Indignez-Vous! is now just four days away!
The Montreal Gazette reports today in its ‘the week ahead’ section for October 21 that, “The Council of Canadians and other left-wing groups hold a conference at the Marriott Château Champlain called Indignezvous! Hope in Resistance.”
Le Devoir has previously reported, «Le Conseil des Canadiens et Eau Secours entre autres ont convié les militants à une conférence les 21 et 22 octobre au Château Champlain. En langue bilingue, le thêmese présente ainsi: Indignez-Vous: Hope in Resistance. Le mouvement Indignez est une expression de l’indignation, nottament de la part de la jeunesse, contre l’écart croissant entre les très riches et les très pauvres…».
Indignez-Vous! is being organized by The Council of Canadians/ Le Conseil des Canadiens, Alternatives, Eau Secours!, Association québécoise de lutte contre la pollution atmosphérique (AQLPA), and Médecins Quebecois pour la regime publique (MQRP). The conference will explore how we can work together as civil society movements in Canada, Québec, and the First Nations to create positive alternatives to a system that makes profits more important than people and the planet.
Where does the conference title Indignez-Vous! come from? It is the title of a 13-page book written by 93-year-old wartime French resistance hero Stéphane Hessel. The bestselling book (3.5 million copies worldwide) encourages us to reject through peaceful means the “insolent, selfish” power of money and markets by defending the social “values of modern democracy”. Hessel says young people today should “cry out against the complicity between politicians and economic and financial powers” and “defend our democratic rights acquired over two centuries”. In the 1940s, Hessel was captured, tortured and sent to concentration camps in Germany. He escaped the execution date set for him by the SS: October 20, 1944. After the war, he helped to draft the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In the spirit of Indignez-Vous!, the Council also intends to support Occupy/ Occupons Montreal in Square Victoria, which is a short walking distance from the Marriott Château Champlain.
For all the information you need on the conference, please go to http://canadians.org/conference and http://canadians.org/indignez-vous. In advance of the conference, the Council of Canadians launched an extensive updating of our website content in French. To see that, please go to http://canadians.org/francais.
