There were two shootings in Montreal North on Sunday evening but they are described as unrelated.
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Kate
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Kate
Beaverton? Le Revoir? No, CTV: Only Quebec music is to be played in government buildings and on government hold lines. Effective immediately.
Update: FNoMTL has a terrific playlist on Twitter.
Can’t wait to hear “Aimes-tu la vie?” while on hold with R.Q.
mare
Doesn’t sound like English Quebec artists are welcome.
« Le Québec est un véritable incubateur de talents musicaux qui s’inspirent de notre société, de nos racines, de notre territoire et de nos ambitions. Non seulement la musique québécoise est-elle unique et riche, mais les Québécoises et les Québécois l’écoutent, l’aiment et la partagent. Je suis fière que notre gouvernement instaure de nouvelles pratiques qui la rendront encore plus présente dans notre quotidien par le truchement de l’État québécois. Je félicite l’ADISQ qui partage ce but d’accroître le rayonnement de nos artistes et je salue sa directrice générale, Solange Drouin, qui s’est passionnément engagée au service de l’industrie musicale pendant 29 ans. »
But the ADISQ does have some English record launches on their agenda, so who knows.
dhomas
If I was managing an SAQ, I would play exclusively Moist, Arcade Fire, Bran Van 3000, Celine Dion’s English songs, etc.
ant6n
Jus play the Titanic song on loop all day
thomas
If the music has lyrics, at least 90% must be in French with a maximum of 10% in either English or Indigenous languages.
ant6n
So play the orchestral version
Francesco
Lol composed by American James Horner, lyrics by American Will Jennings, produced by a gaggle of Americans for a Hollywood blockbuster.
For that matter, are Will and Win Butler naturalized Canadians?
Kate
“notre société et nos racines” is such a loud dogwhistle that I just can’t.
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Kate
Our police probably feel really tough, really “world class” kneeling on the neck of a Black kid. That’s what big hard American cops do, isn’t it? Teach those kids to mess with us.
It’s news. It’s bad news in many ways but it’s particularly bad news for the city. This story is news in the New York Times and in the Washington Post, in the UK Independent and in the news in France and, you can be sure, in media reports in languages for which I haven’t googled.
What our cops took away from the killing of George Floyd was that it’s really cool to kneel on a Black person’s neck. And now the world knows it.
Uatu
Just remember the 2 important takeaways from this: there’s no systemic racism in QC and that the real story is Quebec bashing by the world press.
Oh yeah and some kid was restrained by cops. /SEphraim
And the privileged, like Valerie Plante and Francois Legault should be the ones to decide if we need bodycams. Let us not forget that while suddenly she has flipflopped on the issue, she actually actively BLOCKED bringing in bodycams earlier and in Feb 2019, shelved the project.
Blork
A disinterested third-party observer might note that there is a difference between:
• Suspect potentially armed (taser was found)
• Kneeling on neck for 15 seconds…and:
• Suspect unarmed
• Kneeling on neck for nine minutesThe disinterested third-party observer might also comment that whenever a cop uses their gun, people here comment that they should be trained in ways to subdue a suspect without resorting to armed response, yet this video shows a textbook example of non-lethal way to subdue a suspect (15 seconds!) and we still get complaints.
(For the historical record: the George Floyd case blew up because the cop involved went way off-script by kneeling on Floyd for nine minutes, well beyond the point that he was handcuffed and not resisting. That is against protocol and is downright dangerous and malicious, as we saw with the result. What we see in this video is nothing like that, but because it shares two things with the Floyd case (kneeling and black suspect) everyone hyperventilates and sees it as being the same.)
The disinterested third-party observer might finally comment that in the NY Times, Washington Post, Independent, and other media coverage of the event, the story they’re covering isn’t that a cop knelt on someone’s neck; the story is that everyone’s losing their shit over it.
ant6n
Another “disinterested” observer may notice that knee-on-neck maneuvers aren’t textbook, no matter whether the minor was chocked for 15 seconds or nine minutes. Doing it to a black kid after all that happened last year is especially stupid.
A third disinterested observer may ask how this situation escalated relatively quickly for this poc minor, from waiting at a bus stop over having to identify oneself to being searched, subdued and searched in this manner. Never happened to said observer, then again that observer isn`t a poc.
A fourth disinterested observer may question how “disinterested” the first observer really was.
Anyway, the bad news for Montreal is real, and very likely avoidable, no matter how much one tries to ridicule the reaction as exaggerated.
Blork
Actually, kneeling on the neck is an approved tactic as long as certain guidelines are followed, such as it be very short term only until handcuffs are applied, and the pressure should only be enough to hold the head in position, with the other knee bearing most of the cop’s weight on the suspect’s back. In the George Floyd case, neither of these guidelines were followed. In this case in Montreal it looks like both were. (That said, I am not a fan of this technique and I think it seriously needs to be re-thought, but not as theatre and optics, but as a tactical method.)
The question of how did this escalate to the point that it did is a legitimate one, but unfortunately that’s not what anybody is asking about. The conversation is 100% about the knee on the neck, and that’s what irks me.
With regard to the accusations of racism, how do you think the cops would have acted if they were arresting a working-class* white kid under the same circumstances? (In my experience, given the various arrests I’ve seen of white people both in person and on video, it would have gone the same way.)
Put another way:
If a cop arrests a black kid by doing A, B, and C. Then the cop arrests a white kid by doing A, B, and C. Can the cop be accused of racism?
(* Mentioning class because often, upon closer examination, over-reactions by police are matters of class, not race.)
Ephraim
Could this have looked any worse? Yes, but not much. And if there had been no cameras, could this have been worse? Yes. Is there a single place where police should NOT be under scrutiny to avoid an accusation of abuse of power? No.
Kate
Blork, 3 days ago I first noticed this story and commented how it was already being intensely politicized. Today’s post (when I first made it, anyway) was more about how the story was making its way around the world and throwing shade on this city.
Blork
Weird that I didn’t see the original post, since I’d seen the story blowing up around that time and I was expecting you to mention it. TBH my comments above have a wide sweep and are triggered less by the reaction here as by the reaction overall when the story broke a few days ago. Zero people comparing 15 seconds to nine minutes and zero people stepping back to try to see it free from the obvious bias. That said, I am not happy about the event at all, but I’m even less happy about the reaction to it.
Robert H
‘If a cop arrests a black kid by doing A, B, and C. Then the cop arrests a white kid by doing A, B, and C. Can the cop be accused of racism?’
Cette question s’agit d’un faux-fuyant, parce que si un genou sur le cou etait une tactique habituelle utilisé par la police pour maîtriser une personne blanche de toute classe, nous en aurions déjà entendu parler, et on l’aurait arrêté. Peu import le méthode, compte tenu de l’histoire de la tension entre la police et les minorités visibles (dont je fais partie), il suffit de regarder le terrible bilan de la dernière décennie:
Michael Brown, George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Rayshard Brooks, Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson, Stephon Clark, Botham Jean, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner…il y en a plus
It’s preferable to be rationale and temperate, but please don’t imply that the rest of us are hysterical because we find these events upsetting.
Blork
Robert H, that’s a good point (your list) and as I’ve said above this isn’t about denying the problem of racism in policing. But it is about taking a breath and trying to see clearly. People are arrested all the time, both white and non-white. A cop kneeling on the neck of a white person for a few seconds doesn’t make the news because there’s no story there. But there IS the perception of a story if the person is non-white, because of all those precedents you mention.
Again: I’m not denying the very real problem of racism in policing. But I am asking that people examine the case before passing judgement based on being upset or offended. Shit happens. Sometimes people are arrested. Sometimes it isn’t pretty. Sometimes it’s racist. But the fact that the person being arrested is non-white does not automatically make it racist.
And I acknowledge that this is upsetting for many people, particularly POC. But there’s got to be a better way to process that upset that to automatically assume the worst and to create a Twitter storm around it.
Robert H
@Blork: We see this differently, but differences are inevitable. I appreciate your thoughtful response. You are one of the people here who make Kate’s on-line salon one of my favourite destinations.
Blork
Thanks Robert H. Commenting against then grain can be fraught with threats of cancellation and other problems, so I appreciate your words, and your acknowledgment that we can see things differently and still be civilized.
GC
“Mentioning class because often, upon closer examination, over-reactions by police are matters of class, not race.”
Could you perhaps elaborate on that? There are plenty of cases of “driving while black”, where the driver is treated badly because he–and it’s usually a “he”–can’t possibly own an expensive car, for example. One can’t really argue that’s an overreaction to class and is pretty blatantly racist if the driver is doing nothing else suspicious.
Of course, Blork, I’m not saying that was the kind of situation you were referring to. But perhaps an example of the kind of thing you did mean? Would you say it was the case with some of the examples Robert H mentioned, or were you thinking of other events?
(I definitely acknowledge that media do not report on things in the proportion to which they happen…and sometimes it’s hard for me not to perceive that something is more common than it actually is after the media bang that drum a bit too hard…)
Blork
GC, I don’t have specific examples; my comment comes from years of reading and observation. That said, here’s an article from The Jacobin that discusses the issue:
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/police-killings-black-white-povertyOn the race issue, the article says this: … of the 6,451 police killings recorded between January 2015 and (2020), 3,353 of the individuals killed were white, 1,746 were black, and 1,152 were Latino.”
That means almost twice as many white people were killed by police as black people. However, when you adjust for population, it emerges that twice as many black people as white people are killed by police PER CAPITA.
That definitely indicates a problem. However, for the purposes of this discussion (where the topic is media representation and the resulting public perception), how many of those 3,353 white killings made the news? How many of the black ones did, and how were they presented? It is right and justifiable that the black killings be reported, but we really need to keep it in perspective, because what seems to be happening is there’s a public perception that NO white people are killed by police and EVERY black killing is racially motivated. That’s just plain false, and when the narrative runs that way we have no hope of arriving at anything resembling the truth. This is why my instinct is always to reel it in, step back, try to observe from a disinterested POV, etc.
Ant6n
You’ve got like 40% of the posts in this discussion, probably most of the words, and seem to pushing a particular point of view that the issue of racism and undue violence in policing is constructed by media. That does not seem disinterested at all.
Blork
Actually, I’m saying it’s distorted by media, not constructed by media. And “disinterested” isn’t the same as “uninterested.” It means I have nothing personal to gain in this discussion.
Blork
(As in, I’m not a cop, I’m not the media, I’m not a victim of racial discrimination, etc. I’m trying to look at it without pre-judgements, as if I were an anthropologist from Mars.)
GC
Thanks for the link, Blork. I’ve never heard of that publication, but I’ll have a look.
Those numbers need some context, because it’s often not that simple. If three white people are killed while actually shooting at police and one black person is killed for writing a bad cheque, that’s still evidence of a huge race problem. (Yes, that’s an extreme example, but I’m sure you get my point…) HOWEVER, I have not read the article yet and I don’t want to be That Guy who criticizes it without even reading it! For all I know, there is more detail there on issues like that.
walkerp
Or how about not kneeling on anybody’s neck when you already clearly have massive superiority in force?
Crazy how fascistic and fear-driven our approach to public disturbance has become that the base rhetoric is an argument about which types of citizens should or should not have violence done to them rather than maybe criticizing the armed thugs who do it and do little or nothing to actually prevent real crime?
GC
OK. Now I’ve read that article, Blork. Unfortunately, it does not support what you said. This excerpt sums it up: “white people who live in the poorest neighborhoods are at high risk of getting killed by a police officer, but black people are at high risk everywhere.” The data analyzed suggest police overreactions can be an overreaction to class, but ONLY for white victims. While I agree with you that we should not have a knee-jerk reaction that every white-officer-killing-black-suspect event is racially motivated, but those facts aren’t helping with that.
Blork
I suppose it’s a matter of perspective. What I see in that summary is that in working-class areas, EVERYONE is under threat from the police, so when a white cop is aggressive towards a black suspect it might be racism or it might be classism; you can’t automatically assume it’s racism. And I know that is cold comfort to POC; I’m not here to dismiss those concerns. My only point is that I’m against automatic assumptions because that means we cannot see or discuss the situation clearly, and as long as that’s happening there is little hope of improving anything.
GC
And that is a point I don’t disagree with. But, mostly I just appreciate you having an adult discussion with me! It’s so refreshing to engage with a stranger over the internet and not be screaming at each other at any point.
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Kate
Outdoor working spaces are popping up, created by an entity called Îlots d’été. The CTV item says “free to use” and the project’s own website says nothing about charges either.
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Kate
A suspicious package caused evacuations then was detonated downtown Saturday night by a police robot, but the Gazette’s brief account raises more questions than it answers.
What made it “suspicious”? And if police say the package posed no threat, why then does the article go on to say “police have not identified a suspect and the investigation is ongoing”?
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Kate
People are talking about this Christian Rioux column in which he says Concordia University is just as much a tool of assimilation as the residential school system.
Le Devoir publishes many good, thoughtful opinion pieces. This is not one of them.
JaneyB
That is quite an obnoxious piece. The history of Franco-Indigenous relations is not at all rosy in QC despite a less comprehensive use of residential schools. Furthermore, comparing Francos attending Concordia to Indigenous people attending residential schools is the writing of a crazy man. With the headgear law in the air, a piece like this just stencilled a bullseye on the foreheads of nationalists in QC. The media blowback in the next weeks will be ferocious I’m sure.
Uatu
Does that mean the francophone MNAs who are Concordia grads r a buncha sellouts? Assimilated Manchurian candidates that can’t be completely trusted? Begin the Inquisition and root out the disloyal/s 😛
Jack
I read this book and it was a really interesting take on this issue. It demolishes the conservative nationalist narratives that Rioux exemplifies.
https://www.lapresse.ca/arts/chroniques/2021-06-20/litterature/sequelles-coloniales.phpRobert H
@Jack- Yes, that was an insightful column by Chantal Guy about Dalie Giroux’s book “L’Oeil du maître.” Mme Giroux correctly identifies the nationaliste mindset:
«…il y a une position de victimes du colonialisme dans notre récit, et c’est nous, les Canadiens français, personne d’autre. Un autre sujet politique colonisé ne peut pas exister parce que ça nous enlève notre position. »
«C’est comme si on n’avait pas vraiment digéré 1995 encore, que le Québec a une nostalgie de sa posture de victime, qui fait en sorte qu’on ne prend pas nos responsabilités. »
Then the author also identifies its antidote:
« On est structurellement, historiquement et institutionnellement impliqués là-dedans, poursuit-elle. Notre infériorisation en tant que Canadiens français est réelle, mais elle est relative. C’est-à-dire que nous, on s’en est sortis, mais pas en se solidarisant avec les Premières Nations, les immigrants et les gens racisés. Je trouve que c’est ce qu’il faut assumer maintenant. C’est ça dont il faut prendre responsabilité. »
The existence of indigenous people’s grievance is inconvenient to sovereignists because they realize they are historically implicated along with the anglo colonizers and no longer blameless. Christian Rioux’s column is coming from the opposite premise which is striking enough, but he closes his column with a ridiculous equivalence. He would probably dismiss Guy’s column, much less bother with Giroux’s book.
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