WE SHOULD LEARN FROM FRANCE

Excerpt from a letter received from a new volunteer and supporter with the World Can't Wait - Drive Out The Bush Regime:

"You know you should be on the streets, and yet you are not"

I travel a lot in France these days, and for a long time I was irritated by the anti-Americanism when it was blindly directed toward me. After all, I thought, French people read the paper enough to know that least 50% of our population opposes Bush, the war, and so on. Then, at one point, over a beer at a highway gas station bar, an older French man said to me the following (and it's all the more compelling after the news of the repeal of the youth labor law):"We're not upset with you because we think you support Bush," he told me. "In fact, we know that most of the Americans that come to France, in particular, don't support him.

The point is, if this were happening in France, the vast majority of our students would be out in the streets protesting. Because we believe in political protest, and you don't. That's why you're such a dangerous country in the hands of Bush -- public opinion doesn't matter in your country, because you don't have the power of protest as a check against your President. Every time we see a picture of your city streets with the protesters missing, we blame America not for its idiots that support Bush. Every country has its idiots. Rather, the fact that Bush is still in office is the fault of you--" (he pointed his finger at me) "--you who know that you should be on the streets, and yet you are not."

http://worldcantwait.net/index.php?...=1367&Itemid=61

I have been following the CPE issue in France last month.

The French government, within the context of its stubborn and corporate-driven attempt to dismantle the rightly envied social rights of its people, has tried to push through a new youth job contract that would allow employers to fire or layoff workers under 26 years old who have been with the company less than two years, without any other justification than their interests, oops, sorry, I meant the common good.

Unsuccessfully.

:-)

The French KICK ASS. They buried the European Constitution, and now they killed that thing. THEY can make themselves heard. Hey, it's been two months. TWO MONTHS OF STRUGGLE AND STRIKES !

The American media did their best to discredit the protests. Talks of riots, of terrible unemployment rates, of nasty unions, any lie, anything - to make you think that one is SO MUCH BETTER OFF WITHOUT PRIDE AND FREEDOM.

The funny part is that I didn't believe them either when they said that the protesters were blockading the classes and blocking bus depots and I was asked whether I commended that too. Well, it was true !

Let's chill, anyway. This was not the Apocalypse. This was determination. First, blocking is a language. It's an elementary way of saying no. If you just nicely carry a "NO TO THE CPE" sign and nicely step aside for everything to go on just like nothing special is happening, nobody will read your sign, and nobody will understand that its meaning is basically that something special is happening, precisely. That's a first meaning. A second meaning is that stopping a bus is enacting the stopping of the law you want to oust. It's not violence. It's a symbol.

In a country of free men where strikes still mean something, solidarity must prevail over individual freedom during the action, if the action is to succeed. Strikebreakers invariably break unity, castrate the action, have a bad influence on te undecided, give a bad image, are exploited that the media and often hurt not only the cause but the activists involved by resulting in their shunning.

Therefore :

1 - Action works. Mass protests work. With this culture, values and means, the students have WON. WON, understand ? WON, as in "BUSH WON".

2 - There is no relation between blockading classes and blocking depots and burning cars. NO RELATION,, understand ? NO RELATION, as in "NO RELATION BETWEEN POLITICAL DETERMINATION AND RANDOM VIOLENCE", and as in "NO RELATION BETWEEN POLITICAL PROTESTS AND RANDOM DESPAIR".

What was the question again ? If I commend blockading classes ? Well, I would, 100 %, if it only could happen here.