Dear Clément…I hope you’ll read this from where you are now…
I didn’t know you. First, I saw your picture on a online newspaper. A very bad black and white picture. You were showing your profile. I read your name. Clément. Underneath was written your age. You were 19. Then I remembered what I was doing when I was 19. I was young, thinking myself as a big man because I was at the university, was playing the cock in a henhouse. Pretending I was someone. I was actually nothing. YOU were. Do you mind if I sit here, along the banks of the river Seine with you? Come one, we are going to have a talk about you, I’d like to know you…to have known you. I wish I had known you…If only we had had time to sit together in a pub and share a pint or two or three…But no, I was 19 and I was nothing. I just don’t understand how a young man, brave like you are can be beaten up to death, in the center of Paris, in the very middle of the afternoon, in front of a station. Were you invisible? Were those who let their hate kill you invisible? Were the people blind? Are we all blind? Blinded by our routine, our comfort, our job. “Hey. I work I don’t have time to commit myself.” No, excuses, we are blinded by our cowardice. Then, I see you, lying on the pavement, the print of the sole of the boot that has killed you is still on your face. A very vague sound resounds in my head. It’s the one of one pair of boots marching down the street of our cities. “It’s nothing…that’ll finish soon” we say. Then two. “It’s nothing…that’ ll finish soon” we say. Three, ten, thousands pairs of boots are marching down our streets. They make the ground shake, they make us hide in fear. YOU were not afraid, you were fighting against that dark wind. Yes, they are coming back! In the branches, the sound of their evil wind whistles…We can hear it, we think it’s nothing, they’ll never get the power. We are in a democracy. They were too in 1933. The crystal night is not that far away. The battle of Cable Street is not that far away. Your death is too painful, too unfair. The boots that have killed you were worn by hatred, by xenophobia. We are now crying because, since your death thousands have hidden in the dark, thousands have said “It’s nothing…that’ll finish soon.” No, it won’t…Hatred is part of us. Do we hate democracy so much that we let these things happen? Do we hate ourselves so much that we are ready to forget the basic principles of society? No Clément, YOU were someone…You were fighting for all of us…I am 38 now, I am nothing.
I have personally 'fought' xenophobia for years. By marriage I am related to people who are not 'white' to begin with, one of whom has been a close friend for much longer, also have a Jewish in-law who has been beaten up for it. Then add my profession to the equation and I simply do not differentiate except that when, for instance, I hear my nephew has been attacked I am reminded. I have made sure my children are informed properly and now do not make any reference to colour, religion and so on but accept all people as simply human beings.
Seems like only Jean Louis, Tracy, Brian and me are bothered.
I don't think we really want to know, big money defending 'status quo' for sure.
Ron Kavana's 'Reconciliation'
When summer time has come
And autumn winds are threatening
To blow our love away
It's then love will be tested.
Arm in arm we'll stand,
Side by side together
To face the common foe
That would tear our love asunder.
Tura lura lay
Tura lura laddie
Tura lura lay
Tura lura laddie
You fair weathered friend
Where are you now I need you
Unlike the autumn sun
A cold December morning
When hard times come around
In cold and stormy weather
There's only you and I, my love
To shelter one another
Tura lura lay
Tura lura laddie
Tura lura lay
Tura lura laddie
Now there's a time to fight,
And there's a time for healing
As the sun would melt the snow
On clear, bright April mornings.
Our fight has run its course
Now is the time for healing
So let us all embrace
Sweet reconciliation
Tura lura lay
Tura lura laddie
Tura lura lay
Tura lura laddie
This is where we should be and not killing people like Clément!
Who are the leaders, the real leaders,of UKIP I wonder.
Yes David, you have omitted (as vehemently they deny it) UKIP members who want immigrants rounded up and put in camps until they can be deported, fox hunting and various other 'humane' activities reinstated in the UK and have met within the cabals formed by Golden Dawn, EDL, FN and so on. OK, we are being very political and emotive for sure, but as bad the nasty element of the left can be these right wing groups take the pip. Clément joins the list that history hides, when I see the monuments to executed resistance members in villages in this area I never see corresponding lists for the Jews, Roma, disabled and mentally ill victims of WWII on public monuments and that is where Clément Méric's name will (not) be too.
The same right wing scum that killed Clément are the same right wing scum that filled the ranks of the Milice, the same members of the Police Nationale and the Gendarmerie that rounded up the Jews and delivered them to the Velo d'Hiv and Drancy en route for Treblinka and Auschwitz, the same who tipped Algerians into the Seine, the same scum who populate the ranks of the English Defence League, the FN, the New Dawn, the NF. We must stand up and oppose this right wing renaissance wherever we are and whoever we are.If you are an Anglophone immigrant it's not good enough to say that it's a French affair. Clément was a student at Sciences-Po and thus one of the brightest France and Europe had to offer. He deserves to be memorialised by our continuing and continual opposition to the Right.
The only info I can find in English http://www.thelocal.fr/20130606/paris-student-left-brain-dead-by-far-right-attack
Jean Louis, very well written, a thought provoking post. For those who would like to know more