cinq

If any people were to have an actual civil war, I believe it would be the French. This week I’ve had my first real experience with the grève. For those of you that haven’t been to or studied France, these people love to strike. It all started way back in 1968* when the students decided they didn’t like the way things were being done and that they were going to do something about it. So to protest the overcrowded classrooms, the lack of up to date materials, and the unrealistic curriculum, they cumulatively agreed not to go to class. For three weeks. As it turns out, they had way more power than anyone could have suspected, and as the weeks wore on they were joined by unions of all sorts, and all of France was effectively shut down. So, ever since that terrible three weeks of inactivity, the government has feared the power of the people, and the people have realized their power to effect change. Good work, people. The down side is that the strike (or la grève), has become so commonplace that people have adapted to work around it. Now this doesn’t mean it’s become ineffective, not at all. It simply means that on strike days the busses switch to the holiday schedule and everyone knows that they might be inconvenienced that day. They’ve read about it in the paper the night or perhaps even the week before, many of them choose not to go to work to participate in the ‘manifs,’or protests, and the next day life goes on. These people are the most civil and well behaved protesters I’ve ever heard of. To the American eye, it’s really quite absurd.

*it could be argued that it in fact started in the late 18^th century when the people ‘striked’ against the king, but that was much less civil, what with the beheadings and general bloodshed. 

Unfortunately my ‘culture and conversation’ class didn’t educate me on the current issue of protest, so I’m embarrassingly uninformed about this particular strike. What I do know is that the government is raising the age of retirement from 65 to 70, and people are pissed. The French already enjoy some of the longest vacations and shortest work weeks in the world, so you can see why an extra 5 years of work would be irritating. I’ve run into the slogan ‘pour nous, la retraite c’est 65’ (for us, retirement is at 65) over and over again these past two weeks, and now I see that they really mean it.

Tuesday was my first taste of the grève. Having been forwarned of the strike by my contact, I headed to the bus station at 8:30 to catch the 8:44 bus. Around 8:55 I called her to tell her I must have missed the bus and would be late, to which she replied that her bus had yet to come either, and not to worry about it (here already we see the nonchalance with which the French react to the grève). Around 9:15 the bus finally pulled up and the 20 or so of us waiting there clamored over to the front door. As we waited for the door to open, the driver put the bus in park and stood up. He proceeded to the back door of the bus and, circumventing all of us riders, exited and crossed the lot into the transportation office. This didn’t seem to surprise anyone. So we continued to wait. About ten minutes later, the driver reappeared and walked back towards the bus. He did not, however, reenter to drive us all to our destinations, but rather got into a small car labeled TAN (the name of the transportation company) along with three other drivers, and drove away, leaving the bus parked there on the side of the road, and the twenty of us waiting for who knows what. Again, very little surprise from the French. I called my contact again, and seeing as she had yet to see her bus, we rescheduled for Friday.

Around 5 that evening I decided to head into town to deal with some phone problems, and when I arrived at the tram station, I noticed that the board which normally has the next time of arrival on it said that this tram line was interrupted between two stops downtown due to the protests. I also noticed a road sign saying to avoid centreville because of the riots. So I boarded the tram and when we arrived at the edge of downtown, we were told to get off because this was the last stop. I got out and walked the extra half mile to my destination, and as I walked I could hear hundreds of people chanting. I crossed the road through several scattered marchers with enormous flags and a few vans with loud speakers. After my errand I thought I’d go check out the protest, but it was entirely gone. I saw several people with rolled up flags walking away, but no rioters to be seen. I went to my normal tram stop and sure enough the tram was there, service was back to normal.

I took the tram all the way out to a big shopping center past my residence to do some errands. While waiting for the tram back in, I saw the tram heading the other direction make a short stop at the station. Then another one. And another. And one more. I saw five northbound trams back to back over the course of 15 minutes, during which not one southbound tram arrived. Apparently the protests WEREN’T over and southbound service was still interrupted. Very peculiar.

Today felt much more apocalyptic than Tuesday. I went into town for some errands and found my tram line to be cut downtown again due to the protests. When I got downtown, and maybe this was due to the overcast weather, I felt anxious, and my surroundings reflected that emotion. Because the tram line was cut there were people milling about in the middle of the streets, and I got the feeling that everyone was annoyed to have to be walking instead of taking the tram for the third day in a row. There was a general sense of unease, like in one of those movies where you keep your head down so no one knows that you have a chocolate bar under your coat and you aren’t sharing it with them. To add to this sensation, I could hear someone over a loudspeaker up ahead, but they weren’t speaking, they were just making noise, sort of a whining noise. As I approached the actual protest, I could see flags above the crowd, and a pillar of smoke. I’m sure it was coming from a barbeque or some such thing, but it added even more to the apocalyptic feel. It seems that the sanitation workers have gone on strike as well, for there were papers and flyers blowing about in the street. I went into a super market that seemed to be deserted, with only one checker for the 15 counters. When I walked back up to the protest they had started singing some sort of freedom song, and because of the mist it echoed after me as I walked away. Add to this the sirens of a far off ambulance, the papers tumbling in the road, and the people in disarray all about the tram line, and you really get the end of the world feel. Perhaps it’s unrest after a few days of strike, but whatever is going on, I hope it stops soon, or at least that the sun comes out.

The only photo I got of the thing. Notice the 'pillar of smoke.' Not as pillar like as I remember