WHEN Vladimir V. Putin first came to power in Russia, Quebecers could not help but laugh. Poutine, as he is called in French, is also the name of a Québécois fast-food dish made of French fries, gravy and cheese. But these days the laughter is over, as Quebec gets a taste of Mr. Putin’s medicine.

For a change, Americans should take note of what is happening across the quiet northern border. Canada used to seem a progressive and just neighbor, but the picture today looks less rosy. One of its provinces has gone rogue, trampling basic democratic rights in an effort to end student protests against the Quebec provincial government’s plan to raise tuition fees by 75 percent.

On May 18, Quebec’s legislative assembly, under the authority of the provincial premier, Jean Charest, passed a draconian law in a move to break the 15-week-long student strike. Bill 78, adopted last week, is an attack on Quebecers’ freedom of speech, association and assembly. Mr. Charest has refused to use the traditional means of mediation in a representative democracy, leading to even more polarization. His administration, one of the most right-wing governments Quebec has had in 40 years, now wants to shut down opposition.

The bill threatens to impose steep fines of 25,000 to 125,000 Canadian dollars against student associations and unions — which derive their financing from tuition fees — in a direct move to break the movement. For example, student associations will be found guilty if they do not stop their members from protesting within university and college grounds.

During a street demonstration, the organization that plans the protest will be penalized if individual protesters stray from the police-approved route or exceed the time limit imposed by authorities. Student associations and unions are also liable for any damage caused by a third party during a demonstration.

These absurd regulations mean that student organizations and unions will be held responsible for behavior they cannot possibly control. They do not bear civil responsibility for their members as parents do for their children.

Freedom of speech is also under attack because of an ambiguous — and Orwellian — article in Bill 78 that says, “Anyone who helps or induces a person to commit an offense under this Act is guilty of the same offense.” Is a student leader, or an ordinary citizen, who sends a Twitter message about civil disobedience therefore guilty? Quebec’s education minister says it depends on the context. The legislation is purposefully vague and leaves the door open to arbitrary decisions.

Since the beginning of the student strike, leaders have told protesters to avoid violence. Protesters even condemned the small minority of troublemakers who had infiltrated the demonstrations. During the past four months of protests, there has never been the kind of rioting the city has seen when the local National Hockey League team, the Canadiens, wins or loses during the Stanley Cup playoffs. The biggest demonstration, which organizers estimate drew 250,000 people on May 22, was remarkably peaceful. Mr. Charest’s objective is not so much to restore security and order as to weaken student and union organizations. This law also creates a climate of fear and insecurity, as ordinary citizens can also face heavy fines.

Bill 78 has been fiercely denounced by three of four opposition parties in Quebec’s Legislature, the Quebec Bar Association, labor unions and Amnesty International. James L. Turk, the executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, called Bill 78 “a terrible act of mass repression” and “a weapon to suppress dissent.”

The law will remain in force only until July 1, 2013. The short duration says it all. It amounts to a temporary suspension of certain liberties and allows the government to avoid serious negotiations with student leaders. And it grants the authorities carte blanche for the abuse of power; just hours after it passed, police officers in Montreal began to increase the use of force against protesters.

Some critics have tried to portray the strike as a minority group’s wanting a free lunch. This is offensive to most Quebec students. Not only are they already in debt, despite paying low tuition fees, but 63 percent of them work in order to pay their university fees. The province has a very high rate of youth employment: about 57 percent of Quebecers between the ages of 15 and 24 work, compared with about 49 percent between the ages of 16 and 24 in the United States.

Both Quebec and Canada as a whole are pro-market. They also share a sense of solidarity embodied by their public health care systems and strong unions. Such institutions are a way to maintain cohesion in a vast, sparsely populated land. Now those values are under threat.

Americans traveling to Quebec this summer should know they are entering a province that rides roughshod over its citizens’ fundamental freedoms.

Laurence Bherer and Pascale Dufour are associate professors of political science at the University of Montreal.

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http://montreal.openfile.ca/blog/montreal/2012/explainer-first-24-hours-bill-78

Explainer: The first 24 hours of Bill 78

Posted by Justin Giovannetti on Saturday, May 19, 2012

After a rare nighttime debate at the National Assembly, Bill 78 was approved by a vote of 68-48 on Friday afternoon with the nearly full support of the Liberal caucus and the right-wing Coalition Avenir Quebec.

Given the tongue-twisting name of, “An act to enable students to receive instruction from the postsecondary institutions they attend,” the bill imposes severe limitations on a Quebecers’ right to hold a spontaneous assembly:

• Semesters at campuses impacted by the student strike are immediately suspended, due to start again in August.
• Demonstrations with more than 50 people must provide the police with a time, location and duration at least eight hours in advance. The police may modify any of these parameters at any time.
• All gatherings are banned within 50 metres of a campus.
• Student associations not “employing appropriate means to induce” their members to comply with the law are guilty of violating the law. Individuals also fall under this and can be guilty by omission or for providing advice.
• Fines range from $1,000 for individuals to $125,000 for student associations. Fines double for repeat offences.

Opposition from legal scholars
Many of Quebec’s organizations and professional associations showed some concern about the law. Typically a quiet and conservative organization, the Quebec Bar came out swinging against the bill.

“This bill infringes many of the fundamental rights of our citizens. The basis of a democracy is the rule of law. We must respect the law. We must also respect fundamental freedoms, like the freedom to protest peacefully, the freedom of speech and the freedom of association,” Bar President Louis Masson told The Globe and Mail.

Speaking to CBC’s The House, former judge John Gomery was critical of the law. While some believe that the law would not stand up to a court hearing, a sunset clause of July 1, 2013 will probably keep it out of the Supreme Court.

“My view is that this legislation is part of the extreme reaction that this debate has provoked. Violent demonstrations provoke violent reactions,” Gomery told CBC host Evan Solomon. “I think it is surely going to be contested before the courts.”

Quebec favours the law
According to a CROP poll commissioned by La Presse, 66 per cent of Quebecers are in favour of the law. Some are discounting the poll because of its small sample of 800 responses. The poll also showed a record low level of Quebecers supporting a tuition freeze: 32 per cent.

CLASSE takes down calendar
So that it is not found guilty of aiding protest that might not be properly planned or executed, the student coalition CLASSE removed a calendar from its website where students added planned activities. A central point for organizing protests, CLASSE was facing a fine of $125,000 for the first offence.

Montreal police lines jammed by people filing “protest reports”
In a bid to undermine Bill 78, hundreds of people called their local Montreal police precincts on Friday, attempting to file plans for “protests” composed of 50 friends going out for an evening. Under the law filing these plans of a dubious value is required.

According to the Montreal police, most of the plans filed were bogus.

It’s all Greek to Margaret
In a column for The Globe and Mail, Margaret Wente compared Quebec’s tuition protesters to debt-riddled Greece. While criticizing the province’s “cradle-to-grave” social system, Wente claimed that rioting students are “overwhelmingly middle- to upper-middle class.” Calling herself appalled, Wente concluded by stating that Quebec students would “shut down Alberta” if given the chance. Greek Quebecers were not happy with the comparison.

Following the Russian example?
Russian President Vladimir Putin has revealed that he is looking to bring forward a new law to crush Russia’s protest movement: $32,000 fines for people engaged in unauthorized protests. The Putin-Charest photomontages are imminent.

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http://montreal.mediacoop.ca/blog/bernans/10947
Charest’s Draconian Law Sets Stage for Québec Pussy Riot!
Posted on May 18, 2012 by David Bernans

Pussy Riot already likes red

Unable to break the will of students who have been on strike for a record 14 weeks protesting an 82% tuition increase, Charest’s Liberal government has taken a page from Russia’s strongman Vladimir Putin. Education Minister Michelle Courchesne has tabled Bill 78, the Act to enable students to receive instruction from the postsecondary institutions they attend.

Are you planning on a Barbeque or a soccer game in a public park in the province of Québec? Make sure to invite no more than eight people. Once Bill 78 becomes law, the organizer of a gathering of 10 or more people* in a public place will be required to notify the police in writing eight hours in advance of said gathering with a full itinerary of the group’s movements.

Obviously, police are not going to arrest some kids at a soccer game, but what if the kids on one team all have red squares on their uniforms and the other team has the Liberal Party of Québec (PLQ) logo? And what if the PLQ players can pick up the ball with their hands and have referees remove the red square goal keeper whenever she gets in the way? Has this innocent game now become an illegal political gathering, protesting the draconian Bill 78 without a permit?

These are the kind of tactics being used by protestors in Putin’s Russia to avoid similar government restrictions on freedom of assembly. Such tactics illustrate the problem of enforcing bans on unpermitted demonstrations without looking like authoritarian thugs. By targeting the impromptu concert-demos of the anti-authoritarian feminist punk rock group Pussy Riot, Russian authorities have given the phenomenon international notoriety.

Premier Jean Charest has put forward this legislation ostensibly to calm the fires of revolution that have caught the attention of international media. He wants to rehabilitate Québec as a tranquil tourist destination. But perhaps, instead of legislating an end to a social movement, Charest has just given birth to Québec’s own Pussy Riot!

David Bernans is a Québec-based writer and translator. Follow him on twitter @dbernans.

* Bill 78 was amended after this article was written. The relevant section of the legislation now applies to gatherings of 50 or more people.

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http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/canada-politics/quebec-bill-78-echoes-russia-anti-protest-idea-202141533.html

Quebec Bill 78 echoes Russia’s anti-protest idea: is it Jean or Vladimir Charest?
By Andy Radia | Canada Politics – Sun, 20 May, 2012

It is a little ironic that the Quebec government’s Bill 78 came down on the same day a Russian anti-protest bill was to be introduced.

Friday was supposed to be the first reading of a draconian draft law in Russia that would raise the maximum fines for organizers of unsanctioned protests to $48,000 from $1,600. Participants’ fines would increase to $32,000 from $160.

Quebec’s legislation, which passed Friday, also sets multiple requirements on public demonstrations and threatens stiff penalties to people who disrupt college and university classes.

The bill has been met with a chorus of criticism.

Louis Masson, the head of the Quebec Bar Association, says the Bill “clearly limits” the right to freedom of assembly. Constitutional lawyer Julius Grey told CBC News that Bill 78 is a “terrible law” that suspends the freedom to association, express and protest, without sufficient reason. Pauline Marois, leader of the opposition Parti Québécois, said it was “one of the darkest days of Quebec democracy” and demanded Premier Jean Charest hold elections because of the unpopularity of the law.

And, according to the Associated Press, the U.S. consulate in Montreal has warned visitors and U.S. expatriates to be careful because of the demonstrations.

Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, Russian President Vladimir  Putin will have to wait for his legislation “to cope with an increasingly assertive opposition.” The anti-protest bill in that country was abruptly delayed until next week because of disagreements within the government.

What’s contained in Quebec’s Bill 78? Openfile.ca has published this list explaining the new rules:
-Semesters at campuses impacted by the student strike are immediately suspended, due to start again in August.
- Demonstrations with more than 50 people must provide the police with a time, location and duration at least eight hours in advance. The police may modify any of these parameters at any time.
- All gatherings are banned within 50 metres of a campus.
- Student associations not “employing appropriate means to induce” their members to comply with the law are guilty of
violating the law. Individuals also fall under this and can be guilty by omission or for providing advice.
- Fines range from $1,000 for individuals to $125,000 for student associations. Fines double for repeat offences.

An authorized International Day Against Homophobia rally held in Petrovsky Park on the Petrograd Side of the city was broken up by ultranationalists and Orthodox radicals and ended with attacks and mass beatings Thursday [May 17].

A man shot at two demonstrators with a gun firing irritant fluid, and then a militant crowd smashed windows in two buses carrying Central Asian migrant workers — whom they initially mistook for departing LGBT activists — with stones and attacked those inside one of the buses when it came to a standstill.

Called the Rainbow Flash Mob, the rally — which had been officially authorized by the Petrogradsky district administration — was stopped about half an hour after its start time when the police, who were present in large numbers at the scene, told the organizers that they would not be able to hold back the anti-gay protesters for long, according to the LGBT rights group Vykhod (Coming Out).

Despite their massive presence, the police did not attempt to disperse an aggressive crowd that gathered near the rally site shouting homophobic slogans, firing rubber bullet and irritant guns and throwing objects.

Video footage from Piter.tv shows menacing-looking young men — many with their faces hidden by medical masks or black cloth — clapping rhythmically and chanting, “We will hang and bury you!”

Yevgeny Zubarev, a reporter with Piter.tv, said rubber bullets were also fired at journalists, as he was nearly hit by one.

OMON riot police officers stood in a line, preventing the radicals from entering the rally, but did nothing to stop the threats being made.

The anti-gay protesters, of whom there were more than 200, included Orthodox activists, nationalists and young men who resembled neo-Nazis or football hooligans. One young man, who held an offensive anti-gay sign, was wearing a scarf with the logo and name of the Young Guard, United Russia’s youth organization.

The first attack occurred soon after the rally began, when a man wearing a suit and tie and glasses discharged a pistol firing irritant fluid at a woman who was holding colored balloons, and then shot at a man who rushed to help her. A video on the Piter.tv web site shows him shooting at people and shouting “Sodomy is a deadly sin” as he was being led away by a police officer.

The police told the organizers to end the rally, which was scheduled to last from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., after about 30 minutes, arguing that officers would not be able to hold the crowd for long. Only two of the scheduled speakers had time to make speeches.

Releasing more than 500 colored balloons into the air, the 100-plus participants left the park by bus for safety reasons. Provided by the organizers and the police, three buses left unnoticed in the opposite direction to where the counter-demonstrators were. They took passengers to the offices of Coming Out, as well as to several faraway metro stations.

However, at about the same time, two other buses — which happened to be carrying Central Asian migrant workers — were driving past the site, and a group of about 60 young men and women ran after them shouting anti-gay insults, throwing stones and at least one smoke bomb at them until most of the windows were broken.

Apparently they did not realize who was inside until they caught up with them as the buses slowed down on the bridge over the Zhdanovka River. Discovering that the passengers were not LGBT activists, however, did not cause them to end their attack.

As the second bus stopped, having apparently mounted the curb, the attackers started to climb through the broken windows in the rear of the bus and punch those inside while at least one delivered several blows through a side window.

As the attack continued, the bus passengers started to jump out from one of the front side windows and run away. The bus then managed to drive off as the attackers dispersed in the neighborhood.

The police watched from a distance and did not intervene.

According to LGBT activist Maria Yefremenkova, a young man and woman who were late for the rally were attacked by the same people afterwards as they were walking toward Petrovsky Park wearing rainbow paraphernalia.

On Friday, the police spokesman said that the police had failed to find any of the victims of the attacks on the buses.

“The bus is owned by one of the city’s enterprises, it was carrying the enterprise’s workers,” Interfax quoted him as saying.

“The owner declined to file a report due to the insignificance of the damages.”

The attacks went unreported on the police’s web site, where the May 17 bulletin included incidents such as a pickpocket being caught on a tram and two attempts to sell alcohol without a license.

A probe has however been ordered by the St. Petersburg police chief to investigate the actions of the police during the event, the police spokesman confirmed Tuesday.

The man who discharged the pistol firing irritant fluid has reportedly been charged with hooliganism and faces up to five years in prison if convicted.

There has been no reaction from the city authorities, although the city’s new ombudsman, Alexander Shishlov, released a statement Friday urging the police to find the organizers and participants of the attacks and instigate criminal proceedings against them.

The demo was supposed to be the first authorized LGBT rights event since the St. Petersburg law banning “the promotion of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism to minors” came into force in March.

Photos courtesy of Sergey Chernov and Ridus.ru.

Andrei Bitkov, who was kidnapped on the morning of May 22, has been sent from the Kaluga military enlistment office to a military unit, said Dmitry Kozhnev, Kaluga coordinator of the Interregional Trade Union of Autoworkers (ITUA/MPRA). The recent harassment of Bitkov and other Russian Socialist Movement (RSD) activists by law enforcement authorities was provoked by their involvement in the trade union struggle; in particular, they supported workers at the Benteler Automotive plant during a strike in March 2011.

According to Kozhnev, Bitkov was kept all day [May 22] at the military assembly point [in Kaluga]. “The draft board wanted to send him for an additional medical examination, but the FSB made a deal with the commander of the conscription center. On the part of the FSB, this was all organized by the very same Andrei who put pressure on Daniil Pyatov [another RSD activist],” Kozhnev said. Bitkov has already been dispatched to Military Unit No. 49345, in the Moscow region town of Shcherbinka.

“The actions of the security services and the military enlistment office are deliberate and blatantly illegal. A court hearing was scheduled f0r May 29 to decide whether Andrei Bitkov could be exempted from enlistment due to health reasons. In fact, Kaluga authorities are taking revenge on a active member of the labor and leftist movements,” said a an RSD spokesperson.

RSD and ITUA activists fear for Bitkov’s health and safety. The military unit where he has been sent is notorious for its cruel treatment of conscripts. In addition, there is every reason to believe that law enforcement agencies will soon carry out other provocations against leftist and trade union activists in Kaluga.

For more information, contact Dmitry Kozhnev, ITUA Kaluga coordinator, at +7 (903) 800-3696.

ArtLeaks invites you to a public working assembly around the issues that are at the core of the group’s mission – exposing instances of abuse, corruption and exploitation in the art world. This is the official public launch of our platform, which began to operate in September 2011, and will be followed by a series of debates and workshops in the near future. These present a unique opportunity to engage more directly with conditions of cultural work that affect not only artists but creative workers in general: those from the traditionally creative fields as well as those generally involved in cultural production.

Members of ArtLeaks will present on the problematic politics of sponsorship in contemporary culture, the intense exploitation of cultural labor, the marketization of public space dedicated to so-called independent initiatives, the appropriation of culture under the umbrella of disreputable corporation and last but not least, what possibilities we may envision for transversal alliances and activism against cases of abuse and corruption of cultural managers and institutions.

We invite to the discussion all those of you who have experienced abuses of your basic rights to be paid for your work, those who have struggled against subjugation under the dictates of galleries who cater to a wealthy minority, those who regularly take on other jobs to finance projects that may never be realized. Join us in forwarding the conversation from a critique of the status quo to formulating strategies on how to make real changes in the system – changes that would benefit the vast majority of creative workers, allowing them to unleash their full potential to bringing about a better world.

To this end, the evening will be divided between a first part dedicated to interventions by members of ArtLeaks, while in the second we would like to engage the public in a conversation and brainstorm on solutions, models and positions in response to concrete problems, concerns, urgencies.

Currently ArtLeaks is working on formulating a new regular publication entirely dedicated to issues of cultural workers’ rights and related struggles. This journal will be unique in focusing specifically on the challenges we face in the field today, related to wide-spread mistreatment, (self)exploitation and corruption and how these may be over-come through strategies of self-organization, solidarity and collective action. ArtLeaks will launch a call for papers at this public meeting.

ArtLeaks members that will facilitate this working assembly: Corina Apostol, Vlad Morariu, David Riff, Dmitry Vilensky, Raluca Voinea. We will have interventions via Skype from Vladan Jeremic and Société Réaliste.

Berlin, Sunday, June 3rd, 19:00h, Flutgraben

Address:
Am Flutgraben 3
12435 Berlin
+49 30 5321 9658
www.flutgraben.org

Directions to Flutgraben: http://www.kunstfabrik.org/Anfahrt_Kunstfabrik_engl.pdf

Kaluga authorities continue to take revenge on leftist activists who helped organize a strike at the Benteler Automotive plant.  Today, May 22, Andrei Bitkov, a member of the Russian Socialist Movement (RSD), was seized on the street by men in plain clothes and forcibly taken to the assembly point of the local military enlistment center, after which contact with him was lost.

The Interregional Trade Union of Autoworkers (ITUA/MPRA) believes that such actions, which blatantly violate the laws of the Russian Federation, are linked to the successful strike carried out by the ITUA at the Benteler Automotive plant in March–April 2012, a strike Bitkov helped organize.

Despite the fact that Bitkov is not eligible for the draft due to health reasons and was planning to appeal the actions of the draft board in court in a hearing scheduled for May 29, the “competent” authorities have not given up their attempts to send the leftist activist to the army. Thus, on May 17, Center for Extremism Prevention (Center “E”) officers descended on the Kaluga offices of the ITUA, where both trade union and RSD members were located at the time. They tried to illegally detain Bitkov, but the workers present prevented them from doing this.  A month earlier, immediately after the strike at Benteler Automotive, Center “E” officers had served Bitkov with a summons to the draft board.

Earlier, on April 18, another RSD activist, Daniil Pyatov, was kidnapped by officers of the security services directly at the university where he is a student. They attempted to threaten him into cooperating with them.

The ITUA and RSD regards these events as forms of political and anti-trade union repression provoked by the growth of worker self-organization in the Kaluga automotive production cluster.

Currently, Andrei Bitkov is presumably located at the draft board assembly point at ul. Michurina, 38a, in Kaluga; tel.: +7 (4842) 54-29-06. His comrades urge all concerned citizens to call this number and demand his immediate release.

For more information, contact Dmitry Kozhnev, ITUA Kaluga coordinator, at +7 (903) 800-3696.

Pyotr Prinyov: “If you want to spit on your future, spit on a migrant worker”

Pyotr Prinyov is one of the most prominent figures in the Petersburg protest movement. You can spot him at rallies held by workers and forest defenders, dormitory residents and students, and before regular union meetings you can catch him reading Martin Heidegger and Eugene Debs. Having started as a labor activist at the company MM Poligrafoformlenie Packaging, Pyotr is now deputy chair of the interregional trade union NovoProf and one of the leaders at the Center for Workers’ Mutual Aid.

— Pyotr, NovoProf is one of the few Russian trade unions that work with migrant workers. Your campaign in support of Petersburg janitors made a big splash. Tell us how it all began and what the situation is now.

— It all started when workers at Evrotrakt approached us and asked help in organizing a trade union local. Evrotrakt is a property management company that also does cosmetic building repairs in [Petersburg’s] Nevsky district. According to rumors, a certain bureaucrat launched this little firm, which was incorporated in the [Leningrad region] village of Gostilitsy. They say that a Petersburg deputy governor oversees the firm.

The trade union local was formed last winter. The situation there is quite difficult: we are dealing with the issues of wages and migrant workers living in the area where they work. When the janitors started to fight for [better] wages and a more or less acceptable workload, eight out of twenty union members were immediately dismissed. They were also evicted from the place where they were living, in a building slated for resettlement.

— You’re saying the building is unfit for habitation?

— Practically speaking, yes. Evrotrakt lures migrants by providing housing; plus, they make some arrangements with the local police or the Federal Migration Service. Apparently, Evrotrakt, which is quite greedy, decided to house migrants from Tajikistan in this building, which it has been contracted to renovate. And make money off them in the process. Around two hundred people live in the building, ten to twelve people to a flat. There is no running water, and often there is no electricity and heat, as was the case this winter. Just today, we talked with Sevara, one of the activists. They offered to let her an apartment in this building for twenty thousand rubles, although the local council owns the apartment.

— What sort of wages do the janitors make?

— They’re ridiculous. According to the employer, they amount to fifteen thousand rubles a month [approx. 375 euros], but the real wage is much lower. And they have an entire thriving system of penalties [for infringement of work rules] in place. There are months when the workers take home six or seven thousand rubles [approx. 150 to 175 euros] – and this for people living in Petersburg! People are basically starving. Some of them pick leaves from trees to brew “tea.” The workday lasts from dawn to dusk, and they are forced to work on weekends. And they are constantly being conned when it comes to registration [with the Federal Migration Service] and work invitations.

— How are they conned?

— [Employers] use shady firms that ostensibly do the paperwork for the migrant workers, but really just fleece them of ten thousand rubles each [approx. 250 euros]. Then, when their documents are checked [by police or migration officials], it turns out they are fake. People disappear, and new ones arrive to take their place. Migrants are an easy target for law enforcement, and this is beneficial to employers. It is quite easy to force migrants to work a lot and for free or to get rid of undesirables. Especially if you have the right connections.

— Is the situation like this only at Evrotrakt?

— No, this is a quite typical situation. Two busloads of Tajiks are loaded up and taken to a construction site. The first week, they are give ramen noodles to eat; the second, they get nothing. And then they are told, “Beat it! We’re not going pay you. Be grateful we gave you back your passports.”

In fact, this is slavery, but no one pays any mind. Any law enforcement agency needs facts that are backed up by paperwork. But what sort of paperwork could there be in this case? You have to go to the work sites and actually check out what is going on.

— Does corruption play a big role in this business?

— Evrotrakt has close ties with law enforcement agencies, and with the prosecutor’s office. When the migrants filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office, the owner of the firm, apparently imagining he was the Lord God, rang up our janitors and said, “Why are you complaining about me? I have everything under control. You won’t get anywhere.”

The previous company, Lyuks-servis, which Evrotrakt squeezed from the market, was also not known for its philanthropy. Thanks to Memorial [Anti-Discrimination Center], they were fined one and a half million rubles [approx. 38,000 euros] for employing illegal aliens. But Evrotrakt is still fighting this [outcome]. For some reason, the authorities are turning a blind eye. We’ve already taken one case, asking for the fired workers to be reinstated, to court. This is the first step.

—  Does the firm work under a government contract?

— Not under a government contract, but through the tender system. Because they work cheaply, they win bids [for provision of services]. And they work cheaply because they don’t pay wages to their workers, and when they do pay them, it is only enough to buy ramen noodles, which the workers have to wash down with water from the Neva River.

All this is beneficial for the city authorities since they have a workforce they can use to clean the city cheaply.

— But not very efficiently, as the past winters have shown.

— Who cares about efficiency these days? It is easier to hire several thousand Uzbeks than to purchase decent snow removal equipment. Because you can use those Uzbeks to write off a payroll bill that would be enough for them to live on, socially adapt and get job skills. But why pay them when you can just steal the money?

— How do migrants end up in Russia? Is it a spontaneous process, or is it organized?

—  The workers who come here have already been hyped into thinking they will have a place to live, a job and money. Special runners are sent to recruit this workforce. Most of the people who turn to us are from Tajikistan, where things are the worst in terms of social benefits, wages and hope for the future. There are also lots of people coming from Uzbekistan. As a rule, these are people from rural areas who sign up for a job whatever the pay just to be able to leave. It is not just families that come here, but entire villages. The population there has been reduced to total poverty. But on the other hand, we should realize that these are active people, people willing to pick up stakes in one place and move to another country.

—  How well do the migrants know Russian?

—  In our trade union local [for janitors], only three people speak Russian. This is one of the reasons why exploitation of migrants is so advantageous. Tajiks and Uzbeks will not go and file a complaint, simply because they cannot speak Russian. In the slave-trading states they come from, Russian is a nearly forgotten language: it is not taught [in schools] at all. The employer communicates with workers through so-called foremen, who are paid a bit more and have managerial ambitions. A “foreman” of this sort can pocket a portion of the payroll, thus bypassing the boss.

— There have been repeated attempts to create trade unions for migrant workers, but they failed. How do you view the work of organizing foreign workers?

— I see a great future here, but there is one “but.” It should not be a trade union of migrant workers, but a trade union that defends the interests of workers whether they are migrant workers or not. Migrant workers must be included in existing trade union organizations. The trade unions themselves must do this in order to obtain normal industry-wide pay rates for labor and develop their trades normally, rather than relegating them to the level of menials, as we see, for example, in the case of roofers.

At NovoProf, we are now developing a whole program for working with immigrants. Our union basically covers the food industry, one of those sectors where foreign workers are employed. We want to involve migrant workers in the trade union struggle. Otherwise, sooner or later spontaneous riots will kick off, which will scare the local population and play into the hands of nationalists.

— It is argued that migrant workers are an evil, because they take jobs away from Russians. What do you think?

— This is nonsense! The people who make this argument pay no attention to the job market or what is happening around them. Migrants are mostly employed as unskilled laborers, unlike Russians, who usually do not aspire to work as janitors and construction workers. What, if we up and closed the borders right now, the Sukhorukovs and Bondariks [well-known local nationalists] would rush off to work on a construction site or go clean courtyards?

— Why, then, is the topic of migrant workers nowadays such a red flag for many people, including workers?

— These workers do not realize that if you just remove the migrant workers, the niche for slave labor and semi-slave labor will not go away. Our own fellow citizens will fill it. So, if you want to spit on your future, spit on a migrant worker.

Unfortunately, our society has lost the culture of internationalism that existed in Soviet times. I remember very well the attitude to people from other republics in the Kursk region, in the village where I grew up. A lot of families from the south came to our village when the Soviet Union collapsed and the bloodbath began. They were seen as perfectly decent people.

People do not realize that there is this whole policy to ensure that workers fear workers just like themselves who have come from another country. While workers are busy fighting fellow workers across ethnic lines, they are not fighting their immediate exploiters.

It is not profitable for employers to create decent social head starts for the younger generation, so that people not only achieve a certain level of consumption, but also have the opportunity to realize themselves. I guess as long as capitalism exists, this will always be the case. Because it is much more complicated to extract profit from a literate, educated person.

May 21, 2012 — Russian Socialist Movement

Assembly, May 16, 2012, Moscow. Oleksiy Radynski shot this film at Barrikadnaya, where a clash with police turned into an experiment in self-organization.

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Meanwhile, in “Russia’s fascism capital”©, city officials suddenly closed St. Isaac’s Square, which anti-Putin protesters have been occupying since May 7. The official reason for the closure is a “routine maintenance” of the square’s gravel paths. Maintenance work is scheduled to last until May 27. Protesters have reportedly vowed to remain in the square unless they are removed by force, although they are also considering to nearby Alexandrovsky Park.

]]> http://chtodelat.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/on-the-barricades/feed/ 0 hecksinductionhour 2 11 http://chtodelat.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/occupy-moscow-in-the-news/ http://chtodelat.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/occupy-moscow-in-the-news/#comments Mon, 21 May 2012 06:40:00 +0000 hecksinductionhour http://chtodelat.wordpress.com/?p=4205 Continue reading →]]> Two fresh and surprisingly sympathetic mainstream Russian TV news reports on Moscow’s nascent Occupy movement — the first, viewable here; the second, at the link:

• Anastasia Pak, “Occupy Moscow,” Nedelya [The Week], REN-TV, May 19, 2012

• Nikolai Kovalkov, “The opposition has given birth to its own civil society,” Tsentral’noe televidenie [Central Television], NTV, May 20, 2012

Meanwhile, Radio Svoboda (RFE/RL) shot this video in and around Moscow’s Arbat neighborhood on the evening of May 19, the fourteenth day of continuous protests:

The Moscow Times has more details, including of the State Duma’s plans to fine protesters into the dirt:

Round-the-clock anti-Kremlin protests drew hundreds of people to the streets over the weekend for another creative stroll, and the police forced the opposition’s outdoor camp to relocate to another site in the city center.

Police made about 70 arrests at the opposition’s Occupy-style camp, which moved from Kudrinskaya Ploshchad to the Arbat.

Following the example of a writers’ march a week earlier, a group of artists took a walk Saturday along downtown Moscow boulevards, carrying and rolling works that included caricatures of President Vladimir Putin, a model tank and piano on a cart.

The event came after several prominent writers on May 13 led a crowd of more than 10,000 people on a stroll designed to be a peaceful opposition demonstration.

But the artists’ stroll — dubbed the Nomadic Museum of Contemporary Art — was planned as a less politically focused event and coincided with the annual Night at the Museum, when the city’s museums and galleries work late.

Organizers estimated that the art show, whose works included many made by children and teenagers studying art, attracted some 2,000 people. Well-known modern artists who participated included German Vinogradov and Nikolai Polissky, among others.

The head of City Hall’s culture department, Sergei Kapkov, who was spotted at the walk, said it should not be seen as a political action.

“Culture and modern art are broader than politics, so politics have become part of modern art,” Kapkov said in comments to Dozhd television.

Police didn’t intervene in the artistic demonstration. Instead, they cleared the opposition camp at Kudrinskaya Ploshchad on Friday night.

The camp had settled near the Barrikadnaya metro station after protesters were forced from Chistiye Prudy early Wednesday following a court ruling. The Occupy Barrikadnaya camp was scattered without any court hearing.

About 2 a.m. Saturday, a riot police officer approached the camp of several hundred people with a loudspeaker and ordered everyone to leave “because public events are banned after 11 p.m.” The campers didn’t resist and started packing their belongings.

But even though the crowd was obediently leaving, some 20 people were detained by riot police, apparently at random, including several who were walking by the U.S. Embassy.

The police later issued a statement saying the camp had been cleared “because of complaints from local residents” and violations of unspecified sanitary norms on food eaten on the square.

Dozens of evicted protesters moved to the Arbat, while others settled at Nikitskiye Gates around a monument to Kliment Timiryazev, a prominent Russian physiologist.

The Nikitskiye Gates group was broken up later Saturday morning by the police, who directed the campers to walk to the Arbat, where at least 50 were detained during the day, RIA-Novosti reported, citing police. But people at the new Occupy Arbat site — located around a monument to poet Bulat Okudzhava — reported that dozens of new protesters were joining the camp on Saturday and Sunday. As of Sunday evening, the police hadn’t intervened.

Another group of opposition-minded citizens arrived Sunday at the Sakharov Center, which was celebrating a city-sanctioned Festival of Freedom on the eve of what would have been Andrei Sakharov’s 91st birthday.

Meanwhile, the State Duma on Friday postponed the first reading of a bill that would significantly raise fines for illegal protests. The bill, criticized as a measure to stifle dissent, would increase maximum fines for participating in illegal demonstrations from 2,000 rubles ($65) to 1 million rubles ($32,368) and for organizing them from 5,000 rubles to 1.5 million rubles.

The opposition has announced plans for what’s expected to be the next large-scale rally on June 12, the Russia Day holiday.

The march is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. near the Belorusskaya metro station and march down Tverskaya Ulitsa to Borovitskaya Ploshchad, which abuts the Kremlin walls, opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov announced via Twitter.