Why more than 250,000 people have joined France’s student protests
France has been thrown into crisis as student-led protests erupted across the nation, calling for better conditions for learning and for the government to address a decade-long staffing shortage. Read More Read More
Who Doth Love Us Most? France’s presidential candidates compete to coddle corporations
The first debate of France’s upcoming presidential election, hosted by employer federation Medef two weeks ago, was strangely reminiscent of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Like the aging, angry monarch asking his three daughters “who doth love us most?”, corporate leaders asked the leading seven candidates what more they could do for business. Read More Read More
French police “targeting Black and Arab men” with discriminatory fines
Sitting at the living room table in her Paris apartment, Khady Mané opens one white envelope after another, scanning the notices and adding them to a growing pile of fines and late payment reminders. “They arrive almost every day, it doesn’t stop,” she said. Read More Read More
Paris Anti-Racism March in face of “Remigration”
Several thousand people attended a march in Paris today against racism and the Far-Right organized by leftwing party France Unbowed. It’s part of a campaign launched by firebrand leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in the face of a rising far right and growing number of racist incidents. Read More Read More
Could French Far-Right Local Election Gains Pave Way to the presidency?
In Hénin-Beaumont, a former mining town ringed by man-made mountains of coal refuse from a bygone age, the streets were nearly deserted on a recent morning in mid-March. Few braved the unrelenting rain to shop at the outdoor market, where sellers often outnumbered customers. Read More Read More
2 years after riots rocked France, these moms are still trying to keep the peace
In the sprawling suburbs of Corbeil-Essonnes south of Paris, kids aged 10 to 13 years old are playing what seems to be an every-man-for-himself game of soccer in a town square. Two boys chasing the ball collide, causing one to twist his ankle and fall onto the pavement. Watching the kids play are members of the Gilets Roses, or “Pink Vests,” a group of mothers who since... Read More
Le Pen Banned from 2027 Elections: Justice or Conspiracy?
In a week of high political drama, far-right leader Marine Le Pen and her allies condemned the sentence she received last Monday for embezzling public funds as the culmination of a judicial witch hunt. Her protégé and National Rally President Jordan Bardella decried a “tyranny of judges.” Justices have since received death threats, and at least one judge is under police... Read More
Evicting Vulnerable ahead of Paris Olympics is “Social Cleansing”
On a Tuesday morning in late May, at least three dozen police officers surrounded an encampment of migrants in central Paris. The streets above the banks of the Seine were virtually empty and the cafés still closed when they evicted more than 100 boys and young men, many from West Africa. It was just past 7 a.m. Read More Read More
Chile: Struggling to Emerge from 50 Years of Neoliberalism
September 2023 marked the 50th anniversary of a bloody coup d’etat that toppled Chile’s socialist government in 1973. Led by General Augusto Pinochet, the military dictatorship that took power killed or “disappeared” more than 3,000 people over the next 17 years. General Augusto Pinochet (L) poses with Chilean President Salvador Allende 23 August 1973 in... Read More
France Welcomes Ukrainians but Migrants from Africa and the Mid-East Sleep on the Streets
More than 4 million Ukrainians have fled their country since Russian troops invaded on February 24. Human Rights campaigners have praised the French government for the speed with which it set up a reception center with provisions for shelter, food and healthcare. But they wonder why the authorities haven’t extended the same warm welcome to asylum-seekers from across Africa and... Read More
