30 November 2009
SPONT'EX, part 1
So by an open invitation of Madjid, I should tell you about Spont'Ex.
Where do I start? Probably with the 16th of January 1994.
It wasn't the day we started Spont'Ex. But it was the day we first demonstrated as a group - if I recall well. The right-wing Balladur government (with Bayrou as the ministre of Education) had passed a law that, in short, offered better conditions for private, often catholic, schooling thus threatening the foundation of the public and secular ( laïc ) schooling of the French republic. The law was subsequently emptied of its core by the Conseil constitutionnel but 1 million people decided nonetheless to remind the governement of its attachment to the public school by demonstrating in the streets. That was probably the biggest demonstration I ever attended.
It was thrilling to be there, exciting and powerful. We were all caught in the hope of a yes future. We were carrying fake pink flowers and giving people appointment for May (rendez-vous en Mai) in stickers. We were hoping for a political change (that happened 3 years later with Jospin) that would knocked down the same ambient tight-ass conservatism that suffocates us nowadays since 2002. It just gets me crazy how we've been stuck in a political limbo for 7 very long years, first with Chirac and now with Sarkozy and that we can't seem to put an end to it. What's worse is that when I'm looking at the current left-wing opponents, none of them inspire me a sense of happiness, modernity and intellectual brightness that I'm striving for : a sense of Spont'Exitude.
Well, I still have at least that fake pink flower, ever since then, by my bed.
Where do I start? Probably with the 16th of January 1994.
It wasn't the day we started Spont'Ex. But it was the day we first demonstrated as a group - if I recall well. The right-wing Balladur government (with Bayrou as the ministre of Education) had passed a law that, in short, offered better conditions for private, often catholic, schooling thus threatening the foundation of the public and secular ( laïc ) schooling of the French republic. The law was subsequently emptied of its core by the Conseil constitutionnel but 1 million people decided nonetheless to remind the governement of its attachment to the public school by demonstrating in the streets. That was probably the biggest demonstration I ever attended.
It was thrilling to be there, exciting and powerful. We were all caught in the hope of a yes future. We were carrying fake pink flowers and giving people appointment for May (rendez-vous en Mai) in stickers. We were hoping for a political change (that happened 3 years later with Jospin) that would knocked down the same ambient tight-ass conservatism that suffocates us nowadays since 2002. It just gets me crazy how we've been stuck in a political limbo for 7 very long years, first with Chirac and now with Sarkozy and that we can't seem to put an end to it. What's worse is that when I'm looking at the current left-wing opponents, none of them inspire me a sense of happiness, modernity and intellectual brightness that I'm striving for : a sense of Spont'Exitude.
Well, I still have at least that fake pink flower, ever since then, by my bed.
