France in Rebellion-Four Articles Notes from Paris
JACOBS, FRANCOISE
Notes from Paris... By Francoise Jacobs Paris All roads led to the Sorbonne, where the students were in control. They had occupied the main buildings and were meeting around the clock to discuss...
...children fed the ducks...
...A manager," he declaimed with great solemnity, "is an energizer, a catalyst of production...
...The workers are stupid to go out on strike...
...Every morning he offered us a running account of the events the night before and gave us the benefit of his general wisdom...
...Despite the tension, the discussion was orderly, the chairman recognizing everyone who wished to speak and insisting on quiet so that they could be heard...
...Six francs for the dollar...
...A gesticulating student who shouted that he had such a definition was given the floor...
...de Gaulle and all his works stink...
...the picnickers on the banks, the generosity of the trees, the grace of the scornful swans suggested a scene from Renoir...
...A private dressed in khaki work clothes, his face a study in disgust, picked up a big garbage can to move it toward a truck...
...With the sanitation department on strike, a strong odor pervaded many streets in the poorer quarters...
...When we arrived in Paris the franc was riding high...
...They had occupied the main buildings and were meeting around the clock to discuss plans for reforming the university and for the new world they intend to build...
...Dijon (burgundy) : Thousands of Dijonnais marched down one of the main streets, protesting the police brutality against the Sorbonne students...
...We joined one group where an angry, well-dressed woman was asking: "Why didn't they get rid of that German Jew [Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the student revolutionary leader] before all this trouble started...
...At one corner, where the refuse formed small mountains, we watched young soldiers load it into their military trucks...
...Yet the atmosphere was irresistible: warm, good-humored, passionate...
...For New Yorkers the sight was a familiar one: Paper bags, some tightly closed, some drooping under the weight of their contents and overflowing...
...another suggested the discussion would make better progress if the term "manager" was properly defined...
...Merde," he exclaimed, "merde...
...We walked to the Place de la Bourse, the scene of a battle between the police and students the preceding night...
...Around President de Gaulle's residence crs units (the tough riot police) were everywhere present, their trucks barricading the streets leading to the Elysee Palace...
...Anarchist sentiment predominated...
...Immediately, they abandoned the call for Peyre-fitte's resignation and improvised a new slogan: "Le chapeau, qu'il est beau . . . le chapeau, qu'il est beau...
...Now a furious discussion was raging over the role of the managerial class in the new French society...
...of World War II, and the Nazi occupation...
...This is not considered strike-breaking...
...But further "uptown," in the Bois de Boulogne, all was normal and peaceful, sweethearts rowed on the lake, embraced on the lawns...
...My husband commented on the efficiency and dispatch with which the damage done to the streets during the preceding night's demonstration was repaired by the next morning...
...The debate continued interminably...
...As the threat to the city's health increased, the government called out Army units to clean up the worst streets...
...The effects of the general strike soon became frighteningly visible: In front of dairies and grocery stores, people queued up for milk, bread, potatoes...
...A fight was raging between the crs and students a block away from friends we were visiting near Place des Vosges...
...Practice makes perfect," I told him...
...At the beginning of the May days, he was on the side of law and order: "The students are a bunch of spoiled brats, they should be given short shrift...
...We watched them approach, 10 abreast...
...old boxes piled high in unsymmetrical pyramids...
...Having delivered himself of this nugget, he wormed his way out of the crowd and disappeared...
...They never had it so good...
...I returned to our room and told my husband: "The situation is becoming serious...
...A small, seedily-dressed, agitated man forced his way into the middle of the crowd and burst forth: "They told us to have kids...
...Peyrefitte resign...
...Toward the end of May, as my husband and I strolled along one of the Grand Boulevards, a man came alongside us, acted as if we knew him, and, with his mouth barely moving said softly to my husband: "Change your dollars...
...The concierge at our hotel near the Madeleine was quintessentially Parisian in accent, diction and gesture...
...We stood on the balcony of their apartment where we could hear the sounds of battle...
...We don't need managers in a free society," affirmed one speaker, and he was greeted with roars of approval...
...Parisians, workers included, accept the intervention of the troops as "raisonable...
...We exchanged most of our travelers' checks at the hotel, at the rate of $4.80 to the dollar...
...We heard them screaming: "crs?murderers . . . crs—ss . . ." And then the ultimate issult in the Latin lexicon: "crs cocus (cuckolds...
...Most of what was said was nonsense...
...Maoists, Trotskyists, Castroites, and unaffiliated revolutionaries hawked their literature...
...In rythmic unison, they voiced their slogan: "Peyrefitte [the minister of education] demissionne . . . Peyrefitte d&mis-sionne...
...Earlier, Jean-Paul Sartre and Si-mone de Beauvoir had addressed the students...
...Look at the hat, how beautiful it is...
...They told us to have kids...
...We inched our way into the great amphitheater of the Sorbonne, crowded to the rafters with students, workers, and well-dressed members of the middle class anxious to participate in a "historic" happening...
...A kind of disciplined anarchy reigned in the Sorbonne courtyard...
...In front of the Bourse (which looks like some Grecian temple and is surely the most beautiful symbol of capitalism in the Western world) groups of Parisians were discussing the crisis...
...As the demonstrators passed by where I was standing with my husband, they caught sight of my somewhat extravagant felt blue hat...
...memories of old terrors stirred within me...
...Red flags hung from windows, banners waved in the breeze proclaiming the dawn of a new day...
...The can had no bottom and the garbage cascaded over his feet...
...Well, now you've got them, and you can damn well make the best of them...
...their grievances are justified...
...Now he was on the side of his working class brothers: "The strikers are right...
...One morning I descended into the lobby to find his attitude had suddenly changed...
...Hoots of derision greeted his pronouncement...
...The crs hurled tear-gas bombs, the students hurled stones and cursed from behind their barricades...
Vol. 51 • June 1968 • No. 13
