CLAC-Logement and the Comité des sans emploi Montréal-centre denounce the growing gap between the rich and the poor by demonstrating in the World Trade Centre during the day of actions against the Charest government
Montreal, April 14, 2004 - CLAC-Logement and the Comité des sans emploi Montréal-centre organized a militant march and action this afternoon, April 14, as part of the national day of action against the Charest government. The final blow took place at the end of the demonstration, when we entered the World Trade Center of Montreal in order to denounce the concentration of wealth and the “re-engineering of the state” by those behind Jean Charest.
The “re-engineering of the state”, with its cuts in social programs, its attacks on working conditions and its partnership with the private sector, will brutally hurt the poorest people in the province. While the majority of the population pays more and more for housing, for heat in the winter, to feed their children, to take public transport and to go to school, while many see a deterioration of their working conditions and even see themselves losing the right to unionize, Charest’s policies accentuate the poverty and the misery of the majority to the profit of the wealthy minority.
The World Trade Center is a den of the profiteers who have created the policies of this government: privatization of public services, subcontracting, elimination of trade-union accreditations, etc. And the poor pay the bill. The rich sleep in the Hôtel St-James while the poor face evicitons and perpetual increases in our rent.
Social peace cannot exist where wealth is hoarded and controlled by a greedy few.
1000 HAVE-NOTS STORM ELITE HOTEL IN MONTREAL
Montreal, April 15, 2004
Over a thousand angry protestors marched on Montreal’s posh St. James hotel yesterday, causing havoc and disrupting the tea-time of the idle rich. The protest was part of a province-wide day of action marking the one-year anniversary of the elections that brought Jean Charest and the Liberal Party to government in Quebec. Since taking power, Premier Charest has initiated a “re-engineering of the state”—a business-oriented restructuring of the province’s government, in an attempt to undermine the many social-democratic programs still running in Quebec. This has taken the form of anti-union laws, cuts to subsidized childcare, plans to reduce the number of people on welfare and other attacks on working people. One flyer for yesterday’s protests stated “As if we didn’t have enough trouble making ends meet with low salaries, precarious jobs, insufficient welfare and high rents, this government has given itself the clear mission of making us even poorer.” The Charest government has created a lot of enemies and yesterday Montreal saw a 10,000-strong union demonstration, as well as protests organized by a number of housing and anti-poverty groups and the North-Eastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists.
Around 4pm people began to gather for a demonstration co-organized by the Comité des sans-emploi (Committee of the Unemployed) and CLAC-Logement (the Anti-Capitalist Convergence—Housing Committee). After some fiery speeches, the protestors marched down busy Ste. Catherine Street and right into a downtown mall, chanting “The social peace is over!” and “Make the rich pay!” Shoppers in fancy boutiques were startled by a thousand angry working-class youth in their midst. The demonstration snaked its way through the mall and the connecting train station exiting several blocks later. The crowd, which had grown in size, then proceeded past the American consulate and ended up at the St. James Hotel—perhaps the most expensive in Montreal at which rooms can cost up to $5000 (Canadian) a night.
Protestors rushed the doors and pushed passed the frantic hotel manager into the exclusive first-floor dining room. Businessmen in expensive suits were shocked as black-clad and masked anarchists jumped on the oak tables or tried—unsuccessfully—to pull the table-clothes out from under the plates and glasses without knocking them over. Protestors played the grand piano or pocketed silver forks and ashtrays. Others demonstrators sat down at tables with the hotel’s dismayed, paying clients and helped themselves to their wine and hors-d’oeuvres. “Down with capitalism” was graffitied on the wall. Several hotel security guards attempted to grab a demonstrator, but were quickly restrained by other protestors. Another security guard said to one organizer, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to stop you. They only pay me $10 an hour. I’m on your side.”
After a few minutes of mayhem, the demonstrators in the hotel, made their way out through the connected, ultra-chic, indoor shopping center of Montreal’s World Trade Center, tipping over small indoor-trees as they went. The protestors streamed out of the World Trade Center and around from the side of the hotel into the gathering union demonstration.
As the proletarian hooligans, street-punks, students, red and green anarchists, Maoists and the odd Worker-Communist dissolved into the larger crowd at the union demonstration, the completely-outmanoeuvred police were left with nothing to do but flash their cars’ lights and glare from the sidelines. There were no arrests.
Whether the militancy of yesterday’s actions will catch on and snowball or be lost in electoralism and nationalism remains to be seen. But the potential for an uncompromising, gutsy, fighting poor-people’s movement against the Charest government is there. The spirit of the day was perhaps best expressed by a large sticker plastered all along the demonstration’s route—inside malls, on street signs, placards, SUVs and police cars. It showed Jean Charest’s face next to the phrase “OSTIE DE CROSSEUR!”—which roughly translates as “FUCKING WANKER!”
Jean Charest: One year in power is one year too many!
April 14th marks the one year anniversary of Jean Charest’s liberals coming to power and pushing their agenda of cuts down our throats. As if we didn’t have enough trouble making ends meet with low salaries, precarious jobs, insufficient welfare and high rents, this government has given itself the clear mission of making us even poorer. To do so, they’ve forcibly passed laws that will radically change our access to social services and the general working conditions in https://florafox.com/cz/.
The Charest gang has demonstrated, better than anyone else, that governments will bend over backwards to please their rich buddies. These vultures will profit from the income tax cuts and will stuff their pockets with the privatization of public services, the attacks against unionized workers, and the many subsidies allotted to companies.
We are the ones who will have to pay for all of this. We’ll be paying more for electricity, public transportation, childcare, tuition fees, and the list goes on… BUT WE’VE HAD ENOUGH OF BEING ROBBED! There’s already too many of us being forced to chose between eating or paying the rent; forced to work and live underground because of fear of deportation; getting welfare checks cut if you refuse a bad job; getting beaten up by cops because you work and sleep on the street. The Charest government has stepped up the attack by bandit governments who steal from the poor to give to the rich.
We salute the organizing of unions and community groups against the Charest government on April 14th, but we also have to fight for and with those who will be the most affected by Charest’s attacks: the poor, the unemployed and the homeless. On April 14th, those who have been hurt the most by Charest’s policies will confront those who profit from them.
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