#nahel merzouk protests

[sumarex]

[nando161mando]

System Fail 25: The Urge to Destroy

As humanity recons with a never ending cavalcade of catastrophes, large segments of the population have succumbed to despair or distraction through culture wars or a series of vain cultural phenomena. [Insert Barbenheimer joke here.]

Many youth, particularly in France, have channeled this hopelessness into rage. For the past several months the country had been seeing a series of strikes and riots in response to the raising of the retirement age, and these riots intensified in late June after the police murder of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk during a traffic stop. As the dust settles, inept politicians blame bad parenting and TikTok.

Meanwhile in Peru, protesters from around the country have gathered in Lima calling for the resignation of President Dina Boluarte and the dissolution of congress.

[mariacallous]

In the late 1990s, when I was a New York Times correspondent based in West Africa, international airline connections made passing through Paris a rite of both work and vacation. On one such visit, I received a shock that has stuck with me. As I approached a subway station not far from the Champs-Élysées, out of its stairwell came running two policemen, their guns drawn, as they pursued a young Black man whom they caught up to, badly manhandled, and then hauled away under arrest.

As someone who had grown up in Washington, D.C., and recently moved to Africa from New York City—or simply as someone who had watched U.S. local news broadcasts and grown up consuming his country’s violent small- and large-screen offerings—I had been trained to think that urban scenes such as these were a unique product of my own country.

On subsequent transits through Paris, I was disabused of yet more of my naivete when I began taking trains into the central city instead of taxis. Maybe it was a labor strike that had caused me to do this at first, but the experience so intrigued me that I began making a habit of it. Not even in New York had I felt such a gulf between the popular image of a city and this kind of lived experience of it via public transportation.

For long sections of these rides, the cars were filled with Black and brown people–– overwhelmingly young and, I surmised, overwhelmingly either the children of recent immigrants or immigrants themselves, with France’s former colonies in North and sub-Saharan Africa the most likely places of origin. Before reaching the stylish, urban dreamland exalted in countless romantic Hollywood fantasies and more than a century of novels and travel writing, one must traverse something altogether different and discordant: a huge expanse of what the French rather delicately refer to as banlieues. They needn’t have resorted to the term, though. For many of these places, the old European word “ghetto” would have fit just fine.

Passing through and eventually visiting some of them, I was reminded of other grim cityscapes I have known in other parts of the world. The comparisons are admittedly not perfect, but segregated townships built under South African apartheid came to mind, as did some of the bleaker sections of New York where I had once paid dues as a local reporter, such as the more depressed parts of the Bronx.

As with the notorious infrastructure schemes of the powerful New York master planner of the last century, Robert Moses, which deliberately isolated Black communities and cut them off from areas privileged in terms of race and class and from public amenities such as the city’s beaches, Paris’s banlieues are poorly connected to the city’s transportation system, heightening their economic and social isolation and therefore their misery. For those looking for points of optimism after France’s recent civil disturbances, projects underway or on the books are expected to dramatically increase subway connections for these long-neglected parts of the city.

There is an old saw that holds that history never repeats itself but often rhymes. And it was just such a resonance—and not the recent events in Paris themselves, per se—that has brought France’s capital powerfully to mind for me.

To briefly review those events, though: On June 27, a French teenager of Algerian descent was fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic stop in what amounted to a virtual execution. A video of the incident that was widely shared online shows a police officer shoot 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk at close range through his window as his car pulls away.

Outraged young people, who were disproportionately “of color,” then rose up in protests that lasted for six days and included numerous acts of looting, vandalism, and even violence. This, in turn, drew florid condemnations from broad segments of French society, with many people using racialized language or outright racism to denounce not just the protesters’ behavior, but also the growing presence of minority groups in France and the immigration that helps drive it.

What has intrigued me here is a powerful coincidence of timing—and, as I will explore below, perhaps a deeper connection in terms of history and significance with a major decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. And therein, a paradox arises.

France has long prided itself on its all-but-unique handling of racial diversity. Official policy comes close to pretending that such a thing does not exist and takes this for an unqualified positive. The republic is indivisible, says one often invoked phrase, and in the pursuit of its supposed universalism, France has made it illegal to collect data on the basis of a person’s race.

If it is possible to glimpse some admirable idealism in France’s notion of universalism, it has an insufficiently acknowledged dark side as well. Firstly, it requires a near complete assimilation into the dominant national identity of we might call “Frenchness,” which is overwhelmingly defined and policed by people of one race. This might even be considered one of its main, if unstated, features. In order to function, French universalism requires a charade: pretending to be colorblind.

This colorblindness may help prevent French people from noticing that their television news industry or their cinema, to take two industries, are crushingly white, well beyond the true demographic breakdown of the society. But it does nothing to alleviate the underlying reality that opportunity still correlates strongly to race in the country. The same, for that matter, is true of life in the isolated banlieues, as opposed to the tonier parts of the city. I have little doubt that the same patterns hold in other spheres of society as well, from elite educational institutions to national politics.

France’s readiest and most powerful counterexample is, of course, the United States, which has long served as an almost archetypical national “other” to justify French policies and obtain buy-in from a French public that has been socialized over generations to view the United States both with haughty disdain and as a menace to the French way of life. Any idea of taking race or color into account in forming public policy is dismissed as succumbing to a dangerously corrupting Americanism.

The recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that race-conscious college admissions programs violate the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, however, suggests the French may have little to worry about on this score. The two countries would indeed appear to be converging in favor of the French way: pretending that color doesn’t exist and that race has no place in social policy.

The Supreme Court ruling may have barred the overt consideration of race in college admissions in the United States, but it cannot pretend away the fact that Black students are dramatically underrepresented in higher education in the country, as they have been for generations—a product of actual policy during the United States’ long era of segregation and Jim Crow.

In fact, as the University of Chicago law professor Sonja B. Starr has argued, racial gaps exist across a very wide range of categories in U.S. life, from income and employment rates to maternal mortality and life expectancy to exposure to toxic environmental pollution and incarceration.

The question is: What are wealthy societies such as the United States and France to do about such realities? Overtly taking race into consideration clearly displeases large numbers of people in rich democracies, especially among those who have benefited most from inequality. If governments are not allowed to even weigh the racial facts before them, what realistic hope is there for public policy to redress these problems?

[sataniccapitalist]

2,500 fires started. 2,000 people detained. France's protests by the numbers

[prepmun-naf-24]

A direct Telegram from the Cour des Competes (Supreme Audit Court)

03 September 2024 As much as budgetary abysses are a concern, we have NEW investigation updates on the (already dissolved) 25,678 protestors. While the mobs have died down, the price to pay was immense. For the past 2 days, the germanderie deployed on-site to quash the French mobs have reportedly been displaying "disproportionate aggression, especially towards ethnic minorities". TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT FROM AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN BYSTANDER: "I was just watching the protests,... then the police comes along to beat me incessantly. Not even the French Whites who are rowdy! But me!... It's like the 2023 Nahel Merzouk incident." TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT FROM PARISIAN POLICE CHIEF, LAURENT NUNEZ: "The French police are sworn and bound by the Constitution to uphold secularism and equality regardless. We have exacted action only to those who appear as a threat, to either the police or the peace of France." President Macron makes no comment and awaits your response.

[feckcops]

French climate activists are waging war against water hoarders

“As of 30 June, 42 of France’s 96 mainland départements (administrative divisions) contain at least one area with water restrictions. 15 of these 42 are officially in crisis, meaning water usage is restricted to priority functions: health, civil security, drinking water and sanitation.

“It’s no surprise, then, that French climate groups are escalating their tactics in the fight over water. In August last year during water restrictions in Vosges in eastern France, activists drilled holes in jacuzzis at a holiday resort. Over the winter, others sabotaged artificial snow canons at Clusaz, south-eastern France, while others set up a ZAD (autonomous zone) in the area, citing the winter drought as their motivation. 

“The most contentious of these groups is Les Soulèvements de La Terre, or ‘Earth Uprising’, which is currently waging 100 days of action against ‘water hoarders’ across the country. In response, the French state is cracking down on so-called eco-terrorism – and hard. Earth Uprising’s aim is to ‘take ecologism back to the land’, spokesperson Basile explains to Novara Media. ‘When we talk about climate change, it can feel like something that’s very far away,’ he says. ‘But defending agricultural land, the green spaces where we live, that’s very tangible.’

“In recent months, this rationale has led Earth Uprising to fight against ‘concretisation’, as concrete production is water intensive. In December, the group targeted concrete production firm Lafarge in Bouc-Bel-Air in southern France. 200 activists broke onto the site, attacking equipment with hammers and axes and setting light to vehicles. Notably, Basile explains, Lafarge wasn’t just targeted for its concretisation plans, but for funding Islamic State in Syria.

“Earth Uprising also targets agribusiness, blockading Monsanto sites and attacking megabasins – large, man-made reservoirs which store water for agricultural use, filled by pumping water from the water table in the winter months. In March, 30,000 people descended on a megabasin construction site in Sainte-Soline in western France, sabotaging the pumps. When the police fired grenades and teargas into the crowd, the crowd fought back. 5,000 grenades were used over the course of a few hours, and by the end of the day, hundreds of protesters and dozens of police were injured.

“‘France is the only western democracy where maintaining order involves firing on the crowd with military grade weaponry,’ Basile says. This can be seen from the state response to the gilets jaunes to the recent wave of protests following the killing by police of unarmed 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk.”

[newstodayjournal]

France Funnels Hundreds Arrested in Riots Through Hasty Trials

The clerks were on strike in the Nanterre courthouse, so the accused burglars, homeless thieves and domestic abusers had to wait. It was 5 p.m. by the time Yanis Linize was ushered into the courtroom, a few blocks from the traffic circle where young Nahel Merzouk was shot by a policeman just a week ago, setting off protests across the country. A bike courier from a southern suburb of Paris, Mr.…

[delectablywaywardbeard-blog]

Rivolta in Francia, una 'notte più tranquilla'

   “E’ stata una notte più tranquilla grazie all’azione risoluta delle forze dell’ordine”. Lo ha detto il ministro degli interni francese, Gérald Darmanin, commentando la quinta notte di proteste e violenze urbane che fanno seguito all’uccisione da parte della polizia del giovane Nahel Merzouk a Nanterre, nella banlieue parigina. Scontri sono avvenuti a Parigi, nella zona degli Champs Elysées, a…

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Nicole Narea at Vox:

Widespread protests appeared to ease Wednesday morning in France after police killed a 17-year-old in a Paris suburb last week when he refused to comply with a traffic stop, prompting a national reckoning on racism and excessive force in policing. The victim, who was of Algerian and Moroccan descent, was identified by police as Nahel M. In the wake of his June 27 death, protests broke out across the country, including in the cities of Marseille, Lyon, Pau, Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux, Roubaix, and Nanterre, the Paris suburb where Nahel was reportedly from. They became violent, with protesters throwing stones, bottles, and fireworks at police and setting fire to garbage bins, vehicles, and buildings, including a bank in Nanterre. Some launched fireworks at the home of the mayor of a French suburb, whose wife and one of his children were injured while they attempted to flee.

Police in turn used tear gas to try to disperse the crowds, and some municipalities in France took steps to restrict the use of fireworks and to ban protests. A 27-year-old man died after being hit with the kind of flash-ball projectile that police have used, and that is meant to be nonlethal, though the investigation into his death is ongoing. The French government has even weighed restricting social media to prevent further incitement of violence. Overnight arrests Wednesday totaled just 17 across the country, a fraction of the more than 3,000 arrests seen over the last week as the French government deployed tens of thousands of officers to quell the unrest. That seems to be a sign that the violence is abating, even if many remain outraged.

There’s been “an explosion of general anger” directed not just at police oppression, but also at economic and racial inequities, said Mathieu Rigouste, a researcher in social sciences and the author of La Domination Policière, a book examining how French policing practices are rooted in colonialism. Many in France see Nahel’s killing as a reflection of racism against Arab and Black communities in the country, given that it’s not the first time something like this has happened. In 2020, four police officers beat a Black music producer inside his studio in a viral video, just as Macron was considering legislation that would impose new restrictions on posting videos of police online. And in 2005, teens Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré — who were of Tunisian and Mauritanian origins, respectively — died after fleeing a police identity inspection and running into an electricity substation where they were accidentally electrocuted.

“You have a kind of immediate feeling among the public that this is symptomatic of more global trends in terms of police violence,” said Jacques de Maillard, a political science professor at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin who studies comparative policing. Those trends include, as the UN pointed out in 2021, “a steady increase in the use of excessive force, police brutality, and other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, as well as arbitrary detention” around the world — and often reflect factors including racial tensions. The circumstances of Nahel’s killing certainly seem to mirror many deadly traffic stops in the US and elsewhere. The public prosecutor in the case said that police tried to stop the vehicle because of erratic driving and the driver was young. But Nahel refused to stop, ran a red light, committed additional traffic violations, and endangered pedestrians, they said. Police pursued him, and a video of the incident released Tuesday morning showed them approaching his car on foot, one officer pointing a gun. Nahel starts to drive away, but the officer fatally shoots him in the chest. That officer is now under formal investigation for voluntary homicide — the French equivalent of being charged with a crime in the US legal system.

France’s longstanding police brutality problem

France is seen as one of the worst offenders in Europe when it comes to police brutality. After Macron rammed through controversial reforms to raise the retirement age earlier this year, French police used tear gas and batons, as well as stun grenades and rubber bullets — which are banned in most other European countries — to disperse the mass protests that broke out. That prompted the UN’s Human Rights Council in May to criticize France’s use of excessive force in law enforcement. Members of the council also urged France to address more general “racial profiling by security forces.” The existence of racial discrimination in French policing is also well-documented. The French government’s own human rights watchdog found in a 2016 survey of over 5,000 people that men and boys perceived as Black or Arab were 20 times more likely to be stopped by police than others.

The police killing of Nahel Merzouk on June 27th has fueled protests and riots all over France. Merzouk was of Algerian and Moroccan descent.

This isn't the first police brutality incident in France involving a person of North African origin. #NahelMerzouk #JusticeForNahel