Spring in France
September 2016 - France
The following text is an attempt to draw up a non-exhaustive account of the events that took place from March to June 2016 in France , and more particularly in Paris . Its goal is to contribute to reflecting as to project ourselves ( individually and collectively , beyond geographical frontiers ) better prepared in the coming times , with a more battle-hardened view to seize the occasions , open up horizons , to be more conscious about certain limits as to try to overcome them . The different considerations in this text have no ambition whatsoever to express or summarize the points of view of other comrades .
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As many other European States , the French State is undertaking since some years profound restructuring on the juridical , repressive , military , administrative , political and economical field . The development of new technologies , the exponential enlargement of the field where they are applied , the vastness of the new markets they are opening up , is leading to a new economical model . Companies have to be flexible as well in their decisions as in their adaptations to the changes , in the organisation of the production , in the management ( and therefore sacking ) of workers . The State – whose primary role is to maintain social peace – is implementing under the cover of “ modernisation ” or “ solution to the crisis ” a whole set of legislation reforms . The last one in this series , the law El Khomry , renamed “ Loi Travail ”, has not been swallowed in indifference as the many other reforms that preceded it these last years . In the turbulent period that started , a period of slowly slowly abandoning a social State that has ever less to offer , facing this new law proposal , the common sense of a mayor part of the exploited showed them that the modifications in the conditions of exploitation announced in this law are not to be appreciated as a minor evil , but as an even worse . A sufficient pretext to go out in the streets to express a rage that has more to do with a weariness towards this society than with a defence of demands . The quite unconventional turn this “ social movement ” has taken in comparison to others , has foremost to do with the fact that the unions weren ’ t at its initiative , but “ jumped on a moving train ”, that they didn ’ t succeed in including or erecting themselves as representatives of the people in struggle , and that the pulse of this movement is not to be taken during the days of massive strikes or the generals assemblies of student mobilisations in the universities . As a text , coming from Italy and meant to give an overview on what was going on in France rightly pointed out : “ it is not about a social movement , united by a same motive and guided by a political class more or less linked or in competition , but about a contemporary explosion of autonomous forces that are sometimes opposed : disappointed citizens , indignant workers , overwhelmed syndicalists , bored students , layabout troublemakers , neighbourhood gangs , subversives of all kinds … all are coming out in the streets in their own way , uniting or separating or ignoring each other , but in any case confronting everywhere the institutional order . Nobody had been waiting for the sovereign assembly of a movement – social , political or popular – endowed with a legitimate reason decrees that the moment had come for direct action .” A bursting of disordered , although limited , revolts rather than a sharing of common perspectives .
« état d ’ urgence on s ’ en fout , on veut pas d ’ État du tout » ( the state of emergency we don ’ t care , we don ’ t want a State at all )
Beyond what it allow concretely , the state of emergency appeared as an exhortation of the State to obey more than ever its imperatives in the name of the terrorist threat . House searches without the approval of a judge , nightly house raids , individual bans to circulate in neighbourhoods where demonstrations took place after the measures of the state of emergency came into effect . From mid-May on , just before the days of mobilisation , tens of persons were given bans to show up . Then , in June , at each demonstration , hundreds of people received this kind of ban orders . From the first bans to
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