What Should You Know About the Quebec Student Strikes and Occupations?

One thing to remember about Occupy is that it has much of its current origins, successes and most intense interactions with authority around the spaces of college campuses. Activism here is particularly innovative when it comes to direct actions, occupations and student strikes, all to combat college tuition increases, privatization and the creation of student debt markets.

Here’s the wikipedia entry on the Puerto Rico student strikes, where they were protesting massive waves of layoffs of government workers, campus faculty and an estimated 100% tuition hike. Here’s the wikipedia entry on the Chilean student strikes. These protests date back to 2006, where students fought high application fees they couldn’t afford. And, of course, there’s what is going on at University of California, with the pepper-spray at Davis and the beatings both in 2009 and 2011 at Berkeley.

But the most interesting resistance happening right now is going on in Quebec, Canada. There are, according to one representative report, over 165,000 students on strike from class out of a 495,000 student body. Read more......