WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #341 - Policy, Urban revolts: Working-class neighborhoods take center stage (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The revolt of working-class youth at the end of June forces us to think

about the experiences of domination in working-class neighborhoods as a
global question. A demanding and ambitious campaign must be led to
demand justice for working-class neighborhoods and not leave young
people isolated.

The death of Nahel Merzouk on June 27, killed at point blank range by a
police officer, provoked a week of revolts in working-class
neighborhoods which spread across the country from the second evening.
On Thursday June 29, the white march organized in Nanterre by Nahel's
mother and relatives was violently repressed and the night from Thursday
to Friday will be the strongest of the revolt.

In the following weeks, the annual march for Adama Traoré in
Beaumont-sur-Oise will be banned as will rallies in Paris. While the
young people's fed-up exploded spontaneously and they are accused of
committing violent acts, presumed to be non-political, at the same time
peaceful expressions and mobilizations of the Truth and Justice
committees are prohibited... a good example of state hypocrisy   !
Political and police responses will be authorized in an anthology of
racist remarks and depoliticization of the revolt. While the demand for
the abolition of the license to kill voted for by Cazeneuve in 2017 was
an obvious response, the government will do everything to move away from
the question of the murder of Nahel and to focus on the looting which "
would no longer have anything to do with his death  ”  : we should not
make the link between looting and inflation for example, when many
essential businesses have been looted.

The ghetto system
But here, police violence and inflation go hand in hand. The revolt
forces working-class neighborhoods to be put back in the spotlight as a
reality with its unity of articulated oppressions. These oppressions are
too often approached in their fragmentations: social/capitalist question
on one side, racial/colonial question on the other, distinguishing
exploitation, unemployment, housing often treated separately, and not
linked to racist and sexist discrimination. In reality, the social ills
of working-class neighborhoods and the different dominations cannot be
separated, and therefore neither can the demands.

The situation in our neighborhoods is neither exceptional nor
accidental: everywhere in the world the dominant classes wage war on the
discriminated urban proletariats and reserve for them a regime of
colonial management and controlled abandonment. On the menu:
unemployment, discrimination and impoverishment. These populations are
assigned to precarious work, creating the conditions for the evils of
poverty (survival and illegal getting by, etc.) and then reproaching
them for it, repressing them and incarcerating them... for the greater
profit of the capitalist exploiters (see for example The economy of
private prisons in the USA   [ 1 ] .

This is the ghetto system. In France this translates into neighborhoods
where non-owners are found: populations of working-class origins, often
immigrants or from colonization, many single mothers, suffering daily
humiliations, discrimination at work, in education, in housing,
health... This process of impoverishment / precariousness /
discrimination forms a system and benefits the bourgeoisie: class
reproduction, strangled population subjected to poor working conditions
and low wages (precarious contracts, temporary work, subcontracting ).
The suburbs are the neoliberal laboratories before generalization:
yesterday the free zones, youth jobs and subsidized contracts (the CPE
had been a humiliating response to the revolts of 2005), today the
uberization of which Macron championed, and which he sold as a solution
to unemployment. The bourgeoisie, through its class separatism, has
ghettoized the suburbs, the better to " reconquer  ” then through
gentrification and “  police cleansing  ”   [ 2 ] .

We are not dealing here with accidents and involuntary abandonments, but
with a system caused by a racist state and economic regime which would
not hold up without the ideological support which justifies unequal and
police treatment (Islamophobia, recently the stigmatization of “  social
welfare profiteers whom they would send to the country  ”…)


What is the value of the words of a local youth compared to those of a
cop in the eyes of the racist state  ? Let's film them. Nanterre, on
June 29 during the white march in tribute to Nahel.
Patrice Leclerc
 From 2005 to today, developments
But this particularity of the neighborhoods must be linked to general
social protest, such as the retirement movement where many workers from
working-class neighborhoods have mobilized. This moment of strong
mobilization of several layers of society was also a moment of explosion
in the face of the social distress of the moment, just like the yellow
vests in 2018, whose repression forced us to face police violence.

In the spring with the repression of the retirement demonstrations and
Sainte Soline, this question re-imposed itself, with the demand for the
dissolution of the BRAVM. Macronie, which has suffered a significant
number of social movements since 2017 from several different layers of
society, is afraid that all of them will converge. It therefore
represses with all its might. Things have changed since the revolts of
2005, which saw mobilizations in working-class neighborhoods renew and
diversify after that date. The numerous and organized Truth and Justice
committees have pierced the wall of silence through the mobilizations of
different collectives (Lamine Dieng, UNPA, Adama committee, etc.). They
challenged a left and struggle organizations which themselves
experienced generational renewal (the CPE generation was contemporary
with the revolts of 2005, 20 years later it is today leader of the
struggle and sensitive to these questions). As a result, the revolt was
not isolated as in 2005: let us cite, for example, the arrival of Sophie
Binet in Nanterre the day after Nahel's death.

All this constitutes a victory that the government fears. If the
Separatism Law had somewhat weakened the anti-racist movement in recent
years, the revolt caused a surge to which the social movement responded.
An appeal signed by various unions, associations and political
organizations was made public very quickly “  Our country is in mourning
  ”   [ 3 ] which will call for demonstrations in the following days. A
date for a united march is already planned for the start of the school
year, September 23   [ 4 ]. It is a question of perpetuating this start
from the start of the school year, of putting it into place over time
and of making it a vector of mass struggles against injustices in these
neighborhoods. Struggles in working-class neighborhoods have also always
existed, the equality marches of the 1980s (the 40th anniversary of
which will be celebrated in the fall, and which will be an important
event) or the initiatives of the MIB (Movement of the immigration and
the suburbs)   [ 5 ] which launched the “  Justice in the suburbs  ”
campaign. We must now build a new mass mobilization.

We demand justice in the suburbs
The libertarian movement must take its full place in future
mobilizations where the diversity of tactics must be an asset. We will
have to encourage convergence and self-organization, and prevent
militant pitfalls capable of creating new divisions, resentment and
disillusionment: neither replace each other, nor abandon. As
libertarians, we must also bring forward our own demands and analyses.
After 2005, certain demands were imposed on us   [ 6 ], still relevant
today, our democratic and self-managing demands must take on greater
political depth to counter the hegemony of the fascist theory of the
great replacement: offensively calling into question the nation-state,
its assimilationist republic and its authoritarian secularism and
identity, through the affirmation, recognition and dignity of the people
of the suburbs as they are: popular, multicultural, creolized, on the
move, with diverse histories (worker, migratory, colonial, struggles)
assert their right to freedom of expression and cultural hybridity   !

We must affirm the right to take full control of the inhabitants of
working-class neighborhoods over all decisions that concern their lives:
the right to health and good living conditions far from pollution, to
food sovereignty, the right has public services under the control of
residents and self-managed by them   ! Radical oppression demands
radical responses.

Nicolas Pasadena (UCL Montreuil)

To validate

[ 1 ]  Angela Davis, A struggle without truce , La Fabrique editions, 2016.

[ 2 ]  Increased repression often accompanies renovation/gentrification
plans, see Mathieu Rigouste, Police domination, industrial violence , La
Fabrique, Paris, 2012, 257 pages.

[ 3 ]  “ Our country is in mourning and angry ”, on the Solidaires
website, solidaires.org .

[ 4 ]  August 1  , 2023, “ Call for the united march of September 23 “
For the end of systemic racism, police violence, for social justice and
public freedoms ” ”, on the Solidaires website, solidaires.org.

[ 5 ]  MIB, Immigration and suburbs movement, active in the 1990s-2000s

[ 6 ]  “ Working neighborhoods: five years after the revolts, what has
changed ? », Alternative libertaire , n° 201, December 2010.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Revoltes-urbaines-Les-quartiers-populaires-sur-le-devant-de-la-scene
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