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Our next speaker, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, the leader of the student movement.
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Welcome, welcome, thank you, this is a bit amazing. :)
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I'm Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, and for 54 days, today,
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I have been on strike.
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For 54 days, I have been fighting.
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54 days of fight, 54 days of police batons.
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of tear gas, of pepper spray, me, my friends, my comrades
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the students of Quebec.
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54 days of striking against the Liberals,
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against the bosses, against the cops, against contemptuous columnists
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54 days, and we have already won.
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Already, we have won over cynicism
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Already, we have won over powerlessness
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Against those who said just a few weeks ago
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that the people of Quebec were dead
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and that its youth were not much better.
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That is why, I believe, I'll use this platform that has been offered to me today
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to warmly thank the Prime Minister of Quebec
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Mr Jean Jean Charest. :)
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Thank you Mr Charest, you have given us
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an unshakable confidence in ourselves.
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Thank you Mr Charest to have shown us what we could do against you.
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But by now, by now, you are on probation
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You have declared war on an entire generation.
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We have marked the ground of the history with a permanent mark.
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From now on, Quebec's history will never be read without stopping here.
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You have shown us the violence of your world, to let us -- perhaps -- imagine ours a little bit better.
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Because we aspire to something more than your dying world.
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We aspire to more than your dollar-sign education, than your laboratory schools,
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and to more than your "Me Inc." society.
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By now, we trust ourselves
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By now, we trust the power of history
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We trust our classmates
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And by now trust the people of Quebec.
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And it won't stop here.
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Our anger, the students' anger, already resonates to the four corners of the province
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and the ears of our children, our nieces, of our cousins resonate with it.
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Striking is a school. For us, this spring, it will have been the best schooling.
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... and it will have been free no less :)
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Striking-school this spring will have been for us
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the best of training, a free training.
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We learned this spring, we learned for real.
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We learned what injustice is, what violence is, what the violence of a system is.
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We learned what cayenne pepper tastes like, we learned what tear gas smells like.
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And above all, we learned resistance.
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Hundreds of thousands of us leaned to fight harder than we ever had in our lives.
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to fight harder than anyone ever did in Quebec's history.
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Our strike, it is not merely the matter of a generation,
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It is not merely the matter of a spring.
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It is the matter of a people, it is the matter of this world.
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Our strike is not an isolated event. Our strike is just a step,
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It is just a moment along a much longer route.
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Our strike is already victorious. It is already victorious
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because it made it possible to see this road, that of resistance.
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This is the true meaning of our strike.
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250'000 people don't take to the streets just to avoid paying $1625 extra.
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This is the meaning of our strike. In perseverance, and in a continued disobedience.
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This spring, we planted the seeds of a revolt
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which, perhaps, might not grow for many years still.
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Yet already, we can say that the people of Quebec are not asleep.
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Nor are its youth.
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Maybe they have the hardest clubs.
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Maybe they wear the thickest armors.
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Maybe they own the largest newspapers.
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Maybe they have the thickest wallets.
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We, however, we have the toughest spirit.
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We have the courage of the oppressed,
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We have the force of the multitude.
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But above all, above all,
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We are, simply stated, right.
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We are right to stand. We are right to shout. We are right to protest.
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We are right to strike. We are right to block entry to our cegeps.
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To block entry to our universities.
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We are right not to be intimidated by the injunctions of a small-minded jerk
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who lost his debate in the House, and who has parents rich enough to buy him a lawyer.
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It is right to fight against this.
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Against a world...
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Right to fight against a world that tries to cut off our wings,
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who wants to discipline us through debt and work
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Yet this fight is not only the student's fight.
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It must not be only the student's fight.
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Because the individuals
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who want to increase tuition fees, who perhaps will increase tuition fees.
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the individuals who invented the health tax, the people who invented the 'Plan Nord'.
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The people who have laid off the workers at Aveos
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the people trying to lay off workers at Rio Tinto, Alcan, Alma
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the people trying to stop the Couche Tard workers from unionizing.
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All these individuals are the same.
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It is the same people, with the same interests, in the same groups, in the same political parties,
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in the same economic institutes.
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These individuals are a single elite, a gluttonous elite, a crass elite
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a corrupted elite.
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An elite who sees nothing in education but a human capital investment.
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who sees nothing in a tree but a sheet of paper
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and who sees nothing in a child but a future employee.
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These people have a plan...
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These people have convergent interests, converging political projects.
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It is against them that we have to fight.
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Not only against the Liberal Government.
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Today I can, I believe, give a voice to the wish,
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the dearest wish of the students currently on strike in Quebec
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to become a springboard. Let our strike be a springboard for the next protest
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a much broader protest
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much deeper and much more -- yes -- radical
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against the political direction of Quebec in recent years [bravo!]
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If there is a Quebec tradition to protect
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it is not poutine or xenophobia. :)
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If there is any Quebec tradition to protect,
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it is the one Quebec's students are carrying today. A tradition of fight,
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of union fights, of student fights, of the people's fights.
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And to speak of this fight, I could not finish my statement today...
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without offering you the words of Gaston Miron:
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"forward, forward, we are moving, our heads like a delta"
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Good-bye, farewell
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on our return, we will have the past on our back
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and after all this time throwing our hate at all forms of peonage
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we will have become terrible beasts of hope. "
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Thank you.
