Protesters barricade, occupy Montreal CEGEP
Lendon Ebbels, The McGill Daily (McGill University)
MONTREAL (CUP) — Students attempting to strike across Quebec this week are facing police crackdowns and intimidation from school administrations and law enforcement.
Approximately 100 students were arrested late Nov. 13 at the CEGEP du Vieux-Montréal, where hundreds of students met with riot police at a “bed-in” marking the beginning of the school’s three-day strike against Quebec’s rising tuition fees.
After students at the CEGEP barricaded themselves inside the school, hundreds gathered in support on the streets. Protesters and riot police gathered in the busy Latin Quarter intersection of Ontario and Sanguinet streets for several hours.
Students said they chose to occupy the CEGEP because the administration refused to allow them to stage a “bed-in” to peacefully protest tuition hikes under the Charest government, a strategy used by l’Université du Québec à Montreal (UQAM) students the day before.
At the CEGEP, whose student population has a long history of radicalism, the administration refused the “bed-in” on the grounds that the school closes at 11 p.m. and that students sleeping at the school would be a security liability.
“[The student movement] isn’t a new thing there. What’s new is the administration being so hard on it,” said Cleve Higgins, a McGill sociology and international development student who was arrested at the protest.
“I think students asserting control of their own space is important,” Higgins said. “The government and admin at the school recognize that it’s a demonstration of student power and that’s why they’re afraid of it.”
Most protesters interviewed at the demonstration asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution by police and punishment by their institutions.
Students inside the CEGEP said that up to 300 demonstrators occupied the school and built barricades between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m.
The barricades were made with the building’s own materials, including tables, chairs, benches, chalkboards, and plywood. The barricade to the main entrance was constructed using two dumpsters, a vending machine, and at least one toilet. Painted onto a concrete wall next to it was “CVM Résistance.”
Students said that police officers had met with campus security earlier in the night and established that the police could enter the building if, and when, they saw fit.
Though the exact timing of later events is unclear, most students interviewed said police returned around midnight dressed in riot gear, donning helmets and protective masks and carrying shields, batons, rubber bullet guns, and cans of pepper spray. Witnesses estimated that at the peak of the demonstration more than 150 police were present.
According to Higgins and Fred Burrill, a history student who was also arrested, the protest turned more violent after the demonstrators realized police intended to force them out of the school.
Students armed themselves with two-by-fours, glass bottles, and fire extinguishers.
After facing resistance from students who used an emergency fire hose against them, police broke through a barricade at an upper entrance.
Another protester claimed that upon entering, they set off a tear gas bomb and sprayed the students with pepper spray.
Many students escaping the school jumped over the barricade at the main entrance and ran out, where they met plenty of officers stationed on the street. The officers surrounded the students into a circle next to the school above the intersection on Sanguinet.
Burrill and Higgins said they were given two choices by the police – to sit and be arrested, or to try to run and “get beat up.”
Hundreds of other protesters gathered on the streets at Sanguinet and Ontario — many of whom wore the symbolic red square of the student movement — but were forced down the streets, further away from the CEGEP and the protesters.
They remained strong in force and numbers until early the following morning, chanting slogans like “Police everywhere, justice nowhere!”
Throughout the most intense hours of the street protest, the police repeatedly employed pepper spray, pushed protesters back, threatened the use of their batons, and used noise scare-tactics to quell the demonstrations.
“The disproportionate amount of violence that the police are displaying really demonstrates how dangerous the idea of accessible education is to the government,” said Sarah Golightley, a sociology student from McGill who witnessed the confrontation.
Contrary to reports that no one was injured, one student emerged from the school asking for water to rinse his eyes with large bruises on his head and arm.
Burrill and Higgins also said they witnessed a police officer digging his knee into a protester’s leg.
About 100 protesters, mostly from inside the CEGEP, were arrested. After being detained as late as 5:30 a.m. in the CEGEP, all protesters received identical charges of mischief, assault, and armed assault.
In direct response to the actions of the police at the CEGEP demonstration, the Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiantes (ASSÉ) called an anti-policy brutality demonstration.
CEGEP du Vieux Montréal was not the only school facing conflict.
At UQAM on Nov. 12, a band of striking students surrounded the office of Claude Corbo, rector-elect of UQAM. Strike leaders accused Corbo of encouraging deep budget cuts and tuition hikes in an attempt to bail the school out of its $550-million debt.
At least three students were arrested, according to reports from the Montreal Gazette and a press release from ASSÉ.
And at three CEGEPs at Drummondville, Saint-Laurent, and Terrebonne, administrators are invoking Law 43, which forbids public-sector employees from withholding their labour.
“The Association étudiante du CEGEP de Drummondville . . . has the right to demonstrate peacefully their point of view, but it cannot block the normal activities of the CEGEP,” reads a press release from the CEGEP de Drummondville administration.
Marc-André Faucher, the information secretary for ASSÉ, said the law was unjust for both students and public service employees.
“It blocks the right to strike, a right recognized long ago in Quebec and internationally,” Faucher said. “This is something we’re going to have to watch if we want to keep our right to strike and hold actions. Administrations and police alike are talking about killing the movement.”
Associations representing approximately 58,000 students across Quebec went on strike on Nov. 12, as part of the ASSÉ-led Day of Action.
Higgins was hopeful that students could confidently participate in the Day of Action despite the violence at Vieux Montréal.
The Students’ Society of McGill University failed to make quorum in its general assembly on whether or not to join the strike.
–with files from Kelly Ebbels
