Violence in Demonstrations

It may seem like a moot point now that the government has passed Bill 78, thereby unleashing the wrath of every anarchist within striking distance of Montreal, but there was a time when there was a real debate about where the line could be drawn between civil disobedience and vandalism, and vandalism and violence.

Former Education Minister Line Beauchamp demanded that CLASSE leader Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois condemn violence in demonstrations as a prerequisite to joining the other two major student groups at the negotiating table (where of course Beauchamp had no room to bargain). He responded that there was a difference between violence and vandalism, and condemned the former. He of course did not hesitate to point out that most of the violence, in his strict construction of the term, had been, and continues to be, perpetrated by the Montreal and now Quebec Provincial Police, on the protesters.

Although I am in solidarity with the student movement, I will have nothing to do with some of their actions, which somehow they don't seem to understand has alienated most of the population-at-large. Throwing bricks or smoke bombs on the tracks of the metro or stopping traffic on one of the major bridges is a poor choice of tactic. By doing those things, the movement lost the support of the people who pay the bulk of their tuition.

But the poor choice of tactic is not what I want to talk about. When someone attending a peaceful rally chucks a rock through a window or a beer bottle at a cop, thereby allowing the police to bust the heads of their brethren, that is violence. It is not violence against the population, nor is it even violence against the police, who are usually well protected. It is violence against the rest of the demonstrators. When you cross the line into vandalism, you get your friends beaten up by the cops.

People who would normally be out in the streets (students, or me, for example) are growing increasingly wary to have their voices heard out of fear that they will have their heads bashed in by police. Thus, I thoroughly and completely condemn any act of violence or vandalism without exception* in demonstrations.

Since the passage of Bill 78, this hardly matters. The cops do not need much of a good reason to tear gas the crowds. Hopefully they stop pepper-spraying the patio patrons on St. Denis, but that's another story.

*There is, I must say, one instance where I think it's okay to perpetrate violence in a demonstration. If you're marching peacefully and you see a fellow demonstrator who is about to toss a rock through a bank window, you are allowed to beat the ever-living shit out of him.