Translating the printemps érable

July 22 2012

Original French Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9IsVemVIDs

Host: My friends, this song is appropriate because today once again, we were 80 000 to have disobeyed the infamous Loi 78. Thanks for having come out again in such great numbers. I think we can be proud. And we can even tell Jean Charest himself. We are at his office. Do you have something to tell Mr Charest right now? [Crowd boos]. Mr Charest thought that we were going to run out of breath. But in three weeks, Mr Charest thinks that we will be going door to door for the Parti Québécois. But we have a surprise for him. In three weeks, Mr Charest, Quebec’s students will be back in the picket lines, they’ll be back on strike. And to speak to us about that, let’s welcome Gabriel Nadeau Dubois from CLASSE. 

Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois: Hello everyone!! Thank you, thank you infinitely for having come out in such great numbers today. We were 80 000. We showed all those who were talking about [us] running out of breath that they were wrong. You have shown them that they were wrong! For a few weeks now, our movement has been attacked more than ever. The Right has doubled their strength to chase us from campuses, to chase us from festivals, to chase us from certain towns in Quebec. We are now witnessing a witch hunt that is putting Quebec society to shame. 

But we have to remind ourselves why it is that they are hunting us down. They are hunting us down because we frighten them! We are frightening them in our numbers, we are frightening them with our strike, we are frightening them with our words, we are frightening them with our determination. And we are especially frightening them with our ideas. 

For one of the first times in history, the Liberal machine is feeling itself accosted on all sides. We are tens of thousands of students, workers, who are demanding only to compile a list of Liberal scandals: Anticosti, health taxes, Plan Nord, shale gas, tuition hikes, corruption. We are hundreds of thousands to dream of more, to dream of better for Quebec. We are hundreds of thousands to want to be done with, who are determined to be done with the Liberals, with Jean Charest, with neoliberal policies. We are hundreds of thousands to want to finally hand back this country to its people. 

Everywhere, everywhere, people are gathering, people are getting organized, the casserole demonstrations have transformed themselves into popular assemblies. Everywhere, our direct democracy has been the example. 

Thanks to our mobilization, thanks to our strike, a democracy that has been sleeping for too long is in the midst of awakening. In neighborhoods, in villages, assemblies are more and more numerous, citizens are awakening and are taking part in politics like rarely before in history, and that, that is because of us. 

Not long ago, we were saying that another Quebec is possible. Today, I’m certain of one thing: it already exists. It’s marching here today in Montreal, in Trois-Rivières, in Quebec City. And I am convinced that it is only a question of time before it becomes a reality. 

***

Translated from the original French by Translating the printemps érable.

*Translating the printemps érable is a volunteer collective attempting to balance the English media’s extremely poor coverage of the student conflict in Québec by translating media that has been published in French into English. These are amateur translations; we have done our best to translate these pieces fairly and coherently, but the final texts may still leave something to be desired. If you find any important errors in any of these texts, we would be very grateful if you would share them with us at translatingtheprintempsderable@gmail.com. Please read and distribute these texts in the spirit in which they were intended; that of solidarity and the sharing of information.