Re: [Marxism] riots in france

[Greg Dunkel <gdunkel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

kersplebedeb wrote:

> for what it's worth, i have been translating various pieces from
> left-wing perspectives from French to English about the past eight
> nights' rioting in France. you can see it on my blog at
> http://sketchythoughts.blogspot.com/

They are still going on and are a major challenge to the French
government.  I though list members would like to see a sampling of the
French Communist Party, Ligue Communiste Révolutionaire and Lutte
Ouvrière positions on these events.  The PCF has a daily paper,
L'Humanité, so it has said more.  I was surprised by the scantness of
the LCR and LO statements.

The translations are my own, and I am enclosing the URL where the
original French can be found. I aimed for capturing the meaning rather
than being totally literal.  The order I put them in is alphabetical.

/greg

LIGUE COMMUNISTE REVOLUTIONNAIRE

http://www.lcr-rouge.org
Hunt for the youth ...

At Clich-sous-bois, some youth fleeing a police road block went into an
electric substation.  Two of them died.  Angered by this tragedy, for a
number of following nights, some youth confronted the "Blues"dispatched
in great number to this city in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis.
Other youth, in the hundreds, accompanied by a number of their nighbors
and local officials, had impressive demonstrations of force and dignity,
which rendered homage to their comarades, victims of a law and order as
injust as it is violent.

This is where the politics of Villepin [French prime minister] and
Sarkozy lead.  Mass unemployment and lack of economic security feed a
growing misery.  Ghettoization combined with unsufferable
discrimination, dismantling public schools and the checks in education
which this engenders, the evacuation of nearby social services, all this
is what a great part of the people of this country face daily.
Simultaneously, they see parliament lowering the taxes on the wealthy
and removing them from dividends.  Every day the police act more
hatefully and violently, the logical complement of this policy which is
exhibited without shame.  Racism spreads its poison, encouraged by the
words of an interior minister [Sarkozy], who wants to criminalized all
youth, insulting them by treating them as "scum" and "gangrene."

============

http://www.lutte-ouvriere-journal.org/article.php?LO=1944&ARTICLE=1

LUTTE OUVRIERE    dernière mise à jour le 3 novembre 2005 à 18:09

*Editorial*     * Lutte Ouvrière n°1944 du 4 novembre 2005 *

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who is responsable for the violence in working class communities
------------------------------------------------------------------------

For several days, after the death of two youth electrocuted while trying
to flee the police, the city of Clichy-sous-Bois was the scene, each
night of confrontations between the police and hundreds of youth of a
working class neighborhood. The confrontations spread to sveral other
spots around Paris.

While Clichy-sous-Bois is a Paris suburb, the violence could have
exploded in the suburbs of Lyons, Strasbourg, Lille or elsewhere, for
the same reasons.

Of course, the principal victims of this violence are the people living
in these suburbs.  The cars which burn are not the cars of billionairs
or ministers, but those of workers who live in these areas.  That is
why, when the youth attack the firefighter as representatives of
authority, they do not show a very great consciousness.

====================

http://www.humanite.presse.fr/popup_print.php3?id_article=817249



Journal l'Humanité
Rubrique Société
</journal/rubriques/3/societe/>Article paru dans l'édition du 4 novembre
2005.
Parti communiste français : « Enough provocations and irresponsability  ! »

Serious developments are happening in the working class areas of some
cities in France, the PCF declared Nov. 3, particularly around Paris:
cars and public buildings burned, attacks on firefighters, vandalism,
confrontations with the police, use of Flash Balls and tear gas ... even
a mosque was attacked.  The immense majority of womens, men and youth in
these areas, starting with those that are in the most difficult
situations, are the first victims of this intolerable violence.

This explosion was detonated by the irresponsible politics of the
interior minister [Nicolas Sarkozy], inspired by his petty politics and
personal ambition. Ruining years of efforts of local elected officials
and community groups, Sarkozy has not missed any opportunity, as a
representative of France, to stigmatise all the people who live in these
areas.  He uses their own suffering -- from the death of a child several
months ago to that of two youths a few days ago -- to draw an odious
connection between the women, men and families in the worst difficulties
to criminals which he has shown himself incapable of confronting.
Stigmatised, humiliated, discriminated, some youth -- a small number --
have become hostages to this logic of confrontation, in which they
believe, wrongly, able to express their anger, their revolt and their
dispair.



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