Chris Hedges: The fight in Quebec is our fight. Their enemy is our enemy. And their victory is our victory.

i'm encouraged by what's happening in quebec... they are clearly protesting for the same reasons that gave rise to the arab spring, the occupy movement, the student protests in chile and the indignados in spain: the brutal hand of the global corporate state...

chris hedges in truthdig...

The Quebec government, which like the United States’ security and surveillance state is deaf to the pleas for justice and fearful of widespread unrest, has reacted by trying to stamp out the rebellion. It has arrested hundreds of protesters. The government passed Law 78, which makes demonstrations inside or near a college or university campus illegal and outlaws spontaneous demonstrations in the province. It forces those who protest to seek permission from the police and imposes fines of up to $125,000 for organizations that defy the new regulations. This, as with the international Occupy movement, has become a test of wills between a disaffected citizenry and the corporate state. The fight in Quebec is our fight. Their enemy is our enemy. And their victory is our victory
.
This sustained resistance is far more effective than a May Day strike. If Canadians can continue to boycott university classrooms, continue to get crowds into the streets and continue to keep the mainstream behind the movement, the government will become weak and isolated. It is worth attempting in the United States.


[...]


The importance of the Occupy movement, and the reason I suspect its encampments were so brutally dismantled by the Obama administration, is that the corporate state understood and feared its potential to spark a popular rebellion. I do not think the state has won. All the injustices and grievances that drove people into the Occupy encampments and onto the streets have been ignored by the state and are getting worse. And we will see eruptions of discontent in the weeks and months ahead.


If these mass protests fail, opposition will inevitably take a frightening turn. The longer we endure political paralysis, the longer the formal mechanisms of power fail to respond, the more the extremists on the left and the right—those who venerate violence and are intolerant of ideological deviations—will be empowered. Under the steady breakdown of globalization, the political environment has become a mound of tinder waiting for a light.

hedges goes on to express his concern that the longer the fundamental issues go unaddressed and the more that protests are suppressed, the greater the likelihood of violence...

The left in times of turmoil always coughs up its own version of the goons on the far right. Black Bloc anarchists within the Occupy movement in the United States, although they remain marginal, replicate the hyper-masculinity, lust for violence and quest for ideological purity of the right while using the language of the left. And they, or a similar configuration, will grow if the center disintegrates.

and that is something i most fervently pray does not happen...

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The question now is which fork in the road will Occupy take?

more from adbusters...

Occupy's Spiritual Quest

The fork in the road ahead.

Dear occupiers, jammers, dreamers,

Three years after the May 1968 uprising that swept the world, the great French philosopher Michel Foucault observed that a key strategy of power is to “appear inaccessible to events.” Power, Foucault argued with a nod towards 1968’s failed insurrection, acts to “dispel the shock of daily occurrences, to dissolve the event … to exclude the radical break introduced by events.”

Forty years later, in light of Occupy, Foucault’s observation still strikes home. Despite achieving the impossible at unprecedented speed – sparking a global awakening, triggering a thousand people’s assemblies worldwide, and giving birth to a visceral anti-corporate, pro-democracy spiritual insurrection – Occupy is now struggling through an existential moment. Our movement has been dealt a blow: our May 1 and follow-up events have been dissolved by power; the status quo has shown itself to be far more resilient than many of us expected.

Now a passionate debate is emerging within our movement. On one side are those who cheer the death of Occupy in the hopes that it will transform into something unexpected and new. And on the other are patient organizers who counsel that all great movements take years to unfold.

[...]

The fire in the soul of Occupy burns from Oakland to Quebec, Barcelona to Chicago, Wall Street to Moscow and Frankfurt… the question now is which fork in the road will our movement take?

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

i'm less interested in the direction the movement will take than i am in how we can accelerate the collapse of the house of cards which may or may not be connected with any "movement"...

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The Quebec protests evolves from student debt to austerity

from adbusters...

Quebec: Red Square Revolt

It started with students — first a few at the Université Laval, and then hundreds of thousands, filling the streets every day and every night, wearing red squares (carrés rouges) to symbolize the giant debt they’d accrue if their government went ahead with proposed tuition hikes. Now the movement has turned into a bigger revolt against austerity measures in Quebec — a grève générale illimitée (#ggi) or unlimited general strike questioning the fundamentals of liberal democracy and capitalism. This short video summarizes the strike, its goals, and the persistence of protestors even as the Quebec government attempts to institute draconian anti-protest laws.

interestingly, the quebec protests made it across the atlantic to appear at the cannes film festival...

Quebecois filmmaker Xavier Dolan wore the red square, which has become the symbol of the Quebec student movement, on the red carpet for the premiere of his film Laurence Anyways at Cannes.

The young director sported the square on his tux and the film's actors Nathalie Baye, Melvil Poupaud and Suzanne Clement, also wore the symbol in support of students.

The screening came as students took to the streets in Montreal to protest new laws cracking down on public protesting, which critics say threaten civil liberties. Molotov cocktails were thrown and windows were smashed, ending in at least four arrests.

"questioning the fundamentals of liberal democracy and capitalism"... cool...

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