Follow the Leader
By James Cummins
December Issue of U Men Magazine--"The Best of the Year" issue.
On November 10, 2011 a group of students entered the James Administration building on the McGill University Campus in order to state a sit-in protest. Montreal has been famous for these ever since John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged a similar event in May of 1969 to protest the Vietnam War. Protest is, in some respects, a way of life in Montreal that it isn’t elsewhere in North America. However the events of November 10 are different than others that have come before it.
Since the beginning of September, the union that represents the support staff of McGill University has been on strike. Students around the campus have complained about a plummeting quality of service from the university ever since. A campus staff already known for being rude, giving mixed advice and then blaming it on the student, and generally regarding student requests as a chore rather than the first and most important job of the institution, was replaced by management that began refusing to answer emails or even the most basic questions.
Some campuses, like the Management Faculty, saw instances of students being dealt with by administration members who would be sitting directly in front of a student and refuse to speak to them, only speaking through a student mediator while rummaging through their desk and exclaiming “I don’t have time for this!” There were others however that were as helpful as they possibly could be, though this was not the norm.
There were some students that supported the striking workers, but many who did not. The majority of students were at worst neutral towards the strike, just wanting the university and the union to come to terms and get back to work. As of the beginning of November this had not yet happened--the strike continued. The university administration began sending out emails to the full student body regarding various tactics they were putting in place, such as legal injunctions to get picketers off campus, appeals to the labour board, and generally pressure on the student body to ‘stay in line’ or else.
At this point the “Occupy Montreal” movement--sprung from the efforts of the New Yorkers who began their Occupation of Wall Street on September 17 of this year--had been rather tame. The occupiers are located in a park that is pretty distant from any 9-5ers or major traffic. November 10, however, was not initially intended to be the grounds of a spreading of the occupy movement in the city. Instead, it was planned by a separate group as a province-wide student strike over plans to double the university tuition rate. Québec’s tuition is more than half that of most other Canadian provinces, including my home province, and I myself am already paying an out-of-province rate similar to what will be asked of those that call Québec home, so generally I am not all that interested in the plight of students I see as getting a pretty good deal.
As for the Occupy movement, I can sympathize but do not necessarily support the general philosophy behind it. I have a book coming out in a few months here detailing the nearly decade long history of a similar movement—the Anti-Naked Shorting Movement—which I have been following since 2003. They too took to Wall Street, but in smaller groups back during the economic boom, but no one listened. They warned that Wall Street was a house of cards and some very bad things were coming, but no one listened. They created a national network of experts and supporters, got on television, and wrote columns--but nobody listened. So I can sympathize with the fact that, when no one will listen, words are often no longer enough. Someone has to do something. I wrote book, and in a different situation, the Occupy movement is staging worldwide sit-ins.
I can also sympathize with the idea that, not only were the banks of the last decade placing profits ahead of the rights of homeowners and families, but they were also placing them ahead of future homeowners and future families. Student debt is a plague in North America. For many decades it has been assumed that if you are not from a rich family, you will be expected to pay back what it cost you to go to school over the first ten to twenty years of your working life--with interest. Students exit university already chained to national lending institutions. And to leave school in a time where there are no jobs to even pay the interest on those loans is more than frustrating--it can be life ending. To that end, for many students, the only ones profiting off their education are the university faculties whose salaries are paid only because there is a student body present, and the lending institutions that skim off the top of the salaries of students once they leave college.
The idea is that this money will be made back by the student over time, but if there is no first job to get that student on their feet, then an immediate bankruptcy looms.
The following is the context I came into November 10, 2011 with--I was pretty much neutral on the whole thing. I believe that banks have the right to make money, and that universities have the responsibility to provide research to future society more so than they do to provide a student with a very lavish education. Individuals in turn have the right and responsibility to take care of their own interests within that system—that is capitalism. I have student debt; I have a plan, and not one reliant on a corporate institution taking my future out of the hands of the educational institution in order for society to continue squeezing me. That is the way of the world.
But on November 10, that changed. The students who came to occupy the building at McGill were there to occupy, specifically, the office of the university President. They entered the floor and successfully entered the offices to which they sought access to. No one was hurt. The protestors claim they had to squeeze in with their bodies through a door that was being slammed in their faces; the administration characterizes it as them pushing past the people inside. Semantics, right?
Another group of students formed outside of the building, creating a human chain to protect those inside. The police had been called, and campus security was becoming pushy. Tensions were on the rise. Those inside the building were approaching the end of their simple act, but after a skirmish between police and protestors outside, the riot police were on their way. Again, as of now, no one was hurt.
After negotiating their exit with the administration, the protestors exited the building to a scene of over a hundred riot police entering the campus. Within minutes the tear gas and pepper spray was in full use. People were beaten. People just passing by trying to get home were attacked by police--not protestors. The protestors were allowed to leave without arrest, but not before a show of substantial force by the authorities. To make matters worse, no emergency broadcast was put forward to the established network to warn the body that police violence was coming.
The following day the President of the university released yet another email, telling the administration’s side of the story. In it the protestors were pretty much described as insolent brats who had no idea what they wanted, whom the university very kindly let leave. She left out the pepper spray, she left out the tear gas, instead merely stating that “the riot squad … dispersed the protesters by its usual means”. She called the presence “shocking”, in my opinion in such a way that it insinuated she was shocked that they had to be called, but what is more shocking is the lack of empathy shown by the shepherd of this flock.
The incident sent the following message: if you step foot in our offices, bad things will happen to you. The administration used communication to attach themselves indirectly to the events through insinuation--perfectly legal, of course. But supporting the riot police through calling their methods “the usual” and then stating they were “entirely directed by the Montreal police service” in the same sentence, insinuates that, while they didn’t technically do anything, it very well could happen again. It was clear that the administration was subtly choosing sides people the students and police.
Students fed up with administration inaction that has led to a weakening of their education, and facing a society that they see as represented by the administration, that will be difficult for them to survive in, have a right to be frustrated. The administration has a right to ignore this frustration. However, in that ignorance, and through the events of November 10, they have proven one thing--if it comes down to you or them, it’s not gonna be them.
Even if the President steps down tomorrow it would not heal those who were there, or even those who simply hear about it that are now concerned about whether or not they have a voice on campus without fear of reprisal. At a university that purports itself to be a leader in human rights, this kind of event requires greater attention that it has received. An official in-house investigation has been launched by a faculty member--not an independent investigator. More insinuating emails have been distributed in warning of any future protests. And life goes on.
I take the view that nobody did anything wrong, they just did what they did poorly. The President had been bad at communicating on behalf of the administration, no doubt she does not intend to intimidate, but she has intimidated hundreds of students in recent months. The police responded not through an intention of hurting people, but because they were not calm and peaceful enough to disperse the students without the crutch of force. And the student body needs to pay more attention, stronger attention, sooner to the issues going on around them.
But being bad at your job is not an excuse. That the financial analysts were bad at their jobs during the 2000s, unequipped to foresee the results of their actions, is not an excuse. That the McGill University administration and Montreal police force are unequipped to handle peaceful protest effectively, is not an excuse. Especially in a city where real, actual riots are not uncommon after something as common as a hockey game. If the authorities do not clean up their act, I fear a meltdown coming. And it will not be the fault of the oppressed. The administration and police are paid to be good at their jobs, the students and taxpayers are paying for the system. They should own the system, not be held down by it.
All this to say: there is no doubt in my mind that this turmoil, and this new conversation happening all across North America, was directly inspired by the events of the Arab Spring. The Middle-East has become a beacon of hope for not just similar regions, but for the superpowers themselves. More than enough has been written about the effects this has had on the region, but in the coming years much more will no doubt be written on the powerful impact of this contemporary philosophy of social activism, a neo-Ghandi-ism if you will, shall have on the world as a whole. As Barack Obama stated before the United Nations:
“[T]his has been a remarkable year. The Qaddafi regime is over. Gbagbo, Ben Ali, Mubarak are no longer in power. Osama bin Laden is gone, and the idea that change could only come through violence has been buried with him. Something is happening in our world. The way things have been is not the way that they will be. The humiliating grip of corruption and tyranny is being pried open. Dictators are on notice. Technology is putting power into the hands of the people. The youth are delivering a powerful rebuke to dictatorship… The promise written down on paper -- “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” -- is closer at hand.”
It should be said that this notice is not exclusive to foreign lands. The “best of the year”, in my opinion, has been this radical shift in power from the authorities to the people—the most radical in over a century. May the philosophy of fairness spread as far and wide as it possibly can. I may not support everything protestors are saying, but I more than support their right to be heard whether it be in Beirut, Montreal, or New York City.
