Dear comrades, hello,

I want to thank every comrade participating in this conference, which seems all the more important to me, given the situation we are in today. I was just at a demonstration in Paris that the French government, the Macron government, has dared to ban. I dare to say it: once more. This demonstration is part of a situation that you know and that I will explain again in a few words.

On the last 27th of June, Nahel, a 17-year-old young man, living in one of the many working-class suburbs of Paris, was killed. I’ll say it again: he was 17. He was killed by a policeman, murdered by a policeman. The killing of this 17-year-old young man immediately caused immense outrage and a true explosion of revolt and anger in the whole country. And we do understand why: there have been many Nahel, far too many. In the last few years, there have been dozens of young people who were executed, murdered by policemen in the same circumstances.

The explosion of anger, that lasted for several days in our country, and which set ablaze many cities, and not only working-class suburbs, has been suppressed in a very hard and brutal manner by this government. Today in Paris a demonstration took place, summoned by the “Truth and Justice for Adama” committee. Who was Adama ? He was one among the dozens and dozens of victims of State suppression and violence. In 2016, he too was murdered by the police. Since then, his family has demanded truth and justice. Every year the “Truth and Justice for Adama” committee organizes a demonstration. Every time these demonstrations have taken place perfectly peacefully. And well, this year, while there was no risk, it was banned by the Macron government. And this ban adds to bans on dozens of other demonstrations in the last weeks and in the last month. You do know that, a couple months ago, millions of workers, along with their unions, fought against the retirement reform of Emmanuel Macron. This retirement reform, backed by almost no one in the population, was forced through by Macron. He suppressed demonstrations. So, this ban today is just one more ban. In spite of all this, thanks to the intelligence of the organizers, we still managed to go through with the demonstration, and this is something that I wanted to bring up because it is really important.

So, that same government, which as I’ve said, only forces through to pass its anti-democratic and anti-working-class policies, that same government passed in the National Assembly a couple weeks ago the military scheduling law. The budget in this law amounts to 413 billion euros over the next 6 years. 413 billion for the army, 413 billion for the war. The parliamentary group I belong to, that of the France Insoumise, voted against it. This same government is still today shipping more and more weapons to Ukraine, and always seeks more weight in NATO leadership. I’ll just give you an example so that you can understand how unacceptable these 413 billion are. In my district, hundreds of people are now living in basements. 413 billion for war, but for housing and public services? Nothing. So when Macron tells us that there is no other solution than always shipping more weapons and financing the war further and that it would be the only way to have peace: there’s no trusting this government ! The only solution is foot-to-foot combat against the governments that oppress us, and here it’s the Macron government. A last word: let us stick together in this fight we have just started. Thank you.