The MARP is upset to report that our local Direct-Action Labour-Tuition Solidarity Working Group missed an important opportunity to set barricades and interrupt the standard way of doing things.
Previously, student radicals held a die-in at a Mining Presentation in solidarity with Peruvian miners. During that protest, McGill’s Mine Planning Lab Administrator Deborah Frankland actually told the radicals that “the only thing that you’ve proven is that you’re retarded,” to which protesters responded by asking for a “safer-space.”
But, on January 19, 2012, our lazy Hippies skipped a McGill Global-Colonial-Theft-Complex presentation on Rio Tinto/Alcan, who is involved in a labour dispute which is very similar to continuous McGill’s war on MUNACA.
Rio Tinto/Alcan has locked out its plant in Alma, Quebec since 2 Jan — followed by a court injunction against more than 20 picketers at a time until 2 Avril.
Following McGill’s 2008 acquisition of renowned Concordia union-buster Michael DiGrappa as Vice Provost for Representing-What-We-Hate-Most, RT/A has employed strike-breakers — after receiving millions in tax-cuts from our Fascist Harper Capital-Subsidies National Budget Control Board.
In Solidarity, MUNACA has sent a $1000 cheque to the locked-out workers because the HMB sits on RT/A’s Board of Governors, as first reported by MUNACA here and here,
Luckily, there is still an opportunity for our disengaged pig population to redeem themselves because Osisko Mining has also been engaged in some fucked-up shit since 2 Jan, which must have been a fascist holiday we weren’t aware of.
Also the AUS General Assembly will be held on 31 Jan and so will not co-incide with the Osisko mining presentation, thanks to Fascist Electioneering — which we remind you, the MARP reported first.
While Oskiko also has a $4.1 million-dollar endowment in McGill to create Canada’s “next generation of geologist,” we at the MARP are fairly torn about them because they also appear to have an incredibly well-developed sense of irony — check out a quote from this document which is totally MARP material.
OSISKO: A Benchmark in Responsible mining “We could have just bought their houses, but that wouldn’t have been sustainable,” says Thibault. “So we relocated them. It was more expensive, but it was worth it. If we had purchased the houses and demolished them, people would have moved to nearby cities and purchased houses there. Instead they are staying in Malartic and the population is growing.”
Report filed by: Karlos Marx