If these women were white Would they treat them like that ?

[pierre75]

Prefecture said it was calm. Mainstream media only wrote it was done.

But video and internet.

What does it means to be expelled in France in summer 2010 :

http://dai.ly/dmrJKP

La Courneuve. Less than 10 km from Eiffel Tower.

If these women were white, would they treat them like that ?

[Ben]

Appreciate the tabloid style journalism of your post, bravo.

By the way, what's actually going on in the video?

[86ti]

If these women were white, would they treat them like that ?

Actually, one of the women dragged away by the police appears to be white.

[pierre75]

Sorry Ben for the "tabloïd style" but it's easier for me to try to write like that in understandable English.

Story is simple : Building that was promised to be destroyed for years. Families came after it was closed and lived inside without neither commodities or authorisation. Expelled start of july. Camp in the road in front of the building. Expelled from the camp last week.

Most of these families do work and can afford a rent. Most of them have papers. They are allowed by law to be on the list of social housing. The law says that authorities must provide another lodging if case they expell but "it would be too easy to get an appartment this way". And municipalities are fed up with such families. Nobody wants them because if they get a housing so other families will come out from the nowhere where they are actually living and ask the same. So this first group families is the cap of the bottle. Municipalities offer one week of hotel for the ones who accept. And finish. So this new kind of nomadism, working but going from an empty building to another. It is not that no appartments are available. It is that "it would be too easy this way". Cap of the bottle.

What for me is important and why I posted this video link is because a new step appears to be. "They use kids as a weapon to get housing and it cannot be tolerated anymore". If we allow ourselves that the kids of working families have by birth a cap of the bottle destiny, what will be the next step ? If it was white families, white women with white kids treated this way, would we allow ourselves to get accustomed to such a video ?

I do not pretend myself to help this families. The white woman in the video is doing so or at least tries to help. I do not pretend neither that the government is full of vicious dearly beloved who want some people to suffer. But I'm convinced that if we allow the "depression for somes" to make us easy to forget such a video, so we may find ourselves, one day or another, to be the next step. Our own kids are more expensive to educate than to import young qualified migrants. Our own salaries are more expensive to pay than to import talented and dedicated migrants to do our jobs. I don't know how it sounds in english but if we accept cold inhumanity for others, so this inhumanity will flourish at our own expense.

[scrudu]

Pierre: What do you mean mean by "cap of the bottle".

I think it's disgraceful that those women brought their children and babies along to this protest. By the way they were sitting, they obviously expected to be physically removed. Why were they willing to subject their children to this upset? The woman in the footage who clung on to her child with her legs while the policeman was trying to lift him to safety was shocking. Who does that to a child? Or the women who lay backwards with their babies on their back crushing them into the ground??!! What were they thinking?

I don't think anyone would become accustomed to such a video. It was horrendeous and very upsetting to watch. For whatever protest anyone involves themselves in, they should not involve innocent children. This goes for any skin colour, any country, any race.

[pierre75]

Scrudu, I will try to answer latter. My english is poor and it takes me time to write.

CNN broadcasted it. International press starts also to use it.

So the French mainstream media, which were fully silent for more than one week while it was given to them, do not have anymore choice and start also to broadcast and speak about.

[pierre75]

Scrudu,

I try to answer you briefly. Sorry for my english.

On my view, there is three different kinds of caps (and soon to be a new one).

- Cap n°1 : The official cap.

For instance, UK is starting to implement a cap for working migration. A maximum number is decided. Sorry for the others. At least, it is clear.

- Cap n°2 : The national secret cap.

Maximum number is also decided by the authorities but it is unofficial (secret) because it is illegal.

It concerns marriage and families migration. For instance, family immigration in France has a maximum unofficial (illegal) figure of 80 000 per year since 2008. It is obtained mostly by focussing on French-3rd country families with poor social background by adding more and more time consuming difficulties to register their files when asking for transcription of marriage, visa or leave to remain (artificial challenges of the validity of their documentation, challenge of the genuineness of the marriage, no answer from the administration, etc …). Of course, foreign families with poor social background are also subject to this kind of artifical and mostly illegal difficulties.

This is illegal (art. 8, Human Right Convention, European Council) but this is how they work. They reduced French-3rd country families by more than 10 000 per year between 2003 and 2008. Now they block us at 50 000 per year since 2007 (plus 30 000 for foreign families, so total 80 000).

2003 : 95 844
2004 : 96 609
2005 : 94 690
2006 : 98 344
2007 : 87 719
2008 : 82 996
2009 : 80 043
2010 (January-June, 6 months) : 41 238

- Cap n°3 : The local secret cap

This cap has no figure but two tools :

- No housing facilities for families (whether French-3rd Country or foreign families who have been regularised in the territory).

- No maternelle (public school) for kids under 3 years old.

Mostly decided at the municipality level, the goal of this cap n°3 is to keep a certain amount of families with difficulties in order to discourage new ones to come or to ask for their rights.

Municipalities refuse to publish the lists of housing asks, who is accepted and who is refused.

Municipalities refuse to publish the lists of « maternelle » at 2 years old, who is accepted, who is refused.

This is the local cap of the bottle. This was the destiny of the families of the video of La Courneuve. Foreign people do not have the right of vote at local elections in France. So municipalities do not really care. We have still a long way to go.

- And soon cap n°4. Language abilities, qualifications, school and training abilities and new definition of public order. On the name of inclusion, these 4 matters have more to do with exclusion.

France has been condemned by the Social Comittee of the Council of Europe in 2007 for social housing. The French law says that the poor must get priority for housing but the reality is opposite.

France has been condemned by the Social Comittee of the Council of Europe in 2010 for open camps facilities for travellers. The French law says that a minimum amount of camp facilities shall be available but the reality is not even 50%.

I hope that France will be condemned for discrimination of availability of maternelle at 2 years old. The French law says that the poors must have priority access to maternelle at 2 years old but the reality is opposite.

Only 5% of the 2 years old kids have maternelle access in Seine Saint-Denis (the stronghold department of the French-Foreign families, more than 55% of the births have at least one non-French father/mother. Only French Guyana makes best, more than 60%).

In Finistère (west of France), 61% of the 2 years old kids are scolarised in maternelle. Finistère has only 5 ,7% of births with at least one non-French father/mother ...

Segregation isn’t it ?