In the shadows of a nation, the Red and the Blue, power and control, the French state whispers, whispers of dissent to be silenced. As the clock strikes a change, the retirement age rising, the state sinks its claws into the fabric of resistance, the spectre of Marx hangs over Parisian streets.
In the cold corners of the streets, the yellow vests, remember, cry out, but the state, the ever-watchful eye, chews the bones of their fight with past arbitrary arrests, fear seeping through the cracks.
The numbers, the cold and unforgiving numbers, 5,000 of 11,000, prosecuted like wolves caught in the state’s snare, the Human Rights League watchful gaze recording the truth. Arié Alimi, a name of liberty, a lawyer, speaks of the December 2020 protest, the 150, the majority unprosecuted, but not untarnished.
Laws, twisted and manipulated, the weapons of the state, the rights of citizens strangled in the grip of an iron hand. A 2010 law, a noose around the neck of the people, “participating in a group” preparing violence, an excuse, a justification. Thibault Spriet, the Syndicat de la magistrature’s national secretary, raises his voice, the injustice laid bare.
Casserolades, the cacophony of resistance, pots and pans, a battle cry against the state. Alimi sees the intent, the desire to quash, to prevent, to intimidate. The streets of France, simmering with tension, a pot on the verge of boiling over.
High above, ministers, their voices dripping with disdain, misrepresent the rights of the people.
Where Macron goes, the whispers of authority, a decree, a shadow cast on “portable sonorous devices,” the perimeter marked by the president’s steps. Denials, claims of innocence, but the truth dances in the videos, the police’s words echoing, a ban on pots and pans. Prefects, orders, a repetition of the pattern, the iron grip tightening, “festive” protests of “musical character” now silenced, laws once crafted to thwart terror, now aimed at the people.
The distortion of law, a veil at the highest echelons of power. France, a land of rules, of declarations, the prefects awaiting notice, yet the undeclared protests, not a crime, the highest court’s voice resounding, a confirmation in the shadows of last year.
But the Interior Minister, Darmanin, a serpent’s tongue, untruths weaving through his words, claiming the innocent, the participants, can be detained in the cold grip of legality. A threat looms, a suffocating cloud, the notion of severed public subsidies for the Human Rights League, the oldest guardian of civil rights, a critic of the government’s iron-fisted dance with the demonstrations.
In the corridors of power, harsh words echo, Fabien Goa, an Amnesty International researcher, a concerned voice, the ministers twisting the truth, the rights of the people slipping through their fingers. Raphaël Kempf, a lawyer from Paris, a guardian of human rights, warns of the erosion, the slow crumbling of civil liberties, the slide into a dark abyss of police authoritarianism, unquestioned and unchallenged.
And thus, the battle rages, the workers against the machinery of the state, the struggle for rights and dignity against the iron grip of the bourgeoisie. The fight continues, the spirit of the masses unbroken, the spectre of Marx ever-present, watching from the shadows.
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