It's a strange experience, but I'm sure quite familiar to many: a hidden war, one you constantly hear about without seeing.
Today I felt compelled to go where I never do, across the canal, then across the ring road, then across the suburban towns by foot and by tramway. First the city, the warm afternoon, people smiling - glad to be inside. Then beyond the ring road, through the low, gray, poverty-struck constructions of the 1940s and 50s, surging with people of all origins; across the no-man's lands between huge tower
blocks;
to the incredible modernist housing projects around Bobigny, so tall and forbidding and clean. But the shoddy decaying estates where the cars burn and the stones fly and the kids stand off against the police are further out, you have to
go specially by bus, people look at you and wonder what you're there for, that was not my intention. Instead, just the need to remember what's beyond the ring road, at walking distance, the other world of the class-divide inscribed in
the urban geography.
Now that the children and grandchildren of the immigrants who built the postwar prosperity of France have spoken the only language that the elites can hear - the language of fire and bricks - what's gonna happen next?
Tonight is the 12th night of this collective speech. For years I thought something like Watts was coming to this country. This is it, but without all the guns. Maybe they'll appear next time, when it's organized. For now, the wild
improvisation of stones and molotov cocktails and roving confrontations with the cops is the only thing these young people could do. The cars and buses and schools are still
burning as I write. Bagdad is the word on everyone's lips.
In a wierd way, many of them - to judge from the interviews - still seem to believe some change for the better is possible. But the situation has been the same for at least 15 years, just getting worse as long as I've lived here. The
socialists made feeble attempts to reverse the trends in the late nineties; it was always cosmetic, then the right came and exchanged its own ineffective programs for the earlier ones. But its programs mostly wore uniforms, and the sight of Africans and Arabs (as those of North African or Middle Eastern origins are called here) getting IDed for no other reason but the color of their skin has been the typical panorama on the street for years now. Sometimes kids get killed in the scuffle. And even if you didn't hear about it, there's always a riot.
It was common knowledge that areas of certain estates had become off limits to outsiders, especially at night; if you listened, you found out that isolated eruptions were longer, more intense than the media let us imagine. Some said that
any attempt to disturb the patterns of drug traffic was worth an explosion, then a retreat. And everyone knew that official unemployment levels were above 20, sometimes up to 40 percent in the poorest areas.
Now it's better to go all the way, to push the violence as far as your body can stand it, to rival with your neighboring towns and with the distant urban regions to see who can destroy more, who can shock more, who can burn more, who can have more crazy dangerous fun - it's the last chance to pierce through the scorn and oblivion. I am sure this is the way the rioters feel and I sure don't blame them.
Now we've heard what the response will be. The right-wing government has announced four points, or that's what I got out of Villepin's grotesque chat on the television:
1. Repression, a curfew, the restoring of order at all costs.
2. The resumption of the budgets that they cut for associations and schools.
3. The pursuit of their longer-term project of destroying the old, decayed 1950s and 60s housing, and replacing it with more livable construction.
And finally, 4. An attempt to apply their fancy new workfare programs (contracts, training sessions,or internships for some 50 thousand people within 3 months were the promises).
No one will miss the historical irony: the emergency powers on which the curfew is based come from a 1955 law that was drafted for application in the colony of Algeria.
What the state needs to do is rebuild the housing, to add on the sporting, cultural and leisure facilities that never existed for the poor quarters, to double the education budgets, to institute affirmative action laws and ensure the
employment of an entire generation, to set up co-development programs that can follow the remittance money back to all the places that the contemporary European labor force comes from in Africa and the Middle East, and above all, to open the ranks of society - positions in business, civil service and political representation - to all those French people whose ancestors aren't the Gauls. But for 30 years the state has claimed it can't do these things, because of the crisis, because of Maastricht, because of neoliberalism.
What's happening in France is a powerful and shocking event because it has extended spontaneously across the country and no one yet knows when it will stop.
What's more, it's so obviously justified, even if people in the suburbs are in agony for the loss of their peace of mind, their vehicles, their markets and schools. But the right and the neofascists can turn these events into an
excuse for a deeply repressive society, they can play the clash of civilizations to the hilt. A lot depends on what happens in the next few nights, whether a paroxysm results in more deaths. Whatever happens, the shock will be inscribed in the future of this country. It's a turning point.
So far I've heard no one mention that the transformer where the two kids from Clichy-sous-Bois got electrocuted while trying to hide from the police has just been privatized, along with the entire public electricity system. You see an
idiotic ad with a brainless young middle-class couple bushing over the beauty of a stainless-steel windmill, a dam or a nuclear reactor that they're about to own shares in. When just yesterday everyone owned it - it was a public
service. As if that did us a lot of good.
blocks;
to the incredible modernist housing projects around Bobigny, so tall and forbidding and clean. But the shoddy decaying estates where the cars burn and the stones fly and the kids stand off against the police are further out, you have to
go specially by bus, people look at you and wonder what you're there for, that was not my intention. Instead, just the need to remember what's beyond the ring road, at walking distance, the other world of the class-divide inscribed in
the urban geography.
Now that the children and grandchildren of the immigrants who built the postwar prosperity of France have spoken the only language that the elites can hear - the language of fire and bricks - what's gonna happen next?
Tonight is the 12th night of this collective speech. For years I thought something like Watts was coming to this country. This is it, but without all the guns. Maybe they'll appear next time, when it's organized. For now, the wild
improvisation of stones and molotov cocktails and roving confrontations with the cops is the only thing these young people could do. The cars and buses and schools are still
burning as I write. Bagdad is the word on everyone's lips.
In a wierd way, many of them - to judge from the interviews - still seem to believe some change for the better is possible. But the situation has been the same for at least 15 years, just getting worse as long as I've lived here. The
socialists made feeble attempts to reverse the trends in the late nineties; it was always cosmetic, then the right came and exchanged its own ineffective programs for the earlier ones. But its programs mostly wore uniforms, and the sight of Africans and Arabs (as those of North African or Middle Eastern origins are called here) getting IDed for no other reason but the color of their skin has been the typical panorama on the street for years now. Sometimes kids get killed in the scuffle. And even if you didn't hear about it, there's always a riot.
It was common knowledge that areas of certain estates had become off limits to outsiders, especially at night; if you listened, you found out that isolated eruptions were longer, more intense than the media let us imagine. Some said that
any attempt to disturb the patterns of drug traffic was worth an explosion, then a retreat. And everyone knew that official unemployment levels were above 20, sometimes up to 40 percent in the poorest areas.
Now it's better to go all the way, to push the violence as far as your body can stand it, to rival with your neighboring towns and with the distant urban regions to see who can destroy more, who can shock more, who can burn more, who can have more crazy dangerous fun - it's the last chance to pierce through the scorn and oblivion. I am sure this is the way the rioters feel and I sure don't blame them.
Now we've heard what the response will be. The right-wing government has announced four points, or that's what I got out of Villepin's grotesque chat on the television:
1. Repression, a curfew, the restoring of order at all costs.
2. The resumption of the budgets that they cut for associations and schools.
3. The pursuit of their longer-term project of destroying the old, decayed 1950s and 60s housing, and replacing it with more livable construction.
And finally, 4. An attempt to apply their fancy new workfare programs (contracts, training sessions,or internships for some 50 thousand people within 3 months were the promises).
No one will miss the historical irony: the emergency powers on which the curfew is based come from a 1955 law that was drafted for application in the colony of Algeria.
What the state needs to do is rebuild the housing, to add on the sporting, cultural and leisure facilities that never existed for the poor quarters, to double the education budgets, to institute affirmative action laws and ensure the
employment of an entire generation, to set up co-development programs that can follow the remittance money back to all the places that the contemporary European labor force comes from in Africa and the Middle East, and above all, to open the ranks of society - positions in business, civil service and political representation - to all those French people whose ancestors aren't the Gauls. But for 30 years the state has claimed it can't do these things, because of the crisis, because of Maastricht, because of neoliberalism.
What's happening in France is a powerful and shocking event because it has extended spontaneously across the country and no one yet knows when it will stop.
What's more, it's so obviously justified, even if people in the suburbs are in agony for the loss of their peace of mind, their vehicles, their markets and schools. But the right and the neofascists can turn these events into an
excuse for a deeply repressive society, they can play the clash of civilizations to the hilt. A lot depends on what happens in the next few nights, whether a paroxysm results in more deaths. Whatever happens, the shock will be inscribed in the future of this country. It's a turning point.
So far I've heard no one mention that the transformer where the two kids from Clichy-sous-Bois got electrocuted while trying to hide from the police has just been privatized, along with the entire public electricity system. You see an
idiotic ad with a brainless young middle-class couple bushing over the beauty of a stainless-steel windmill, a dam or a nuclear reactor that they're about to own shares in. When just yesterday everyone owned it - it was a public
service. As if that did us a lot of good.
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