Showing posts with label demonstrations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label demonstrations. Show all posts

Saturday, December 8, 2018

Paris: My May 1968

author Carol Rose

 My May 1968  Part One

by Carol Rose

Today it is May 1998,  my hourly companion, the faithful France Culture radio station, has begun to speak of May 1968 in reverent tones; an historical event, without any doubt, which had changed France irrevocably.  
First of all the awareness of time having passed likitysplit’ — thirty years had gone by — then it hit me that the manner I had lived this string of events did not jibe with the reverence in the speaker’s voice.  It struck me as odd as I had not been particularly aware at the time of having lived closely through any major event and yet there I had been in the midst of things I barely understood.  

I understood the excitement of the daily marches taking place on the Avenue in front of our courtyard.  I longed to be out there to join in the upsetting fun.   The pharmacist at the corner on the Place Denfert Rochereau was very mocking of me for he realized how I was longing to be free to join the crowd.  He was appalled by the chaos, the total disorder of the meetings of workers and students which usually originated or ended in front of his shop.  People shouting slogans would climb up onto the Lion de Denfert and wave red anarchist flags.  

Meanwhile, in the courtyard where we occupied an old house with two little children, the concierge, Madame LibĂ©, was fearful and scandalized by the goings-on.  We would stand on the sidewalk of the Avenue, she dressed in purple, wringing her hands at the events taking place before us.  I, a little child on each hand,  was not seeing any danger whatsoever in the quite orderly demonstrators marching by with their slogans and banners.   One child wanted to know where all the people were going..