LETTER FROM PARIS #19 - is everybody happy?

Ted Lewis asked the question in song. It was his signature. The urge to have everyone be happy sounds fine in song. Remember Melina Mercouri in “Never on Sunday” and how she wanted everything to have a happy ending? For her, Medea had a happy ending! In Paris, everyone should be happy. Why not? You live and you work and you play in one of the most wonderful environments.

Back to reality. Just as Manhattan is a place where everyone seems to be having fun, or working to become rich, successful and make the A list (as in "If you can make it here you can make it anywhere) there are others, lots of them.. The Manhattan mythology forgets that there are how many(?) – six million or so living on the island of Manhattan and the great majority of them are just working people, working poor, or on public assistance.

Today one of my favourite boulangeries was closed. It's Friday and that’s when the world is out shopping for the weekend. In the Labon market neighbourhood, just around the corner from where we are living – the “Marche” is closed, and the fruit and vegetable stores are closed. I am puzzled at how many of the steel gates that protect the stores are down. Maybe I am missing something. Is there is some kind of holiday? But the other great boulangerie around the corner is open and business in booming.

I remeber walking by a building a few days ago and there was a sign protesting the treatment of Korean steel workers. Today the number of picketers had grown larger. There were even more signs. What sealed it was that there was an ambulance and a pompier vehicle parked close by. They are expecting trouble. The merchants have a choice: stay open for the Friday afternoon business and risk damage if there is a “disturbance, or take no chances and close up.

The French, and the Italian and the British for that matter, make a kind of dark humour about how things slow down or close whenever there is a strike or a demonstration. (Incidentally no one is making jokes about the carnage in Greece.) A few days ago there was a large meeting of people waving signs in a small park in the centre of the city. Immgrants have been protesting about how people seeking refugee status are being treated. Nearby were dozens of police and vans. They are ready.

I wonder how the French police would have handled the inevitable vandalism and looting by “sports fans” after Montreal defeated Pittsburgh. The Montreal cops made, as I read, no arrests! I think the French police would err on the side of caution. The police vans will be full. There might be violence.

Many years ago I was in a taxi on my way to a taping session at a studio in London. Our way was blocked by an enormous parade of protestors from Coventry and I think at least one other Midlands city. It was all about the cutbacks in the auto industry. They needn’t have bothered. That industry died anyway, the victim of its own incompetence. That’s another story. I had to get to the studio and they were blocking us. The cab driver leaned on his horn, defying both thre protestors and the police, barged into the parade. His taxi was whacked by a man carrying a protest sign. The cabbie turned belligerent. He stopped. He was ready to get out and make an issue with several thousand angry auto workers. I dissuaded him, and so did a nearby bobby.

In Europe, parades and demonstrations and work stoppages are part of the scenery. It goes I guess with their idea of justice. I cannot help but wonder how the authorities in Toronto think they can keep the protesters doing their protesting miles from the Convention Centre hosting the G20. It was supposed to be in Bellwoods Park, but the locals there objected so it was moved.

I don’t think that could happen in Paris. Strike, demonstrations, protests – they are all part of the way of life.

So – is everybody happy? Only the tourists --and me.