On June 6, 2024, students peacefully occupied McGill University’s James Administration building demanding that McGill divest from its financial and administrative ties to Israel. McGill’s administration responded by calling in the Service de la Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), including riot police. The police response to the peaceful occupation was grotesque and excessive: students and community members were tear-gassed, chased, and beaten by riot police, resulting in serious injuries.
Instead of condemning the extreme police violence against protestors, McGill’s President Deep Saini sent an email portraying peaceful student protestors as violent and thanked police “for their expertise in handling the situation.”
Just hours before protestors occupied the James Administration building, the Congress of the Fédération nationale des enseignants et enseignantes du Québec (FNEEQ–CSN) unanimously adopted a solidarity motion in support of student organizing for Palestine on university campuses across Quebec. In the same way that unions rely on disruptive actions like rallies and strikes to win improvements in our workplaces, it is absolutely vital to protect the rights of students to engage in protest and pressure tactics against injustice.
The FNEEQ Student-Worker Caucus unequivocally condemns acts of police violence against the student protestors. Likewise, we condemn McGill’s attempts to misrepresent the events of June 6. The university administration’s resistance to protestors’ demands demonstrates their real disregard for freedom of expression and student and community wellbeing.
Since April 2024, students at Concordia and McGill set up an encampment on McGill’s downtown campus to demand that our universities take action to condemn the state of Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. The encampment at McGill was established in the context of similar encampments at university campuses across Canada and the United States. In spite of brutal police repression and retaliation against students and faculty by university administrators, protestors have remained courageous and are determined to make the universities meet their demands.
The FNEEQ Student-Worker Caucus unequivocally supports the encampment’s demands that McGill and Concordia: disclose their investments in companies that are complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, divest from those complicit companies and cut all academic ties with Israeli institutions, defend students from repercussions or disciplinary actions related to their organizing in support of Palestine, and declare that they condemn the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people and cease all military contracts with Israel.
We call on the two universities to meet these demands immediately.
Sincerely,
The FNEEQ Student-Worker Caucus
Concordia Research and Education Workers Union (CREW-CSN)
Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM)
