Pot-banging against Bill 78, Quebec law limiting protests, is catching on
By Jeff Heinrich, The Gazette May 24, 2012 9:30 PM
Supporters bang pots as protesters march on Ste. Catherine street near Émilie-Gamelin park during a night protest against pending tuition increases and Bill 78 in downtown Montreal, Wednesday May 23, 2012.
Supporters bang pots as protesters march on Ste. Catherine street near Émilie-Gamelin park during a night protest against pending tuition increases and Bill 78 in downtown Montreal, Wednesday May 23, 2012. Photograph by: Dario Ayala , The Gazette
MONTREAL - Bang, bang, bang – ping!
A phenomenon is sweeping Montreal and other cities that gives new meaning to the term Bloc Pot – no, nothing to do with Quebec’s marijuana party.
The stink that’s being raised is a block party, every night at 8 o’clock in places as varied as Verdun and Villeray, Sherbrooke and Quebec City.
It’s called “Nos casseroles contre la loi spéciale!”
And it makes loud use of pots and pans.
In neighbourhoods in and outside the metropolis, at the stroke of 8, students and teachers, parents and kids, renters and homeowners, go outside and start banging saucepans and skillets, pieplates and pots.
The target of the protest is the Charest government’s emergency Bill 78, which regiments public demonstrations as a response to the province-wide student strike, now in its fourth month.
The “casseroles” campaign is coordinated by social media and lasts a good 15 minutes or more – sometimes over an hour, with pots-and-pans flashmobs congregating on select city street corners.
There’s a Google map showing where it’s all been happening.
There are readymade fliers urging people to “tintammer” that you can print off from Google Docs.
There are updates on Twitter (#casseroles), a funny caricature on Facebook of the premier with a pot on his head, and innumerable “casseroles” videos on YouTube.
The idea was launched on Facebook by François-Olivier Chené, a politics professor at Cégep Saint-Hyacinthe, east of Montreal. He was inspired by the potbanging protests that shook the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile in the mid-1980s (and which actually began under the Marxist government of Salvador Allende he overthrew in 1973).
In Chile, the “caceroazos” – as the protestors were called – got out their pots only every two weeks or so. In Quebec, it’s every night. Even though Bill 78 is nowhere near as repressive as anything Pinochet dreamed up, the idea seems to have caught the public imagination here. So whether you’re in Châteauguay at 8 p.m. this Friday (“tout au long de St. Jean Baptiste” Blvd., according to a Facebook post), or outside Monk métro or St. Henri métro (ditto), expect to get blasted.
And what if you think it’s all a lousy idea?
“If you complain about the noise of the ‘casseroles,’” someone advises on Twitter, “tell yourself this: Corruption is silent but much more damaging.”
http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/banging+against+Quebec+protest+catching/6672798/story.html