The French are mobilizing to support their mayors in the face of violence

All over France they organized this Monday demonstrations in response to the call of the president of the Association of Mayors, David Lisnard, who the day before called for “citizen mobilization” p.Condemn the violence suffered by councillors since the beginning of the riots caused by the death of a minor who was shot by a policeman.

It was a specific condemnation of the attack suffered by the family of the mayor of L’Hay-les-Roses, Vincent Jeanbrun, who was attacked while he was in the town hall to prevent the looting of the building. A woman with two children had to flee the house when she saw that some strangers threw a burning car, and she was injured, as well as one of the children.

“I would never have imagined this,” Vincent Jeanbrun told a large group of leaders of his party, Los Republicanos, and residents of the city. “They attack democracy, all its symbols: their representatives, teachers, police, emergency services… everyone is in the crosshairs every day, and the police no longer enter some neighborhoods. It can’t be like this anymore.” “I don’t think they attacked me personally,” the mayor confided to us after the ceremony, “but they are attacking a symbol, because the drama is that these people are not recognized within the Republic.”

In Paris, Elsa, of French-Italian descent, wanted to attend the protests to support a group of mayors. For her, the unrest that France is experiencing these days has an explanation. “We’ve allowed immigration from North Africa and sub-Saharan countries to come in, including some who don’t want to integrate,” he said, insisting he was not being classified as far-right. For Arlette, who came with two friends, it is now “more than necessary” to support the French Republic in this situation, which she considers “shameful and unacceptable”, although she understands the first outbursts of violence “when a policeman killed a young man, I agree”, the rest she does not understand : “No, stop all this violence, this robbery”. Michel, for his part, complains that most of the attackers are “very young Frenchmen, who were only interested in breaking up for the sake of breaking up, without even evoking the fate of the poor killed Nahel”, and considers it “shameful that they are bad parents and the guardians take care of them”.

macron call

Vincent Jeanbrun received a call from Emmanuel Macron who expressed his “confidence” and “support” and promised to “build solutions together”, according to the Élysée. The French president wants the government to maintain a high level of pressure on the ground, with a heavy presence of law enforcement forces, 45,000 agents, despite the fact that the unrest has subsided since Sunday evening.

At the same time, he wants to “begin detailed and long-term work to understand” the reasons behind this outbreak of violence. Many voices reproach Macron for having in his hands a valuable report that he himself ordered from the former minister of urban planning Jean-Louis Borloo, and which has remained forgotten in a drawer since 2018. This is why the leader of the Green Senators, Guillaume Gontard, responded “Analysis time is over.” «[Ahora] we need action”He said.

Quarters where social discontent boils

Maria Rego

The postal code in France carries a lot of weight. Growing up in the center of Paris, Lyon or Toulouse is not the same as growing up in theirs banlieues, in those impersonal neighborhoods built in the suburbs of big cities where rates of unemployment, child poverty or abstinence skyrocket on every election date. And from violence. The death of young Nahel a week ago in Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris, has reignited these vulnerable areas which, according to France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee), account for about 5.2 million people in the country, 8% of its total population.

The banlieues They began to grow in the sixties, with Charles de Gaulle at the head of France, on the outskirts of large cities, for example, in old industrial zones. With no interest in tweaking its aesthetics, with huge beehive-shaped concrete blocks to make the most of every square meter, the idea is to house the workers. Today, they are primarily home to immigrants (especially Maghreb and Africans). 23.6% of its neighbors were born in other countries, while in other regions that percentage drops to 10.3%. In the Seine-Saint-Denis department, on the outskirts of Paris, many of these neighborhoods are concentrated and 30.9% of the census population is of non-French origin.

There, they know very well what it is like when protests, fire and looting destroy their streets. In 2005, they endured three weeks of uncontrolled rioting after two teenagers were electrocuted inside a substation in Clichy-sous-Bois where they were hiding from the police. The youngest also organized riots in some suburbs, which cause numerous problems every day, including racial ones. The French ombudsman warns that agents are 20 times more likely to check on a child who is perceived as Arab or black.

Ten years ago, the French government counted some 1,514 “priority districts for urban policy” and has since made efforts to restore them, with €12,000 million invested by the National Agency for Urban Renewal between 2004 and 2020. In some 600 of in these poor neighborhoods, for example, dilapidated high-rises – high-rise buildings, with dozens of apartments per floor – were torn down and replaced by buildings with fewer floors and more pleasant designs. The intention of the Executive is to allocate another 12,000 million by 2030 so that residents banlieues Get out of your social hole. The challenge seems complicated when you consider that now, Insee calculated, 43.3% of residents in the most vulnerable neighborhoods progressed below the poverty line — three times more than in the rest of the country (14.5%) — and its unemployment rate (18 .6%) doubles the national average (8%).

In these areas, which hardly have places for rest or green corners with any function other than to serve as an architectural barrier to the other side of the city, about 13,770 euros per year enters the household, while the average income in the cities of its surroundings reaches 21,730 euros. . More than half of the children (56.9%) growing up in banlieuesand who in many cases represent the most radicalized social dissatisfaction when they reach adolescence, live in poverty (the average of large cities in France is about 21%).

Disconnection banlieues with the cities surrounding them is visible even when voting. In the presidential election in which Emmanuel Macron won for the first time in 2017, 48% of voters living in these depressed areas of France stayed at home or did not appear on the electoral rolls at all.