Militantism and the National Question

Unofficial English translation of Militantisme et question nationale by Andrée Ferretti

Et le vent devant ma porte les emporta.

Why are the young people so disinterested in politics?

Here is one of the questions which I inevitably have to answer, each time I speak before an assembly, whatever its composition.

Are they really disinterested in politics?

Don't we see them in rising up to the barricades in great number to fight against the destroying effects of the globalization of a system based on economism, scientism and individualism, on the economic exploitation of the natural and human richnesses of all societies, rich and the poor, on military research and the sale of weapons?

Don't we see them in great number marching for peace, against a system leading us straight to World War III?

Don't we see them voice for the environmental protection, for the equality of women and men, for greater social justice in all its forms?

Don't we met them in great number in the Équiterre movement and multiple associations dedicated to daily services for the poor, the junkies, the prostitutes and other victims of our increasingly unequal society?

And who worries about the production of GMO and technologies which manufacture animal clones and, soon, human, if it is not in majority the young people?

Why do we thus have the impression that the young people ignore politics when the fights that they carry out on these many fronts are all highly political? Wouldn't this be because they do not turn around the central axis which a society project is? And in Quebec isn't any society project indissociably tied to the national question? Our history shows us that indeed the Quebec society has always progressed but in the convergence of the national struggle and the social fights, in other words, when the national struggle assumed the social claims.

If the young people give us the impression today that they ignore politics, it is indeed that the national question does not mobilize them in any manner.

Why? Here is the relevant question.