On the night of Wednesday, 23rd May, the police moved towards a “hard application” of “special law” 78. This is just one day after hundreds of thousands of students, workers, and their families flooded the streets of downtown Montreal in what was the biggest demonstration, and the biggest mass defiance of a law, in Canadian history.

Tuesday, May 22nd saw the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. Between 250,000 and 350,000 youth and workers came out onto the streets of Montreal and openly defied the emergency law that requires police approval of protest routes eight hours in advance. A widely publicized “official route” was broken; the crowd turned away, following an unannounced path.

Over the past two weeks, the student strike in Quebec has entered a new stage. What originally began as a strike against a 75% increase in tuition fees has rapidly progressed into a movement against the Liberal government itself. Premier Jean Charest’s government has clumsily fallen over itself, trying to suppress or divide the movement, with little success. Instead of killing the movement, every action by the government has only given the movement new life.

Fightback, the Marxists in English Canada have taken the initiative to spread the inspiring Quebec Student strike across the country. They are doing this in solidarity with their comrades in Quebec organized around La Riposte. The comrades launched an open letter calling on the Canadian Federation of Students, the main student federation in English Canada, to organize strike ballots for free education and to support the Quebec movement.

16 May: The past two weeks of the Quebec student strike have brought an intense roller-coaster of events. The Quebec government put forward an offer that would “find a way out of the crisis”, but which did nothing to resolve the issue of the proposed tuition increase. The offer was massively rejected in assembly after assembly across Quebec.

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear the Mask

Here we go again. Four more years have passed since the last presidential election cycle, and once again, organized labor finds itself with no real options. It is clear that if he were elected president, Mitt Romney would unleash an all-out “Scott Walker on steroids” assault on the working class. But does that mean workers have no option but to vote for the Democrats? Are “political and economic death by hanging” or “political and economic death by drowning” really the only options?

We’ve come a long way since the Workers International League was founded 10 years ago. From our humble beginnings in Fargo, North Dakota, to a dozen modest but growing branches around the country, we have worked hard to begin establishing roots in our unions, workplaces, schools, and communities. These have been tumultuous years of war, revolution, and counter-revolution, and Socialist Appeal has consistently provided news, theory, and analysis from a working class and Marxist perspective.

We are publishing a statement put out by our comrades in Quebec, La Tendance Marxiste Internationale au Québec, on the government's deal with the striking Quebec students.  Last night (Sunday), there was another large demonstration and our comrades handed out over 1,000 leaflets with this statement.  The original French version can be found by visiting the La Riposte website.

The fantastic 12-week long Quebec student strikes mark a new stage in struggle in the Canadian state. However, while this outburst is new for Canada, it is merely the continuation of the international movement against austerity which we have witnessed: the Greek general strikes, the indignados movement in Spain, Wisconsin, the Occupy movement, the inspiration from the Arab revolutions, etc. A victory for the Quebec students is a victory for all workers and youth, both in Canada and around the world, and it is vital that everything possible is done to assure its success and draw out the necessary lessons.

For all revolutionaries it is perfectly clear that 2012 will be a defining year of important challenges. Currently, the Bolivarian revolution is at a cross-road. Either we radicalise the revolution and we deepen its changes, or the reformist politics which seek to simply regulate capitalism, as opposed to eliminating it, could lead the revolution to suffer a dangerous defeat in both the long and medium term.

This week has been a crucial one in Quebec’s historic student strike. In their struggle against the $1,625 tuition increase, the students have held strong since February 13th —  for 73 days straight. 178,390 students remain on unlimited strike despite the government’s gamble they could wait this movement out, that it would tire and collapse.

As this article goes to print, the Quebec student strike is in its 11th week. All of the efforts by the Jean Charest government to derail and divide the student movement have so far failed, and generally have served to further ignite the flame and spread the indignation to the rest of the population. The vitriolic media campaign unleashed over the supposed “violence” of the students has failed; meanwhile, the government refuses to condemn the brutality and mass indiscriminate arrests by the police forces.

The slogan, “When injustice becomes law, resistance is a duty!” summarizes very well the analysis of the situation at the Université de Montréal (UdeM) and shows the only road forward that remains for students facing the attacks of the Charest government and the Guy Breton administration at UdeM.

Well before the current crisis of capitalism shook the entire country, Michigan gave us a glimpse into the future. Michigan was once the seat of the American automotive industry, particularly in Detroit and Flint. Beginning in the late 70s and throughout the 80s, the “Big Three” (GM, Ford, Chrysler) began downsizing their production in Michigan. Seeking lower production costs, they demanded givebacks from auto workers in the form of speed-ups, wage cuts, and layoffs. They also moved production to other countries and to states with low unionization rates.