– By Scott Sayare –
PARIS — For six weeks, French mailmen, teachers, train conductors, factory workers and government employees have been rallying the troops, readying banners and stoking the flames of popular discontent here before taking to the streets today in a massive protest.
But on this warm and sunny Thursday morning, you might not have known it.
“Bonjour!” said an eager Laurent André, handing out newspapers from his usual spot outside the Plaisance métro. He’s used to grim Paris mornings and the bustle and rush of stressed commuters, heads down, grimacing. Not today, though.
“People are happy, the weather’s good,” he said.
He had only given out half as many papers as usual, he estimated, with so many people staying home to avoid the strike. Everywhere, cafés were quiet, sidewalks uncrowded, pedestrians unhurried and calm.
In the métro at rushhour, passengers stepped on and off with uncommon politesse. There was space to read the paper.
“It’s wonderful. You can sit where you want!” said Béatrice Lobrot, a press attaché for a Paris cosmetics firm, sipping a hot chocolate at the empty counter of a métro station cafe. “They’re getting to be pretty wonderful, my days when there’s a strike.”
She was enjoying the calm, she said, but feared today’s protests wouldn’t do much to resolve the country’s “generalized anguish.” She supports the concept, though.
“You’ve got to express yourself, in any case,” she said.
Most French agree.
“It’s a right,” said Jean Batis, a hip-hop producer from just north of Paris, dressed in baggy jeans and a beige, flat-brim Yankees cap, a paper bag full of computer parts at his feet.
He didn’t think the strike would change much either, though.
“It’s always the same game: they give a little bit, we strike, they give a little bit, we strike.”
He won’t be protesting this time, though, he said. He hadn’t heard there was a strike today.
Others knew, but headed off to work this morning just the same.
“It doesn’t accomplish anything anymore,” said André, the paper-boy, who also studies law at Université Paris-Sud 11. “It’s pretty clear that students go on strike just to skip class.”
Plus, he had to work. Which was the case for others, as well.
“If I had the means, I’d be striking,” said Yves Robert, a father of two who’s delivered mail for La Poste for the past 20 years. He took off work to march in the nationwide protest in January, but things have since changed.
“The rent for my apartment’s gone up,” he said.
“Times are tough.”
Note: Elements of this text originally appeared in The Associated Press on March 19, 2009.
1 Comment
04.18.2009 at 18:27
Where is your Strasbourg story??