[News] Black Lives Matter in Paris: Tens of Thousands Protest Police Brutality for Second Week

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.leftvoice.org/black-lives-matter-in-paris-tens-of-thousands-protest-police-brutality-for-second-week?fbclid=IwAR1N3vS5Y7cq2TjlDV2yzsbyTNtBXApX0bf3dK9ibC_W-LTUFJNnJgG3Kgw
Black
Lives Matter in Paris: Tens of Thousands Protest Police Brutality for
Second Week
Madeleine Freeman - June 14, 2020
------------------------------

This Saturday, protests in solidarity with the uprising against police
violence in the United States continued in France, drawing tens of
thousands of people into the streets in Paris and other cities. Despite
repression from riot police, clashes with white supremacist groups, and the
government’s attempts to contain the protests, the anti-racist struggle is
erupting across France. As in the United States, the movement demands
justice for decades of systemic police brutality against working people of
color and expresses outrage at a government that refuses to recognize the
racism ingrained in the French state’s highest institutions.

France’s mobilizations — which began with a massive 40,000 person
demonstration
<https://www.leftvoice.org/40000-people-flood-the-streets-of-paris-in-solidarity-with-george-floyd>
on June 2 — have coalesced around the deaths of both George Floyd and Adama
Traoré, a young Black man who was killed by French police in 2016. Like
Floyd, Traoré was choked and suffocated by the police. “My brother died in
the same way as George Floyd,” said Assa Traoré, Adama’s sister, as she
addressed a crowd of tens of thousands of people in Paris’s Place de la
République on Saturday. “Without justice, there is no peace!”

In the square, protesters joined in the chants of protesters across the
Atlantic Ocean in the United States: “Black Lives Matter!” “I can’t
breathe!” Signs and banners expressed the common struggle against racism in
the heart of these two imperialist powers:  “I hope I don’t get killed for
being black today,” read one sign. Other signs and chants pointed to the
role the government and its politicians play in the daily violence
experienced by people of color at the hands of the police and the laws they
protect: “If you sow injustice, you reap a revolt.”

The demonstration defied a nationwide ban on gatherings of more than ten
people, a measure implemented earlier in the year to combat the spread of
coronavirus but which has been used as an excuse to violently quell the
social unrest that has been steadily brewing in France’s working class
neighborhoods against repressive lockdown orders and the economic crisis.

The police used this ban as an excuse to declare Saturday’s demonstration
illegal. They sent in riot police and vans to surround the rally to prevent
it from marching to Place de l’Opéra as planned. But the protesters faced
off against the police, refusing to back down. Later in the afternoon, the
Council of State, a high court, ruled that the demonstration was legal
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/protesters-in-france-seek-police-overhauls-11592076198>
as long as it was stationary and did not involve more than 5,000 people.
This paltry gesture did not stop the police from repressing the
demonstration — beating protesters, throwing tear gas canisters into the
crowd, and preventing people from leaving the square; however, these
attempts to both pacify and repress the movement were not successful at
deterring protesters from staying in the streets the entire day.

Saturday’s protest occurred in the context of “reforms” implemented by the
government this week to combat police brutality and racism within the
police force. The Interior Minister, Christophe Castaner announced new
measures on Monday that make chokeholds illegal and institute a policy to
suspend any officer “suspected” of racism. But as Saturday’s protest shows,
the tens of thousands of the people in the streets see these gestures for
what they are: intentionally toothless measures against a system that is
racist to its very core, a system rooted in centuries of colonialism,
slavery, and anti-Black, anti-immigrant, and therefore anti-working class
racism.

But the Black Lives Matter protests were not the only mobilizations on
Saturday. Police unions also held marches across the city in protest of the
government’s new measures, defending the use of chokeholds to restrain
detainees and denying racism in the police force. According to Fabien
Vanhemelryck, secretary-general of the Alliance police union, “The police
is not racist…
<https://www.euronews.com/2020/06/12/police-in-france-protest-chokehold-ban-in-wake-of-george-floyd-s-death>
it saves lives whatever the colour of the individual’s skin…We need to be
protected, respected, supported. The police are never above the law.
<https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1295069/france-protests-emmanual-macron-police-racism-black-lives-matter>”
But the more than 1,500 complaints of brutality reported against French
police in 2019 — most of them from people of color in France’s working
class neighborhoods — tell a different story, as do the tens of thousands
of people protesting and being repressed in the streets. Once again, the
cop unions are using their influence to protect killer cops and defend
police immunity. In a show of unity against the protests and against
anti-racist struggle, police threw down their handcuffs on Saturday and
participated in a march and caravan of police vehicles covered in banners
with slogans such as “No Police, No Peace.”

Saturday’s protest was also marked by the intervention of white supremacist
groups that interrupted the rally. Identity Generation, an ultra-right wing
organization, unfurled a large banner on the roof of one of the houses
overlooking the square that read: “Justice for the victims of anti-white
racism. #WhiteLivesMatter.” In an inspiring display of solidarity,
protesters immediately tore down the banner with help from inhabitants of
the apartment building. The action was celebrated by the whole square who
shouted “Thank you!”

These events could not overpower the incredible show of solidarity and
bravery by the protesters risking arrest and beatings to mobilize against
police terror. The demonstration brought together students and workers from
different industries, including Anasse Kazib, an activist for the railway
workers at Sud Rail and member of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA)
and *Révolution
Permanente*. In an interview for *Révolution Permanente*
<https://www.revolutionpermanente.fr/Paris-Malgre-l-interdiction-de-manifester-la-mobilisation-s-amplifie-contre-les-violences>,
Kazib spoke about the need to link up the workers’ movement with the
anti-racist struggle and all struggles against oppression; he argued that
the workers’ movement must “create unions with the working class
neighborhoods, the feminist movement, and the environmentalists, in order
to attack together on the same nail: the bourgeoisie and the government.”

This second historic mobilization in France shows not only that the
struggle against racist police violence is international, but that it is
also a struggle against governments who make empty promises of reform while
they protect killer cops, send the police to repress protests, and make
backroom deals with cop unions. In the fight against the police, the
politicians of the ruling class are the allies of white supremacists and
police unions. The only true solidarity with the movement is that of the
working class and oppressed who are coming together across the world to
rise up against racist state violence.
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