Gilles Poux, PCF mayor of La Courneuve had co-signed a forum in May to demand an emergency plan for the suburbs, he calls on franceinfo to “get out of 40 years of relatively ineffective city policies on issues of social promotion”.
“We have national policies which consider that with a few subsidies, we ask elected officials to be firefighters permanently. Except that at some point it blows us all up in the face”, deplores Friday on franceinfo Gilles Poux, PCF mayor of La Courneuve (Seine-Saint-Denis). Last May, he co-signed with around thirty local elected officials a column published in Le Monde, which called for an emergency plan for the suburbs.
Emmanuel Macron said he wanted to provide a complete and deep response to the riots at the start of the summer. Does this inspire you?
It inspires me, provided that we take out elements of language. I hope that it will take into account the needs expressed by working-class neighborhoods for many years, to get out of 40 years of relatively ineffective city policies on issues of social advancement. We have to ask ourselves how these 6 million inhabitants live in these working-class neighborhoods, whether we are working with the youth of these neighborhoods, with the elected representatives of the communities, with the various authorities, to propose alternatives. Me, I started a battle on employment in my city: companies tell me that they are ready, and what they offer is a year and a half of interim before being able to think of a CDI. As long as we are in this situation, we will not light a light within this youth who only asks to take its place.
Giving young people their place in society, what does it consist of?
La Courneuve is one of the areas that receives the most private and public investment, with the 2024 Olympics, the Grand Paris Express, private companies coming to set up, and we have an unemployment rate three times higher than the national average. It’s not just a coincidence. Employment discrimination continues. When we hear the former president of Medef say that drug dealers are the number one employer in Seine-Saint-Denis, it doesn’t surprise me that there is still reluctance on the part of entrepreneurs to hire young people from these territories.
You say that money invested by public authorities has been there for several decades. Where is it stuck?
Money is going hard today, and from this point of view, our neighborhoods have changed. In La Courneuve, the urban reality has changed profoundly, housing is of much better quality. We are on the way. Where there are no means, it is on social and human issues: we are on very marginal investments, with public services which have deserted the working-class neighborhoods. We have national policies that consider that with some subsidies, we ask elected officials to be firefighters permanently. Except that at some point it blows us all up in the face. We have to get out of this territorial contempt, this social contempt with which we are confronted.
Do you still feel the scars of what happened at the start of the summer?
Fortunately, the tension has subsided. However, the feeling, the pain and the feeling of exclusion continue to be profound. If signals aren’t quickly sent, if we don’t open up the possibility of discussion, we’re not immune to things exploding again in the weeks and months to come.