Occupons Montréal: Don’t Listen to the Media

He was working at the base of the statue of Queen Victoria when I photographed him. The tools of his trade were a simple black marker & a small sheet of plywood. What he was drawing was a beautiful, if a little terrifying, piece of artwork. This was the moment that my scepticism about Occupons Montréal faded & was replaced with hope – cautious hope, cautious optimism – but hope nonetheless.

The reason I had felt sceptical, the reason I had felt that Occupons Montréal might fade into irrelevance until I saw it for myself, is rooted in my understanding of other occupations worldwide – most notably, Occupy Wall Street, where the message is much clearer than the media is portraying it to be & the protestors’ organizing prowess & sense of community repeatedly seems to win out against the established powers & authorities. Globally, we are seeing a sort of 1968 all over again – a mass protest movement, simultaneously local & international in scope, with issues ranging from ending war, economic justice, student debt, unemployment, animal rights, etc. The momentum of this movement seems implacable & the energy of the people participating in it is contagious when you are around it.

So when I saw, over the weekend, a headline on the Le Devoir website saying that Occupons Montréal was associating itself with a march for Québec independence (the headline has since been removed), I felt my heart sink. The rest of the world was challenging an unfair, unscrupulous & predatory economic system that is pushing governments to austerity & here I was seeing my city’s Occupation rehashing old battles & using old, still-divisive politics to undermine its own message & popular support with nearly half of Québec’s population.

Except it wasn’t, and it isn’t. The Occupation General Assembly’s Minutes don’t mention a word about sovereignty or independence. The Occupation seems to be about changing the system to make it fairer for the people in our society who aren’t at the top of the wealth & power pyramid; the old battles are being brought up in the media, but not in the discussions I heard people having down in Square-Victoria-cum-La-Place-du-Peuple. Some of the ideas being discussed are frivolous, unachievable, blue-sky pushes for revolutionary, total world-system reform, but mostly what’s talked about seems to be about making the movement work, making the occupation durable &, beyond those goals, it seems to be about making the world better for people who need it. Allowing people not just to exist, but to live.

 

So yes, my scepticism faded. It faded because of the message of the Occupation, which is simply “Here are the problems foisted on our society by the wealthy & the powerful at our expense & in our name. Fix them. Now.”; it faded because of the people at the protest, who are living together with a sense of community I have simply never seen in Montreal; it faded because artists are sitting next to enthusiastic political activists, drawing pictures & sculpting stones while someone lectures about inequality and social justice, just because this place has given them the opportunity to express themselves in a way they could not before; it faded because in a city where people will riot because a band can’t play a gig for being held up at the border, there is a village of tents cooperating in an astonishing display of direct, deliberative democracy to change things for the better & not only has it not descended into chaos, but it has grown larger, more organized & more beautiful.

The artist with his plywood canvas sat on the plinth of a statue in a true, 21st Century Agora. If nothing else is accomplished by this movement, the community & the sense of being at the bustling, creative heart of a true democracy will nevertheless stay with me always.

The English Patience Update: Pauline Marois Reaffirms her Wad-ness

Pauline Marois made it known yesterday that she simply would not stand for the "prevailing unilinguism" of Montreal's downtown core. She called for tighter laws and more fascism (forcing more francification of the downtown core, strengthening the loi 101 and - I love this part - pushing for the acceptance of the Québec Identity Act).

There is no prevalence of unilinguism in Montreal. Nearly everyone in this city is bilingual - which is a good thing. I always address the employees of a commercial business in french, out of courtesy and I've spent the last 5 years nearly constantly in the downtown core; I've never once been answered in anything but french. Yes, some people struggle with the language, and it sucks for them, but it's not a problem.

Pauline Marois is a reactionist who's having a groundless fit and is not helping anything. She is a wad and, in the words or a scotsman I once met, a doss cunt.

The English Patience

The Journal de Montreal has produced an "article," by Noée Murchison about the availability of french service in businesses in Montreal's downtown core. I can only wince at the trouble this will stir up in the next few weeks, but that aside, I'd like to see if I can make a bit of sense of the issue.

Québecois culture is a big thing for the vast majority of the people in this province, and rightly so; I've said on a number of occasions that it is a culture which deserves preservation, if it does not quite require protection. Language is a part of this; French is beautiful and expressive and is at the core of much of Québec's cultural identity.

So this isn't an argument against French or Québecois culture.

Instead it's a plea for a bit of sanity (I seem to do that a lot, I think). This is a problem for the economy to take care of on its own, not for government intervention; let's face it, the OLF (OQLF, according to the Journal) is a fascist, anti-individualist organization which imposes culturally-, politically- and ideologically-driven rules on private organizations which should not have to deal with the bureaucratic nitpicking of that hateful and ironically named organization. If the OLF does decide to hang back (it won't), then most businesses will likely exercise their prerogative and staff themselves with employees appropriate to their clientele, which is as it should be.

If a business sees a lot of francophone custom - and those in the downtown core do - then that employer has a vested interest in ensuring that there are always enough french-speaking employees on the floor to deal with the demand; that being said, stores like Chapters in downtown montreal, which is a predominantly anglophone bookstore, can reasonably maintain an almost unilingual staff without a significant loss of business, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

For those of you who think there is something wrong with that, that's okay too; you don't need the government to exercise control over businesses, all you need is your hard-earned dollar and the discretion about when & where to use it. Voicing the reasons for your choices is the key and, trust me, just like businesses have listened to the Green Movement, they'll listen to you: it's Capitalism 101.

Which is why I applaud the Journal's decision not to reveal the identities of the businesses which they singled out as "too anglophone," it's one of the few good decision that filthy rag has made in a long time (it's really just a tabloid legitimized by wider circulation).

My prediction for all of this? The OLF is going to go apeshit in the next few weeks.

Pauline Marois is a Wad

"Il faut briser la perception voulant que le Québec soit bilingue et expliquer aux immigrants que le Québec est une nation francophone qui respecte les droits de la minorité anglophone." -Pauline Marois

More on this when I'm less pissed off.

-Update-

I sent a letter to my MNA, Pierre Curzi. Chances are nothing will happen, but I figured I'd republish it here and hope for the best:

Monsieur Curzi,

Mon nom est Steven Alleyn, je suis un membre de votre compté électorale et je n'ai pas manqué la chance de voter depuis que je suis rendu à l'age légale de voter. Je vous écrit pour vous communiquer mon inquiétude par rapport au propos récents de la dirigeante de votre parti.

Je parle, bien sûr, de sa déclaration alors qu'elle parlait à l'assemblé nationale, au sujet de l'immigration: "Il faut briser la perception voulant que le Québec soit bilingue et expliquer aux immigrants que le Québec est une nation francophone qui respecte les droits de la minorité anglophone."

Elle a raison qu'il y a une perception qui se doît d'être briser, mais ce n'est pas celle là; la perception qui a réussi à s'insinuer au centre du débat nationaliste, celle que les droits de la collectivité prennent précedence sur les droits de l'individu.

L'individu est l'unité de base de la collectivité et on parle ici d'une question de la liberté d'expression. Alors que le droit de l'individu de s'exprimer se trouve brimer, l'habileté de la collectivité de faire pareille est abimé; détruite, complètement. L'immigration n'est pas une question d'assimilation des immigrés à notre société, mais plutôt d'une ouverture de notre société aux bienfaits que les immigrés peuvent nous apporter. Les lois protégeants les individus du danger n'ont pas à être changer; l'abus des femmes et le port d'armes dans les places publiques ne sont pas des questions d'ouverture culturelle: on parle ici seulement d'une ouverture par rapport au droits d'expression et de religion des nouveaux venus ainsi que ceux des Québecois "pure laine."

J'aimerais, s'il l'est possible, que vous puissiez faire parvenir cette lettre à Madame Marois. De ma part, je la republirai sur mon blogue (http://moopthas.blogspot.com/) sous mon nom-de-plume en espérant suciter l'intérêt des citoyens de notre province. Il n'est plus acceptable de brimer la liberté d'expression de nos propre citoyens au nom d'une entité qui ne peut exister sans ces mêmes citoyens.

Merci de votre attention,
Steven Alleyn
Otterburn Park, Québec
Compté de Borduas