MONTREAL — You’ve probably heard by now about the racket in Quebec.

It takes a bit more than a blogger’s first nutgraph to delve into the depths of this serious 12-week conflict between 160,000+ striking students and the provincial Liberal government set to hike tuition, but essentially both parties are in a stalemate of negotiations and it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere fast.

Interestingly, national and international media coverage only intensely picked up on this madness after the disruptions of a “Plan Nord” meeting between Premier Jean Charest and extraction business folk April 20 and 21. After the melee came a steady stream of headlines about the student movement in particular — regardless if the point was to challenge questionable and imminent environmental practices and government investment in Northern Quebec and not tuition.

Perhaps the link was made due to the fact that the converging demonstration had been endorsed by CLASSE, one of the major students groups. Or maybe it was because, as Montreal raged outside, Charest cracked a now-infamous joke about creating student jobs up North, which got a fair bit of national attention.

Why it was this particular protest that broke through the hyper-local coverage and launched this Quebec issue into broader national and international consciousness is anyone’s guess. Unfortunately, few have been able to accurately explain the depths of dissent that is months in the making, and its increasing nuance.

After Plan Nord, a slew of big-league editorialists took little time (or research) to weigh in on the issue as it made an international splash, and as the daily demonstrations in particular shone a spotlight, for better or worse, on this idea that it was only “students” in the streets.

But perhaps what is far worse than other provinces not paying attention to education reform in La Belle Province through sometimes-blatant false dichotomizing is how little interest there seems to be in the way the entire thing has been publicly policed or who, exactly, is responsible for things getting physical to the point of made-for-TV sensationalism.

“Violence is an intrinsic part of the demonstrations, a part of their essential dynamic,” Rex Murphy recently wrote in the National Post. “This is no secret. Is anyone really surprised that these protests have been accompanied now by riotous behaviour?”

Of course, there have also been many peaceful and playful demonstrations on a near-daily basis since this thing kicked off, and not a single incident occurred at the largest student demo to date on March 22, where an estimated 200,000 took the streets.

Maybe it’s not as interesting to pontificate about, but it is unfair to solely criticize the student movement for violence. While it does occur and is admittedly anticipated, its frequency is certainly the result of months of tension and lack of leadership by all parties coming to a head.

A tacit surveillance of students, increased security personnel on campus as well as clashes at picket lines never struck the same national nerve as it was sowing the seeds of tension and “violence” months ago. Only a handful of on-the-ground, local reporters covered the police angle first, as tear gas became a normal thing to hear about on your commute to work in Montreal.

In many minds here, the first warning shot of what was to become a “violent” conflict was fired by the police — on a seated college student — when the first of two protestors to date lost his eye on March 7. This, of course, was nowhere in the Globe and Mail‘s coverage that day, and clearly hasn’t been on Rex’s radar.

The early days of this conflict also saw Minister of Education Line Beauchamp quick to denounce “intimidation” by students, but the charge of excessive force from police burning handsome money to keep peace in the streets (as the government stalled to sit down with students) didn’t warrant her comment.

It’s no secret, even in national media, that the SPVM practice tough love — heck, they even got handsy with local student media at the vigil for the kid they shot in the eye earlier that day. They ain’t foolin’. And the government knows this. The morning after 22-year-old college student Francis Grenier lost the use of his eye while playing his harmonica at a protest, Premier Jean Charest stepped in only to defend the police that shot him.

Not exactly a peaceful message, and boy did it piss people off.

The police, of course, have a monumental task of maintaining calm and chaos as the stalemate continues and tensions mount against the Liberal government, who have done little to help curb rising temperatures in the streets.

Since the beginning, a wishy-washy message has been sent about what “violence” ought to be condemned and what is allowed to pass. This is the powertrip issue. The Charest government even hinged negotiations with student groups to end this damn thing on arbitrary conditions that they “denounce violence” — as well as the use of certain French swear words.

But when a human-rights organization like Amnesty International starts weighing in on police activities, the government and media might as well take notice.

Yet it is only now that we are seeing a serious call for tactical reform of handling these protests which, as you may guess, aren’t slowing.

Recently, thank goodness, the coverage has started to change and there are some ready to admit the action in the streets has been heavy-handed. What’s unfortunate is that it took the loss of a second eye and the town of Victoriaville to rapidly deteriorate into a damn warzone last weekend for the “violence” to receive the balanced critical attention it deserves.

(And if you’re curious what the police in Victoriaville were up against, here’s an idea.)

It’s a scary thing to think that in a country like Canada the escalating use of force and mass arrests (1,200 and counting) to answer a call for political discourse can be so steadfastly ignored. Instead, people focus political or journalistic energies to demonize one group or another about who is more “entitled.”

At this point it doesn’t even matter what the nuts and bolts of the protest or dissent actually is — pick whatever issue. A serious tone has been set here and the message is (unfortunately) not “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” but that if you believe strongly enough in a cause to get out into the street and show it, you are at physical risk of violence with near impunity — which is “intimidation” enough for many.

Hopefully, the winds are changing as two 20-something students emerge from their Victoriaville comas in Quebec this week, and the increasingly harrowing events on the street are told with a real call for all parties to finally figure it out.

We can’t keep shooting ourselves in the eye.