THIS is not a tale of two cities, it is the story of two cousins, young men whose experiences of France cut to the reality behind the political rhetoric of egality and liberty and through the cauterising flames of 17 nights of rioting in the suburbs.
County sets sights on sign regulationsKane's proposal would require that temporary signs be placed only on private property and located only on the same parcel of property as the event, sale or business that is being advertised. Residents would be banned from placing temporary signs in the public right-of- way."It's a resolution to clean up our community and make it nice looking," Kane said. "Believe me, it makes a big difference."Aziz encountered discrimination on each step of the business staircase. The bureaucracy of France conspired against his plans to open his business, his drivers were racially abused, one was attacked, and he suffers constant harassment from officialdom.Besides, the festival's version of the Old West is more exciting and -- for lessons taught and learned -- much more rewarding.Though they grew up in different parts of the country, as French citizens, they shared long childhood holidays back in Morocco where the extended family was big enough to field two football teams.France, says Bertossi, is at an impasse. "All the discourse of the past two weeks has been about security and order. What we need is a political debate on defining what it means to be French today. Local authorities have to tell kids they are part of France. Integration has to be for the whole of society because otherwise we face the dangers of the right wing."The festival runs through Friday. When not being entertained by performers, visitors will find herbal medicines, quilts, rug weavers and cooks to watch.Their Moroccan parents arrived in France as immigrant workers almost 30 years ago. Hamid Senni was born in France and grew up in Valance, in the kind of high-rise blocks next to which you see cars being torched every night now on television.He moved to London, immediately began work with BP and has been head-hunted around Europe by many multinationals. Now he has set up his own business consultancy, Vision Enabler, in the most expensive part of the British capital.His younger cousin Aziz was 40 days old when he arrived in France and he lives in Mante-la-Jolie, 40km west of Paris, one of the hundreds of French towns that has seen rioting in the past two weeks Hamid's father is uncle to Aziz's father, but the first cousins once removed behave like brothers.In addition to taking up the sign ordinance Monday, commissioners plan to:His company has been taken to court by the local authorities four times and each time the allegations of regulation breaches have collapsed. He puts it down to local business rivals pulling strings in the town hall and down to plain discrimination.Kane said she often sees unattractive cardboard signs advertising garage sales or other events attached to utility poles or standing in areas where the sale or event isn't taking place.What the festival shows is that, inside the stereotypes of "noble natives" and tin-horn sheriffs beat the hearts of living, breathing human beings; people who passed down their genes, their skills and their codes to the people who drive the freeways of the West today.His book, which couldn't have been better timed, has already sold 5000 copies. Aziz has decided to set up scholarships with any profits so that others like him can be educated out of the ghetto.It's not just in the labour market that Hamid suffered discrimination. Social integration, going out with white girls for example, was frowned on by society. "We would go to a club and at the door [the girl] would be allowed in but I would be turned away, " he says.- Consider budgets of $90,800 for the first phase of a project to improve S.E. Croco Road between S.E. 6th and Sycamore streets; $231,150 for the first phase of an effort to improve Croco between S.E. 21st and 29th; and $222,450 for the first phase of a project to improve the intersection of S.E. 29th and Croco. The projects would be financed through a countywide half-cent sales tax that voters approved last August.In his 30 years, Hamid has notched up four degrees and can speak five European languages.Miller asked whether Kane's proposal included penalties for violators. When he learned it didn't, Miller asked the county counselor's office to amend the measure to include a $100 fine for those who break the rules.Britons should not sleep too easily though.Kane's feelings about the signs prompted her to sponsor a home rule resolution that would set rules regulating temporary signs in unincorporated areas of the county. That measure is on the agenda for when commissioners meet at 9 a.m. Monday in their chambers at the county courthouse, 200 S.E. 7th.The problem he refers to is being "outside the picture". Hamid says: "In France, if you are Arab-looking you constantly have to explain yourself: your name, your skin, your faith, the place you stay. I will make enemies for saying this, but France is still living in the time of the colonies."Commissioners heard the first reading of the proposal at their meeting Thursday, where Commission Chairman Vic Miller spontaneously broke into a vocal rendition of the 1971 hit song "Signs," by the Five Man Electrical Band.With fresh rioting erupting in Lyon last night, in defiance of a curfew , it would appear that the crisis is far from over."People like my mother remember the Algerian uprising and the repression by the French troops. This just makes older people angry too, " says Hamid It is difficult in elections to stand on a platform of multiculturalism and pro-immigration policies and Sarkozy appears to have made the easy calculation that the immigrant population has limited political power.And, as with all worthy mythologies, looking back at the wranglers and outlaws, the hanging judges and dance hall girls can teach a lot about human nature and human relationships. Sometimes a fallen woman just might have a heart of gold. And sometimes the orneriest stage coach robber in the territory might believe in the sanctity of family.Now approaching their 30s, they remain close and competitively friendly. "Who is the best looking?" asks Aziz tugging his cousin's chin. Making jokes, flirting with passing women, they don't have hangups but they have had the problems which the children of French immigrants all face. Exceptionally, they have overcome the barriers in their path and are now successful young businessmen but both have arrived by very different routes."I wrote the book partly to show people of my generation not to give up, that it is possible to be in business, " says Aziz. "Partly to inspire and partly to ask people to face up to this problem.""Public life in the UK does not represent British society. There should be 47 or more MPs from ethnic minorities in Westminster if it was to be representative, " says Christophe Bertossi, a research fellow with the French Institute of International Relations.
In Paris, curfews and bans on public association only reinforce the growing sense of siege. The capital, on a quiet Saturday, its centre emptied for the Armistice commemoration holiday, feels anxious.
Author: EYEWITNESS By Torcuil Crichton in Paris
No comments:
Post a Comment