"maitres chez nous"

Student strike continues here. There was a brief period of negotiations between the ministre de l'education Line Beauchamp and some of the student groups who had agreed to renounce violence. But the acronyms for various student organizations: FEUQ, CLASSE, etc. are a real alphabet soup and it has been impossible to get them all in line together.

In the english-language Montreal daily, The Gazette, I read this op-ed article which I found really interesting. The author asserts that the student movement is appropriating slogans from the nationalist movement of the Quiet Revolution, such as "maîtres chez nous" for their own student movement. She critiques the exclusionary nature of these slogans. If the nous includes only native born Quebecois, then are they ignoring the presence of African and native students in their classes? A video of a demonstration, she says, included only white faces among the protestors. The students attempt to evoke Pierre Vallières' notorious essay "les Negres blancs d'Amérique" which claimed the Quebecois suffered the same kind of discrimination from white Anglophones as blacks were suffering in the American south. It was hyperbole but it resonated with the radical-chic of the moment. The phrase also reminds me of the film about the Irish blues band that covered soul hits and declared that "the Irish are the blacks of Europe!"

The student movement does appear to dovetail with the Quebec separatist movement. It is little surprise that students from other provinces (of whom there are very few at Laval) or from other countries (including the Haitians I have met in the CELAT program) are not supporting the strikes. If one intends to move out of Quebec after earning one's degree, why would one wish to sacrifice an entire term of credits in order to preserve lower tuition for future undergraduates here in Quebec?

Another op-ed in the same paper examined how the Parti Quebecois leader has taken to wearing the red square, symbol of the student movement, on her lapel. Will this be a successful strategy for the PQ? I'm not sure, but there is an obvious resonance. The strikers attack the Liberal party provincial government and demand to be "maîtres chez nous" as if the liberals and the university rectors are their anglophone oppressors.