LA Times: Rift Emerges Among Young Haves and Have-Nots in France
By Sebastian Rotella, Times Staff Writer
March 28, 2006
As France braces for major nationwide strikes to protest a new labor law today, an embattled government confronts two youth crises that threaten to converge with resounding impact.
One involves the students, mostly middle-class and wealthy activists whose movement has shut down high schools and universities with the kind of rowdy, but essentially nonviolent, protests to which the French are accustomed. Joined by France's powerful labor unions, the students accuse the government of endangering their future job security with proposed labor reforms.
The second involves another world: the bleak, crime-ridden public housing projects where unemployment among young people can approach 50%. Youths there want a better future too, but they tend to express their discontent with nihilistic outbursts of arson and vandalism....
***
The mayhem shatters any illusions about unity among France's young people. In fact, gangs who disrupt marches and attack the protesters often feel contempt for students, whom they see as privileged and weak rich kids, a police intelligence commander said....Strikes are expected to shut down schools, transit and business, bringing the country to a near-stop.
The landscape of Paris' fashionable Left Bank has turned ominous. Checkpoints, steel anti-riot barricades and police buses block historic narrow lanes and stone plazas. Riot police in body armor stand guard near the Pantheon, the National Assembly, the Eiffel Tower. Police promise they will react more quickly than they did Thursday, when they were criticized for hesitating to intervene as gangs pummeled high-schoolers with seeming impunity....
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-france28mar28,0,724685.story?coll=la-home-world 
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
