Translating the printemps érable
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For more useful English-language sources on the conflict, see:
CUTV - broadcasting live from the protests nightly
Rouge Squad - Tactical Translation Team
Rabble.ca's Maple Spring Coverage
Rima Elkouri June 12, 2012
Original French Text: http://www.lapresse.ca/debats/chroniques/rima-elkouri/201206/12/01-4534009-deni-policier.php
“Charged with driving while black.” This is what black Americans call it when they are victims of profiling while driving, with no other reasonable motive. Rather than being accused of driving while intoxicated, they get a veiled accusation of “driving while black.”
Should we now talk, however ironically, of being accused of riding the metro with a red square? After the so-called “preventative” searches and arrests reported during the Grand Prix, after a minister wrongfully associated the red square to violence and intimidation, the question deserves a fair hearing.
CLASSE co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois exaggerates when he suggests that the police at arresting people “everywhere in the city” for wearing a red square. That is not true. Yet you have to paint on the denial pretty thick to pretend, like the SPVM do, that there was not political profiling done during the Grand Prix.
Marc-André Cyr June 12, 2012
Original French Text: http://voir.ca/marc-andre-cyr/2012/06/12/vomir-la-belle-province/
« Fear of all shapes susceptible of setting off a transformative love. Blue fear – red fear – white fear : link of our chain »
– Refus Global, 1948
The Grand Prix and its orgy of mediocrity… sickening.
State control and police repression… sickening.
The media and political elite of Quebec… sickening.
Sickening, sickening, and sickening again… this is the feeling that our Belle Province ought to provoke these days.
Fear
We already knew that our elites are afraid of communists, anarchists, disorder, riots, strikes, protests, civil disobedience and rock throwers; we did not know that are also afraid (almost pathologically afraid) of red squares, of the sound of pots and pans, of smoke, of envelopes full of baking soda, of album covers. To wrap up his column denouncing Amir Khadir because he took part in a (supposedly) illegal demonstration, André Pratte offers this typically nuanced piece of analysis:
“When respect for the rule of law is no longer absolute, we have to trust the judgement of each individual to determine how far to take ‘resistance.’ To put it another way, we give up the absolute for the arbitrary. After baking soda, what will they put into envelopes next?” [1]
Mr. Pratte asks good questions.
Radicalization is something to be afraid of.
Vincent Larouche June 10, 2012
Original French Text: http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/regional/montreal/201206/10/01-4533418-grand-prix-surveillance-maximale.php
After three days of demonstrations on the sidelines of the Formula 1 week-end, police expanded great effort to avoid any other disruption of the race. Police resources were deployed at a level rarely seen in Montreal. Some forty people were kicked out of Jean-Drapeau park as a result; roughly thirty others were detained preventively.
» See our picture: the Formula 1 race in Montreal (http://www.lapresse.ca/photos/201206/10/12-7761-jour-de-grand-prix.php)
Most people who were detained preventively were coming out of the Jean-Drapeau metro station. Seen as potential protesters, they had only made a few steps before police officers cuffed them, searched them and detained them temporarily according to section 31 of the Criminal Code, which allows officers to intervene when they have sufficient reason to believe a crime will be committed.
«People were arrested because they were recognised as having participated in illegal and violent demonstrations,” explained investigator Alain Simoneau, chief of the “Service d’ordre” section of the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM).
Gérard St-Denis, 74 years old, Sainte-Birgitte-des-Saults, June 10th 2012
The ruckus of the Formula 1 is over. Now we can at least hear ourselves think. A little calm in the cottages.
We cannot allow the incendiary, misplaced, and false comments that Jacques Villeneuve made about the student strike to pass unremarked. Comments that are insulting to and contemptuous of our youth.
Brought up in a setting of luxury, wealth, and opulence, having studied at excellent schools in Switzerland, Jacques doe not know what a student’s life is really like. He never did have to work at McDonalds, Harveys, Subway, or a corner store during the school year, let alone have to find work in the summer. He doesn’t know what it is to finish the month eating peanut butter sandwiches and Kraft Dinner.
Mr. Villeneuve would do better to content himself with socializing with people who can spend $1,000 for supper than try to pontificate on a social situation that he does not know. Wealth does not convey good judgment.
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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.
This testimony is linked to the Devoir piece that was previously posted.
François Arguin June 10, 2012
Original French Text: http://francoisarguin.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/emoignage-de-francois-arguin-sur-le-profilage-politique-au-parc-jean-drapeau-le-samedi-9-juin-2012/
I went to Park Jean-Drapeau intending to film something, be it protesters with signs or even to document the police brutality, which I have been a victim of twice since May 18th. I was also going to verify to what extent people wearing the red square were free to circulate in Park Jean-Drapeau.
I came out of the metro and I immediately caught sight of two people with a red square. I told them that I was going to follow them a little with the camera just to see what would happen to them. It’s an absolute coincidence that these two people were in fact journalists from the Devoir who were going to do an investigation into political profiling in Park Jean-Drapeau, which I only learned after the fact.
After walking for a few seconds, 2 police officers standing by the entrance to the metro headed toward us, I filmed what they were doing and in less than 2-3 minutes of walking around the sight, we were questioned by the police.
Marie-Claude Lortie June 8, 2012
Original French Text: http://www.lapresse.ca/debats/chroniques/marie-claude-lortie/201206/08/01-4532858-la-fievre.php
The least you can say is that springtime in Montreal isn’t mundane.
Crossing the city has become an adventure.
When you don’t fall upon violent clashes between protesters and police, it’s the joyous citizens beating their casseroles that are in the street, or you meet Forumla 1 fans getting themselves photographed in front of a million dollar Bugatti on Sherbrooke Street, where the Ritz just reopened, where the famous franco-new-york chef Daniel Boulud just set up. And when you don’t fall upon Francis Ford Coppola or Arianna Huffington at the airport, it’s the soccer star David Beckham eating at Pied de cochon.
The street food that was believed to be forbidden slips between the lines of the regulations to create its picnics here and there, be it at place Émilie-Gamelin or the Olympic park.
The FrancoFolies are starting. Jackhammers and torrential rains do their thing in a thousand streets, tunnels and construction sites, creating traffic jams that rival those created by the protesters with red squares, be they dressed or stark naked.
In short, from the city of Dorval to Viau Street, passing by Saint-Laurent and Crescent and even more, the city refuses to be boring. Serious, painful, tense, but often joyous, superficial, deep, illuminated, at times macho and hysterical, she worries us maybe a little sometimes, but makes up for it above all with her multiple moods.
This city is alive. It’s crazy.
“People from France know what this is”, said Daniel Boulud, the chef, when I met him yesterday afternoon at his new restaurant on Sherbrooke West, Maison Boulud. The institution he represents isn’t exactly the kind that the Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois of the world frequent, but contrary to Jacque Villeneuve, he doesn’t have a negative word on the subject of the protests. “They tell me that tonight they will be masked and naked, it’s brilliant”, he said laughing. “They have courage, here”, he added, chef Riccardo Bertolino, well-known head of Montreal kitchens, nods.
Staff note: This post has been edited from the original. We have removed content that was deemed inappropriate.
Lives in Switzerland, does not pay taxes in Quebec, grew up in Monaco, hasn’t ever had a real job, hasn’t won anything in 15 years…But feels he can teach a lesson to students who are fighting daily for the common good.
Original Image: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=370211086372714&set=a.157863577607467.34901.150189145041577&type=1&theater
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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.
Caption: You know a society is sick when education has become a commodity and the Grand Prix is valued as a societal project.
Original Photo: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=374973262558196&set=a.374972882558234.87958.162997260422465&type=1&theater
La Presse staff June 7, 2012
Original French Text: http://www.lapresse.ca/photos/actualites/201206/07/12-7744-ouverture-du-grand-prix-manifestations-a-montreal.php
Police, security guards and protesters all convened for the opening cocktail party for the Grand Prix du Canada in Montreal, an invitation-only event that the group Convergence of Anti-Capitalist Struggles (CLAC-Montreal) had promised to disrupt.’
Click through for photos.
Yves Boisvert June 5, 2012
Original French Text: http://blogues.lapresse.ca/boisvert/2012/06/05/baisse-dachalandage-au-gp-de-f1-ne-blamez-pas-les-etudiants/
The President of the Canadian Grand Prix, Francois Dumontier, said that ticket sales are down by the thousands for this year’s grand Prix.
Why?
Because of the student conflict.
At least, according to Mr. Dumontier.
Yes, the situation has been reported on almost everywhere in the Western Hemisphere, with shocking accompanying images. Montrealers in Spain or in Monaco have been asked questions about troubles that are not usually associated with the peaceful image of Montreal.
But is this really the reason for the slump in sales?
Not entirely, and, most likely…not so much.
