By Tim McSorley - Coop Média de Montréal

Two weeks ago, the undergraduate students in our School voted to go on strike; last week, our graduate students joined the ranks. This week, all students, graduate and undergraduate alike, will be boycotting classes. As Concordia faculty, we fully support the strike. Here are the top ten reasons why.

By Dave Zirin - March 12, 2012

In 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists at the Olympic games, taking a stand against the injustices they saw in their corner in the Sports World. The year 2012 is crying out for similar displays of athletic militancy but we shouldn’t have to wait for this summer’s Olympics. The time for action is right now during the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament. We need young people of uncommon courage stepping forward into...“the civil rights movement for our times,” the inequity and exploitation engineered by the NCAA.

March 11, 2012 - Coop Média de Montréal

These despicable...actions from the City of Montréal’s Police Service can be better understood in the broader context of the rising police violence and political repression in KKKanada, as illustrated by the mass arrest and illegal detention of more than 1,000 protesters during the G-20 counter-summit in Toronto...the creation of a special squad by the Montréal police to repress the anarchist movement, as well as the high number of murders perpetrated by police officers.

By Henry A. Giroux - AlterNet

Americans seem confident in the mythical notion that the United States is a free nation dedicated to reproducing the principles of equality, justice and democracy. What has been ignored in this delusional view is the growing rise of an expanded national security state since 2001 and an attack on individual rights that suggests that the United States has more in common with authoritarian regimes like China and Iran "than anyone may like to admit."

By John Stoehr - 07 March 2012

College isn't for everyone, Santorum says. By itself, that statement isn't political...But when you flesh out the context - a wealthy candidate with an anti-college message speaking at a gathering paid for by billionaires with a long track record of union-busting - that statement takes on a sinister cast. Collective power is the only power available to many Americans without college degrees. What is this supposedly working-class candidate really saying?

By Eva Swidler - March 08, 2012

Granting diplomas will never challenge structural inequality and a class system, and the promotion of education as a solution to inequality absolves the policies which created those inequalities. Lost too, is the corollary observation that higher education serves as a gatekeeper for and marker of entry to the middle class, not as a creator of the middle class. Classes are created by politics and economics, not schools.

By Daniel Dyer - February 29, 2012

Some of my earliest school memories are scarlet with fear. I was not a big child...The boy in fifth grade who kept hitting me on the legs with a stick until I had to fight or run; I fought and lost and wept. The high school boy...who would routinely wipe his feet on my white shoes...I could do nothing...And, of course, I was no saint, either. I remember with great regret and horror the things I said and did to classmates farther down the totem pole of fear than I.

By Tim McSorley - Coop Média de Montréal

As thousands of students prepare to demonstrate in Quebec City this afternoon, the strike against tuition fee increases continues to grow: As of today, 84,500 students are officially on strike, with another 16,000 or so having voted in favor of a strike mandate, but not officially going on strike. This means the total could soon reach the 100,000 student mark, with some of the largest student associations in the province still to hold votes in the coming weeks.

By Stefan Christoff - February 28, 2012

Tens of thousands of students are on the streets protesting moves by the Québec Liberal government to inflate post-secondary tuition fees by $1,625 in the next five years. A serious grassroots battle is underway as students hold major street protests, sit-ins, and direct actions...Montreal is alive with dramatic protests. Tens of thousands took to the streets in a major demonstration last week, the largest strike action to date, emptying the schools of students.

By Daniel McGowan - February 27th, 2012

Could there be a more contemptible slime thrower than Alan Dershowitz? He is supposed to be a renowned defense attorney, but he is best known for his offense in defaming anyone who questions Zionism and the apartheid and misery it has brought to Palestine and to other parts of the world, including the United States...Jimmy Carter, John Mearsheimer, Richard Goldstone, Desmond Tutu, Susan Abulhawa, and Norman Finkelstein have all been scourged by this infamous Dershbag.

By Stefan Christoff - Coop Média de Montréal

CBC coverage of Quebec student protests in downtown Montreal today is driven by a painfully obvious bias against the student strike...News reports via CBC have consistently failed to scrutinize violent police actions against striking students, and the station's coverage bends toward the austerity-driven logic of the Quebec government's policy to hike tuition fees.

By Kristen Gwynne - February 23, 2012

Too many of America's public schools have become pipelines to incarceration. Instances of nonviolent youth treated like criminals -- strip-searched or shackled for the most minor infractions -- shed light on a problem so widespread that every example would be impossible to document...This summer alone...NYPD school safety officers arrested more than one student per day, and gave summonses to at least three kids daily...While these charges are minor, if a student fails to show up to court, he or she will be issued a warrant for arrest.

By Ali Abunimah - The Electronic Intifada

Comparing Omar Barghouti to Hitler and Jews and others who support human rights for Palestinians to Jewish collaborators at Nazi extermination camps is sickening...It is not only deeply defamatory against its targets but...[is] a form of Holocaust denial. Comparing a student conference at UPenn to a Nazi death camp says effectively that Nazi death camps were nothing more harmful than a student conference.

On June 3, 2008, former Canadian politician/UN ambassador/pro-Israeli flack Allan Rock became U of O president. His administration has been marked by secrecy, political censorship, abuse of students and faculty, and repudiation of fundamental university values.

By Kristina Betinis - 9 January 2012

Mary Thorson, a 32-year-old physical education teacher at Cottage Grove Upper Grade Center in Ford Heights, Illinois, took her own life on November 24, 2011. The note she left at the scene of her death was devoted almost entirely to the conditions in the Ford Heights school district...More than 98 percent of students in [Ford Heights]...live below the poverty line...Thorson wrote of extreme hardships faced by the students, the school administration’s disregard for teachers, and the lack of resources available in the district.