Students and protesters didn’t quite make it over the bridge on Wednesday’s ‘Casseroles over the Bridge’ march, planned in solidarity with the student strike in Quebec. The route for the protesters was originally planned to begin at the Halifax North Memorial Public Library, weave through the sidewalks of the North End and cross the MacDonald bridge before coming to an end.
As only a small group of about 20 protesters showed up at the library on Gottingen Street, organizers of the rally decided to keep it on the Halifax side in hopes of helping the small group stick together.
Reaching a new audience
“I think summertime is a challenge for organizing (protests),” says Nicole Cooper, a Halifax student who co-organized the rally. “Halifax has a lot of students going away for the summer, but it’s important to keep the momentum up all year.”
Despite the small turnout, the group made its way through the North End, going up Cunard Street, turning onto Agricola and then marching back down towards Gottingen Street. Protesters made noise by banging on pots and pans, an act that officially makes the protest a ‘cassrole-style’ demonstration.
“(The casserole approach) helps people in their own communities get together because they can just grab their pots and pans from their kitchens and show their support, even in a residential area” says Cooper.
King’s student Adriane Chalastra, who also helped with organizing the protest, says the route across the bridge was chosen specifically for a few reasons. Mostly for visibility, but also to reach out to a different audience.
“A lot of our rallies have been focused on the Halifax downtown core,” says Chalastra. “There’s a lot of people that these rallies affect who don’t live in the Halifax downtown core. That’s the most expensive place to live, and there are a lot of folks who go to NSCC or who live in Dartmouth and commute. I think it’s really important to make the rally accessible.”
Momentum and the media
Lower turnouts at protests and rallies in solidarity with the Quebec movement have raised questions of whether the movement is fading out. According to Rebecca Rose of the Canadian Federation of Students, this is not true. Approximately one week ago, Rose travelled with a group of students to Quebec to participate in mass demonstrations.
“It was really good to experience it first hand, because I think what we’re getting through the media is bogus,” says Rose. “The only time the media really pays attention to what’s going on in Quebec is when someone sets something on fire, or breaks something. They’re trying to downplay the numbers, downplay the public support, (and) downplay the increase in tuition fees.”
Rose says there were about 100,000 protesters, young and old, at the rally she attended in Quebec on June 22. Cooper says she hopes support will stay strong in Nova Scotia as well.
“Solidarity is important; it shows that people do support each other and these issues transfer over,” Cooper says. “We need to really broaden these discussions, and pick up local issues in our own places and connect them back with issues in other provinces and across the country.”
Rose says its the ongoing momentum from the strike in Quebec that fuels the fire for smaller protests and movements nationwide.
“It just shows that you have to fight for what you believe in,” says Rose. “This is the longest student strike in North American history, and also the biggest. It’s historical for a lot of reasons and I think people are getting inspired by that.”
