Take your neo-liberalism and shove it

>> The successful takeover of Complexe G paves the way for more shutdowns

by JACQUIE CHARLTON

The takeover of Complexe G in Quebec City last Monday might be called the moment when anarchy in Quebec gained a degree of credibility. It was pulled off largely by a bunch of kids, some of whose clothes appeared to be falling apart, and whose leaders were apt to preface statements with phrases like "A careful reading of the history of the left will show you..." They slept cheek-to-jowl on the floor of a community centre the night before their blockade and went to work the next morning on a breakfast of only bread and margarine, and muffins that appeared to be made with no eggs or milk.

And yet these 300 youths took over the very nerve centre of the provincial government so smoothly, slickly and painlessly, so militarily, that it wouldn't be a stretch to say it took your breath away. "If it hasn't sent a chill to their hearts yet," said organizer Patrick Borden, "it will when we shut down the stock exchange."

Plan G, as its delirious participants were saying Monday, is only the first in a series of takeovers by a corps of disciplined protesters, each trained in such lessons as the philosophy of civil disobedience, the right way to act when police do a thumb-in-the-neck hold and, more importantly, how to suppress the urge to fight back.

The training seems to have worked. The takeover of Complexe G was trouble-free: protesters made their way down to the building in the morning and sealed off the entrances with their bodies. Police chose not to intervene. By 1:30 p.m. all Complexe G employees were sent home, and victory for the protestors was declared.

One 21-year-old Concordia student blockading the parking door was lifted off her feet and slammed into a concrete wall by an enraged fonctionnaire who wanted to get to his car. She and her fellow blockaders were remarkably sweet about it when they described it later. Hadn't she felt a murderous anger, though, in the split second after her cheek slammed into the wall? She had, she admitted, but only for a moment. She managed to calm herself almost immediately, adamant the collective mood should not be tarnished.

And what a mood. During the prep-speech in the community centre the night before the action, when organizer Philippe Duhamel asked whether the crowd was ready, the floor nearly vibrated with the deafening affirmation. At one point the participants were asked whether they wanted to get up at 5 a.m. or 4:30 a.m. for the 7 a.m. takeover of the Complexe. Surprisingly, the earlier time was the overwhelming popular choice.

If the coalition of several hundred non-violent protesters holds together, as organizers hope, if Plan G does indeed create the "legacy of training and information" described in their literature, the financiers will have a force to reckon with. The real challenge, though, will be to involve the people on the sidelines--in this case, quite literally, the several hundred Complexe G workers who were supposed to register for work in the park across from the building while the blockade was going on.

Frequent megaphoned invitations were extended to them to join the protest throughout the day, and in fact their union had officially come out in support of the demands of the protesters (though not of the action itself). But only about two or three of the workers actually did. The workers' reactions were mainly of the, "Well, it's something all students have to go through," and "It brings back memories of my own protest days" variety, with the odd "They should shut up and get jobs" comment. But two employees standing together at the edge of the park watching the protest held a very different perspective. Their bitterness (in the case of the younger worker) and sadness (in the case of the older) about their situations in the face of, well, The System, easily fit in with the day of protest.

The younger was a janitor who told me about the smoking regulations inside Complexe G. Since May 1, smoking has been prohibited inside the building, with fines of $35 for a first offence and $250 for a second. Higher up, on the 16th and 32nd floors of the Complexe, in the offices of, ironically enough, the Ministers of Education and Environment, the ashtrays he had to empty were still overflowing. "There are two laws," he said. "One for the higher-ups and one for the little guys."

"They never have cutbacks, the bosses," the older worker said. He said he had worked as a physical plant employee in the Complexe basement for nearly three decades and was making $23,500 a year. When the haut fonctionnaires were ill, he said, they told their secretaries they were going to be in meetings all day, and then stayed home without counting it as a sick day. At the end of the year they'd be paid a bonus for each of their unused sick days. "Meetings" were not an excuse the guys at the bottom could use.

The two workers said they were too afraid of what would happen to them if they gave their names for this article, and the older man even asked me to change his job title. "You know how they are," he told me.

"I've been here 28 years and I'm not considered any better than if I'd just worked one," the old man told me, and it was suddenly clear that the people in the park, or some of them at least, could hurt as bad about the way things are as the triumphant kids across the road.