La Maison en Greve

Each day as I walk to the metro, the first thing I see, even before the Eiffel Tower (yeah, I see the Eiffel Tower on my morning walk - it's pretty cool) is La Maison de la Radio France. It's a huge, circular building that takes up about two city blocks, and it's home to numerous radio stations and concert halls. The website says it's 10 euros for a guided tour, if that interests you.

Anyway, what's really cool about this building, aside from the really cool building, is the crowd outside of it. There are the usual scary, heavily armed officers standing in front of the door, and then there are the people with flyers. I've been wondering for a while (they've been there at least as long as I have) if they were on strike, or campaigning for the environment, or something. But they were clearly protesting something. They'd plastered the windows with their flyers and a couple cartoons, which I can't understand because I am not yet awesome at French or French satirical comics.

So today I found myself with a little extra time and I approached two flyer'd women and asked them to explain what was up. They spoke in fast, excited French, so I got the gist of it, but not tons of detail. After reflecting on the context clues and asking my host mother to clarify, here's what I got: the protestors are employees of Radio France, which is government funded (think BBC, NPR).  They are "en greve" because the director of the program has not been spending money wisely, and there's just not a lot of money in general, so lots of people were bring fired. When the program got a bit more money, the director was spending it on offices and buildings rather than people and programs.  The women I spoke with told me they think la Maison de la Radio France is a beautiful building, but they believe in "radio avant tout." So they're outside everyday spreading the word and doing their best to reach the director however they can.

I'm sure we can all think of things like this in Chicago, and wherever else we come from - mismanaged organizations and the like. I love getting to see people speak out in this way, especially when they're cool about it and don't try to stop me and ask for seven dollars when I'm on my way to class.

So voila. French activism, in the flesh.

Side note: There's a small piece of the Berlin Wall outside la Maison de la Radio France. Pretty cool.