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Organizers said the crowd size rivalled the massive protests held the two previous months, on the 22nd of March and April.

While polls in recent weeks suggested the striking students had lost considerable public support, they appeared to have been galvanized in recent days by the new Quebec law.

‘An increase in the powers of police and the state anywhere is an attack on us everywhere’

Since that law passed, people in central Montreal neighbourhoods have appeared on their balconies and in front of their houses to defiantly bang pots and pans in a clanging protest every night at 8 p.m.

Related events were organized Tuesday in New York, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver, which saw only a tiny group of people show up to protest. In France, a few hundred congregated near Paris’ famous Notre Dame Cathedral.

A stone’s throw from the Seine River, people in Paris waved flags in a crowd that included many Quebecers, some of whom had brought their own signs, like one that read: “Quebec is becoming a dictatorship.”

There were two demonstrations scheduled in New York — one at Rockefeller Plaza where Quebec government offices are located, and another at Washington Park later in the day.

Organized by the Occupy Wall Street movement and by the group Strike Everywhere, the first New York event was designed to raise awareness about the Quebec protests while the second was about opposing anti-protest laws all over the world.

Between 20 and 40 people gathered in front of Quebec’s government office in New York. A few handed out red squares, the symbol of the student protest movement.