We were functioning
simply with the unions
without interference of departmental or national authorities.
All the problems that were unresolved
or got bogged down
led to demonstrations,
meaning road blockades,
I'm talking about Revin where we ransacked the EDF office,
also here when we came
and robbed the public treasury
(when I say robbing : the documents)
I'm also talking about the bank occupations,
of all the bank agencies of Vireux,
and many more..
"VV" [Vireux Vivra] was a bit of a fringe thing
in its form of demands
that had a quite violent connotation,
in the words we used back then :
a bit more "terrorist",
that used dynamite
to make the problems of Chiers visible.
It was translated into a kinda particular event,
an EDF pylon that was blown up,
so that made another link
between Chiers and the antinuclear people.
In Chalons-sur-Marne.
Along with our rights
we had, in our reach, not too far
(not on us though),
a pair of molotov cocktails, of course.
Because it would be denying reality
to say we didn't use them.
The judge told me "I hope you learned your lesson",
when he freed me..
I said "sir, when you come back to Vireux,
tomorrow, you will find me on a blockade.
Otherwise you don't let me go."
It's as simple as that.
If the blockade was necessary, well, there you go.
The castle got burned down after
a failed meeting with management,
upon seeing most of the staff
had come to assist us,
those wimps didn't want to come.
And well, unfortunately for him,
one RG agent was recognized
and got singled out,
and was almost lynched.
To try to divert the attention from the guy,
I pitched the idea
"Let's go back to Vireux, take over the castle"
Someone said : "Take over, not take over, we'll burn it !"
When we arrived there, well molotov cocktails
and we set the castle on fire.
Everyone who had
an antinuclear soul came to demonstrate
with the autonomes
who came down from the paris region,
it made for an amalgamation of people
protesting against Chooz and fighting
- (bad untranslatable belgian joke) -
who were protesting violently against the CRS.
Frank Ménenger was 17 years old
when, alongside the parisian autonomous movement,
he went to Chooz and Vireux.
We found him quite naturally in Paris.
Jean-Noël organized a meeting at gare de l'est.
He'd simply accepted,
as if through the simplicity of the testimony,
we could also detect the pride
of having kept the same sentiment
and especially the same ideas and the same radicality.
So it was a train going to Charleville,
you painted "solidarité Vireux" on the train?
There must've been a dozen tags.
On each wagon, there was one sentence
"against the Chooz power plant",
"solidarity with the Vireux workers",
stuff like that.
We were a group of people,
relatively young, but who had made choices.
People who had broken away from school,
broken away from their family,
and we were revolutionnary, it's a choice,
it was almost a life choice.
And what we put into that,
it wasn't ideological stuff,
it was really rage, something from the guts.
I think it's one of the most interesting
things I've lived in my life
and it deeply transformed me.
When people talk to you about [may] 68,
that it transformed them,
I completely understand,
it's really what I lived through at Vireux.
It almost makes me tear up :
once we were with 3 or 4 friends,
we went into a grocery store,
and we had absolutely no money at the time,
I don't know what we lived with :
we begged, we stole a lot,
we had really no income, there was no RMI [RSA]
we were too young to get it anyway,
we had really nothing.
And we go into a grocery store,
we buy a bag of biscuits because we were hungry,
we get our coins out.
The grocer looks at us, he says :
"That's all you have ?"
"Well yeah that's all we have, we don't.."
"Come on, take this, take this..."
and he gives us a bunch of stuff.
Well for me shopkeepers, it was really something,
and, well, it still is,
I don't have any love for small-scale trade,
but there the shopkeeper, he wasn't a shopkeeper anymore.
I think most people of Vireux,
there was nothing very spontaneous,
everything was discussed beforehand,
everything was prepared beforehand,
the material was there,
there was much more material than necessary,
there were pallets of molotov cocktails,
paletts of steel bars.
A barricade at Vireux,
it was 200 2 ton steel bars
stacked into a pyramid with gas bottles in the middle
so it would blow up when the armoured truck arrived
and covered with a layer of phosphorus,
so that when it's on fire,
when they put it out, when they came with the water cannons,
when they put it out, it would burn with the phosphorus.
And I remember, there was a worker,
he was doing his calculations to attach an electric pylon
in the direction of the barricade,
so if the armoured car pushes it,
the pylon would fall on it.
Lots of calculations like that.
On top of that, we were skinny as a rail.
Me, I was, I dunno, I weighed 60 kg
We were kids, half of us were girls.
You can't say we were big guys.
It's not the myth of the manly autonomes,
huge with leather jackets,
we were three apples high, thin as a nail.
I come from a suburb,
most of us came from the suburbs,
we didn't have a very nice image of the working class
because we came from it,
I mean we know what the working class is,
it's beaufitude.
We were young, with 40 year old workers,
almost our fathers, who were annoying,
their mentality wasn't ours, it was super beauf.
Once, we were crawling
behing a small wall, a bit like this one,
we were going, I think along the Meuse, no?
Yes, yes.
...along the Meuse, to get behind the cops,
to attack them from behind with mollies,
we were a bit fewer than 10,
half workers half parisians, half young people from Paris.
And the guy in front of me, he's crawling with his molly,
he turns, but he's not talking to me,
I think he was talking to the guy behind me,
he goes "This is fun !
Really fun, kind of like Algeria!"
Wow!
What is this ?
They're crazy.
They're crazy, but at the same time the guy was super cool.
There I didn't think "Ah, they're really beaufs,
what am I doing with this asshole ?".
I told myself "Damn, even with the worst asshole,
you can do cool stuff!"
Djamel is more known under the name Gavroche.
It's his musician name.
Djamel is also a child of the Pointe.
But he's first a child of the Chooz struggles.
He grew up in Aubrives, between Chooz and Vireux.
His father was a steelworker at the Chiers.
Mind the steps.
You did all the building work, here ?
Yeah, with our own hands.
Small space, friendly.
The amazigh symbol, a kabyle symbol.
Please, sit down.
I know my parents, at the beginning,
and it's normal, they still have this reflex of..
they always tell me "Shut up".
Well, there was Chooz,
and at Chooz they had to get invested
completely, completely into this thing, it was their fight.
But me, this spirit,
revolutionnary, let's say, it comes from there.
And Aubrives is a village,
meaning when a cop shows up,
us, the cops, we saw them on TV, you see.
And honestly, it was really scary :
they showed up, they asked questions..
Well, we had the advantage, that
when the cops asked questions,
most of us didn't speak a word of french
so we couldn't really answer.
Our mothers, they couldn't speak french,
our fathers had just arrived in france
so they spoke with a very heavy accent,
so they didn't have any information.
And they threw down tear gas by helicopter,
by helicopter, but it wasn't 10 000 meters high,
so you could see them fall.
And my eyes start crying and everything,
and I remember my father telling me "go back home".
On top of that, the "go back home",
I'll remember all my life,
he said it in my mother tongue
so it's scarier than anything.
if he had said "rentre, rentre!",
but he said it in kabyle.
"Axxam, axxam!"
It's total panic !
After he was ambushed,
there's cops everywhere.
He said it's a difficult period because
when talking about him, he said,
us for example at the Chiers,
we were worse than slaves.
You know, he worked in the foundry.
It was in 83-84 when they started to say
"Take 10 000 bucks and piss off!".
They offered to the whole population
with an immigration background to go back to their country.
So, us in Aubrives, there was only kabyle algerians.
So they offered to all of us to go back to the country.
And I'll remember my whole life,
my father who came in, who said
"We're packing our bags, we're going back".
And imagine, in 83, I was 13,
and there, the world collapses.
That was where you really became aware there was
really a difference between
the french worker and the immigrated worker.
Because they were offering that we would go back.
But to go back, you have to have left !
Us, where do we go back to ?
We're born here, you know what I mean ?
When they said that to my parents,
when they told us "you need to go back"
"go back where ?"
I was born in Aubrives, I was born in Givet, I mean.
It was shitty times.
So us, we ended up in social housing, in Givet.
Because after we couldn't stay,
because we were in a small house in Aubrives, countryside and all.
It was really nice.
We ended up in social housing,
and you imagine I'm 13, my brothers 14 and 15,
you end up in social housing like that, from one day to the next.
Yeah, we had a bath, but well..
That's all we had.
I came to france the day of my birth
My mother's belly my first home
Hardly had I let out my first yell,
they tell me "hey, you, you're not from here!"
[The workers of the Chiers obtained a "historical" social plan, some of them keeping their salary for up to 10 years] they tell me "hey, you, you're not from here!"
She had been careful to give me [The workers of the Chiers obtained a "historical" social plan, some of them keeping their salary for up to 10 years]
[The Chooz power plant was attached to the EDF network in 1997] She had been careful to give me [The workers of the Chiers obtained a "historical" social plan, some of them keeping their salary for up to 10 years]
She had been careful to give me [The Chooz power plant was attached to the EDF network in 1997]
a name thet rhymed neither with Marc, Olivier or Raymond [The Chooz power plant was attached to the EDF network in 1997]
but that was well connected to the Mediterrannean [The Chooz power plant was attached to the EDF network in 1997]
but that was well connected to the Mediterrannean
My parents had been of age for a long time
but did not become independent at 18
Hardly had they yelled "enough",
they were told "shut up, foreigner!"
We forget quickly.
International amnesia.
Some men get excited.
Always wanting to do evil.
We forget quickly.
International amnesia.
My repression is named Darwin.
Races were never again supposed to be cousins.
In paradise there are no angels of colour.
The black cat brings bad luck.
On TV mental slavery.
Tells you to beware of "Fayçal".
In the neighborhoods it's Sodom and Gomorrha.
Terrorists in cages of death.
We're accused of all evil on earth.
It's the new witch hunt.
No, I'm not paranoid ! You just have to read the news.
Because international amnesia.
International amnesia.