Nova Scotia students rise up

From the French May of 1968 to the Quebec student “Maple Spring” of 2012, the end of spring term has been a good moment for students to rise up. This year Ontario students adopted the red-square symbol of the 2012 Quebec strike (from the French “carrement dans le rouge”, literally “squarely in the red”, or broke) to protest the same injustice, to protest the Ford government turning grants into loans.

 

There was a big echo from Nova Scotia students. For an entire week, from March 15 to 21, students staged the first organized, province-wide university student strike in the history of that province. This student strike, like others before it, was able to connect with other movements for justice.    

 

The Nova Scotia Student Strike demanded not only affordable tuition – meaning a 20% decrease in tuition across the board – but university divestment of all funds associated with weapons, war, fossil fuels and exploitation of resources on sovereign Indigenous land. On the second point the Dalhousie University Students Union demanded divestment by Dalhousie University from weapons manufacturers, companies that produce fossil fuels and “entities which directly or indirectly support genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

 

Called by the Canadian Federation of Students Nova Scotia, the strike saw support from their profs, many of whom actively encouraged and facilitated participation.

 

The plan for the strike predated the tabling of a vicious austerity provincial budget that slashed grants to a long list of vulnerable groups in the community. But it coincided with protests against the budget from all sides from the beginning of March.

 

There were enormous protests over a 30% cut to operational funding for arts, culture, heritage and education.

 

On March 24, passage of the budget bill stalled when a group of singing protesters shut down the final vote to approve it.

 

And the Shoulder to Shoulder, We Are Treaty People saw a coalition of more than 60 Mi’kmaw and settler groups from communities throughout Nova Scotia call for a stop to selling off Nova Scotia to corporate interests and to respect Mi’kmaw rights.

 

This coordination may not have been pre-planned, but it came together with true solidarity, sewing the seeds for a united fightback against a provincial government that’s putting profit before all in Nova Scotia.