When We Saw Paris In Flames Just months after immigrant youths took to the streets in France to fight discrimination, more protests and subsequent riots cropped up again this past week. This time, students and labor unions seek to battle the Contrat Premiere Embauche (CPE), or the First Job Contract law, which states that an employer has the right to fire an employee within the first two years on the job without giving a reason. 
This contract, advocated by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, is seen by the government as a way of revitalizing France by, hopefully, bringing down their youth unemployment rate, which is now at 23 percent. Students are viewing this regulation in a different light, fearing that it will eat into France's desirable labor protections and leave young people by the wayside.
In Paris, on Thursday, March 16, 2006, those opposed to the First Job Contract law made their voices heard. "Next to the capital's famous Bon Marche department store, rioters torched a newspaper stand at the end of an otherwise boisterous and peaceful march by tens of thousands of whistling, chanting, drum-beating students in the Left Bank," reports the AP. "Police fired rubber pellets to disperse the rioters, who formed a very small part of the demonstrators." 
After the march, violence erupted anew Thursday night around the capital's Sorbonne University. Several hundred youths hurled chunks of pavement, metal crowd-controlled barriers, bottles and tables and chairs from nearby cafes at police. Authorities responded with a water cannon, thick clouds of tear gas and baton charges." 
There were an estimated 167 arrests and Paris, and reports of 18 protestors and 34 police officers injured in the clashes. The 18th of March saw as many as many as 1.5 million people in the streets of various French cities. Riot police were called in a when many of these protests against the labor law also turned violent. Five cars and 10 shops were damaged or destroyed. 
 While the prime minister believes, "There was a lack of understanding over the method," many of the union officials are considering further action. A CGT union representative, Bernard Thibault, said, "If there are no moves we will propose a day of strikes in the next few days." Furthering that sentiment, Jean-Claude Mailly, secretary general of Force Ouvriere union, stated, "The prime minister is like a pyromaniac who has set fire to the valley and then withdraws to the hill to watch." 
Good friend Jack Forde sends us this note from the DR's Paris office: "We went by the Place de la Sorbonne on Sunday…where we all sat from noon until 7 pm eating lunch and then drinking wine…it's completely barricaded from the street, and guarded by gendarme wearing full riot gear (shoulder and shin pads, etc.) The square itself is littered with broken glass and other refuse, since the protestors smashed the windows in the Gap. 
"There's graffiti on most of the walls and the Tabac/restaurant where we sat is boarded up," Forde said. 
While we do not agree with these transgressions of the French youth and their supporters, we will leave it up to you, dear reader, to draw your own conclusions. However, we offer a few lines from Baudelaire as a final thought: "The Might-have-been with tooth accursed
Gnaws at the piteous souls of men,
The deep foundations suffer first,
And all the structure crumbles then
Beneath the bitter tooth accursed." |
