2024-02-01 14:00:51
“We tell ourselves that it only happens to other people. And, yet, in a fraction of a second, here I am on the front of the stage. A crime scene. » Vincent Jeanbrun begins his book, “written like therapy”, by the dramatic event which propelled him, in the summer of 2023, to the forefront of the political scene. On the night of July 1 to 2, the home of the mayor of L’Haÿ-les-Roses (Val-de-Marne) was attacked with a car ram and partly burned during urban riots. His wife fled through the back of the garden with their two young children amid mortar fire and seriously injured her leg. At the same time, the elected representative of the Les Républicains (LR) party watches over his barricaded town hall. Vincent Jeanbrun almost delivers a war story with the details of this confrontation between his municipal police and the rioters, or the story of this gymnasium saved from a probable fire thanks to the intervention of a school guard.
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In a few days, Vincent Jeanbrun became, at 39 years old, the symbol of mayors on the front line in the face of this wave of violence. France discovers his story on TF1’s “8 p.m.”, that of a grandson of Italian immigrants raised on the 17th floor of one of these “brown towers” in the city of which he has been mayor since 2014. The Two Frances (Albin Michel, 270 pages, 18.90 euros) recounts from the inside these days when, according to him, the Republic is faltering in the face of rioters who embody this other France, “that of chaos”. The author multiplies the examples of small renunciations of the State in these declassified territories, highlights a justice system which has become a factory for classifying and manufacturing impunity and points out the bankruptcy of urban policy.
Caution
He assumes a strict repressive policy, praises the use of video surveillance and would like his municipal police to benefit from drones to identify the perpetrators of violence. The statement could appear right-wing, the observation too definitive, but Vincent Jeanbrun has the merit of not only talking about repression. Integration is also the heart of the book. The elected official highlights this “want to get out of it” among his fellow citizens, to no longer be under house arrest in neighborhoods synonymous with “relegation”. A theme that is no longer fashionable for a right that has become obsessed with the question of immigration.
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Without making excuses for them, this person close to Valérie Pécresse describes the rioters of the summer of 2023 as “children of France” and not external elements. Faced with this failure of integration, he pleads for a Republican revival, calls for a major plan for working-class neighborhoods and warns of a future outbreak of violence. In recent days, France has mainly focused on the anger of farmers. The riots already seem far away and Vincent Jeanbrun is worried about them. “I can see that everyone wants to quickly turn the page, and that’s also why I wrote this book. »
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