Join our anti-fascist and anti-racist contingent on October 28, as we show our opposition to both the violence of austerity AND the violence of racist exclusion!
WHEN: 1pm, Saturday, October 28
WHERE: PARC VILLERAY (corner Jarry and Christophe Colomb)
Decades of cutbacks – under both the Liberals and the Parti Quebecois – have made life less secure and more difficult for the poor and workingclass across Quebec. This has affected all sorts of people from different communities, however the hardest hit have been women, immigrants, people of color, people with disabilities, those of us in crisis.
Obscenely, this is occurring at a time when the government has one of the largest budget surpluses in recent history.
Just as obscenely, this is occurring at a time when racist organizations are taking to the streets, blaming immigrants for the damage done by years of cutbacks, attempting to co-opt people’s rage at the ravages of neoliberalism and anxieties about an unsure future, trying to redirect this against those who have in fact been most hurt by austerity measures.
2017 has brought an unprecedented budget surplus, but it has also brought unprecedented anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim demonstrations and hate crimes across Quebec. These racist politics are often framed in terms of supporting “our” people first, of needing to exclude or marginalize everyone who is not a white Québécois, with the lie that this is necessary in order to protect the interests of “our” poor. A poisonous appeal, scapegoating people who are often in the most precarious positions, for the damage done by the capitalists and their state.
The racists are proposing a society based on the privilege of who belongs where, of having the correct citizenship papers, belonging to the correct culture, speaking the correct language with the correct accent, and always wearing the clothing and praying and living the way they will dictate. To the extent that they support social services and community programmes, it is so that these can be used as to further entrench racist hierarchies of privilege and exclusion.
This xenophobic rabblerousing has a clear impact on society, on multiple levels. We see this with hate crimes like the killings at a Quebec City mosque earlier this year, but also in the daily harassment of Muslim women who wear head coverings in public, and now in this new piece of racist legislation, bill 62, which is clearly intended by the Liberals as token of goodwill to the growing racist constituency here.
Against this, we are fighting for a society based on mutual aid, solidarity, the freedom to be who you are, and a commitment that we will face the challenges of the future together. Their slogan is Les Notres Avant les Autres – ours is Les ‘Autres’Sont les Notres!
On October 28, we will join with the Coalition Main Rouge to demand government investment in public services, social programmes, and the community sector. We will be marching as an organized anti-fascist contingent, to make it clear that we are not only showing our opposition to the violence of austerity, but also to the violence of racism and “national preference”.
