<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-container gmail-content-width3">
<div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element">
<font size="1"><a href="https://www.leftvoice.org/black-lives-matter-in-paris-tens-of-thousands-protest-police-brutality-for-second-week?fbclid=IwAR1N3vS5Y7cq2TjlDV2yzsbyTNtBXApX0bf3dK9ibC_W-LTUFJNnJgG3Kgw">https://www.leftvoice.org/black-lives-matter-in-paris-tens-of-thousands-protest-police-brutality-for-second-week?fbclid=IwAR1N3vS5Y7cq2TjlDV2yzsbyTNtBXApX0bf3dK9ibC_W-LTUFJNnJgG3Kgw</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Black Lives Matter in Paris: Tens of Thousands Protest Police Brutality for Second Week</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Madeleine Freeman - June 14, 2020<br></div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-line-height4 gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><span>France’s mobilizations — which began with a </span><a href="https://www.leftvoice.org/40000-people-flood-the-streets-of-paris-in-solidarity-with-george-floyd"><span>massive 40,000 person demonstration</span></a><span>
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!”</span></p>
<p><span>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.”</span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><span>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, </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/protesters-in-france-seek-police-overhauls-11592076198"><span>ruled that the demonstration was legal</span></a><span>
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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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, “</span><a href="https://www.euronews.com/2020/06/12/police-in-france-protest-chokehold-ban-in-wake-of-george-floyd-s-death"><span>The police is not racist…</span></a><span> it saves lives whatever the colour of the individual’s skin…</span><a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1295069/france-protests-emmanual-macron-police-racism-black-lives-matter"><span>We need to be protected, respected, supported. The police are never above the law.</span></a><span>”
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.”</span></p>
<p><span>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!”</span></p>
<p><span>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 </span><i><span>Révolution Permanente</span></i><span>. In an interview for </span><a href="https://www.revolutionpermanente.fr/Paris-Malgre-l-interdiction-de-manifester-la-mobilisation-s-amplifie-contre-les-violences"><i><span>Révolution Permanente</span></i></a><span>,
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.”</span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
</div></div></div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
</div>
</div>