Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Abbe Pierres' Last Gift

This post is about how the best laid plans of men and mice never go the way they looked on paper.
In 1954, a 41 year old priest named Abbe Pierre was already leading a one man crusade to help the huge homeless post war populaion of France gain their rights and respect. He had requisitioned an abandoned house outside of Paris in the trash heaps by the railroad tracks where a huge homeless population lived in a shanty town.
The government was cracking down on the homeless in Paris and evicting them from under bridges and the nooks and crannies where they were able to find refuge.
He took his fight to the top of the government and during one of the coldest winters on record, was able to get on the radio and make an impassioned speech that is still a classic today about the plight of the homeless and societies responsibility. Of course his social activism put him at odds with the Vatican. He touched the hearts of the French people and he became a national hero. Today his Emmaus Organization is in 54 countries and has housing and second hand stores all over France. Moreover, the government was forced to enact laws to help poor people get housing which have only been expanded since then.
Abbe Pierre died today at age 94. Up until thte last year or so, he was still a powerful personality making TV appearances and becoming a regular puppet on the satiric political show Les Guignols d'Info.
This winter on the banks of the Canal St. Martin in Paris and now in quite a few other cities, there have appeared organized tent towns of homeless. They have been championed by a lot of the French people and have gotten a lot of publicity because of the Presidential campaign. It became such an embarassment that the government enacted today a rather wishy washy law that supposedly guarenteed the homeless a right to sue for housing and put together a program that should take effect in 5 years.
In other words, they did nothing buut tried to make it look like they took initiative.
Yesterday, though, Segolene Royale was on Canal+ for an hour being interviewed and one of the points she made was that the Socialists are committed to immediate action. They will require vacant apartments that qualify be used for the homeless as well as using govrnment owned land to construct new housing.
The backdrop to all of this has been Nikola Sarkozi, the UMP Candidate for president and Interior Minister who has been hard at work evicting homeless squats and deporting homeless people who don't have their papers in order, penniless back to their country of origin. There have been thousands of these expulsions. He appeals to the extreme right with this kind of stuff. He tries to play the fear card at every opportunity and has been playing dirty smear politics in the American style.
Today, because of Abbe Pierres' death, the cause of the homeless became the national focus. Chirac spoke of burying the Abbe in the Pantheon, Frances' highest honor.
Tonight a 1989 movie was broadcast. A dramatization of the events of that winter in 1954. The villain of the movie was the heartless Interior Minister who triied all he could to stop an unstoppable force like Abbe Pierre. He lost of course, and the last words of the movie were "Mister Interior Minister, Please Stop the Expulsions!"
The movie was prime time and I can guarantee that almost every television was tuned to it! The Abbe could have died at any time, but his moment of death guarantees that this will be etched in the minds of countless French people. Another case of the politics of human compassion overwhelming the calculating machine of a little cruel fascist!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hello Microdot,
Voltaire Quote:
“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities area wrong.”

On the other hand, sometimes the good guys get through and make a difference. Those like Martin Luther King in the 1960’s U.S., Nelson Mandela of South Africa, and of course Abbe Pierre of France.

Many do not appreciate the commitment, the amount of abuse one is exposed to, the danger to step out of line and point out what it wrong and work to make it right.

I have had a taste of it fighting the environmental issues in my own area. This is how I got involved in politics at the level I have. I have been threatened with physical harm by the garbage industry. I have been called a “Wild Eyed Radical by the newspapers in the early days,” “Environ-Mentalist by the Rush Limbaugh lemmings,” but finally after many years and many successes to my credit; “Someone to go to when people’s homes are endangered of being devalued and their health suffer because someone wants to bring in an operation that is going to pollute the air or water of the area.”

County Commissioners will now call to ask my advice and seek the truth on issues when a suspicious enterprise is trying to locate in the county. I have Commissioners in other counties calling me for advice. Many times it is because the Congressman will direct them to me when they call him for help.

Arthur Schopenhauer Quote:
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

Great Posting!