May 18, 2012 @ 11:55 · Normand Baillargeon
Original French text: http://voir.ca/normand-baillargeon/2012/05/18/je-porterai-a-present-un-carre-noir/“When the truth is not free, freedom is not true.”
“The truths of the Police are today’s truths(*).”
- Jacques Prévert
From
now on I shall be wearing a black square. [Update: without taking off
the red one, of course. Together, they make a very nice flag.]
I
shall wear it first in solidarity with the young people who were
pitilessly humiliated, beaten up, clubbed, and gassed, and to never
forget what was done to them.
I shall wear it to remind me that I
mourn democracy, to say to all men and women the sorrow I feel at the
sight of what now resembles more, and I weigh my words, to an
association of evildoers than a Government, to a gathering of mafiosi
gangrened with corruption and around which floats, infallible, the
nauseating smell of scandal and contempt for civil society.
I
shall wear it to remind me that I was lied to when assured that the
debate on tuition actually took place: students and professors in fact
withdrew from the bogus consultations organized by Liberals and during
which the issue could not be treated serenely; and to remind me that
this government later refused to discuss this question fully and
seriously, something that only Estates General [on education] can
achieve.
I shall wear it to remind me of the efforts [the government made] to dissolve the political into the judicial.
I
shall wear it to remind me your too long maintained refusal to
negotiate and, when that moment finally came, your unshakable refusal to
address the questions raised by the students on strike.
I shall
wear it to remind me that I mourn deliberative democracy, assassinated
by opinion makers I cannot bring myself to call journalists and whose
excessive language has far exceeded anything I have seen in all my life.
I
shall wear it to remind me these non-probability surveys which have
been, and it is a shame, the best that was offered to us as part of our
democratic conversation on such an important issue.
I shall wear
it also to mourn these words of language that have been abused lately:
strike, democracy, accessibility, and to never forget that these
perversions of language consisted in turning a collective and political
issue into a private, mercantile and economic affair.
I shall
wear it for the freedom of expression, association and demonstration
that this iniquitous emergency bill stabs in the heart.
I shall
wear it in solidarity with my libertarian fellows who are humiliated,
beaten, clubbed, and gassed, like the others, but are also calumniated
on top of it.
I shall wear it to remind me the great and noble
hope that anarchism has never ceased to bear: that of a free, democratic
and egalitarian society without illegitimate power, to remind me this
ideal that I love infinitely and which the people who spit on it today
clearly know nothing about.
I shall wear it finally and above all
to remind me that young people, for a moment, here at home, have
embodied this ideal: and that if governments come and go, this ideal
will never die.
I shall from now on be wearing a black square.
And I invite you to wear one in turn: the reasons to do so are not lacking, unfortunately.
(*)
“Vérites de la Police”, impossible to translate play on the words
“vérités de La Palice”. A “vérité de La Palice” is a French expression
for what constitutes a truism. Read about the origin of it here:
http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/actualites/capsules_hebdo/citation_palice_20040603.html
*Translating the printemps érable is a
volunteer collective attempting to balance the English media’s extremely
poor coverage of the student conflict in Québec by translating media
that has been published in French into English. These are amateur
translations; we have done our best to translate these pieces fairly and
coherently, but the final texts may still leave something to be
desired. If you find any important errors in any of these texts, we
would be very grateful if you would share them with us at
translatingtheprintempsderable@gmail.com. Please read and distribute
these texts in the spirit in which they were intended; that of
solidarity and the sharing of information.