Testimonials

Showing the Love for QPIRG on Campus and in the Community

QPIRG-McGill is a valuable organization to both our community and our campus! Below, find statements of support and personal testimonies about the importance of the work done by and because of QPIRG-McGill.

NSPIRG shows their support!

IMMIGRANT WORKER’S CENTER (IWC) shows their love for QPIRG! 

• Abby Lippman, Chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Women (SSCOW)
  To QPIRG and To our McGill colleagues, students and others. The Senate Subcommittee on Women offers its support -and its thanks — to QPIRG for the group’s constant vigilance to ensure diverse voices are heard on campus. QPIRG helps sustain spaces in the public domain where all voices can speak, thereby promoting the free expression of — and vigorous debate about — ideas and issues that affect us all. Civic discourse is a necessary ingredient of academic life, and offering counter arguments must be preferred to attempting to silence opposing views that some may dislike. QPIRG helps to promote vibrant and inclusive discussions of matters of importance to all at McGill and in the broader community, and the SSCOW hopes they will be allowed to continue to encourage and to contribute to these debates and discussions now and in years to come.
• Nadia Hausfather, 2001 McGill alumnus, former member of QPIRG-McGill working group "A Just Coffee," which worked to promote fair trade coffee on campus.
   Perhaps the place where I learned the most during my time at McGill was at QPIRG. After attending psychology classes of 700+ students, the opportunity to join a working group where I could meet people and learn from them about local university and global issues made my education more complete. It would be a disgrace if ten years later, as the university is increasingly corporatized, that QPIRG-McGill not be around to provide alternative education to students, faculty and community members.
• Jos Porter, McGill alumni, community worker, ally
   This is a letter in support of QPIRG-McGill. QPIRG is a exciting hub of social justice activity, both on campus and in the community at large. I urge the students of McGill to support QPIRG – for the mere price of a cappuccino per semester you can help keep this vibrant organization alive! QPIRG’s presence on campus provides untold benefits to McGill students. It builds an important bridge between campus life and involvements beyond the Roddick gates. As a former McGill student myself, I thank organizations such as QPIRG for broadening my scope of Montreal and for rooting me more solidly in this city that I have called home for the last decade. QPIRG provides students and community members alike with fabulous educational opportunities; through workshops, events and conferences this organization brings to light important issues around social and environmental justice. Their programming and resources equip participants with skills to think and act critically. QPIRG is also a source for hands-on skill building and action, be it through joining a working group, volunteering on the Board of Directors, filling a workstudy position or putting academic skills into practice with the Community University Research Exchange (CURE). They throw a mean dance party too! I have personally had the pleasure of partnering with QPIRG-McGill over the years. As a member of the Montreal Childcare Collective, we have benefited from QPIRG’s working group and discretionary funding and support. They have also made their office available to me for workshops and as a work space. I’ve had the pleasure of facilitating workshops for RadFrosh, writing multiple articles for the School Schmool organizer, and presenting at the Study in Action conference.  Please take a moment to reflect on the impact of your vote in this referendum. Please support QPIRG-McGill
• Nikki Bozinoff, MD candidate, former QPIRG summer research stipend recipient, working group member 2007-2009
    What I remember most about QPIRG McGill, was that it was a safe space. In the most physical of senses, it was a meeting place on a space-cramped campus. I recall climbing the stairs up to a third-floor meeting room each Monday evening, sitting squished shoulder-to-shoulder with other McGill Daily editorial board members, for the purpose of discussing the highs and lows of last week’s headlines. I remember hard plastic chairs, a window that could be propped open to provide minimal air circulation. It wasn’t a glamorous meeting place. But, it was grand enough to hold our big ideas. Which brings me to QPIRG McGill as a safe space for people who are creative thinkers, those who made it to the space looking to learn something beyond what their course-packs allowed, the ones who dared to imagine a better world and acted to make it a possibility. It is unlikely that QPIRG McGill’s detractors are oblivious to the fact that many of Canada’s most vocal social justice activists honed their organizing skills in third floor meeting rooms. QPIRG McGill is an irreplaceable safe space. I’m grateful to have passed through its doors  
• Thomas Fox, Board of Directors of both LPIRG and Amnesty International Lethbridge Action Circle
   I am writing to express my support of the Québec Public Interest Research Group at McGill. This written encouragement and endorsement of QPIRG’s mandate and initiatives is in response to recent systematic assaults by anonymous individuals or groups.
  As a Canadian University student, there are certain luxuries that I have learned to expect and demand from the system that provides my education. These include properly trained professors, access to state-of-the-art research facilities, environments that encourage the development of critical thinking skills, and freedom of expression, to name only a few.While many of these expectations fall under the jurisdiction of University Administration, a large number are not necessarily automatically addressed. Each semester, an undergraduate student will pay thousands of dollars worth of mandatory fees. This money goes toward building maintenance, taxes, utility bills, and above all, staffing costs. This money keeps lights at the University on all night, it pays for landscaping, and it pays the security guard who writes your parking ticket.
  Each semester, each student at McGill also pays a non-mandatory $3.75 towards QPIRG. This money goes towards funding initiatives that further all aspects of social and environmental justice, not only at the University, but also in Montréal, Québec, Canada, and the world. This money funds working groups, internships, events, and students who want to conduct research that will benefit an all-inclusive public.
  While both establishments require separate funding, it is of fundamental importance to acknowledge that they do not function exclusively: one is nothing without the other! The University, as an educational institution, provides students with the theory, the knowledge, and the background required to form opinions and develop passions. At this point QPIRG, or any PIRG, provides those same students with the resources required to put their knowledge into action.
  I support QPIRG in its initiatives, in full confidence, and would be greatly saddened not only for McGill, but for Canada, to see it harmed in any way by those who fail to acknowledge its importance as a not-for-profit organization. It is an organization run by students, for students.Furthermore, if you are reading this letter, and are not well-acquainted with the role that QPIRG has played in your community, I strongly encourage you to visit their website. After seeing their long list of accomplishments, ask yourself what it is worth to you. Is it worth the cost of a coffee and doughnut ($3.75). Can you even assign a value to it?
  
• ~c, Onyo^ta’a:ka/Haudenosaunee First Nation
  Being of Onyo^ta’a:ka/Haudenosaunee First Nation ancestry & hereby the rightful owner of this unceded indigenous territory we call Tiohtia:ke in the local Kanien’ke:haka dialect, I am very very pleased to voice my personal ongoing support for the continuation and growth of QPIRG McGill. It has been through the QPIRG McGill working group Algonkians of Barrier Lake Solidarity, that myself and a mixture of other committed local activists were able to sustain our solidarity support for the Algonkian of Barriere/Rapid Lake community in their fight against the racist-colonial government of Canada’s agenda to exterminate the Algonkian nation’s inviolable right to self-government pursued within the terms their traditional governance code. Because the PIRGs are really the only on campus organizational groups able to fund such initiatives as this which are able to successfully reach through Canada’s system of apartheid- – the racist system of apartheid originated in Canada in fact, as everyone University going person should also be well aware- – to the grass roots level of indigenous communities organizing on a project/initiative sustaining basis I think I can say confidently that it is obvious then that the PIRGS are more fundamentally important University campus organizing-funding bodies than are the rest of the university corpuses combined!
• Aaron Lakoff, former Rad Frosh Coordinator and QPIRG-McGill staff member
  QPIRG-McGill is the lifeline and hope for social justice activism at McGill. Events like Rad Frosh are essential programs which help introduce new students not only to the university, but to Montreal at large. I have personally seen many students start out by attending Rad Frosh who have gone on to do powerful, effective work for the causes of food security, queer rights, and access to education. QPIRG-McGill is not only providing resources to activists, they are building a new generation of leaders who believe that a better world is possible.
• Keith Scott, QPIRG McGill community member
  QPIRG was the first place I learned that I could make a positive difference in the world in a very concrete sense, without relying on the standard channels of political engagement in this country that usually encourage little more than voting once every few years, and that as often as not have negative impacts on the community at large. Almost a decade ago, through QPIRG-McGill, I learned that I, working with others, could affect positive change at the grassroots level. We went into prisons and participated in prisoner-led philosophy workshops that I know for a fact had a positive impact on both prisoners’ and visitors’ lives, in a way that isn’t typically encouraged by our imbalanced punishment-based justice system. Without QPIRG a lot of the important battles being fought would not be fought at all: they wouldn’t even be questions in the public sphere. So many issues would just fall below the mainstream cultural radar. QPIRG gives voice to the voiceless.
• Nora Butler Burke, former McGill Student, QPIRG working group and board member, and coordinator of Radical Frosh
  QPIRG-McGill is an indispensable campus resource. For more than two decades, QPIRG has played a transformative role in the educational experience of countless McGill students, offering up a wide array of student-led initiatives and events. QPIRG has continued to serve as a unique bridge between academia and activism, connecting students to the city beyond the campus gates, and contributing to a vibrant and engaged on-campus community. As a former McGill student, my involvement in QPIRG was invaluable, allowing me to meet other students interested in social and environmental justice, and providing me with concrete experiences of organizing, decision making and community building that I couldn’t find elsewhere on campus. I strongly urge the faculty, staff and student body of McGill to come out in support of QPIRG – an essential, yet under-appreciated campus resource.
• Stephanie Law, MSc, Master of Journalism (Candidate), School of Journalism. Teaching Assistant, School of Population & Public Health. University of British Columbia
  QPIRG-McGill plays a fundamental role to the advancement of various social justice and student-led initiatives, and has done so for the entirety of its existence. Many student groups depend on QPIRG-McGill’s moral and financial support, including climate justice clubs and AIDS awareness clubs like the McGill Global AIDS Coalition. On top of the support it provides various working groups, it also funds individuals to do research relevant to social issues. Without QPIRG-McGill, these initiatives and research projects that are important to the betterment and social growth of McGill would fall apart and become extinct. I cannot imagine McGill without the presence of QPIRG-McGill. All I know is, without it, McGill wouldn’t be half of what it is today and it would be a morally disabled university that I would not wish to be part of. QPIRG-McGill keeps McGill alive – it’s about time McGill reciprocates those efforts.
• Farha Najah Hussain, McGill University Alumnus, Representative of QPIRG McGill Working Groups, Collective Member of School-Schmool 2006-07
  QPIRG-Mcgill has proven to be a crucial entity for students for many reasons, including that of raising awareness on campus of the work we do in our respective communities. By organising relevant and refreshing events, as well as initiating creative and necessary projects, QPIRG-Mcgill has contributed to my growth as a student and activist. Most of all, QPIRG-McGill has allowed me to meet people who are politically engaged, exchange ideas, access knowledge, and develop & refine many pertinent skills- including those involved with critical thinking.
  QPIRG-McGill’s support for various community groups and initiatives demonstrates its responsible commitment to social & environmental justice work. QPIRG-McGill’s struggle to survive amidst insults, threats, and constant bureaucratic maneuvering is a testament of those who form QPIRG McGill’s spirit – a spirit that will not break easily when faced with adversity.
  QPIRG McGill played a vital role during my days in university, and it continues to do so now. I extend my support to QPIRG McGill, as well as my respect to those fighting to sustain it. I invite McGill University students, faculty, and staff, who have not yet done so, to do the same.
• Jesse Muhammed, Journalist & Blogger
  This Fall I was brought into Montreal as a guest speaker for an event hosted by QPIRG McGill. That is one of the most organized, impactful and resourceful groups I have ever worked with. I personally met so many students who have benefited from the presence of QPIRG McGill. Their model of community involvement should be duplicated not only in Canada but throughout the United States. As an active touring community organizer and journalist I have seen so many cities that would welcome them with open arms. Everyone in Montreal should support them! I do.
• Jocelyn Darou, Coordinateur du GRIP-UQAM
  Dear QPIRG-McGill staff, board members, volunteers and friends,As coordinator of the GRIP-UQAM and on behalf of our board, I would like to state our support for QPIRG-McGill. Throughout the years, and even more in the last year, we have had the pleasure of working with QPIRG-Mcgill. Our experience has been nothing but positive and we hope that the McGill community will continue to support this important grass-roots activist organization. PIRGS everywhere are a place to support grass-roots action on social, political and environmental issues. We urge each and every member of the McGill community to their QPIRG and to get involved in one of their many working groups, on their board, or to simply help out in any way possible!
  We continue to work with QPIRG-McGill on the CURE and Alternative Libraries projects by encouraging our students to participate in them and by sharing any and all information pertinent regarding these projects. We also regularly share invitations to QPIRG-McGill’s activities to our mailing list’s members. Thank you so much for the work you do and please continue doing it!
• Roddy Doucet, Advocacy Manager, Concordia Graduate Student Association
  QPIRG McGill is hard to find tucked away among McGill’s illustrious corporate donors. As you ascend University Avenue, you encounter Birks and Bronfmans en masse followed by a lone Trottier and a Molson guarding it all at the top of the hill, masked as a playing field. In one small set of offices, more than likely half the size of McGill President Monroe-Bloom’s management headquarters, there is a group of committed people who do not sell jewels, booze, or whatever it is Matrox (he who is Trottier) makes. No, their contribution is much more precious – they provide a voice for hope. Hope that disenfranchised people can organize a radio show, or better yet their own radio station. A space for progressive people to argue, love, debate, and exchange so that their voice becomes stronger. On a campus that allows corporations to dictate research interests, that eschews providing a decent wage for employees in favor of fattening its endowment, QPIRG is a place where people can meet others, create alternatives, and make a better society. Those who work there know and embody in the best possible fashion McGill’s motto Grandescunt Aucta Laboreor “By work, all things increase and grow.” I congratulate them on their work to date and wish them many more years of successful struggles and victories.
• Norman Nawrocki, community organizer, resident of the Milton Parc community, member of the Milton Parc Ad Hoc Committee to Save Parc Oxygène.
  QPIRG McGill is a much-appreciated model resource for students, faculty and the community at large. It provides services and opportunities that no other organization, on or off-campus, can duplicate, and helps bridge the sometimes unfathomable gap between theoretical course work and day-to-day experiences in the community. On a practical level, it actively links students and faculty with engaged, off campus groups and individuals dedicated to making Montreal a more liveable city. It thus contributes to enhancing a mutual understanding by the academy of the importance of diverse work in the field, and by community members at large of the useful contributions the university can make to existing practice. QPIRG McGill enriches the experiences of everyone on campus, helps broaden public dialogue, and demonstrates that the university can play a critically supportive role, contributing to a more socially engaged and informed citizenship. They deserve our support.
• Andrea Miller-Nesbitt, McGill alumni, Member of the Chaotic Insurrection Ensemble and Radical Reference
  I first became aware of QPIRG-McGill and the work that they do when I joined one of their working groups. I have always been impressed with the diversity of issues that QPIRG-McGill supports, from food politics to the rights of temporary worker to independent media. Connecting local activists with each other and with students is such an important role that QPIRG-McGill and PIRGs everywhere have. Not only does this help raise awareness of a variety of issues, but it facilitates collaboration and mutual support between activists and solidarity workers. Thanks QPIRG-McGill!
• Drew Nelles, McGill Alumni, Maisonneuve Editor-in-Chief, former School Schmool coordinator and Rad Frosh facilitator.
  It’s a cliché to note that university students learn more outside the classroom than in, but that doesn’t make it any less true. You know what I mean if you’ve ever stayed up late arguing self-importantly with a friend, or worked your fingers to the bone organizing a campus event, or done just about anything other than highlighting your coursepacks till they bleed yellow. And at McGill, QPIRG is the institution that makes so much of this non-traumatizing education possible.
  I could talk a lot about what QPIRG does—how it provides physical workspace on a room-crunched campus, how it provides resources to needy student groups and causes—but others on this page have already done that, so instead I’ll talk about one thing: Rad Frosh. Rad Frosh is the alternative orientation week that QPIRG organizes, and it’s great. There’s nothing wrong with puking on Lower Field if that’s what you’re into, but if you’re not—or if you want to party but still remember your new friends’ names the next day, or if you’d rather talk about security certificates and activist journalism—then Rad Frosh is for you. Even my mom’s friends think Rad Frosh provides a better orientation experience than pub crawls or vodka in water guns.
  Despite what QPIRG’s detractors would have you believe, splitting the difference isn’t a coherent political position. QPIRG is what it is for a reason: at a locus of progressive organizing like a university, there’s a real need for a hub, an umbrella group, of this sort. Those trying to starve Canada’s PIRGs are skilled at couching their arguments in populist rhetoric, but make no mistake: these efforts are political grudge matches organized with the resources of Canada’s governing party. They aim not to temper campus discourse but to stifle dissent. Unless you’re a conservative—in which case there’s no hope for you anyway—you need to care about QPIRG.
• Gwen Shulman, translator & Mai Chiu, attorney
  Over twenty years ago, we both met at the McGill Southern African Committee, a student-driven anti-apartheid organization based at McGill University. The work of this committee was responsible for McGill University’s decision to divest from South African investments.Through our activism on this committee, not only did we learn to organize, research, and argue, we also learned the meaning of racism, sexism, discrimination, poverty, and the multiple ways in which human rights could be violated. Most of all, we learned about our responsibility in maintaining the status quo and reinforcing people’s oppression even overseas, the relevancy of other people’s stuggles with respect to local injustices, and most importantly, how youth can take power to make change happen.
  The values that we learned through student activism have sustained us in our different career paths and now as parents, we try to instill these same values in our children. One of the most important lessons we are trying to teach our children is that not only must they take responsibility for asking questions about their own privileges, but that ignorance and complacency are what has led to repeated historical horrors such as the Holocaust.We are inspired to learn that a generation later, students at McGill through organizations such as QPIRG are carrying on the legacy of student political activism, this time by fighting for justice for the Palestinian people.
• Samir Shaheen-Hussain, Montreal-based activist/organizer, QPIRG-McGill working group member and pediatrician.
  QPIRG-McGill plays a pivotal role in allowing students on campus to engage in activism motivated by the ideals of social and environmental justice. It is discouraging that QPIRG-McGill currently finds itself having to justify its existence, thereby diverting inordinate amounts of time and energy that could otherwise have gone into fulfilling its important mandate of being a progressive & radical resource centre for McGill students and the Montreal community at large.
  My own activism can trace part of its roots to QPIRG-McGill, when I was still a medical student at McGill University. In April 2002, with the support of QPIRG-McGill, I was involved in establishing the Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Movement (IPSM) along with a few other people. The group decided early on that it was a priority to support the self-determination struggles of Indigenous communities in light of the historical and on-going realities of colonization here in Canada. Our focus was placed more on local and regional issues, but this was not exclusively the case: we tried to develop links with campaigns and struggles that transcended colonially-imposed borders. During its time on campus, IPSM was, among other things, able to elaborate meaningful collaborations with various services & institutions on campus, including the First People’s House and McGill Chaplaincy. We also put together the “Our Home on Native Land” conference in November 2002, which played a significant role in not only raising awareness about Indigenous struggles for self-determination, but also encouraged participants to get tangibly involved in supporting them. While the group’s members were initially almost exclusively McGill students, the membership shifted over the years, with a significant proportion of the membership being made up of non-student members by 2005; throughout this period, IPSM was a QPIRG-McGill working group on several occasions. While IPSM in Montreal has no longer formally existed for several years now, other IPSM groups cropped up over the years in various cities, including Ottawa and Winnipeg, which speaks to IPSM-Montreal’s inspirational and important work — including an emphasis on the praxis of “decolonization” — much of which would not have been possible without QPIRG-McGill.
  The overview of IPSM’s earlier work, as detailed above, is intentional because it demonstrates the courage and principled politics of an institution like QPIRG-McGill, given that supporting Indigenous solidarity work and Indigenous self-determination struggles is not always a popular or easy thing to do, even by those who profess a commitment to the ideals of social and environmental justice.
  However, QPIRG-McGill’s importance is not limited to supporting and facilitating Indigenous solidarity work. Indeed, by providing a space for meetings and booking rooms for events, by providing resources like computers and printers, and by having engaged and vibrant staff and board members committed to social & environmental justice, QPIRG-McGill supports a variety of important initiatives, including (but not limited to): feminist, queer & trans liberation struggles; anti-racist environmental justice; opposing the attacks on freedom and dignity as a result of repressive national security-state agendas; worker solidarity; student movements for accessible post-secondary education; anti-police violence; migrant justice.
  The contributions made to social and environmental justice activism by QPIRG-McGill are not quantifiable. It is therefore my very sincere hope that QPIRG-McGill is not only able to continue to exist, but to thrive, in the years to come. While contributing meaningfully to life on campus by providing a mechanism for McGill students to engage with economic, political and social issues that shape our current reality, QPIRG-McGill also serves an important role in the Montreal community at large through its various popular education and outreach efforts. The loss of QPIRG-McGill would mark the loss of an institution which allows McGill University to fulfill its professed mandate in promoting the ideals of higher learning: knowledge production, critical thought and community engagement. This cannot be allowed to happen.
• Julia de Montigny, former School Schmool Coordinator (2010-2011) and community member at large
  QPIRG McGill is an invaluable social justice organization for McGill students as well as for the Montreal community more broadly. As a former coordinator of QPIRG Concordia and QPIRG McGill’s joint publication, School Schmool: The Organizer, I feel strongly about the importance and strength of QPIRG McGill. School Schmool is a day-planner as well as a socially progressive resource guide to the city that seeks to bring together information, profiles of community and student groups, and practical tools of use to all students, but particularly those interested in social justice, equity, and sustainability issues. This resource provides users with information on current issues, resources connecting the McGill, Concordia and Montreal communities, and acts as an archive of Montreal’s history of social justice organizing. But, this is only one example of the many ways that QPIRG McGill functions to encourage students to engage with and participate in the issues affecting them as members of both academic and non-academic communities in Montreal.
  While working at QPIRG McGill in the summer of 2010 I saw just how many other resources QPIRG McGill provides students and others with. They house an extensive alternative library, promote relevant workshops throughout the entire year, organize week-long events such as Culture Shock and Social Justice Days, and support many on and off-campus groups committed to working toward a more socially and environmentally just and equitable world. I also benefited from a QPIRG McGill discretionary fund, something they make available for solidarity projects whose aims fall within their own mandate. This funding allowed me to work on a sexual health education training with Head & Hands, when finances were otherwise unavailable. This community organization in Montreal’s west end offers free, non-judgmental and confidential services and resources for youth, including, for example, a queer and trans positive sex-education project that promotes sexual health and communication through youth empowerment and harm reduction. QPIRG was thus able to offer meaningful support for a necessary community project for Montreal’s youth, which could include McGill students. Finally, QPIRG McGill is also successful in fulfilling their anti-oppression mandate by providing a welcoming space for marginalized communities. The space is non-judgmental and comfortable, a place where students and community members, particularly those that may face discrimination elsewhere, are encouraged to feel at home.
  QPIRG McGill is an inspiring and absolutely vital organization in this city and I encourage McGill students, faculty and community members to support them.
• Kayle Towsley, Master student in Speech therapy, McGill
  QPIRG McGill is an invaluable resource for the McGill community. During my time at McGill, QPIRG has given me the opportunity to connect with other people interested in social and environmental justice. They provide support and resources for a huge diversity of groups that work on issues ranging from food-politics and environmental justice to gentrification, and the rights of temporary workers. They also help student-led initiatives and projects by providing funds and support. They give students and community members access to a wonderful resource library, which stocks many amazing books and movies by small publishers that you can’t find at the McGill libraries.
  I would like to extend my support to QPIRG McGill, and encourage everyone to find out more about the wonderful work that QPIRG McGill is doing.
• Adrienne Hurley, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, East Asian Studies, Associate Member of the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University.
  I am very grateful to QPIRG McGill for the many ways in which it supports my work as a McGill faculty member. I am, therefore, very grateful to each student who contributes the fees that enable QPIRG to remain a vital part of our campus community. Through events such as Culture Shock that bring outstanding scholars and artists to our campus or programs such as CURE, which enable my students to engage in meaningful research that has real-life value beyond the classroom, QPIRG fosters the kind of empowering and expansive literacy that enables fuller participation not only in school, but in society, in the world. Furthermore, the QPIRG library has been able to support my students’ research needs when the McLennan Library has not. I would be devastated were we to lose this valuable organization and resource that has made it possible for my students to learn directly from scholars such as Jasbir Puar and Robyn Rodriguez and has contributed greatly to my own knowledge.
• Ashley Fortier, Member of QPIRG McGill working group Qteam, former Rad Frosh Coordinator, and Administration Coordinator at QPIRG Concordia
  QPIRG McGill has been an integral resource and a huge inspiration to me since the moment I first arrived in Montreal. I have had the opportunity to be a part of this organization in many ways over the past five years – as a member of its longstanding working group Qteam, as one of the 2008 Radical Frosh coordinators, and as a staff member of its sister organization QPIRG Concordia. Through these experiences I have seen firsthand the immeasurable ways that QPIRG McGill offers vital support and resources to both student and non-student members of the Montreal community concerned with social and environmental justice.
  Qteam is a collective that has been working for half a decade in Montreal to put on engaging queer programming on and off McGill campus, to build links of solidarity across shared struggles, and to create and promote queer cultural production through a variety of means. With the financial support of QPIRG McGill, Qteam started “Queer Between the Covers,” an annual queer bookfair now in its fifth year. Qteam has also organized dozens of fundraiser parties, with proceeds going to groups and projects such as Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Project 10, a drop-in for LGBTQ youth in Montreal, to name just a few. Qteam has also enriched McGill campus discourse on queer issues by inviting international speakers such as Dean Spade and José Muñoz for free public lectures, screening films with queer perspectives on issues such as gentrification and disability, and offering workshops at Rad Frosh on the history of queer struggles in North America. Without the financial and logistical support of QPIRG McGill, there is no way we could have contributed so much to the McGill and Montreal queer communities and social justice milieu at large.
  When I was hired to help co-ordinate QPIRG McGill’s Rad Frosh program in 2008, I was both thrilled and nervous. Almost every McGill student I’d met since arriving in Montreal had talked with great enthusiasm about their experience at Rad Frosh – as a participant, a facilitator, or a past coordinator – and it seemed like a big reputation to uphold. With the support of the core staff and board at QPIRG McGill, however, as well as many volunteers, the 2008 Rad Frosh program was as successful as ever and I feel honored to have been a part of it. Rad Frosh has for years offered incoming McGill students the opportunity to orient themselves to McGill and Montreal through events such as workshops, walking tours, panel discussions, social events and local art and music. It has been very rewarding to see the participants from the 2008 program get active in social and environmental justice initiatives within and outside of QPIRG McGill in the years following; many of them have also told me directly how foundational the experience was for them and how grateful they are for the friendships they made that weekend that carry on to this day.
  Since beginning to work at QPIRG McGill’s sister organization at Concordia two years ago, I have come to learn just how much work goes into sustaining and growing organizations like ours. On a regular basis, we look to one another for guidance and support and we have built some very tangible roles of support and collaboration. While our groups are autonomous, we work together on several core projects including the Study in Action undergraduate and community research conference, the School Schmool alternative day-planner, the Community-University Research Exchange (CURE), the Alternative Libraries Database, and the Convergence undergraduate and community research journal. The success of these projects is due to the tireless effort of staff and volunteers at both organizations and none of them would be as large and vibrant if it were not for QPIRG McGill.QPIRG McGill takes very seriously the “research” part of its name. It does so by providing students with a chance to access thousands of often hard-to-find books, magazines, and dvd’s available through the alternative library network, giving them an opportunity to put their course work to a broader use by teaming up with a grassroots community group via CURE, creating space for undergraduates to present on their own research at Study in Action, or have their writing published in Convergence. These are resources not to be taken for granted, as they are few and far between for undergraduate students, especially those interested in alternative issues and perspectives.
  For all these reasons and more, I want to offer my most sincere and whole-hearted support to QPIRG McGill, an organization that serves as a pillar in local social and environmental justice communities, particularly those invested in building and maintaining important links between campus and non-campus contexts.
• Max Silverman, McGill Tribune Columnist (2008-2009, 2009-2010); SSMU VP External (2006-2007, 2007-2008); Arts Representative to the SSMU (2005-2006)
  As a former SSMU Vice-President, councillor, member of the AUS council, and McGill Tribune columnist, I’d like to take a moment to speak up for the valuable role that QPIRG McGill plays in the McGill community. From funding student-driven research, to campaigning for new initiatives on campus (think: recycling programs, AIDS advocacy, Campus Crops, alternative frosh activities, etc), to co-organizing events with other student bodies on campus like the SSMU, to providing a space to student groups on a campus where student space is hard to come across, it’s impossible to deny the integral role that QPIRG plays in our campus community. Despite the false claims of certain cynical and special-interest far-rightwing fringe groups, QPIRG is a democratically and accessibly run organization that all students are voting members of. QPIRG is, undeniably, a valuable partner to anyone trying to improve student life on campus, whatever form that may take. I hope the spirit of campus community triumphs at McGill and that all students who care about the university get involved.
• rosalind hampton, PhD student at McGill
  QPIRG McGill is an invaluable organization for the McGill and academic communities as well as for the Montreal community at large.  Through work addressing important and varied issues of social justice QPIRG encourages and facilitates broad civic engagement and fulfills a critical function in our communities.  As a Black community cultural worker and PhD student at McGill, QPIRG has provided me with varied opportunities to be involved in unique social and cultural events and activities.  I am grateful to QPIRG McGill for your active presence in our communities, support of community-based anti-oppression working groups and for the resources and safe space that you provide for all of us at the center.
• Edward Ou Jin Lee - Ph.D. student in the School of Social Work. McGill University
  My name is Edward Ou Jin Lee. I am presently a doctoral student at McGill University in the School of Social Work. I would like to express my support of QPIRG McGill. QPIRG McGill is a vital organisation on McGill campus. It provides undergraduate and graduate students with a huge amount of services (library, CURE, etc), initiatives (Rad Frosh, Agenda, etc) and events (workshops, guest speakers, academic talks, etc). There are countless ways that I have benefited from being able to access QPIRG McGill and the myriad of activities and initiatives they do throughout the year. One of the most important things that QPIRG McGill does is link McGill students to community-based organisations and grassroots initiatives within the broader city of Montreal. They are able to do this through their various working groups, CURE (Community-University Research Exchange) program and providing discretionary funding to community-based initiatives. There are so many different ways that QPIRG McGill allows for McGill students to learn more about important social and economic justice initiatives, whether it be about racialized communities, queer people, environmental issues, etc. This enriches the lives of all of us who participate. One such event that QPIRG McGill organizes is Culture Shock. All of these initiatives and activities organized by QPIRG McGill’s dedicated staff and volunteers impact the lives of McGill students resulting in learning that goes beyond the classrooms and becomes community oriented. I can’t think of a more important resource on McGill campus that allows students to do this. It is for all these reasons that I fully support QPIRG McGill!
  
• Tatiana Gomez, McGill alumnus, lawyer
  I attended McGill University from 1999 to 2002 and then from 2005 to 2008. My years at McGill University would not have been the same without QPIRG-McGill.QPIRG-McGill provided me, like many other students, with a  campus-community link to various social justice initiatives in and around Montreal.  During my first years at McGill, it enabled me to develop meaningful relationships with various community groups, with whom I continue to work with today. Many community groups have strong ties to QPIRG-McGill as a result of its active commitment to social justice, anti-oppression work, and democratic values.I strongly support QPIRG-McGill and hope that present and future generations of students continue to support and be a part of this wonderful organization.
• Fred Burrill – McGill Alumni & QPIRG Community Member
  Since 1980, QPIRG-McGill has been a vital part of campus life at McGill, and a central way that many students have maintained links with the broader Montreal community. This unique partnership has seen students engaged in such diverse issues as housing rights, opposition to clear-cutting, and migrant justice organizing.My own experience in QPIRG, as a member of the Board of Directors from 2007-2010, was a vital time for me in terms of both personal and educational development. I learned the ins and outs of community organizations and event planning, and made friendships and political ties that continue to inform how I relate to activism and non-profit organizations in Montreal.There has been a persistent problem at McGill in recent years of misinformation and fear-mongering by a small group of students dedicated, somewhat distressingly, to limiting the opportunities for broad and diverse political engagement on campus. I urge you to serve both yourselves and future students by continuing to support QPIRG.
• Dr. Gada Mahrouse – Simone de Beauvoir Institute
  I work at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia, which is a research institute dedicated to studying various forms of social justice. My colleagues and I are committed to research and teaching about social movements and many of our courses focus on a number of societal issues that include violence, poverty, racism, militarism, indigenous rights, and globalization. We approach our intellectual work from the premise that teaching and research can only be enriched through activism and community service. I believe that QPIRG McGill provides excellent resources for educational institutions like ours. Indeed, like QPIRG Concordia, QPIRG McGill is a vibrant organization that provides relevant activities and resources for many of us who live in Montreal. For example, QPIRG McGill started the Alternative Libraries Networks, which is a network of eight libraries include focus on books, periodicals, and films, on a broad range of political, social, and economic justice issues including accessibility, environmental concerns and gender equality. This resource is very important in fostering and connecting scholarly and community writing that is focused on social change. The organization bridges the campuses and the community in many tangible ways. It hosts the Community University Research Exchange, a database that enables students to integrate their academic research with the work of local community organizations. Every year, I strongly encourage my students to take part in this program, so that they can see the practical applications of their research.
  QPIRG McGill also brings many interesting speakers to Montreal. In recent years, these have included Dr. Jasbir Puar of Rutgers University and Amy Goodman host of the renowned independent news media program Democracy Now. For several years, I have participated in their annual Culture Shock event series that is devoted to bringing forward an anti-racist analysis. My students speak very highly of these events and bring in ideas that they have learned there into the classroom and their coursework. In sum, I sincerely value the work of QPIRG McGill and hope that it will continue to flourish.
• Jill Foster, Letter of Support for QPIRG from Presbyterian Chaplain Chaplaincy Service, McGill
   QPIRG is an absolutely indispensable part of McGill. The Chaplaincy at McGill – comprised of representatives of many world religions – is devoted to the spiritual care of students, which includes a concern for justice be done to them and by them, and that the earth be protected. We have therefore highly valued and financially supported the work of QPIRG over the years. As a Chaplain who follows Jesus Christ, I endorse QPIRG because its agenda for social and political change greatly resembles his.
  QPIRG’s analysis gets to the root of what is wrong with the world: power and money do not trickle down but drift upward, congealing in the hands of a few, who use it to disinherit and silence many, including the earth itself. QPIRG likewise gets to the heart of the solution: Working Groups are created by and in solidarity with the actual people who are suffering injustice, to organize, speak out and take back what is theirs. QPIRG recognizes that making things right in the world begins not far away on some less enlightened continent – but right here at McGill, in Montreal, in Canada. QPIRG connects the academy to the struggle: in their CURE program students can actually do research for a grassroots campaign for justice.
  QPIRG acts like the conscience of McGill: Rad Frosh, Justice Days and Culture Shock jolt us out of our self-absorption to notice what is happening to people right beside us, to the earth around us– and to act. QPIRG is an invaluable part of McGill. If it goes, it will just have to be created all over again. All McGill would be wise to recognize and protect this treasure.
• Evan Posdamer - former QPIRG McGill board member (2003-2004)
  My time working with QPIRG has given me abilities and experiences that have been instrumental in shaping my life. Through QPIRG I learned practical skills that rounded out the intellectual education I received in class. I learned how to manage finances, how to balance budgets, apply for grants, and engage in legal contracts with other parties. I learned how to organize large events, how to arrange for space, transportation and food, as well as manage and present to large groups of people. Besides learning new things, I learned how to organize the new things I was learning into fun and approachable lessons and games that I could share with others. I learned about campaigning & grassroots organizing, how to delegate tasks and make decisions. And through it all I learned how to work with others in order to create and run organizations and events that help people, build community, and encourage public dialogue on relevant social issues. Thank you QPIRG, I wish you a bright future!
• Freda Guttman is an artist and activist. She is a member of the Tadamon! collective and works in common cause with groups whose goals are social justice for all
   I wish that when I was going to university, that I had had a QPIRG around that would have enabled me to channel my concerns and my interests in social justice into action with others. That was in the terrible 1950′s, the McCarthy era. In 1980, it was created as a club at McGill University, but in 1988 QPIRG McGill became the first student-funded, autonomous PIRG in Quebec. In the early 1990’s I was privileged to partner with QPIRG McGill on an art exhibit and program of events related to the topic of my art which examined issues of global food production and distribution – who grows our food and at what cost to them? During the time my show was on, QPIRG McGill was taking students on tours of super markets so they could see in fact where our food comes from. Actions like this helped project my work into a broader context than the ‘art world’. I was extremely grateful! Today, when the world is challenged by numerous terrifying scenarios, when injustice abounds everywhere and wars rage as per usual, and when more than ever students are so aware of the dangers posed and so cognizant of the fact  that the only route to change is non-violent action and public education, QPIRG is an absolute necessity on the campus of McGill. Think of it! QPIRG McGill sustains groups dedicated to addressing problems of injustice, racism and violence that plague us: refugee and immigrant rights; climate change and Global Warming; safe food; First Nations justice; Justice for Victims of Police killings and their families; Justice and Peace in the Middle East; Women rights; Gentrification and saving Green spaces; media for grassroots, democratic coverage; temporary foreign workers’ rights, and more. What more can we ask for of an open true university than a vibrant environment,  where students are empowered to think about, and participate in working on such urgent issues which in very real ways threaten their future. Bravo to QPIRG McGill and long may it continue to do its good work!
• Jackie Mann - Former QPIRG Board Member 2004-2005, Radical Frosh Coordinator 2005, Radical Frosh Leader 2002, Working Group Member 2001- 02, 2004-05
  Over the years I was at McGill, QPIRG did invaluable work connecting me to struggles in social and environmental justice on campus and beyond. 6 years out, the communities I built there and the work I did through QPIRG continue to touch my life.
  Radical Frosh is extremely powerful in launching new students into an active life of instrumenting social change. I saw hundreds of new students come in, gain a deep understanding of the struggles we face and jump into the work, making great friends along the way. Bridging the gap between campus life and the larger issues facing young people today is something many of the organizations on campus miss but QPIRG has remained a driving force in campus and community activism.
  During my time at McGill, I became part of a group interested in popular education. QPIRG offered us a space to meet, office materials to use, small amounts of funding to get the work done and the support in reaching the communities we sought. We were one of 13 working groups that year and I learned so much about organizing and community building over this time. How many working groups has QPIRG supported throughout the years? How many ideas has it helped get off the ground, and how many people has it brought together to put their passions into action? What deeper learning can a university offer than support to try to do the work we learn about? The impact of this organization is immeasurable, as are the skills that I built with its help – skills I continue to use today in grassroots organizing and in my professional career.
• Ed Hudson – Former PGSS rep to QPIRG and QPIRG Board member
  Sometime during the last year of my PhD, during a clean-up in my (former) department, I came across a wooden paper holder which was intended, many years ago, as a repository for paper to be collected for recycling. On a yellowing label, attached to one side, were listed the types of paper which could and couldn’t be recycled, and at the bottom, a tag from the organization running the program- “QPIRG McGill”.
  The paper holder (which I still have) reminded of something often left unsaid in all the current discussions over QPIRG’s future: that QPIRG not only supported, but initiated, many services and programs at McGill which have since become institutionalized and which we now consider so basic that we essentially take them for granted. These include recycling at McGill and the McGill daycare.
  During my time at McGill, I saw QPIRG support and fund all manner of student and community initiatives in the areas of social justice, environment, human rights, sustainable transportation, anti-racism, community health, and many others. Not all of these were equally successful, or equally widely supported (although many were both successful and widely supported), but all deserved the resources for people to at least attempt them. Is this not within the spirit of research, free inquiry and innovation which should characterize a university?
  If QPIRG is not supported by students, as it has been for 30 years, who knows what programs and services we may be sacrificing in the future, because the structures to help them get off the ground were undermined?
• Sebastian Ronderos-Morgan, McGill alumni, former QPIRG board member, former VP External of the SSMU, Legislative Assistant to MP Charmaine Borg
• Another piece by Sebastian Ronderos- Morgan 
• Trevor Fraser, McGill Alumni, former QPIRG McGill board member
• Andrea Figueroa & Anna Malla, QPIRG Staff
• Judy Rebick “The importance of QPIRG McGill” – in McGill Tribune, October 31st, 2011
• Letter of support from MP Paul Dewar  – in McGill Tribune, October 31st, 2011
• Letter of support from Martin Lukacs – in McGill Tribune, November 8th, 2011
• Letter of support from Linda McQuaig – in McGill Tribune, Novemebr 8th, 2011
• Letter of support from Max Silverman - in McGill Tribune, Novemebr 8th, 2011