Yes. You read that right. Yes. I do mean both news teams from The Link and The Concordian. Yes, it sucked as much as you think it did. So yeah, the SPVM is unhinged. Crazy even. And, in a surprise to absolutely no one who has a brain, McGill is a deeply, deeply evil institution. Like, what the actual fuck. Marching an army on your campus, and for what? Defend your investment in genocide? Whatever dude. Get a fucking grip. The level of fascism on display from our academic institutions despite being under attack on all sides by the Quebecois political apparatus is a level of delusion known only to 14-year-olds. Anyway, here are the pictures.
This won’t be a particularly photo heavy piece, I was mostly shooting video for this event.
I’d also like to highlight that this police presence was no accident. The city and the universities coordinated with the SPVM. Police were present at McGill very early in the morning, while there were vans of riot cops spotted near Concordia around 10am. The protests, which were announced in advance, were only scheduled for 2pm. The protests were surrounded by riot police from start to finish. They were trying to keep students from reaching what I assume are “sensitive” areas of McGill’s campus. McGill’s administration have been on a bit of a tyrannical craze lately, though it’s nothing out of character. This is the same institution that files injunctions against unions to prevent them from picketing, was heavily invested in apartheid South Africa, and got into a legal battle with it’s law professors over their right to unionize. Honestly, it’d be almost comical how evil this institution is if the consequences weren’t so dire.
There’s something incredibly dystopian about watching your coworkers and rivals getting tear gassed by police officers. Adrenaline is a hell of a thing. The police force is truly a strange institution. Preventable property damage but no arrests, all of this show of force but for what? At the end of the day, McGill’s draconian tactics mostly inconvenienced its own, “law abiding” students. Everyone on the team ended up being okay, some were more frazzled than others.
Here is a link to the article, and a link to the video.