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When “20,000 residents all get together, the dealers don’t stay long”: in Villeurbanne, a neighborhood resisting drug trafficking
When “20,000 residents all get together, the dealers don’t stay long”: in Villeurbanne, a neighborhood resisting drug trafficking – (SPECIAL ENVIRONMENT / FRANCE 2)
In Villeurbanne, a few minutes from downtown Lyon, the Tonkin district has become a “drug supermarket”. For months, residents of a group of buildings watched as a “crack hill” was installed under their windows. One day, a group of neighbors decided to take action…
“We don’t want you, get out, get out, get out“, chants a rather unusual choir at the foot of the Tonkin buildings, in Villeurbanne. That evening, around twenty neighbors sing a song of resistance against the drug dealers in their neighborhood, which has become one of the biggest “supermarkets in the drugs” in the Lyon region. The residents made a banner in the colors of their collective “Tonkin PAIX-sible”. Exasperated after yet another shooting in the area, they will use it to dislodge a lookout installed on a barrier. Surrounded , he tries to tear off the banner, but he will end up leaving.
A video widely shared on social networks
The scene took place in November 2023. Filmed by the residents themselves, the operation went viral on social networks. In the video, we hear Sylvie, a French teacher, warning Gérald Darmanin: “Mr. Minister, for as long as we’ve been asking you all this… and it’s us who have to go down to fire the crack dealers, so obviously, they insult us, they spot us… Maybe tomorrow we’ll get shot… If we get shot, if we get hurt, if we get attacked, you will be absolutely responsible.”
For three years, with their collective, Sylvie the teacher and Tristan the carpenter have been fighting to wrest their neighborhood from the control of traffickers. “Special Envoy” went to meet them. What did they expect from this video?
“We wanted to provoke a reaction from the public authorities. We let it happen – the public authorities, but also the people, because they are afraid. So, we said ‘We’re not afraid. Look, here we are Go, and we’re not dead!'”
Sylvie, from the Tonkin PAIX-sible collectivein “Special Envoy”
“We went down, they arrived, ten, there, hooded, with a dog, so what? With a poor dog! There were 25 of us“, says the teacher. “In several co-ownerships, we have established links with each other, abounds Tristan, and it’s very different when you’re not alone. There are 20 000 residents in this neighborhood, there are a few dozen drug dealers… And 20 000 residents who all get together… I can tell you that the drug dealers don’t stay long.”
Excerpt from “No dealers near my house!”, a report to be seen in “Envoyéspecial” on February 15 2024.
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