A Classy Look at Neighbourhoods in Montreal (courtesy of the RCP-OC)

A while back i was at some event or demo or something and got a flyer from the Red Youth Front (Front Rouge des Jeunes), an affiliate of the Revolutionary Communist Party (Organizing Committee), a local Maoist group. (NOTE: the RCP-OC is not the same as the American RCP, for those who keep track of such things).

Anyways, said piece of paper came home with me, got put in one pile of similar papers, shuffled back and forth across m office for who-knows-how-long, until finally today i read it while (trying to) clean up this mess!

All of which is to say: it’s a nice little flier, an explanation of the slogan (provided at the bottom) that “it is right to revolt!”

A list of statistics if you will. Here they go (translation provided by yours truly):

A Look at Life In the Working Class Neighbourhoods

A Look at Life in the Bourgeois Neighbourhoods

Average Revenue
Hochelaga: $28 193
Montreal-North: $35 233
Parc-Extension: $27 877

Average Revenue
Outremont: $90 613
Westmount: $142 604
Town of Mount Royal: $116 271

Life Expectency
Centre-Sud: 71,6 years
Pointe St-Charles: 73,9 years

Life Expectancy
Hampstead: 82,0 years
Westmount: 82.1 years

Average Value of an Apartment
Saint Henri: $120 539

Average Value of a House
Westmount: $553 775

Deaths Caused by Respiratory Illnesses
Montreal-East & Pointe-aux-Trembles: 133

Deaths Caused by Respiratory Illnesses
West Island: 66

Percentage of Single Parent Households
Saint-Michel: 39,8%
Hochelaga: 51,1%

Percentage of Single Parent Households
Pierrefonds: 21,1%
West Island:  16,2%

Rate of Suicide (per 100,000)
Petite-Patrie: 20,6
Centre-Sud: 42,0

Rate of Suicide (per 100,000)
West Island: 6,2
Hampstead: 6,9

Unemployment Rate
Pointe-St-Charles: 15,3%
Parc-Extension: 20,8%

Unemployment Rate
Pierrefonds: 6,3%
Westmount: 5,5%

Dropout Rate
Hochelaga: 49%

Dropout Rate
Westmount: 2%

Violent Crime Rate (per 1000)
Saint Henri: 24,6

Violent Crime Rate (per 1000)
West Island: 4,6

Of course such a list still relies on several bourgeois patriarchal assumptions – about who is in a “household”, about what gets reported in the ways of “violent crime” – which serve as ideological gerrymandering the same way many of Montreal’s communities have actually been gerrymandered in order to diminish working class power… but nevertheless it’s a nice little list. Still more useful than useless.

It would be nice to have gender factored into it. Ditto with nationality. I don’t know if the RCP-OC would do so – like most leftists i imagine they consider the former to be tantamount to dark matter, and like many of the better leftists in Quebec nationality gets only cursory attention methinks from a desire to not inadvertently give solace to the nationalists… but still, one can hope.

Or maybe someone else can go better?

sketchythoughtssketchythoughtssketchythoughts

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