Dear Leo Bureau-Blouin,

You are speaking about compromise. Stop. Compromise is losing. Why? At a basic logical level, if you hold that you do not want a tuition rise, and the government does, any position that results in increased tuition means that you lose and the government wins.

On a moral level, your adversary has deployed anti-human legislation and extreme police violence to have its way in the face of student resistance. Hundreds have been arrested, beaten, including professors, parents, and of course your members - remember them? In doing so, the Charest government forfeited any right to compromise. Several hundred thousand people rose up and joined your ranks. Do not forget them.

Furthermore, you cannot ignore the larger context of your dispute. This is about intensifying resistance to the neoliberalisation of society. The same force pushing students to pay evermore dearly for their increasingly commodified education is the same force that drives other parties to steal elections, threatens coastlines so they can ship tar to China. The same force that poisons the sky and sea. The same that kills and tortures in the name of trade and democracy.

Your union, together with the others have found themselves a frontline. You've closed ranks and honed your game on the fly in ways that puts a great many of your peers in the rest of the country to shame. Suing for peace now is stupid and undermines everything you've accomplished.

Stand firm.

Movements like this separate the believers from the opportunists. There are people in the leadership of any movement who find themselves in the spot light, dazzled by the bright lights and attention, drawing lessons in manipulation from the experience. They forget who put them there. Some wind up in politics, working for the enemy, who is always keen for that kind of talent.