24h sans nous

I'll write more about my weekend dans le Noorrddd tomorrow, but today I want to bring up "le 1er mars - La journée sans immigrés", or "March 1st - The day without immigrants", with the idea being that for 24 hours, all immigrants would stop buying and working to show the impact that they really have on the French economy. March 1st was chosen because it was the day that the "immigration choisie" (controlled immigration) law took effect back in 2005. Similar events will also be held in Spain, Italy and Greece.

I haven't quite decided if I'm going to participate today or not, but I do think the idea is interesting - and well-timed, given all the national debates going around about "What it means to be French". I also think it's easy for most of us to forget how tough it can be for immigrants in France. We all complain about having to go to the préfecture, dealing with red tape, etc, but given our nationalities, we actually have it quite easy when compared to many other foreigners.

If you want to learn more about the event, you can click here for the main website.

There's no bad publicity

I meant to blog about this a week or so ago, but completely forgot.

A French website called "Mailorama" announced a few weeks ago that it was planning on renting a few double-decker busses and then driving them around Paris on November 14, throwing out bags of money worth several thousand euros, in an effort to promote their site. They assured the public that a few security guards had been hired to maintain order. When the Préfecture of Paris got wind of this, they immediately became concerned and put the stop down. After much negotiation, it was decided that Mailorama would be allowed to distribute the money at one location near the Eiffel Tower.

Word got out, and people - to the tune of 5,000 - flooded in from the nearby suburbs. It was not the crowd of Parisian yuppies that Mailorama had been hoping to target - instead, it was mainly unemployed young men who were ready to fight for those bags of money. The préfecture decided to cancel the event for security reasons, and out of frustration, some of the crowd began throwing apples and oranges around, while others took their anger out on local cars and/or stores.

Mailorama has now said that they will give roughly 100,000€ to the "Secours Populaire". And while the event was a complete failure, I guess it's done what they hoped to acoomplish- ie. get people talking about them....

No, no, we won't go

On the way back from the 20th Anniversary celebration of the Abbey Bookshop last night, I came across this:For the non-French speakers, the sign roughly says "This building has sat empty since 2004, and has been taken over by 10 students (blah blah can't read it) in precarious situations. Le CROUS is asking us for 3000€ per month and per occupant, and has obtained an order for our expulsion."

It immediately reminded me of a few different shows I've seen on TV here, covering the housing crisis and the insanely high number of empty buildings in Paris. A lot of companies (both French & foreign) apparently buy up these big apartment buildings left and right as a way to sort of hide their money - and then they just leave them empty. The French government also owns a good chunk of them.

Meanwhile, there is a major housing crisis in Paris and tons of students and/or people with low-incomes who can't find a place to live. Some students have thus started requisitioning these buildings - basically taking them over and using them as their own. In one report I saw, each of the students had a floor of their own - roughly 100m2 - filled with crown molding and marble fireplaces. Of course the building was completely empty, so most of them only had a mattress, some clothes and maybe some books in their entire apartment. And they had to live with the fear that they could be kicked out at any moment, or could come home and find the doors locked with all of their things inside.

Having spent quite a bit of time looking for an apartment in Paris, I know how frustrating (and soul-sucking) it can be, especially for those who don't have someone who can sign as a guarantor for them. And I do think it's absolutely crazy that all of these buildings sit empty - but they tend to be in the chicest neighborhoods of Paris and of course the residents there don't want to live with rowdy students or low-income people.

I did not leave the house at all Monday. I'd planned on it - I'd wanted to check out the last of the soldes and then head over to Aimee's café to say hello. But Metéo France's dire predictions of rain and gale-force winds kept me inside. I was only slightly bitter that night when I realized that their forecasts were several hours off and the wind didn't really pick up until around midnight.

So I thought to myself "Well, that's okay, you can go out Tuesday instead." Unfortunately what I did not know was that there was a huge student protest scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. I ran into my building's concierge in the hallway, and he told me it was expected to be a violent one. They'd removed all the cars from the streets and some of the small stores had even decided to close up shop for the afternoon. I still had plans to go out and profite of the last day of the soldes, but my plans were foiled again when I got downstairs. The were hoards of policemen on the streets and they weren't letting anyone in or out of the residential buildings. So back upstairs I went, to watch all the fuss from my window:The whole thing seemed rather peaceful to me - but then again, I guess it's better to err on the side of caution, you know how these things can turn on a dime. Just look at Leesa's experience with a much smaller student manif that took place a week ago. It seemed fine to me as they went by my place but it had practically turned into a riot just a few blocks later.

Here's a short video I took - you'll notice at the end of the video that the crowd goes up the street as far as the eye can see (grr, Blogger wouldn't upload the video, so I had to upload it to YouTube instead and lost some of the image quality in the process):

And I'm not really sure what the point of this thing is, but I had to laugh at the dude carrying the Breton flag. You'll always see a few of them at any manif, no matter what the protest is about.This is one of the biggest protests I've seen in front of my place though - the people just kept coming and coming, for a good solid two hours.The whole thing was followed up by a bunch of police vans:and then of course bringing up the rear were the street cleaners. They do a good job, ten minutes after it ended, you'd have never known a massive protest had just taken place.

Oof. Yesterday I had one of those hang-overs that just kept getting worse as the day went on. "Rhum-rhum revenge", to quote Doc.

I went out yesterday around noon, and only had one thing on my mind - going back to bed! But on the way back, I discovered that the Gay Pride parade was taking place on my frickin' street, so no buses were running. Looking at the masses of people moving toward me, I felt defeated, like "No way am I going to have the energy to fight through this crowd and get home". But I eventually sucked it up and pushed my way through the endless sea of people, even getting caught up in the energy a bit along the way: Until I realized "Wait a minute, how the hell am I going to nap with all this noise??"
By the time it was time to go to The Abbey Bookshop for Ian's book party, I was feeling pretty shitty (and I don't think I was the only one, lol). "Hair of the dog" was mentioned, so I took a glass of red that was offered to me. Probably wasn't the best idea. Looking at all the rustic cheeses & meats Ian had brought wasn't helping either. So needless to say, I made it home at a fairly decent hour, sober as a judge. But at least I had a new book to read.

The aftermath of the Gay Pride parade - good luck street sweepers!
And now I'm returning to bed.