France – Lyon: “Meeting” with residents or electoral campaign?
France – Lyon: “Meeting” with residents or electoral campaign?
We hereby share an unofficial translation of an article published by La Cause du Peuple.
On Tuesday, January 28, residents of the Beauvisage district invited Nathalie Perrin-Gilbert, mayor of the 1st district for 19 years and now a municipal councilor of the pseudo “opposition” to Grégory Doucet, Lyon’s mayor. The residents are indeed worried: the apartment buildings of the Beauvisage district, in the Etats-Unis [Translator’s note: proletarian neighborhood] will probably be destroyed to pave the way for a park of four hectares.
The residents therefore faced Nathalie Perrin-Gilbert, who came with the mayor of the 8th district, the opportunist Olivier Berzane, as well as assistants as diverse as useless. Far from being the fruit of the imagination of revolutionaries, this uselessness was materialized in facts. Madame Perrin-Gilbert has indeed taken notes and promised a visit to a resident apartment which is flooded for several months (as if she would not be aware of the situation in working-class neighborhoods!), and a new meeting to attend the concerns and requests of the residents first in February, then delayed to March, then at the end, to April. …
Mr. Berzane was unable to respond in several occasions. He could not say anything about the collection of garbage, on the solution against rats which proliferate or on the inability of the town hall services to do the necessary concerning such a wild market. The misery, expelled from La Guillotière, a neighborhood which is facing gentrification, is therefore in the 8th district and all its weight falls on the residents of the poorest district of Lyon. Merchants who have forbidden to sell their products in the market, required legal details about it, since they are losing a major income for months. The restructuring of the roads, replacing them with bike lanes on a main street, is creating immense traffic jams for workers working in industrial areas, was strongly criticized.
Finally, an activist from the CPES (People’s Committee of Mutual Aid and Solidarity) asked for details on the “CAP sur les Etat” project, a restructuring project that aims to gentrify the district. This is indeed the main reason for concerns of the residents, who do not know if they will be expelled and then relocated. The districts’ mayor himself claimed not to be aware of the plans, which are not yet implemented.
CPES militants therefore recalled that the promises and the words only serve to save time, and that there were only two possibilities: either the districts’ mayor is lying, or he is useless. In any case, he is not on the side of the residents facing the landlords and promoters, as evidenced by each struggle in the district, which sees the districts’ mayor oppose the residents. The coffee house in which the meeting took place then welcomed the remaining residents, who extensively discussed the lies of politicians in the electoral campaign and the uselessness for them for a long time.
We publish the interview with Houssem, a worker living in the neighborhood, which we made during the discussions according to the meeting.
URL to ours
We hereby share an unofficial translation of an article published by La Cause du Peuple.
On Tuesday, January 28, residents of the Beauvisage district invited Nathalie Perrin-Gilbert, mayor of the 1st district for 19 years and now a municipal councilor of the pseudo “opposition” to Grégory Doucet, Lyon’s mayor. The residents are indeed worried: the apartment buildings of the Beauvisage district, in the Etats-Unis [Translator’s note: proletarian neighborhood] will probably be destroyed to pave the way for a park of four hectares.
The residents therefore faced Nathalie Perrin-Gilbert, who came with the mayor of the 8th district, the opportunist Olivier Berzane, as well as assistants as diverse as useless. Far from being the fruit of the imagination of revolutionaries, this uselessness was materialized in facts. Ms. Perrin-Gilbert has indeed taken notes and promised a visit to a resident apartment which is flooded for several months (as if she would not be aware of the situation in working-class neighborhoods!), and a new meeting to attend the concerts and requests of the residents first in February, then delayed to March, then at the end, on April…
Mr. Berzane was unable to respond in several occasions. He could not say anything about the collection of garbage, on the solution against rats which proliferate or on the inability of the town hall services to do the necessary concerning such a wild market. The misery, expelled from La Guillotière, a neighborhood which is facing gentrification, is therefore in the 8th district and all its weight falls on the residents of the poorest district of Lyon. Merchants who have forbidden to sell their products in the market, required legal details about it, since they are losing a major turnover for months. The restructuring of the roads, replacing them with bike lanes on a main street, is creating immense traffic jams for workers working in industrial areas, was strongly critical.
Finally, an activist from the CPES (People’s Committee of Mutual Aid and Solidarity) asked for details on the “CAP sur les Etat” project, a restructuring project that aims to gentrify the district. This is indeed the main reason for concern of the residents, who do not know if they will be expelled and then relocated. The district mayor himself claimed not to be aware of the plans, which are not yet implemented.
CPES militants therefore recalled that the promises and the words only serve to save time, and that there were only two possibilities: either district mayor is lying, or it is useless. In any case, it is not on the side of the residents facing the landlords and promoters, as evidenced by each struggle in the district, which sees the district mayor oppose the residents. The coffee in which the meeting took place then welcomed the remaining residents, who extensively discussed the lies of politicians in the electoral campaign and the uselessness for them for a long time.
We publish the interview with Houssem, a worker living in the neighborhood, which we made during the discussions according to the meeting.
