Paris Uprising: Rebellion in Real Time

The mainstream press has been telling Europeans that "riots" have broken out in the Parisian suburbs (Banlieu) this week. In calling them "riots,"the popular imagination likens them to fires and other sorts of largely uncontrollable disasters. It's as if the French are merely being faced with an outbreak of civil unrest, and that someone from the ranks of the government will most assuredly figure out how to weather the storm within the coming days.

These aren't "riots."This is social rebellion: directed at decades of French imperial rule, and ultra-capitalist and racist policymaking at home. After the "decolonization"process finished in Africa (oddly leaving the former colonies entirely dependent on the Banque de France for their monetary policymaking and at the whim of French military decisionmaking), the colonized were supposed to ! be offered life in France as a sort of reparation for the destruction that went along with the imperial era. This, predictably, has turned out to be nothing more than a bone that the French have thrown at their dependents to try to keep them quiet. The idea is this: give them cheap, shitty housing away from the beautiful metropole of Paris, give them minimum wage paying work, and hope that they shut up.

Obviously, "they" haven't shut up. The largely immigrant population of the northern Banlieu has grown tired of being shut out. What's more, this is nothing new. Over the last decade or so, urban revolt has been a regular, if not common occurence. Fires, car bombings, randomn acts of violence, and vandalism are all part of life in Paris' most neglected district.

Referred to as the "93 (neuf-trois)", after the first two numbers of the postal code, the northern suburbs have alw! ays been the destination of those too poor to handle the inner city or the more posh southern and western suburbs. Like similar districts in every major city of the world, it has also been the target of government attempts at wiping it off the map. Being from Chicago, I am quite familiar with the technique, employed by the totalitarian mayor Richard Daley, to clear out public housing structures, replace them with a monotonous string of overpriced, yuppy condominiums, build public amusements to attract the yuppy inhabitants, and then advertise to the world that you have helped rebuild the city. In the north of Paris, this script has been followed almost exactly. The build up of superstores such as Ikea and the Gap between the "93" and Charles de Gaulle Airport began the process of encroaching on these poor communities. Then came the construction of the Stade de France in time for the 1998 World Cup in Saint-Denis (just on the border! of the hot region). The last step was meant to be scoring the 2012 Summer Olympics for the same venue, which would have paved the road for the completion of the great ""urban renewal" project of the problem district.

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