Québec rebels defy police brutality

 
YOUNG rebels in Québec are coming under vicious attack from Canadian cops.

But anger and defiance are rising as a big day approaches - a demonstration against police brutality in Montreal on Thursday March 15.

Contra Info explains that a vast strike movement is shaking colleges and universities in the traditionally rebellious French-speaking province.

This general strike movement has set itself, as an immediate objective, the cancellation of the recent 25% tuition fees rise implemented by the neoliberal government of Québec.

"The movement is now 125,000 striking students strong and many strike votes will be held in the coming weeks by student assemblies.

"Many massive street demos gathering thousands of people, as well as blockade actions have been organized, triggering more and more police repression."

On March 7, the repressive violence went up a notch, as almost 1,000 people were blockading a downtown building in Montréal, hosting the offices of the public lotteries and the Conference of University Rectors.

About 200 people had gained entrance to the building, blocking access to the elevators, as the others occupied the doorways and the adjacent streets, raising barricade out of metal railings in order to block off busy Sherbrooke Street and to use as protection against police assaults.

Riot cops attacked the crowd, hitting the protesters with clubs and shields, soaking them with pepper spray and throwing many “stun grenades”.

One of these devices, that produce a deafening bang as well as projecting fragments and pepper gas, seriously injured a student protester, who received splinters in the right eye and has been taken to the hospital.

As of March 8, he was being operated on for retinal detachment and he might lose the use of his eye. Apparently, the riot police deliberately delayed the ambulance call. Three other protesters were also injured during the assault.

On the same night (March 7th), at about 9pm, a group of about 300 people gathered at the Berri Square, in response to the police attack, and took to the streets, shouting “Cops, Pigs, Murderers!”.

Reaching the administrative headquarters of the municipal police, some tried to smash the glass doors of the entrance with metal crowd barriers, before being chased through the streets by police.

Thursday's protest, and others planned for later in the month, seems more relevant than ever.

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Brutal Spanish cops attack students - videos

 
 




BRUTAL cops have attacked student protesters in Valencia, sparking public outrage across the Spanish state.

Several hundred young people, responding to appeals on social networks, gathered on Monday outside the institute Lluis Vives.

Reports AFP: "The clashes broke out in the mid-afternoon after students protesting against education budget cuts, which they say have left classrooms without heating, demonstrated outside a school and came up against police barricades.

"Photographs and videos from the scene showed youths with bleeding faces and baton-wielding police in helmets and body armour chasing, beating and dragging people along the ground as the clashes continued after nightfall.

"El Pais newspaper said on its website that police fired rubber bullets, and media reported numerous injuries."

Solidarity protests against the sickening state violence are being planned.

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New York cops attack students - video

 

ANGER is still bubbling to the surface of society in the USA, as the momentum from the Occupy movements spreads into other protests.

This video shows police getting physical with student protesters opposing tuition fee rises at CUNY, the City University of  New York.

A statement on the students' website says: "We demand free tuition and admission open to all with a high school diploma or GED, with special attention in admissions to New York City public high school graduates.

"We demand that you fund adjuncts’ health care, and all the wages, benefits, and working conditions for our faculty and staff need to live in dignity.

"We demand that you pay for this by continuing the Millionaires’ Tax, reinstating the Stock Transfer Tax, and pivoting spending within CUNY away from wealthy top administrators’ compensation and toward the education of students and compensation of faculty and staff."

Nov 9 panic spirals into threats

 

STUDENT protesters in London are now being threatened with rubber bullets as the authorities' panic at the prospect of mass dissent spirals into absurdity.

Sky News was, as ever, more than happy to try and put the frighteners on the public, with a report entitled 'Cops Armed With Baton Rounds for Student Demo.'

It quoted one Commander Pountain as saying: "Baton rounds is a valuable tactic for me to have available should the need arise.

"At the moment I have asked for it to be available to me. Those units will be parked away from the area on standby.

"If any of my staff are coming under sustained attack as we saw in previous demonstrations, I need the ability to protect them and to make sure they don't sustain serious injuries or even worse."

As one comment on Twitter said: "Story about rubber bullets is blatant attempt by police to scare folk away from Wednesday's demo. Fuck. That. Shit."

November 9 - UK authorities panicking

BRITISH authorities are panicking at the prospect of another massive and angry student protest in London this week.

The right-wing Evening Standard today published a police-inspired scare story claiming there are fears the November 9 protest "could be hijacked by anarchists".

Says the report: "Police leave has been cancelled and reinforcements called in from county forces for the demonstration which organisers say will attract 10,000 people on a march through the City.

"Protesters are urging schoolchildren to walk out of lessons for the demo on Wednesday.

"The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, which is organising the action, has given students training on recruiting schoolchildren, with one leaflet saying: 'The riots this summer show beyond doubt that lots of young people are burning with intense anger, frustration and willingness to take some pretty extreme action.'

"The march will meet up with St Paul's protesters. Scotland Yard says it will distribute thousands of leaflets to students warning of the consequences of criminal actions. There are fears that the march could see a repeat of the violence and chaos of last year's student protests.

"Hundreds were arrested as protesters and activists attacked banks and shops.

"Commander Simon Pountain said: 'In our experience a lot of these type of demonstrations attract people from so-called anarchist groups and we would expect that to happen. We will be prepared for every eventuality.' Police have vetoed a bid for the protesters to march on the Bank of England because of the possible numbers.

"Michael Chessum, from the organiser NCAFC, defended plans to encourage schoolchildren to join the march. He said: 'We believe that this is about the future of people who are not going to university and it's only right that they join in.'

"He added leaflets had been handed out to sixth formers and older pupils. The campaign group said the march against the 'marketisation' of universities by the Government will herald an 'autumn of resistance'."

Over the weekend Universities Minister David Willetts also admitted he was worried about another student uprising in the capital, declaring: "I think it would be appalling if we had a repeat of those shocking events earlier in the year. I think it really would be very bad indeed."

Students aim for heart of Beast

STUDENTS in the UK are taking their anger to the heart of the Beast on Wednesday November 9.

Rather than repeating the symbolic demonstrations to the Houses of Parliament, they are heading to where the power really lies - the City of London.

There they will link up with Occupy LSX protesters near the Stock Exchange - and many other financial institutions will be boarding up their windows.

The development marks a significant step forward for the student movement, which hit the headlines a year ago.

Radicalised by the violent reaction of both state and media to their mass uprising - and by events elsewhere in the world - a generation of young people have seen past the facade of so-called democracy.

They understand that there is a de facto permanent  and unelected government, which sits not in Westminster but in the boardrooms of the financial elite.

The November 9 march, which starts at 12 noon from the University of London Union in Malet Street, hopes to link up with  thousands of striking electricians, who are marching with Unite the Union in protest at a 35% national pay cut. UK Uncut have also indicated support for the demonstration.

Michael Chessum, from the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, said: “In marching on the City, we are sending a message that we will not let the Government to hand over education to the markets. Education should be a public service, accessible to all – not a corporate enterprise.”

Angry UK students head back to streets

ANGER among students in the UK is still very much alive, with another big protest announced for November 9 2011.

And memories of police brutality against last winter's protests have been revived with the release of this shocking  new footage showing a rather subdued protest being suddenly attacked by a charge of police horses, sparking a feisty reaction.

This year's student protests are planned to fit in with trade union activity against neoliberal 'austerity' measures being imposed on the UK, as elsewhere.

Today's statement from a range of student groups (though not the discredited NUS) says: "As student campaigners, we fully support the trade union movement’s campaign against austerity, including the biggest wave of strike action since 1926.

"The government’s plans for universities represent a threat to the very purpose of education, with the poor being priced out of a marketised system of private providers, while school and FE students are being robbed of basic support.

"The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts has now called a national education demonstration for Wednesday November 9th, and we will organise for a day of mass direct action and walkouts to coincide with the strike. We will not allow this government to abolish the welfare state and destroy our futures."

Greek students take on the state

GREEK students are leading a new wave of resistance against neoliberal tyranny.

At least university 116 departments across the country are now under student occupation as a big radical protest approaches in Syntagma Square on Saturday.

The student rebellion has been sparked by a new education bill bringing sweeping changes to Greece’s higher education system, including immense funding cuts and abolition of academic asylum.

From the Greek Streets reports that general assemblies are happening all this week and next week and says it is very likely that the number of occupations will increase dramatically.

It adds: "There seems to be a completely unprecedented agreement between students across almost the entire political spectrum for mobilisations against the voted law: this is rapidly becoming a stand-off between the student community and the Parliament."

A statement on the Athens protest called for 7pm (Greek time) on Saturday September 3 says: "On September 3rd we are everywhere. We fill up Syntagma Square.

"The squares are us and we are everywhere. We are all. We started as indignated people, we have decided, and in a little while we will be revolting in masses until those who drove us here go away. Until we kick out the bankers' and the market’s governments and system."

Uprising intensifies in Chile

REBELLION against neo-liberalism in Chile has intensified, with trade unions backing the long-running student rebellion.

Reports MercoPress: "The Chilean capital Santiago was witnessing another tumultuous day on Wednesday as protests started to sweep the nation’s capital and unions called for a two day nationwide shutdown to protest the educational system.

"Protesters barricaded roads and burned tires as the two-day national strike began against unpopular President Sebastian Piñera.

"On the last two months mass demonstrations emerged in Santiago - along with other important Chilean cities – calling for improvements in Chile’s educational system. Demonstrations have drawn over 100,000 supporters to the streets of Chile’s capital.

"One union official stated 'this will be the biggest national strike of the last decade'; others have threatened to block roads (including those to the airport). Transportation workers and day-care providers also plan to strike, stranding millions of other Chileans.

"While previous governments have faced one-day national strikes, it was the first 48-hour national strike since the 1973-1990 Augusto Pinochet dictatorship."

Italian students avoid police blockade

THOUSANDS of students in cities across Italy have protested against a law that would result in cuts to university budget expected to be approved by parliament this week, reports Aljazeera.

It says: "Police blocked off large parts of central Rome, the capital, to prevent a repeat of last week's violent clashes, but students managed to avoid the blockade.

"Instead the demonstrators occupied part of a highway running to the east of the city, but many students made it clear they intended the action to be a peaceful one.

"Some carried flags and banners emblazoned with non-violent slogans, and many had painted their hands white as a representation of their peaceful intent.

"However clashes broke out at a protest in the city of Palermo, and there were reports of incidents in Naples, Milan and Turin.

"The government says the new law, which could be voted on Wednesday or Thursday, will strengthen Italy's crumbling university system. But critics say will only cut funding without solving real problems.

"The battle over university reform has highlighted discontent over the future of Italy's youth, which has been fuelled by an official youth unemployment rate of around 25 per cent in the country and up to 35 per cent in the poorer south."

Reuters quotes one student as saying:"We will certainly continue mobilising. It's not only a mobilisation against university reforms but of a generation that is making itself heard again over the politics of the country, the issues we face and the precarious situation in which we live."

Something powerful is in the air

EVERYTHING has changed on the streets of Britain over the last few weeks.

Partly it is just a matter of mood – an electrically charged atmosphere at the anti-cuts protests that presents the visceral possibility that anything at all could happen next.

But it is also possible to identify some specific factors that have dramatically and rapidly transformed the landscape of domestic protest.

The new generation of rebels have made remarkable progress in several areas:

• Tactical. They are wised up to police methods, often successfully avoiding containment. They spotted that the ‘agreed route’ to Thursday’s march was nothing but a rolling kettle designed to end in a giant trap out of sight of Parliament on Victoria Embankment, under the guise of a rally addressed by various dull centre-leftists. As well as appreciating the need to keep mobile, they also mostly now know to mask up when appropriate.

• Physical. They have the courage to take on and break through police lines and the speed and stamina to stage running demonstrations through the city streets, leaving the Plod to live up to their nickname.

• Political. There is plenty of joined-up thinking in evidence. Protesters in Oxford Street quickly identified Boots, BHS, Dorothy Perkins, Vodafone etc and targeted them as corporate tax dodgers, making the vital link between spending cuts and capitalist corruption. The police have been fully exposed as a private army of capitalism and most of the mainstream media as nothing but propaganda conduits for the same system.

• Class consciousness. Perhaps the most significant development of all, as veteran anarchist Ian Bone points out in his blog. The highly publicised attack on Charles and Camilla’s Rolls Royce was not out of place on a day when chants of “The rich, the rich, we’ve gotta get rid of the rich” filled the West End. Cameron was mocked for his Eton past. Posh cars and pedestrians were picked out for abuse, with one youngster shouting angrily at an arrogant driver who tried to run him over: “Why do you need a fucking Range Rover anyway?” These protesters understand the Tory vision of Britain and their own proposed place in it – as an underclass of serfs serving the smug public school Ubermensch. And they are simply not going to accept that version of the future. They have little prospect of higher education, of a worthwhile job, of a home of their own… They have nothing to lose and everything to fight for.

Commentators have made the connection between these protests and the anti-capitalist demonstrations of 1999-2003. Parallels have also, of course, been made with the Poll Tax riots of 1990. Others have mentioned 1968 and Ian Bone invokes the London Mob and the Gordon Riots.

But one link that hasn’t been widely made is with the inner city riots that swept the UK in 1981.

This cold winter of discontent is by no means over yet, but already rebel hearts are being warmed by the prospect of a heated Spring and Summer of 2011.

This is only the beginning...

CONGRATULATIONS to all those who took part in the inspiring resistance in London on Thursday December 9.

Congratulations too to all those participating online in the attacks on PayPal and other agents of global oppression.

Keep up the effort - and remember, this is only the beginning.

No more illusions

FAILING the timely intervention of a 9/12 terror attack in London, two news stories are likely to dominate the UK media on Thursday.

One is the continuing leaking of US embassy cables by Wikileaks, together with the US-led persecution of both website and founder, and the other is the students’ March on Parliament as the tuition fees vote takes place.

Except, of course, they are not really two separate stories at all, but merely two facets of one narrative.

In both instances, the mask of ‘democracy and freedom’ - behind which our rulers have so long been hiding – has not much slipped as fallen to the hard winter ground and shattered into a thousand splinters.

The original spark for confrontation in both disputes was an outrageous deception.

In the case of the USA’s foreign policy, this has been perpetrated for decades and visible to many global observers for much of the time.

But now there is no more benefit of doubt to be enjoyed – we all know for sure that they are just as hypocritical and manipulative as we had ever imagined.

In the tuition fees debacle, young people have been shocked to discover that a ‘pledge’ from a politician is an empty gimmick. Like the US government, Clegg has always been prepared to lie through his teeth in the pursuit of power.

The students and school kids who have been taking to the streets for the last month have demonstrated, and discovered, the all-too-narrow limits of dissent permitted by the British state.

And Julian Assange of Wikileaks has exposed the truth behind the neoliberal attachment to free speech and a pluralistic internet.

Step over a certain line and the illusion of cosy liberalism is abandoned, as powerful players are forced to step forward to defend the status quo.

The student rebels have found that the state will send its hired thugs out on to the streets to crush the slightest sign of empowered opposition.

Wikileaks have found themselves confronted with the full spectrum of commercial persecution available to the US regime.

All of this raises these originally specific conflicts up to a whole new level of contestation.

Young kids now realise that the police and the media are every bit as much their sworn enemy as Cameron, Clegg and the other Tory cunts.

Wikileaks has forced the likes of Amazon, PayPal, Visa and Mastercard to reveal themselves as the partisans of the global capitalist dictatorship that some of us have always known they were.

Other issues, in the months to come, will follow the same pattern and emerge likewise as aspects of the same worldwide scenario.

And once you have seen through the illusions of neoliberal ‘democracy’, there is no going back.

The battle lines are clearer now, to far more people, than they ever have been before.

Our war for liberation has begun.

Greek solidarity with UK students

TWO thousand students marched in Athens against education reform and in solidarity with the British students.

There were clashes with police and five students arrested.

From The Greek Streets reports: "The demonstrators tried to approach the British Embassy in solidarity with the struggle of the students in the UK.

"In response to the arrests, the entire demonstration headed to the police headquarters (GADA) demanding their immediate release."

The blog includes a short video and will be updated with more information.

The action, together with the Italian student protests this week, reinforces the fact that education 'reforms' and cuts are not isolated national issues with specific local causes, as the corporate media claims.

The whole of European society is coming under unprecedented attack from neoliberal forces and students everywhere are finding themselves on the front line.

Students rise up in UK and Italy

STUDENTS in Britain and Italy have taken to the streets against the neoliberal system that is stealing their future.

In Britain, thousands marched and occupied university buildings all across the country, with many reports of police violence as authorities begin to panic at the scale of the insurrection.

For details see reports on Indymedia and anticuts.org.uk.

Protesters in London outwitted cops by conducting roving demonstrations around the capital, blocking major roads such as Oxford Street.

Later hundreds faced off riot cops in Traflagar Square, at one point kettling the thugs-in- blue.

But when the media went home, police moved in to snatch out individuals and eventually arrested some 150 people.

The momentum is set to continue, with more protests called for Thurdsay December 9 and Saturday December 11.

In Italy, reports ABC News: "Thousands of students blocked the centre of Rome as part of nationwide protests against university budget cuts.

"Up to 50,000 students marched through the capital in a concerted attempt to 'paralyse' the city, dubbed 'Block Everything Day,' organisers said.

"According to the Italian Students' Union (UDS), 'more than 400,000 students are rallying throughout Italy'.

"Police in riot gear blocked all entrances to the Chamber of Deputies as lawmakers voted on the reforms and officers were forced to redirect traffic as the city centre was brought to a standstill in several areas."

November 24 - insurrection day!

WEDNESDAY November 24 is being hailed as a big day in the UK rebellion against neoliberal austerity measures.

Students are planning a national day of protest, with talks of mass walk-outs from schools and colleges and coalition offices being occupied.

Writes Class War anarchist Ian Bone in his blog: "Hundreds of thousands of kids will be pouring out of schools and colleges, blocking the streets, marching on town centres in cavalcades of fun and anger.

"The anger is palpable and growing as is the belief the fight can be won. The anger and visceral hatred against the Tories and Clegg broke out of all parameters on November 10th.

"The kids are uncontrollable.The genie is out the fucking bottle. NOVEMBER 24th – INSURRECTION DAY."

Wave of student resistance across Europe

A WAVE of student occupations against the latest neoliberal assault on education is sweeping across Europe.

Young people are waking up to the fact that "reforms" being brought in by their own local states are just part of an overall plan to commercialise universities - increasing fees and gearing them up to fulfill the narrow demands of business.

Said a report on the movement in Barcelona: "Under the auspices of the 'Bologna Process', a plan to homogenise European higher education, the Spanish state is enforcing a university reform that is threatening the public nature of education.

"The most detrimental aspects of this reform include the raising of tuition fees, making it increasingly difficult for working-class students to access higher education and increasing student debt, as well as facilitating the entry of private capital to the university, which threatens to change the priorities of the university’s education and research programmes.

"The ultimate goal of the reform is to strengthen links between universities and the capitalist market, moulding students for a precarious and unequal job market and rolling back public control over the key institutions of our society."

German Indymedia this week reported strikes in three Bavarian unis, plus occupations in Berlin, Mainz, Essen, Duisburg, Munster, Dresden, Schwenningen, Hamburg, Coburg, Tubingen, Aachen and Monchengladbach.

Said a report on the infoshop site, focusing on Austrian student resistance: "The Bologna process aims at extensive convergence with the Anglo-American education system. The goal is to enter competition in the global education market to strengthen its own economic position and increase research dependent revenues.

"Economization and competition logic are imposed on every level of the knowledge landscape."

A statement by students in Vienna issued this week demanded "education, not qualification!" It added: "We want education for all, to strive for a reasonable society, not just qualification according to economic profitability! Our aim is to enable all students to study independently and self-organized.

"We demand free access to higher education for everybody and the complete abolition of student fees."