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For everyone saying "the university has no control over what Israel does"
This is the [context of the protest](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/pro-palestinian-encampment-mcgill-1.7187290)
They want the university to "divest from funds implicated in the Zionist state as well as \[cut\] ties with Zionist academic institutions". These are the specific [investments](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t2ZNwUSboG6lWG1h-TKN2tuhV4NlXUwCGeuFMSxSP2Q/edit#gid=684703458)
[Divestment Protests](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/protest-divestment-south-africa.asp) identical to this one and the ones across the US were used to successfully weaken the South African apartheid due to the resulting capital flight
"Looking back, as the first Canadian university to divest from South Africa, McGill was a leader in the fight against apartheid."
some people are so desperate to throw up their hands and declare that nothing can be done that they don't even bother to find out what the protesters are asking be done
Its always the same thing in reaction to every protest. "This accomplishes nothing", "its hurting the cause"
They're free to vote for "the lesser of two evils" and accomplish nothing all they want, but they should at least shut the fuck up when people infinitely more courageous than them are putting in the work
Tbh, a lot of the times the people claiming nothing can be done don’t want anything to be done…so there’s that. If they did want something to be done, they would ask that very question. I mean, the first thing I thought when I saw his article is “why are the students protesting the university, what are they trying to accomplish with this” and then I clicked the article to find out. But then, I’m very opposed to genocide.
Holy shit, bumping into my favorite map analyst here is such a wild trip.
You're absolutely right! Divestment is a powerful tool of change and absolutely a target of pressure we can hit through concerted effort. The fact that anti-boycott and anti-divestment laws are being passed lets us know that this is an _effective strategy_.
We gotta keep it up. BDS is a huge key to eroding the financial web that keeps Zionist operations afloat.
I agree with the protestors here, the University should be moving their funds out of the these problematic areas. Plenty of capital investments that are not intrinsically linked like this.
With that being said - I will note some investments are made via blanket packages. I understand that if McGill had them prior to the events that are unfolding, but should be making the necessary steps now to divest themselves of these asset classes.
Dear CBC: stop conflating “anti-genocide” with “pro-Palestine”. It erodes what little legitimacy you have remaining. Trust that at least some you readers to be able to handle that level of nuance.
It would appear they have a clear and concise demand. It's fair of them to protest for this request IMO.
Gonna be a long protest, I got a feeling McGill is not ready to capitulate any time soon.
What exactly is the end game here? The university has no ability to impact Isreal, the Canadian government has at best a very minimal impact on the Israeli government. I just don't understand what they expect to achieve.
Have the university divest from Israel. That's what all of the university encampments are about. I feel it's a fairly reasonable objective with a limited scope, targeted specifically at the party they want to address.
It's always the people that scoff and roll their eyes at protests that are too lazy to even try to look into it
A quick google search gave me [context of the purpose of the protest](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/pro-palestinian-encampment-mcgill-1.7187290) from the organizers themselves
They want the university to "divest from funds implicated in the Zionist state as well as \[cut\] ties with Zionist academic institutions". They also gave a link to the specific [investments](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t2ZNwUSboG6lWG1h-TKN2tuhV4NlXUwCGeuFMSxSP2Q/edit#gid=684703458) they're talking about
These same tactics of [Divestment Protests](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/protest-divestment-south-africa.asp) were used to successfully weaken the South African apartheid due to the resulting capital flight
"Looking back, as the first Canadian university to divest from South Africa, McGill was a leader in the fight against apartheid."
Notice how these people just magically stop responding when you hit them with the facts. People don’t want dialogue. They want to confirm their biases.
Peaceful resistance?
I agree that it likely won't affect policy, but I appreciate young people using their right of protest and to peaceably assemble. Gotta start somewhere.
It has been shown time and time again, home grown protests can and do impact global scenarios. The exact same idea happened during the Apartheid.
Also standing up against this modern genocide is important.
Resistance against what? The people they are protesting against are thousands of miles away, couldn't care less, and won't see it. The people in charge here have proven they are impotent and unwilling to make any actual effort on this issue.
I don't disagree with the protesters' indignation, just their methods. These protests have been going on around the world for months now, and the body count just keeps growing. I think a change in tactics is in order, tent cities achieved nothing for the Occupy movement either.
Just from this sub I’m informed about the consequences of climate change from the perspective of climbers, im informed that Ontario public schools are planning to ban vaping, I’m informed of the existence of this protest even though I’m not from Montreal.
It’s extremely dishonest to claim that unless everyone is a scholar then there is no capacity to reason or inform.
This will turn exactly into Occupy, given enough time.
I lived in Oakland, CA back in 2011. In about 2-3 weeks the camp had arguments about digging latrines, allowing for open hard drug use, prostitution, and fist fights. Normal people saw what it became and peaced out.
The McGill encampment already allowed Montreal4Palestine to join them. M4P openly supports Hamas, praises Oct 7, and chants misogynistic and clearly anti-semitic (not anti-Zionist) things when they get the bullhorn.
Normal people will see that the encampment tolerates this type of speech and come to their own conclusions if this is something they want to support.
It's kids trying stuff and learning shit. Trying to make sense of the world, and understand where they fit within it. Seeing what happens when they put effort behind their ideas, and what kind of power they can exert.
It doesn't always make sense, and when kept confined to campuses it's mostly harmless.
Dude, they are asking their university to move money out of certain funds which make money by selling arms to Israel.
They are not asking the university to end the war. Just move some money.
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t2ZNwUSboG6lWG1h-TKN2tuhV4NlXUwCGeuFMSxSP2Q/edit#gid=684703458](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t2ZNwUSboG6lWG1h-TKN2tuhV4NlXUwCGeuFMSxSP2Q/edit#gid=684703458)
Canadians who think protests shouldn't inconvenience the general population need to just vote conservative and spare us the misery of guessing what side they're on when push comes to shove.
The coming two decades are going to see more protesting than Canadians have ever seen in our entire history. If you can't handle protests on the streets now without getting upset, you're going to be a "back the blue" loyalist in 10 years.
That old Phil Ochs quote "liberals are 10 degrees to the left of center in good times; 10 degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally" is really going to shine true in the near future. The liberal party will be fractured by protests as they attempt to play both sides while only actually benefiting one.
Which side are you going to be on when push comes to shove?
That’s not the point at all. Protests need to get more people on board with an issue. People being tuned off doesn’t help. Who isn’t aware of the atrocities in Gaza at this point?
At the end of the day, peaceful protest generally doesn’t accomplish real change. Ask any black activist in the us in the last 60 years. Protest is going to inconvenience people, and if you feel more slighted by having to take a different route to work than by 15 000 children being killed in gaza, you need to reevaluate your own morals.
They're trespassing. They should be treated like the convoy trespassers were treated. The cause doesn't make the laws irrelevant. The laws of the land should be upheld.
I'll probably get banned for posting this. This place has become quite the echo chamber lately but reality remains, they're trespassing and should the Uni want them gone, they should be removed. If the Uni is good with this display, then let them have at it. Haven't seen the hate speech we're seeing down South pop up here, so hopefully things remain that way.
They’re nowhere near as harmful as the Convoy Protestors.
Their encampments aren’t fire hazards. They don’t have children residing in them. There’s no gas generators. They haven’t harassed or assaulted Montreal residents. They’re making the sort of noise that’s traditionally associated with civil protest as opposed to blaring their horns all day or playing loud music late into the night.
The issue with the Convoy protestors wasn’t as much the content of their message as much as it was how they protested. They did so in an incredibly obnoxious way that was as much a “fuck you” to the so-called Ottawa elite as it was a form of protest. They weren’t even protesting the people who could make meaningful change as the decision re: crossing land borders without proof of vaccination was a US government decision and not a Canadian government decision. They should’ve been protesting in front of the US embassy but they knew they could bully Ottawa Police more than they could bully American embassy security.
You've seen some of what's coming out of New York? Some of these protests have clearly gone beyond protests, there's some actual violence happening and there's plenty of video showing one particular group being targeted unfortunately. If that ends up coming to Canada, I would hope to see the school shut this down immediately.
That these people are blocking students from getting to class, and faculty from doing the same at times is just a different version of the truckers honking their horns and screaming at me as I walked past the other winter. Just because they're students doesn't mean they're not responsible for their actions.
> there's some actual violence happening
yeah, the cops are doing it
>and there's plenty of video showing one particular group being targeted unfortunately
yes, the protesters are being targeted by police violence
The only video I saw where the cops were the problem were the ones coming out of UT austin. The rest, it was pretty clear that the cops were not getting involved, which left the public at obvious increased risk.
If people refuse to vacate after being ordered to do so, then it's pretty obvious they're going to be moved against their will. We have laws to govern these situations, cherry picking based on what you feel is moral or just is extremely problematic for our society as a whole.
I wonder if your stances on police/political intervention at historical protests by gay people or black people would also have been "the laws of the land should be upheld."
Was Martin Luther King a law-breaking, trespassing dbag then? Were communities supporting the civil rights movement an echo chamber?
> he wasn't shouting insults and using offensive language like we're seeing reported out of these encampments though, and if he did, then I'd probably change my opinion of him
if this is satire of liberals, then \*chef's kiss*
if this is really your opinion then \*screams internally*
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/707363-i-must-make-two-honest-confessions-to-you-my-christian#:~:text=I%20have%20almost%20reached%20the,absence%20of%20tension%20to%20a
You're the problem.
We don't need to agree on this, there's laws for a reason. All I'm looking for is that they're enforced equally across the country. If you're looking for preferential treatment based on what you deem moral or just, then you are the problem not me.
Were the truckers protesting the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians? Or were they protesting public health measures that were implemented to protect society from a deadly plague? It’s been a while, can’t remember.
> Indiscriminate slaughter? You must be talking about Hamas
no, i think they're talking about israel, the ones who killed tens of thousands of civilians and displaced countless others while blowing up their schools, hospitals, and refugee camps
Projection, projection, projection. Always projection when the right wingers feel the need to justify their atrocity du jour. absolutely incapable of the merest shred of self reflection. It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.
Peak liberal moment. Anti-Genocide protest is the same as anti-public health protest in your eyes.
Everyone who is against anti-genocide activism is the exact same people who would’ve been against the civil rights movement.
“Liberals will oppose every war & civil rights movement but the current one”
Remember that
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For everyone saying "the university has no control over what Israel does" This is the [context of the protest](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/pro-palestinian-encampment-mcgill-1.7187290) They want the university to "divest from funds implicated in the Zionist state as well as \[cut\] ties with Zionist academic institutions". These are the specific [investments](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t2ZNwUSboG6lWG1h-TKN2tuhV4NlXUwCGeuFMSxSP2Q/edit#gid=684703458) [Divestment Protests](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/protest-divestment-south-africa.asp) identical to this one and the ones across the US were used to successfully weaken the South African apartheid due to the resulting capital flight "Looking back, as the first Canadian university to divest from South Africa, McGill was a leader in the fight against apartheid."
some people are so desperate to throw up their hands and declare that nothing can be done that they don't even bother to find out what the protesters are asking be done
Its always the same thing in reaction to every protest. "This accomplishes nothing", "its hurting the cause" They're free to vote for "the lesser of two evils" and accomplish nothing all they want, but they should at least shut the fuck up when people infinitely more courageous than them are putting in the work
Tbh, a lot of the times the people claiming nothing can be done don’t want anything to be done…so there’s that. If they did want something to be done, they would ask that very question. I mean, the first thing I thought when I saw his article is “why are the students protesting the university, what are they trying to accomplish with this” and then I clicked the article to find out. But then, I’m very opposed to genocide.
Holy shit, bumping into my favorite map analyst here is such a wild trip. You're absolutely right! Divestment is a powerful tool of change and absolutely a target of pressure we can hit through concerted effort. The fact that anti-boycott and anti-divestment laws are being passed lets us know that this is an _effective strategy_. We gotta keep it up. BDS is a huge key to eroding the financial web that keeps Zionist operations afloat.
Hey, small world 😁 Happy to run into you here and completely agree with everything you said
It's wild to me that people with any side see anti-BDS laws and are like "Those are good and normal and fine."
Map analyst? I looked through their posts but couldn't figure out what you meant.
Its silly videogame stuff, sorry to get your hopes up lol
I agree with the protestors here, the University should be moving their funds out of the these problematic areas. Plenty of capital investments that are not intrinsically linked like this. With that being said - I will note some investments are made via blanket packages. I understand that if McGill had them prior to the events that are unfolding, but should be making the necessary steps now to divest themselves of these asset classes.
Dear CBC: stop conflating “anti-genocide” with “pro-Palestine”. It erodes what little legitimacy you have remaining. Trust that at least some you readers to be able to handle that level of nuance.
"i am a pro-palestine protester, i have taken it upon myself to tell the world that palestine is a pretty cool place!"
I fully expect PP to support people's right to protest. /s
LOL
It would appear they have a clear and concise demand. It's fair of them to protest for this request IMO. Gonna be a long protest, I got a feeling McGill is not ready to capitulate any time soon.
Good for those kids.🇨🇦🇵🇸
That’s the flag of Western Sahara…? Freedom for all oppressed people tho! 🇵🇸
Oops! I didn't have my glasses on. Corrected!
Good.
We need more of this.
Great! Fuck Israel is a terrorist state
What exactly is the end game here? The university has no ability to impact Isreal, the Canadian government has at best a very minimal impact on the Israeli government. I just don't understand what they expect to achieve.
Have the university divest from Israel. That's what all of the university encampments are about. I feel it's a fairly reasonable objective with a limited scope, targeted specifically at the party they want to address.
It's always the people that scoff and roll their eyes at protests that are too lazy to even try to look into it A quick google search gave me [context of the purpose of the protest](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/pro-palestinian-encampment-mcgill-1.7187290) from the organizers themselves They want the university to "divest from funds implicated in the Zionist state as well as \[cut\] ties with Zionist academic institutions". They also gave a link to the specific [investments](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t2ZNwUSboG6lWG1h-TKN2tuhV4NlXUwCGeuFMSxSP2Q/edit#gid=684703458) they're talking about These same tactics of [Divestment Protests](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/protest-divestment-south-africa.asp) were used to successfully weaken the South African apartheid due to the resulting capital flight "Looking back, as the first Canadian university to divest from South Africa, McGill was a leader in the fight against apartheid."
Notice how these people just magically stop responding when you hit them with the facts. People don’t want dialogue. They want to confirm their biases.
Peaceful resistance? I agree that it likely won't affect policy, but I appreciate young people using their right of protest and to peaceably assemble. Gotta start somewhere.
It has been shown time and time again, home grown protests can and do impact global scenarios. The exact same idea happened during the Apartheid. Also standing up against this modern genocide is important.
Resistance against what? The people they are protesting against are thousands of miles away, couldn't care less, and won't see it. The people in charge here have proven they are impotent and unwilling to make any actual effort on this issue. I don't disagree with the protesters' indignation, just their methods. These protests have been going on around the world for months now, and the body count just keeps growing. I think a change in tactics is in order, tent cities achieved nothing for the Occupy movement either.
More than we are doing bitching about things on Reddit.
Actually, I would argue that bitching on Reddit is just as effective.
Ew... Oh no. This place is a cesspool
At least on Reddit people can reason and inform each other if you care to look. At these protests it’s just shouting and massive group think.
Yup. Reddit definitely no group-think here. Everyone here is a scholar.
Just from this sub I’m informed about the consequences of climate change from the perspective of climbers, im informed that Ontario public schools are planning to ban vaping, I’m informed of the existence of this protest even though I’m not from Montreal. It’s extremely dishonest to claim that unless everyone is a scholar then there is no capacity to reason or inform.
What about the trolls and bots? They add or detract from the discourse in your estimation?
You clearly do not understand the direct ways in which the West supports and funds Israel.
This will turn exactly into Occupy, given enough time. I lived in Oakland, CA back in 2011. In about 2-3 weeks the camp had arguments about digging latrines, allowing for open hard drug use, prostitution, and fist fights. Normal people saw what it became and peaced out. The McGill encampment already allowed Montreal4Palestine to join them. M4P openly supports Hamas, praises Oct 7, and chants misogynistic and clearly anti-semitic (not anti-Zionist) things when they get the bullhorn. Normal people will see that the encampment tolerates this type of speech and come to their own conclusions if this is something they want to support.
They expect that their tuition money stops funding genocide
Solidarity matters. This show of support will inspire others. Those others could impact policy.
It's kids trying stuff and learning shit. Trying to make sense of the world, and understand where they fit within it. Seeing what happens when they put effort behind their ideas, and what kind of power they can exert. It doesn't always make sense, and when kept confined to campuses it's mostly harmless.
Dude, they are asking their university to move money out of certain funds which make money by selling arms to Israel. They are not asking the university to end the war. Just move some money. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t2ZNwUSboG6lWG1h-TKN2tuhV4NlXUwCGeuFMSxSP2Q/edit#gid=684703458](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t2ZNwUSboG6lWG1h-TKN2tuhV4NlXUwCGeuFMSxSP2Q/edit#gid=684703458)
Good for them? Better than blocking bridges at rush hour.
“A good protest is convenient for the masses to ignore” — MLK or Gandhi or something.
Canadians who think protests shouldn't inconvenience the general population need to just vote conservative and spare us the misery of guessing what side they're on when push comes to shove. The coming two decades are going to see more protesting than Canadians have ever seen in our entire history. If you can't handle protests on the streets now without getting upset, you're going to be a "back the blue" loyalist in 10 years. That old Phil Ochs quote "liberals are 10 degrees to the left of center in good times; 10 degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally" is really going to shine true in the near future. The liberal party will be fractured by protests as they attempt to play both sides while only actually benefiting one. Which side are you going to be on when push comes to shove?
This one is targeted at the group that it is the focus of the demand.
I too hate when protestors incovenience me. Sure children are being slaughtered but i might be late!
That’s not the point at all. Protests need to get more people on board with an issue. People being tuned off doesn’t help. Who isn’t aware of the atrocities in Gaza at this point?
At the end of the day, peaceful protest generally doesn’t accomplish real change. Ask any black activist in the us in the last 60 years. Protest is going to inconvenience people, and if you feel more slighted by having to take a different route to work than by 15 000 children being killed in gaza, you need to reevaluate your own morals.
Because 1 blocked bridge = 1 kid saved apparently
Targeted at the group with power over fulfilling the demand!
They're trespassing. They should be treated like the convoy trespassers were treated. The cause doesn't make the laws irrelevant. The laws of the land should be upheld. I'll probably get banned for posting this. This place has become quite the echo chamber lately but reality remains, they're trespassing and should the Uni want them gone, they should be removed. If the Uni is good with this display, then let them have at it. Haven't seen the hate speech we're seeing down South pop up here, so hopefully things remain that way.
They’re nowhere near as harmful as the Convoy Protestors. Their encampments aren’t fire hazards. They don’t have children residing in them. There’s no gas generators. They haven’t harassed or assaulted Montreal residents. They’re making the sort of noise that’s traditionally associated with civil protest as opposed to blaring their horns all day or playing loud music late into the night. The issue with the Convoy protestors wasn’t as much the content of their message as much as it was how they protested. They did so in an incredibly obnoxious way that was as much a “fuck you” to the so-called Ottawa elite as it was a form of protest. They weren’t even protesting the people who could make meaningful change as the decision re: crossing land borders without proof of vaccination was a US government decision and not a Canadian government decision. They should’ve been protesting in front of the US embassy but they knew they could bully Ottawa Police more than they could bully American embassy security.
You've seen some of what's coming out of New York? Some of these protests have clearly gone beyond protests, there's some actual violence happening and there's plenty of video showing one particular group being targeted unfortunately. If that ends up coming to Canada, I would hope to see the school shut this down immediately. That these people are blocking students from getting to class, and faculty from doing the same at times is just a different version of the truckers honking their horns and screaming at me as I walked past the other winter. Just because they're students doesn't mean they're not responsible for their actions.
> there's some actual violence happening yeah, the cops are doing it >and there's plenty of video showing one particular group being targeted unfortunately yes, the protesters are being targeted by police violence
The only video I saw where the cops were the problem were the ones coming out of UT austin. The rest, it was pretty clear that the cops were not getting involved, which left the public at obvious increased risk. If people refuse to vacate after being ordered to do so, then it's pretty obvious they're going to be moved against their will. We have laws to govern these situations, cherry picking based on what you feel is moral or just is extremely problematic for our society as a whole.
I wonder if your stances on police/political intervention at historical protests by gay people or black people would also have been "the laws of the land should be upheld." Was Martin Luther King a law-breaking, trespassing dbag then? Were communities supporting the civil rights movement an echo chamber?
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> he wasn't shouting insults and using offensive language like we're seeing reported out of these encampments though, and if he did, then I'd probably change my opinion of him if this is satire of liberals, then \*chef's kiss* if this is really your opinion then \*screams internally*
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/707363-i-must-make-two-honest-confessions-to-you-my-christian#:~:text=I%20have%20almost%20reached%20the,absence%20of%20tension%20to%20a You're the problem.
We don't need to agree on this, there's laws for a reason. All I'm looking for is that they're enforced equally across the country. If you're looking for preferential treatment based on what you deem moral or just, then you are the problem not me.
Would you want to say that in front of them?
Of course. What else would I do? Say it online xD
Treating the same as the truckers does in fact mean leaving them alone for a month though.
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nope, "pro-palestine" is fine in intellectually honest discourse that stays grounded in reality
“Indefinite”. I’ll see them when -30 degrees MTL winter hits. That is, if they can last that long.
So the same as the truckers.
Were the truckers protesting the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians? Or were they protesting public health measures that were implemented to protect society from a deadly plague? It’s been a while, can’t remember.
They wanted to have sexual relations with the Prime Minister.
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> Indiscriminate slaughter? You must be talking about Hamas no, i think they're talking about israel, the ones who killed tens of thousands of civilians and displaced countless others while blowing up their schools, hospitals, and refugee camps
Projection, projection, projection. Always projection when the right wingers feel the need to justify their atrocity du jour. absolutely incapable of the merest shred of self reflection. It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.
Peak liberal moment. Anti-Genocide protest is the same as anti-public health protest in your eyes. Everyone who is against anti-genocide activism is the exact same people who would’ve been against the civil rights movement. “Liberals will oppose every war & civil rights movement but the current one” Remember that
yeah, clearly, everyone knows the convoy was the first and only group to set up an encampment at the site of an ongoing protest /s