Youth of France: still angry, still protesting

The youth in the working-class suburbs of France made their anger felt last year after Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré were electrocuted trying to escape the cops in Clichy-sous-Bois. Thousands protested night after night for nearly two months.

As the anniversary of the electrocution drew near, Nicolas Sarkozy, minister of the interior who is in charge of the national cops in France, moved 4,000 reinforcements to the area around Clichy-sous-Bois and other hot spots.

Last year a main tactic of the protests was burning cars, trucks, buses, trash compactors, cop substations, banks and other government institutions and then fighting with the cops who came to protect the firefighters.

Most of the protesters were the sons and daughters, or grandsons and granddaughters, of immigrants from former French colonies in Africa, although they themselves were born in France. Just over half arrested last year had never been arrested before.

The protests shook the foundations of the French state and exposed its pretensions to equality and social justice. The prime minister at the time was fired, and a new government, promising major changes, took office.

To prepare for the anniversary of the protests, the Association for Liberty, Equality, Fraternity Together United (ACLEFEU, which is French slang for “Enough Burning”), based in Clichy-sous-Bois, spent the summer visiting 120 French cities and towns and collected 20,000 grievances. Last year, the complaint that the bourgeois media and parties lodged against the protests was that they had no concrete demands.

This procedure is what the republican opponents of King Louis XVI in the third estate did in 1789, when he asked them for their grievances. ACLEFEU made it clear in its summary of the grievances that it was following the model of the 1789 French republicans, in taking the suffering of the people to the elites.

On Oct. 26 ACLEFEU marched on the French parliament with its grievances in hand. They had 114 propositions, broken down into 12 chapters on jobs, discrimination, housing, the conduct of the cops and the courts. The police only let a handful of the protesters through to deliver their “books of grievances.”

Rafika, a young Arab who lives in Clichy-sous-Bois and is a member of the ACLEFEU collective, told the local and national media who were covering the event: “The two youth who died were the drop of water that overflowed the cup. I do not excuse the reaction of the youth during the riots, but I am 8,000 percent in agreement with them.”

ACLEFEU intends to keep the pressure on and conduct another survey next year.

On the anniversary itself, Oct. 27, another youth organization from Clichy-sous-Bois—Beyond Words (Au-delà des mots)—organized a silent march through Clichy-sous-Bois behind a banner that read “Zyed-Bouna dead for nothing.” Their families followed the banner. The march started a little after 10 a.m. and ended at City Hall, where a memorial was dedicated.

Later there were speeches, music, videos and African dancing to commemorate these two youths. The families’ lawyers spoke on the progress of the investigation of police complicity in their deaths.

Both before and after the anniversary, small groups of youths in the Paris suburbs burned cars and at least five buses.

E-mail: gdunkel@workers.org