Paris bulletin 8 2008

 
 

The poet Aimé Césaire died on Thursday, aged 94. Not one to miss an opportunity for quick trip à l’étranger with a press pack in attendance, Nicolas Sarkozy will be packing his suitcase for the funeral even as I write. That’s the same Nicolas Sarkozy whom Césaire refused to meet because of his stance on France’s colonial record. Whether the French Republic brings his ashes back to sit in the Panthéon or not (and there are plenty who think he’d rather stay on la Martinique, his much-loved home), Césaire’s going to join the likes of Martin Luther King – a black man who will be honoured, sanctified even, now he’s safely dead, for his noble vision of our shared humanity. No doubt his books will sell in thousands for the next few weeks.

I’m leaving France soon and leaving a country I feel is ill at ease with itself, ill at ease with the choice it made about this president and now more and more dissatisfied with the direction of the réformes he and his battalions are about to introduce; deeply divided about what position to take in the face of the global challenges of hunger, oppression and runaway capitalistic speculation which has now turned its greedy eye on ‘les matières premières’ (the commodities market) as a better way of making money out of nothing than the US housing market.

There’s been dismay and disbelief at the result of the Italian election and the re-emergence of the corrupt and venial Berlusconi but the French know it’s not by chance that the first person Berlusconi called when he knew he’d won was his mate Sarko, ‘qui partage le même goût du bling-bling’. 

So, whether it’s the thousands of lycéens who’ve been trooping up and down the Paris streets with their banners and slogans these past few weeks, or the hardy souls who shinned up the Tour Eiffel and Notre Dame to hang up pro-Tibetan flags when the Olympic flame came through Paris, or the rising tide of health professionals who’ve not yet taken to the streets (but just watch this space – it’ll happen sometime later this year), or the other large groups of workers who’ve heard that ‘suppression de postes’ is heading their way too, the French are stirring again, letting their political masters know they’re not happy, using the only tool they have, direct action and withdrawing their labour one way or another.

Protest is everywhere. I went down to watch a ‘slam poetry’ session in the courtyard of the Louvre yesterday evening. Rain threatening (came on like a water cannon after a while) but undeterred, lots of young men and a few women jumping about excitedly, spraying the crowd with their anti-authority invective and revolutionary fervour.

 

 

 

 

And when I got off the 48 bus I saw a large crowd gathered in silence under a banner, near the Palais Royal: ‘cercle de silence pour témoigner de notre solidarité avec les sans-papiers licenciés par décret du gouvernement. Venez nous joindre.’ (silent gathering to demonstrate our support for the illegal immigrants who have been dismissed from their jobs by government directive. Come and join us.’)

The government’s misjudged this one too – the restaurant and hotel trades and others like them where the wages are low and the hours are long, are up in arms about losing some of their most dependable workers. The French state has taxed these unofficial workers for years without ever regularising their status as long-term residents and now the bosses have been told ‘get rid of them or take the consequences’.

Cercles de silence and manifestations dans les rues – it looks to me as though the fight’s only just begun.