LET'S CRUSH CAR CULTURE
September 27th 7PM, Laurier Parc (corner St-Gregoire/Mentana)
Climate Rage week brings with it another event not to be missed on the 28th of September at 7pm: the Crush car culture protest!
There’s no denying that in today’s society cars are an unavoidable part of life to be able to get around. Even if the transport sector is a major source of greenhouse gases, blaming individuals for their driving habits would be an mistake. Doing so would blind us to the actual problem at hand: that decision makers create and profit from our dependency on car culture. The way decision makers organise our territory, and the severely lacking public (and active) transport solutions make solo driving an unavoidable travel option for the majority of society.
For example, governments spend huge sums of money on upkeep of current roads and highways each year, while at the same time incessantly complaining that public transport is too costly. Using the ministry of transportation to subsidize bridges and highways to the tune of billions of dollars, they give us the illusion that the actual organization of our territory is desirable and unchangeable. Our long-distance road network pushes us to live further and further from our workplaces with an ever-expanding radius of urban sprawl.
The flipside of this is we’re faced with never ending hikes in the cost of public transit passes, adding to the hyperinflation that people face today. Transport being an essential service, these rate hikes hit the vulnerable segments of our population most, while reducing accessibility to alternatives to car culture for the whole of society. What’s more, with the current housing crisis, it is already too expensive to live in town near one’s workplace or school for many – so people are forced to move further away to be able to afford to pay rent. The general rule of living further away (at least, in the current context) is that public transport becomes less advantageous, and driving becomes the only option.
Recently, Trudeau and Legault announced a joint investment of 7 billion dollars to build a massive battery plant. It’s a major project, which will undoubtedly prove to be a decisive push towards Legault’s “Plan for a Green Economy” for so-called Quebec. Unfortunately, electrification is a false solution to the environmental crises: the major problem being it involves exploiting and destroying land to find the metals necessary to the production of batteries. The reason the government insists on pushing the panacea of electric transport as a solution is precisely that it means it can continue to make cars and money in similar way to the status quo. Of course, we shouldn’t forget the mining companies and battery producers who will make a tidy sum for themselves.
All told, the government, landlords, and the car industry all created and maintain our dependency on cars and are getting rich while doing it. Car culture is a capitalist construct. Faced with this reality, we need to rise up to crush car culture! We need to come together to take back what capitalists stole form us: our capacity to move freely and peacefully.
Join us the 28th of September at 7pm on the corner of St-Grégoire and Mentana to CRUSH car culture together!
The posters calling for the demo