In Defiance

Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, Lazer Lederhendler

Description

On February 7, 2012, as students in Quebec prepared to vote to go on strike, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois gave a rousing speech: “What you do today will be remembered. The decision you make will tell future generations who we were. And you already know what is being said today about our generation. That we are the generation of comfort and indifference, the generation of cash and iPods; that we are individualists, egotists; that we don’t care about anything, except our navels and our gadgets. Aren’t you tired of hearing this? Well, I am. Luckily, today we have a chance to prove that it’s not true, that it has never been true.”

The “Maple Spring” saw more than 300,000 students across Quebec protest a tuition fee hike by striking from their classes. Nadeau-Dubois takes readers step-by-step through the strike, recounting the confrontations with journalists, ministers, judges, and police. Along the way he exposes the moral and intellectual poverty of the Quebec elite and celebrates the remarkable energy of the students who opposed the mercenary attitude of the austerity agenda.

In Defiance is translated from the 2014 Governor General’s Literary Award winner for non-fiction, Tenir tête (Lux Éditeur)

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing, an initiative of the Roadmap for Canada’s Official Languages 2013-2018: Education, Immigration, Communities, for our translation activities.

Sujets

• Political Advocacy
• Political Process
• Political Science

Informations

• Publié par: Between the Lines
• Date de parution: 29 juillet 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 4
• EAN13: 9781771131834
• Langue: English

Extrait

Cover
Praise for - In Defiance
Praise for
In Defiance
The historical significance of Quebec’s colossal 2012 student strike is destined to be the subject of debate for years to come. With incisive clarity and intelligence, In Defiance shines in its analysis of the province’s so-called Maple Spring. Co-spokesperson of Quebec’s largest student union during the strike, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois places the conflict within the context of a broad neoliberal attack on the Quebec model of socio-economic development, explaining how the movement faced down a barrage of insults, legal intimidation, contempt and violence from journalists, politicians, and the police and persevered to win substantial public support in the streets and at the polls. As ever, Nadeau-Dubois’s voice elevates public discussion about the kind of world we want to live in and will be sure to resonate with readers the world over.
– Jarrett Rudy, Associate Professor of History, McGill University
In Defiance is a remarkable insider’s account of the largest popular mobilization in recent Canadian history. With wit and clarity, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois provides an engaging window into the 2012 Maple Spring and the role of the Quebec student movement as one of the leading forces challenging neoliberalism today.
– Yves Engler, author of The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, former Vice President of the Concordia Student Union
In Defiance is as assertive as the demonstrations that overwhelmed Montreal’s streets in 2012. It is a crucial book for Canadians. It gives insight into events that have shaped Quebec’s political culture, such as the Quiet Revolution, which placed importance on education and called for free tuition. It exposes the breadth and depth of the student movement, which infused Quebec with ideas, reinvigorated our sense of street-level democratic participation, and demanded to know: how and by whom is our future to be shaped?
– Kaie Kellough, writer/poet, Montréal
In Defiance is a must-read for today’s students and activists, and for anyone needing a renewal of faith in the future of humanity. Superbly written, with clarity and self-awareness, this book captures the idealism, practicalities, frustrations, failures, and victories of the Maple Spring. In addition to revealing the tactics, day-to-day challenges, and political realities happening behind the scenes of one of the largest student movements in recent history, Nadeau-Dubois shows us that – even against an entrenched government, bolstered in its suppression of the disenfranchised by a wider culture of social apathy – youth, intelligence, and hope can always rise and challenge those in power and, more importantly, the ways of thinking that keep them there.
– Mark Edelman Boren, author of Student Resistance: A History of the Unruly Subject
Title






In Defiance
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois
Translated by Lazer Lederhendler
Foreword by Naomi Klein














Between the Lines
Toronto
Copyright

In Defiance
Originally published in French as Tenir tête ,
© Lux Éditeur, Montréal, 2013
www.luxediteur.com
English translation
© 2015 Lazer Lederhendler

First published in English translation in 2015:
Between the Lines
401 Richmond St. W., Studio 277
Toronto, Ontario M5V 3A8
1-800-718-7201
www.btlbooks.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be photocopied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of Between the Lines, or (for photocopying in Canada only) Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, M5E 1E5.
Every reasonable effort has been made to identify copyright holders. Between the Lines would be pleased to have any errors or omissions brought to its attention.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Nadeau-Dubois, Gabriel, 1990–
[Tenir tête. English]
In defiance / by Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois; translated by Lazer Lederhendler.
Includes index.
Translation of: Tenir tête.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77113-182-7 (pbk.). – ISBN 978-1-77113-183-4 (epub). –
ISBN 978-1-77113-184-1 (pdf).
1. Student strikes – Québec (Province). 2. Student movements – Québec (Province). 3. Québec (Province) – Politics and government – 2003–2012. I. Title. II. Title: Tenir tête. English.
LA418.Q8N3313 2015
371.8'109714
C2015-900601-5
C2015-900602-3
Cover design and photos by Jennifer Tiberio
Page preparation and text design by Steve Izma
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing, an initiative of the Roadmap for Canada’s Official Languages 2013–2018: Education, Immigration, Communities , for our translation activities. We gratefully acknowledge assistance for our publishing activities from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program and through the Ontario Book Initiative, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.
Dedication


To my mother and father, who passed on to me their love of people and of justice.
Quotation


The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle.… If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
– Frederick Douglass
Contents

Foreword by Naomi Klein

Preface to the English Edition

Acknowledgements

Chronology

Introduction
Part 1
Three General Assemblies
One
A Twelve-Vote Margin
Two
A Generation No One Was Counting On
Three
The Hatred of Democracy
Part2
Two Notions: “Fair Share” and “Excellence”
Four
The Revolt of the Rich
Five
Excellence?
Part 3
A Struggle
Six
Soldiers without a Commander?
Seven
Collective Hysteria
Eight
At the Parthenais Detention Centre
Nine
In Defiance
Ten
Under the Shield of the Law
Eleven
All for What?

Epilogue

Glossary

Index
Foreword Naomi Klein
T he Maple Spring in Quebec ushered in the biggest social mobilization this country has seen in decades. Its consequences will be felt for years to come in Quebec, but it will influence the rest of Canada only if those outside the province better understand what made it unique. This book, written by one of the country’s most inspiring young leaders, does a great deal to help.
In early 2012, Quebec’s students went on strike against massive hikes to university tuition fees. But instead of simply protesting the latest round of increases, the student movement told Quebec what they stood for : free, universal education, which they saw as a precondition for any just society. They also showed persuasively that the barriers being erected for poorer students were a reflection of a wider pro-corporate agenda, the reversal of which would be necessary if they were to achieve their goal.
By making a non-reformist, ambitious demand, their protests lit a spark in the province and opened up a broad debate about what kind of society Quebecers actually wanted. Outside the province, many of us watched as the movement unleashed an incredible wave of creativity and militancy. There were the witty videos, the gorgeous art, the poetry and music. There was the omnipresent red square – a must-have symbol of solidarity, which I eventually spotted even in the streets of Toronto. Most iconic, however, were the unforgettable images of hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, regularly crowding the downtown streets, many of them banging pots and pans on their balconies and in their neighbourhoods.
Through 2012, we watched as the students dreamed in public. We read in their manifesto how they envisioned the key features of Quebec life – not just education, but also health care, culture, energy, the land and rivers – protected and nurtured as a common inheritance, not gripped and disfigured by the logic of the marketplace. They exhorted us to think generations ahead, echoing the Indigenous worldview that long predates our country. It was this vision more than anything else that captivated Quebecers and so many of us beyond its borders. This was more than a mere “demand”– it was an expression of a rising cultural shift, an altering of the sense of what is possible.
These students were born around 1990, in the years when market fundamentalism reached its full ideological ascension; they have no memory of life before neoliberalism reigned supreme. All their lives they have heard that “history is over,” that there is no alternative to unrestrained capitalism, that they should be satisfied with the perks of this atomized existence, happily