Thanksgiving Day 2020 seems like a suitable date on which to knock out the first Paris bulletin for a long time. The sun is shining out of a clear blue sky and Macron has just announced that the lockdown (‘confinement’) regulations are to be gradually – very gradually for students – loosened, starting from this weekend. Perhaps as ovens are switched on and Thanksgiving dinners are prepared by thousands of ex-pat Americans living here, there are, after all, reasons for other nationalities also to be grateful, to give thanks.
Sadly I would say that gratitude is not the dominant mood however, or not in Paris where residents don’t only have to cope with the virus, but also the government’s policies of exclusion and harassment of migrants and refugees. It is another klnd of virus, also continuing unabated. As ever, the police are right at the forefront of the action.
The violent dismantling of the tent city on the place de la République this week showed once again the gulf between the rhetoric – ‘la France, pays des droits de l’homme’ – and the reality. This was a full-scale assault on homeless human beings who had already been viciously ejected from another temporary camp at Porte de la Chapelle. As one of the many supporting protesters put it – ‘They don’t want them to move somewhere else. They want them not to exist’, which in a country still not at peace with its past conflicts, colonial and other, has, or should have, terrifying echoes. A massive demo is planned for this coming Saturday, going from République to the Bastille, those two traditional sites of citizen protest.
There may not be anything much to be grateful from the government but fortunately at the local level there are things to warm the heart and keep the fabric of community life in reasonable shape. Museums, galleries, cinemas and theatres will all remain shut until mid-December as will bars and cafes. People will still have to carry their individual ‘attestation dérogatoire’when they go out, but where they can go and for how long will be less restrictive than at present.
It is never easy in a bureaucratic state like France for a spontaneous up-swelling of community activity to take root and flourish, but after months of keeping the refugee breakfasts going, amidst a plethora of difficulties and tensions, we can genuinely celebrate the constancy of les petits déjs solidaires. Which leads me to mention that four of our collectif are currently knitting ‘bonnets solidaires’. We are on the look-out for wool that may be cluttering up your drawers and cupboards, wool we could turn into scarves and hats in cheerful colours to keep off the cold winter weather. Email me at ro597@hotmail.co.uk if you have wool to spare.
At present we are supposed to stay within one kilometre of our home address and, keeping strictly to that rule, I have not been into the centre of the city since late October, either on foot, bike or public transport. Various changes have been made to road usage. Bike lanes that were temporary at first have been made permanent and the Mairie has continued to prioritise public transport over cars. Our own rue Marx Dormoy (see below) is following the trend – a wide and protected bike lane down the middle of the street and a bus-only lane (or meant to be), bringing traffic into the city.
Being confined is not completely negative. It has taken me into local streets I might well never have bothered to explore and all of them within much less than one kilometre of my flat. You don’t go looking for the assets of a poor neighbourhood in monuments and grand public spaces or even in the domestic architecture. What you get instead of the harmony of fine buildings is the vitality of improvisation and grass-roots initiatives, whether it’s quirky shops, patches of garden or meeting places.
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| Lavoir Moderne theatre, rue Léon |
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| fabric shop in the Goutte d'or |
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| remembering the deportation of the Esrikman children |
Walls and fences have taken the place of indoor space for exhibitions. We have pedigree goats and sheep along the boulevard de la Chapelle and the work of Korean, Jee Young Lee, on the fence of le Grand Parquet, one of our local theatres.
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| Stage of Mind 1 - Jee Young Lee |
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Stage of Mind 2 - Jee Young Lee |
