quebec (May 21st) CLASSE had instructed their spokespeople to announce that they would not only refuse to condemn the “illegal” marches, but would actually endorse them. The following day, an illegal march celebrating the 100th day of the strike drew over 400,000 people in what was described as the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. And now, regular “casseroles” marches are drawing in growing sections of the Quebec population in solidarity.

It’s easy to think that these things come out of nowhere, that there is such a thing as spontaneous social combustion. There is an element of spontaneity, and the social foment that exists on the streets in Quebec is partly a product of the tensions that can explode anywhere in society at any time. But from the militants I talked to, one thing that stood out was a strong connection between the veterans of the failed strike of 2007 and the new generation of strikers in 2012. The veterans have brought their past experiences in struggle to the current strike.

As their struggle progresses, the Quebec students have become a rallying point for workers’ unions. Let’s be clear though, the workers’ unions’ support did not come earlier because the student movement represents something completely different. CLASSE has the courage to defy the legislation that the CAW, the IAMAW, and the CUPW did not. These business unions are offering their support now because they can advance their own bargaining agenda by making the students appear to be an ally of theirs. But it is not enough to line up the big old unions behind CLASSE. The next step is to build similar structures to the ones that facilitated this strike. We need structures across workers’ unions like what CLASSE contributed to the student federations: assemblies grounded on the shop floor that plan and manage direct action without the interference of political specialists.

Building a stronger movement isn’t simply a question of a sharper analysis, but of useful practices. A broad conception of the problems with the education system, and with capitalist society more generally, is empty until it is linked to practical proposals regarding the strategic decisions movements have to make on a day-to-day basis. For many people, including some of the students I spoke to, action precedes consciousness in a very real way, and analysis is generated from the struggle. Capitalism is no different than any other machine: you don’t really learn how it works until you take it apart. The Quebec struggle has revealed a way for us to struggle that makes it harder to turn our organisations against us, and we need to learn from that.

*

Information for this article was generously contributed by Amber Gross, Rémi Bellemare-Caron, and the Montréal IWW. Thanks to Marianne for editing and research. For more information on the student strike in Quebec, see http://www.bloquonslahausse.com/ in French andhttp://www.stopthehike.ca/ in English. You can use paypal.com to donate to support the strike via CLASSE. Make your donation to executif@asse-solidarite.qc.ca