About fifty associations, unions and parties call to “take back the streets” on September 23

2023-08-01 19:46:01

Surf on the remnants of the mobilization against the pension reform, relaunch the movement and extend the fight. This is succinctly the ambition of some fifty organizations calling for “taking back to the streets” during a “unitary march” on September 23, in particular to demand police reform and social justice in working-class neighborhoods. Among them are groups from working-class neighborhoods and victims of police violence, NGOs such as Attac, Last Renovation and Friends of the Earth, left-wing parties, from the NPA to LFI via EELV, but neither the PS nor the PCF, as well as the CGT, FSU and Solidaires unions.

The authorities had twice banned demonstrations planned for July by around a hundred organizations. One of them, which had all the same taken place on July 8 in Paris and brought together around 2,000 people, had led to the muscular arrest of Youssouf Traoré, the brother of Adama Traoré, who died in July 2016 following of his arrest by the gendarmes. Several journalists had also reported having suffered violence from the police.

Call for “in-depth police reform”

“We call for people to take to the streets on Saturday September 23, to organize demonstrations or other initiatives throughout the country, to stand together against the repression of social, democratic and ecological protests, for the end of systemic racism, police violence , and for climate, feminist social justice and public freedoms, ”write the fifty signatory organizations of a press release released on Tuesday.

They denounce in particular “a neoliberal policy imposed by authoritarian methods, security laws and a doctrine of the maintenance of order decried even in the largest international bodies, a regressive policy which makes the bed of the extreme right and always tramples plus our civil liberties, our social model, our future in the face of ecological collapse”.

These organizations are calling in particular for an “ambitious public investment plan in working-class neighborhoods” and “in-depth reform of the police”. The death of 17-year-old Nahel, killed by a police officer during a road check on June 27 in Nanterre, and the urban violence that followed, unprecedented since 2005, cast a harsh light on the difficulties of working-class neighborhoods and the stormy relations between young people and the forces of order.