#student boycott

[definetorule-blog]

Wish me luck, I am organizing a collage boycott tomorrow! (It's against the dictatorship of the ruling party and taking accountability for the deaths of 15 people crushed by the canopy that they reconstructed).

[annoyedmontrealer-blog]

So you're gone.

Mr. Nadeau-Dubois & Co.

You've cost (us) taxpayers such an enormous amount of money in Police overtime.

You've polluted our lives with your communist, anarchist and protagonistic garbage.

You've cost thousands of students to drop classes, to waste time, to fail courses, to find education in other provinces.

You've made young people commit stupidity after stupidity and carry a police file for the rest of their lives thanks to your rethoric.

You've called this government: repressive, unfair, arrogant, etc. when they practically let you run the show.

And now you step down and  you leave us a farewell note without a hint of an apology to the citizens of Montreal, to your fellow students, to the police department.

Instead you confirm once again how deluded, paranoid and ARROGANT you are. Your farewell note is an insult to all those people who took you seriously at one point or another. 

To us who searched and searched for a way to understand your cause.

And to this Annoyed Montrealer there is just one thing that is undeniable:

Nobody in this province has the real cojones to do anything. 

Not the candidates who change their declarations every five minutes, not the student leaders who keep crying "repression" when there is none. Not the students who didn't attend the assemblies to vote, not the journalists who made their day in this otherwise boring (but peaceful) country.

You, especially you, are just an entitled, spoiled brat who ran the show for kicks.

I hope you make a scrapbook of your best shots.

[annoyedmontrealer-blog]

Let's protest!

Against the tuition hike! 

Against the Bill 78! 

Against the anti-mask law!

Against the police! 

Against the government! 

Against the commercial media! (snitches!)

Against the ads on Bixi!

Against capitalism (wait, does that mean I can't use Facebook? it is the most capitalist of capitalists, It's kind of the FBI, CIA, KGB, of Marketing Research, the founder is 28 years old and is the richest man in on this side of the Atlantic. But if I don't use Facebook how do I orgnize protests?  WHAT WOULD I DO WITH MYSELF?)

Against the 1% (Though it seems currently I'm the protesting 1% against the non-protesting 99%, amazing how numbers shift.)

Against the Grand Prix (yes it's polluting and sexist, it's the past-time of the filthy rich, it's unnecessary for the planet, but what's that got to do with tuition hikes again?)

Against the Couche Tard! ( hmm.. why again? Oh yes, he doesn't want a union, and that affects tuition hikes because....)

Against Jacques Villeneuve (he gave his opinion, how dare he?)

Against everyone who doesn't think like I do...

Against anything

Against everything

Against nothing

Against everyone

I wrote on twitter yesterday: the image of the student movement isn't being damaged by the commercial media or by the government per se.

Its image is being damaged because it has been hijacked by people with interests that are very fuzzy and the movement  has failed to articulate clearly what it is that they want.

This is not articulating clearly:

DISCLAIMER: THE "GRAND SOIR" ORGANIZERS WILL BRAG THAT THEIR EVENT IS A BENEFIT FOR STE-JUSTINE'S HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN, AND THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA WILL NO DOUBT RECYCLE THE SHIT OUT OF THIS INFO... WELL IF THE PARTICIPANTS TO THIS CAPITALIST FARCE ARE REALLY CONCERNED WITH THE WELFARE OF SICK CHILDREN, THEY DON'T NEED A BOGUS PRETEXT TO GIVE THEIR DISPOSABLE MONEY TO CHARITY! IF YOU HAVE TOO MUCH CASH, YOU FUCKING WANKERS, JUST GIVE IT TO THE HOSPITALS AND FUCK RIGHT OFF!

From the CLAC website.

There are  3 undeniable truths to the whole mess:

1)The protesters are as intolerant, inflexible as the government. Try giving your opinion about why one would be pro-tuition hikes and you'll likely be drowned in comments like these. 

2) The government did EVERYTHING wrong.

3) The third undeniable truth is that to get rid of the current government we need to find a suitable candidate to beat him. There is no one. Not a single quebecer that would satisfy the students or that would be remotely capable to fix the illusory mess that is Quebec in the eyes of the protesters.

So what will happen now. Not much, they'll keep at it and we'll keep going on about our lives, avoiding downtown after 8:30 p.m. Families and friends will continue to fracture whenever they discuss the subject if they have opposing views. The media will continue to make tons of money, the pilots of the Grand Prix will go on living their high life, the tourists will go home promising never to come back to Montreal, or already booking for next year (too much fun!) and in September, with a little help from the anarchists who hijacked the student movement, Charest will be reelected. Thank you very much (NOT!).

Will someone tell me:

Is there anything good remaining in this province?

On a side note, I went to Parc Angrignon. It reminded me of how a large part of us citizens are happy with the simple joys of life.

So very uncapitalist of us: a walk in the parc, brought to us by: our taxes.

It was like a band-aid to my psyque.

[annoyedmontrealer-blog]

Protesting at the sun

This post was written two weeks ago.

I spent the weekend at Fort Chambly. 

It made me think about what a democratic society wants, and what the protesters want.

I saw hundreds of people enjoying themselves. Families, couples, single people. People jogging, drinking beer, playing all sorts of games, sailing boats, riding bikes. 

All this stuff is non-existing in my home country. Parks have never been beautiful there, they are trashed and in most, people are not allowed to sit on the grass. It's forbidden. One has to sit on metal benches in the scorching sun. The shades are off limits.

At Fort Chambly, nobody seemed to talk about the "tuition hikes" or the "student movement". I could tell because we were so many people that we were sitting quite close to each other. We could overhear our conversations.

The few people that talked about it seemed unfazed. We are growing more and more conscious that the number of protesters is dwindling. That it's Parc Émilie-Gamelin. Not Quebec. 

This does not mean that we are forgetting that once upon a time, in March, there was a very large group of students protesting something very specific: tuition hikes.

But the hikes were so negligible that your protest was like protesting against the sun coming up every morning. There are people who love the sun and very few people who don't. 

This is why this protest has always belonged to a minority; unlike the famous Arab Spring, unlike the original Occupy Movement, unlike the current WWTT  La #MarchaYoSoy132 where Mexican students are protesting against a very undesirable presidential candidate, unlike the protests in Chile where students in fact pay 75% of their tuition, unlike the "indignados" in Spain where there is a 25% of youth unemployment.  

We are not there.

What is happening right now is the product of impatience.

It's the result of being born in a country that has it all:

Safety

Space

Natural resources

All sorts of rights (and some are really in peril)

Health care (even with its lowest lows )

A working police force (unlike many, many, many other countries)

Access to books (libraries, bookstores, used books, garage sales)

Access to internet (Free to boot!)

Oportunities to do whatever you want to do with your life.

These are just some of the reasons why you don't see many visible minorities marching. Some of us aspired to something as modest as a library... 

It hurts to find out one was wrong. Sometimes it even takes therapy. But once we recognize that we are humans and that we made a mistake - maybe even a miscalculation- we can sleep again.

As the summer comes, you are getting lonelier and lonelier.

For protesting at the sun.

[annoyedmontrealer-blog]

Primates

There is nothing more insulting, I think, than someone saying: you're acting like a monkey. 

I remember Noel Gallager once insulted all drummers because he said they were like monkeys banging on pots and pans. The Oasis drummer quit, I think.

I thought about this as I rode back to Montreal last night right in middle of the pots and pans protest. 

Evidently, I prefer pots and pans than violence. It's true that for the first time in years neighbors are looking at each other's faces, some will even know each other's names for the very first time and after all this ends, they will have no choice but to say hello whenever they meet on the street.

It got me thinking, I'm not annoyed at the pots and pans.

The whole thing couldn't be more Montreal than that.

Sure, my anxiety levels spike and I have to close my windows, but I'm happy to see people having a good time.

What annoys me is the "I say frog and you jump" phenomenon or the "Facebook told me to" phenomenon.

What annoys me is that most likely these actions stem from a post on people's Facebook or a YouTube video gone viral and without any second thoughts they poured into the streets to bang on pots and pans.

Because it's fun. 

Meanwhile the conflict has become something quite ridiculous.

A soap opera that includes an Anarchopanda, Pirates and ninjas,  a naked lady, a student leader who doesn't think it's necessary to pay rent, a perpetual night party, and the most feared question: Have Montreal protest's become boring?

A new suspenseful episode of negotiations in which the media will blast us with ads and silly headlines, and the protagonists tweet according to their personalities until they emerge with their cryptic smiles, holding their breaths.

My perspective about the protests has changed, I've gone from:

Wow! are they determined

To:

Well, they get to sleep all day and party all night, who wouldn't like that?

In this conflict so far, what we've gained is:

A generous early retirement for an ex-minister, lots and lots of very well payed overtime for police officers an almost exact replica of the Rio Carnival  a glimpse into the future of the student leader's political careers  another punch from Macleans thumbs up from Michael Moore and Arcade Fire a quickie song by Arianne Moffat a wink from Anonymous  

And so far we've lost:

Credibility.

So back to the monkeys, when a monkey starts to scream, all the group follows. It's instinct, they feel threatened, they jump from one tree to another, they make a huge racket but they don't need to know why.

To differenciate ourselves from monkeys, we should be able to answer why.

At this point, do we really know why?

[annoyedmontrealer-blog]

Dear Arcade Fire

I love you guys. With all my heart. I saw you at Coachella, your first time there and since, I've been an adoring fan.

But what you did on SNL wearing the red square which used to be a symbol of students protesting tuition hikes and that now is a symbol of simple hooliganism, to up your "cool factor" was in fact, not cool.

It's valid to be against something, or to be for something. What is not valid is when citizens such as myself have to live next door to a mess created by multiple actors and none of who want to be held accountable. 

Artists and journalists, need to start showing some judgement because at this point anything you do or publish has enormous impact on the young.

The young as Stéphane Laporte's, patronizing article says, have an enormous need to feel loved and validated and when they are not, they hold it against you and you become instant enemy. 

They have taken your gesture as support for whatever they choose to do next, take your pick: civil disobedience, vandalism, police provocation, harassment, etc.

This "movement" is no longer about what it was originally intended for.

People like me, a longtime fan, and not yet at an age that can be considered old, and certainly not in the impressionable age of the adoring kids that you have just pumped up, do not appreciate this lack of judgement from your part.