January 31, 2010
Our neighborhood has changed with the addition of our newest neighbor. Georges Freche, the Socialist mayor of Montpellier for 20 years, now the President of the region. At 71, he is overweight,
aggressive verbally and even more of an autocrat than he was when he steamrollered the change necessary for a mile square pedestrian zone in Montpellier served by trams that run every 5 minutes. As an honorary professor of history, he could keep audiences enthralled with lively stories of the history of the region, but as he ages he uses his speaking abilities more abusively against minorities He has extended his hand and $20,000,000 of French tax money to AGREXCO, an Israeli firm that exports vegetables and fruits from Palestinian lands that are illegally occupied, as part of his overall strategy to build trading relationships with Israel.
So, when Bob and I learned that Freche's local campaign headquarters were moving into our building, we cringed. An hour before the opening ceremony, I saw that Freche would be talking right under our window and called the local Boycott, Divertissement and Sanctions (BDS) contact to see if we could hang a sign right behind him and over his head saying we were against support for AGREXCO and behind the Palestinian-created international BDS movement.
a 5-year-old effort of 150 Palestinian organizations and 10 Israeli women’s groups to support economic, cultural and academic boycott, divestiture and sanctions. Bob took exception to my offer of our window for a sign, so I withdrew the offer and we instead joined the demonstrators at the end of the street and made a lot of noise (see video).
We were glad to learn Friday that Freche will be opposed by the current Socialist mayor of Montpellier when he runs for re election in mid March.
Bob tells me that she will lose because she is supported by the head of the Socialist Party who lives north of Paris, and therefore seen as an unwanted intrusion of the north into the affairs of the south, a reminder of the 20 year Albigensian Crusade (1209 to 1229) where between 200,000 and 1,000,000 Protestants were massacred by their Catholic brethren from the north on orders of the Pope whose efforts were supported by the king. Yes, 800 years have passed, but history rolls forward, and having been obliterated once by the north, the south won't stand for it again. (Competence has nothing to do with it. Helen M, the mayor of Montpellier, wins that hands down by almost everyone with whome we talk.)
These two weeks since the last blog have been full of support for French organizations which support the Palestinians. We went to an excellent film “Good Intentions” organized in commemoration of Martin Luther King Day by Americans for Peace and Justice in Montpellier. This film documents a unique peace organization that brings together Israeli and Palestinian families who have lost loved ones in the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. Daniela Boban, who organizes Jewish film festivals around the world, staged the grand premiere of this 49-minute film in San Francisco at the Jewish film festival.
Our effort to learn enough French to be able to integrate with the community continues. What works for me is consistent French, (not interspersed with English) spoken well and slowly on a one to one basis with friends or by an actor in a play or films with French subtitles. When Bob and I hear as well as read French subtitles, we can understand a film readily. We went this week to see Gaza Strophe, a movie subtitled in French made by Palestinians shortly after the siege of the Gaza Strip during the Christmas bombing of 2009. It was a difficult film but very very well done.
We also went to our first play, Camus’ “L’Etrangere” which we both enjoyed—and understood! Camus is a famous French writer who won the Nobel Prize for literature and at that time was the youngest to do so.
Participating in OVS events continues to be a good way to get to know France as well as to practice French. I was so proud of myself for going by myself at night, finding the theater and then identifying the two French people out of 100 who were to be my companions during the free performance by six bass players from the Montpellier orchestra. One of my new acquaintances took her ethics and ran while they were still intact . She left her job at a bank Societe General and moved from Paris to Montpellier two years ago . Sounds like the US! The other noted that most Americans and British in Montpellier don’t bother to learn French, implying that I had and did (Whooppeeee) On the other hand, that same day, a local school turned down my offer for to tutor others in English, saying the children wouldn’t understand my French.
Some of our "friends" make it harder for us to learn French because they practice their English with us at every opportunity. Sometimes I am complicit, like yesterday, when we were so tired after trying to understand French during a two-hour meeting that we gladly initiated speaking English as we talked with friends. The subject of the film and conversation? Did you know that Sri Lanka has the largest system of participatory democracy in the world? To cope with the hurricane, 15,000 villages out of 38,000 in Sri Lanka have developed autonomous governments modeled on Buddhist principles. I don't know if these villages even bothered to vote in the current Presidential election, an act that proved so unsafe for the opposition, for journalists, for activists that Amnesty International is calling for action.
Our little bank on Bainbridge Island closed its doors on Friday. The FDIC has transferred ownership to a three star bank in Tacoma. We saw this coming and had started a relationship with a higher rated bank in Seattle that has, since then, been moving downward also. So we found a third alternative Olympia Federal in Olympia Washington that, as of this morning, still had its five star rating. Employment in the US is between 10% and 17%. Banks continue to slip. Corporations have been given license to spend our tax money buying political decisions. Do we want to stay here? Go home? France is changing too, trapped by the EU’s neo liberal economics and setting a limit on debt which means that social programs are dismantled to balance the budget. Even in France with its very tight policy for lending money to buy homes, economic growth slowed down by 2.2 percent last year.
After reading this blog, Bob and I decided to take at least a week's break from politics and find lighter ways to learn French! We promise.
As a start on that promise, we went for a walk on the Esplanade this afternoon about sundown and found that spring has not come to Montpellier but then it is just the end of January so the trees shouldn't have any leaves. On the other hand, the sun has been out with temperatures into the 50s the past few days and really great light at sunrise and sunset. The wind still makes it on the cool side. (Montpellier is at the same latitude as Boston, but it is warmed by the Mediterranean and winded slightly by three local winds: the cold northerly mistral from central France and the Alps to the Mediterranean, the Tramontaine, the cold northwesterly from the Pyrenees or northeasterly from the Alps to the Mediterranean, and the Sir coco, southerly from north Africa to southern Europe) The days are getting longer, bluer and warmer symbolized by the tulips on top of my French teacher's table this morning.
