France:
Right wing Interior Minister Sarkozy insults youth on estates
‘Sarkozy: We’ve had enough! No to repression! No to racism!’
On 27 October, two young people from Clichy, one 15 year old and one
17 year old, were electrocuted and died after fleeing into an
electricity sub-station. They were on their way home after a football
game but ran into a police identity control.
Like so many have witnessed before, this is one of the only ‘rights’
you have when you live in one of the poorest neighbourhoods: identity
checks when the police come to where you live.
This drama took place just when Interior Minster Sarkozy intensified
a campaign of insults against the young people who live in these
estates, calling them names like "scum", "rabble"
and appealing for the estates to "be cleaned with a Kärcher"
(a high powered hose).
That the majority of the events [riots] over the last few days took
place in impoverished estates, like Seine-Saint-Denis, Yvelinnes etc) is
not a coincidence.
Sarkozy and Villepin [French Prime Minister] have abandoned
these places and increased racist and discriminatory measures.
They are responsible for the high level of unemployment, for the lack
of decent housing, for the closure of local post offices or local bus
routes, for the ever increasing cost of living. The anger the
inhabitants of these districts feel is normal and justified. It is anger
against the system that creates misery, exclusion and violence.
What Sarkozy and Villepin want is a society where the rich and the
bosses can continue to conspire to fill their coffers, while the workers
and youth slave to survive. It is precisely to seek acceptance of their
ultra-liberal policies that they [the government] implement anti-youth,
racist and repressive policies.
Their aim it to divide us and in doing so be able to exploit us more.
Against Chirac-Villepin-Sarkozy: Youth, workers, unemployed, French
or immigrants, men or women, all together!
But workers and inhabitants of the poorest neighbourhoods cannot be
targets of the violence. They are just as much victims of this system
and the policies of the government.
The same goes for the fire fighters or emergency services staff.
It is not by burning cars and workplaces that an efficient fight
against the Sarkozy government and the police force is possible.
This will reinforce racist and reactionary ideas. This will be used a
pretext by the government to increase repression.
The real responsibility lies with the government and the system this
government defends. To confront this we need a collective and organised
response.
It is the task of the inhabitants of the poor boroughs to organise
themselves with a view to re-establish calm, organising borough
meetings, where everyone can express themselves [and] by organising
demonstrations against the provocations of the police.
Organising to change the system
What we need is real employment, decent housing and free and good
public services. Evidently this is not the policy of the present
government.
They are privatising our public services, they send in the CRS (riot
police) against the inhabitants of neighbourhoods or against striking
workers to defend the profits of the bosses.
These are the policies of capitalism, a system that obeys only one
law – the law of profit.
When the government has succeeded to implementing its policies it is
only because the collective struggle of the workers has not been big and
determined enough. We have to take to the streets to show that those who
oppose these policies are more numerous.
We need a party of struggle. A party for workers and youth that would
allow us to launch an effective struggle against capitalism, against the
misery, racism and exclusion capitalism brings.
Gauche révolutionnaire (CWI) fights for the construction of such a
party.
We fight to end capitalism and replace it with genuine socialism: a
society where the economy will be under democratic control of workers to
satisfy the needs of everyone and not the profits of a few.
Chirac-Villepin-Sarkozy: We’ve have had enough!
We demand:
- CRS out of the neighbourhoods
- No to racism and discrimination
- For real jobs, decent housing, and free and adequate public
services for everyone
