Chris Hedges is absolutely right. All eyes should be on
Quebec right now. I also urge all student debtors to begin wearing a red square, a symbol, as Hedges notes, of revolt. The symbol means that one is "squarely in the red (
carrement dans le rouge)," and "crushed by debt." I think most of us here can relate to that. The
reformists don't get this massive change in consciousness, and they will continue to hide behind their computers, urging people to sign petitions. If you dare suggest that this type of "activism" is futile, they will hiss and scream and make outrageous claims about how much better their plan is than anything else. They will beat their chests in rage, and ignore the horizontal protests, the swarms of democracy lovers, in the process. But the collective voices who demand
true change cannot be stopped, not even by the screeching reformers who claim to be on our side.
Indeed, the protests in the streets of Montreal have not stopped, and it is now, as Hedges notes, "the longest and largest student protest in Canadian history." A few weeks ago,
500,000 people took to the streets of Montreal to protest austerity and so-called reforms. The city itself has 1.6 million inhabitants! This protest occurred after a law - Bill 78 - was passed outlawing freedom to assembly in Quebec.
They are a model for all protesters across the globe. They are hungry for democracy, and done with the tyranny of neoliberalism.
This means it is also time to
Occupy Student Debt here.
2 comments:
"The Dodd-Frank Act requires a formal report on the private student loan market. But the student loan problem cannot be understood without equally examining government student loans: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau needs absolutely to include government student loans in its report, which otherwise would be obviously partial and incomplete.
“If these borrowers are so overleveraged that it carries throughout their entire adult life, this is a big problem,” a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officer has pronounced. His bureau needs immediately to get busy making sure that the Department of Education is not saddling students with unpayable debt for life."
http://blog.american.com/2012/03/protecting-vulnerable-consumers-from-the-government-moneylender/
Hi Cryn,
I've been following your work for over a year now and really appreciate your work for us student loan debtors! I actually live in Montreal now and while I myself haven't been protesting in the streets, I do support the protestors and their creative means of protest (the latest has been to bang on pots and pans). I wanted to point out one inaccuracy in the Law 78 that was recently passed. it doesn't ban freedom of assembly. What it does it that it requires protestors to notify the authorities when and where a protest will take place, and if the protest is a march, the route planned.
Keep up the good work!
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