06) RED ALERT FROM QUEBEC

People's Voice Editorial

     Whatever the immediate outcome, the Quebec student will has raised the bar for popular resistance struggles, for at least two compelling reasons.

     One concerns the broad movement which has emerged in solidarity with the students. By uniting around core demands for accessibility to education which resonate with all working people, the students have expanded their base, from campuses across Quebec, to the wider population. This fight expresses the sentiments of working people in many countries, fed up with endless demands by bosses and governments to make us pay for an economic crisis caused by big capital's drive for profits. The student strike shows that the way forward is not through isolated individual protests, but through conscious efforts to build mass, united action.

     The Quebec students have also begun to question the basis of our entire social system. As the Climate Justice statement (see page 10) says, "the fight against an unjust economy and the fight against climate change" are one and the same, "because the crises of the climate and the economy have the same root: putting profits before people and the planet.... This economic model that celebrates greed above all else is not just making education inaccessible, but it will make our planet uninhabitable."

     The policies demanded in this statement are urgent: reducing inequalities; mass public transit; free education; green jobs that decrease dependence on fossil fuels; restraining the power of corporations and banks; rapid reduction of carbon emissions.

     Although not explicitly socialist, the statement calls for change that is "green as well as red", for "a clean energy future that is socially and economically just". This moves in the direction of democratic public ownership of productive wealth, i.e. replacing the private profit system with working class power. Once this concept wins the support of millions, it will become a powerful political force to win a new Canada and a better world.

(The above article is from the May 1-15, 2012, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)