BY MARNIE KENNEDY
LANORAIE, Quebec - Singing and chanting their demand for "Bread and Roses," hundreds of women are marching across the province of Quebec to demand measures to fight the growing poverty facing women and working people today.
The ten-day march began Friday, May 26. In Montreal, hundreds of people joined the first leg of the procession through the city. Two other contingents left Longueuil, south of Montreal, and Riviere-du-Loup, east of Quebec City. Each contingent will cover distances of approximately 120 miles, converging on Quebec City June 4 for a rally and demonstration. Organizers are expecting up to 10,000 people for the final day.
The marchers are hospital, daycare, and other workers, community activists, students, unemployed, and others. There is a wide range of ages among them.
The march, initiated by the Quebec Women's Federation, is sponsored by more than 40 organizations, including trade union women's committees, farm women's committees, and groups that work for immigrant rights, affirmative action, and rights for the unemployed.
The most talked-about of the nine demands of the march in the press is an increase in the minimum wage from Can$6 to Can$8.15 per hour [Can$1 =US$0.72]. Other demands include a program of social infrastructure with jobs for women, pay equity, access to decent-paying jobs and job-training programs for all those unemployed, the construction of 1,500 units of social housing a year, and measures for immigrant women and students.
The march has received increasing attention as a debate unfolds over government plans for cutbacks, especially the closing of nine hospitals in the Montreal region alone - a decision that has sparked a wave of almost daily protests, picket lines, petitioning, and other actions by hospital workers in the city.
As this article is being written, the women have been marching for four days and have completed over 80 kilometers (some 50 miles). This reporter was able to join the action for two days, as the protesters proceeded along the north shore of the St. Lawrence river.
As the march enters each small community people line up to greet the demonstrators, singing and chanting their support. People come out of farmhouses to wave and cars going by toot their horns. Townspeople come join the march. As we entered one village, the woman beside me commented, "Even though at night I do feel my aches and pains as I try to sleep, during the day, because of this kind of support, I don't feel a thing."
"This project has totally inspired me," Denise Routhier told the press. "Poverty is changing the social fabric of Montreal.-It can't go on this way. There are too many poor and the rich get richer."
In every town, community groups take responsibility for feeding and housing the marchers. Schools and community centers have opened their doors.