Where to start? Well... the beginning is always a good place, I guess. And for me, the beginning is about two months ago, when we were chatting with a friend who works with Jean-Philippe, and the subject of "passes" "in order to go to work" came up. Passes? To go to work? says I.
During the 60th anniversary Nato summit, says they.
They also says that they work in a "red zone." This is the first time I've heard of zones in Strasbourg, with or without Nato presence. It doesn't yet strike me as of particular consequence. And the truth is that the extent of the consequence doesn't strike me until Friday the 3rd. But I'll come back to that.
From here on out, the thing starts escalating. A friend emails to say that she won't be able to attend a little gathering at our place that weekend, because she's fleeing the city to avoid the mess. More and more people are talking of leaving the city for a three- or four-day weekend. A wave of mass hysteria seems to start, first in ripples. Bits of information are filtering through the webs. Rumours begin circulating. And the funny thing about the rumours is that more of them seem to have been true than untrue. They also seem, for the most part, to have been but tiny little tips of the iceberg.
An example of iceberg tips: First there was whispering about snipers on our roofs. Now, given the more-and-more apparent escalation of security, this didn't seem surprising; more like inevitable, albeit horrifying. But then I run into an aquaintence on the 3rd, whose friends were ousted from their appartment for the weekend - firmly, however politely - in order to provide a roost for the sharp-shooters. Their neighbours all along the quay were similarly ousted. And why were these people chosen? Because they live across the River Ill from the Rohan Palace, where the leaders of 20-odd countries were going to be entertained.
Party on.
The helicopters started circulating a few weeks ago. They came in fits and starts, whirring around, hovering, at first amusing the children, and then, surprise-surprise: the children started worrying. As the summit approached, we were being hovered over with more and more insistence, at all hours of the day and night. In a final rallying effort to wake the masses from their sleepy stupor, a helicopter cruised directly over our heads at 2:30am this morning. Our boys were having more and more trouble falling asleep this last week, worried by the incomprehensible reasons for the noise.
They'd have worried more, had they known what else was flying - though ever so much more lightly - over our heads. While walking to our friends' wedding on Saturday, I was sure I saw a drone overhead. But of course, there can't be drones in the Strasbourg skies, now, can there? So I brushed the thought away and ambled on, convincing myself that the mass hysteria had finally got to my head, too. And then, that night, a friend who works in the diplomatic corps said, "...drones in the air, too..." Ugh.
Anyway.
I managed an invite to Barack Obama's "Town Hall Meeting," which was anything but (a town hall meeting). It was actually a let-down in more ways than one. But it did allow me a brief look at the city centre on that oddest of days.
To be frank: it was appalling.
We live in a Green Zone on the edge of the Orange and Red Zones. But I walked out the door at 10am and into a ghost town. Even the tram hub - normally a bustling centre of activity - was deserted. A few businesses were open to the 1% of usual custom that they would have. Many of them, open or not, were boarded over in anticipation of violence.
The tram hub, 10am, Friday, April 3To get to the buses that took us to the meeting, you needed to take a tram. But to take a tram, you needed to get to one. And the tram line had been cut off on the outskirts of the Orange Zone. To get to the next operational tram, you had to walk the perimeter of the red zone. It didn't look like the hour I'd given myself for this ten-minute-on-a-normaI-day-trip was gong to be enough, so I explained my predicament to one checkpoint officer, who sent me along the perimeter to the next checkpoint...
(1) the first checkpoint (2) the second checkpoint (3) view from the edge of the perimeter...and so on down the line, until one of them took pity upon me, saying with a smile that made me think he was kidding, "This is your door in." I really did think he was joking, and he could see it, so he smiled a smidgen of a bit more broadly and said, "The door is open," and ushered me through.
My door in...It was an odd feeling, walking through this barricade. I knew this was the only chance I'd have to get this far, since I had no pass, only this ticket for an official event that would effectively expire at 11am. There were so many things to photograph, but I was in a hurry. Silly me. I'll regret having given up some of those photo opportunities for the rest of my life.
One instance, among many: A little old lady walked up to a gendarme, standing erect against a lightpole. She was worried, because she'd been told that access to her front door would be impossible for the time being. Nobody had told her, when she left to do some shopping earlier, that this would be the case. She had medications to take... As I listened in on the conversation, hurrying to catch the last tram that would take me to my destination, I glanced down a side street and saw six enormous armoured vehicles, blocking any passage at all down that street (more like an alleyway, actually). I was reminded again of a scene I'd witnessed in Derry so many years ago. A hollow feeling came over me. How easy it is for authority to be misguided, misused and destructive. How easy it is for a population to be frightened into submission.
(1) at one of the tram barricades, three mail carriers come up against yet another problem (2) while a group of journalists? delegates? waits in vain for a tram that will never come (3) and the only vehicles for another kilometre go whizzing by...I made it to the "town hall meeting." It was held, not in anything like a town hall, but in a sports centre in a Red Zone. After alighting from our buses, we were curiously corraled into a hall on the other side of the road. Nobody seemed to know why or for how long, least of all the organisers. So after a while, we just walked out and across the street. Some security, but not too much, since camcorders and bags had been strictly forbidden, and this was the third or fourth stage of security. Once in, we tried to find decent seats, but there were too few of them, and we certainly weren't the first in there, so... In the end, most people were either too far away to see Barack Obama, or they were sitting directly behind him, and only got a glimpse or two of The Man. His speech was good, but after a while, he came to the question of economics and responsibility, and once again, I was reminded of who had brought him here, and at what phenomenal, unbelievable cost. And for what?
A photo opportunity. A symbol.
The violation of basic democratic rights that most of the protesters were here to bring attention to is bad enough. But the thing that has bothered me the most throughout these strange couple of weeks is this: Above and beyond the above-mentioned lack of respect and the unbelievable mess that this has created for many people, none of whom were consulted as to the eventual use of their home town as a stage / military parade grounds / photographic backdrop, there is (I repeat) the phenomenal, unbelievable amount of money that was spent. Hundreds of millions of Euros. Hundreds of millions. For a symbolic photo opportunity.
When the world is experiencing an enormous economic crisis, when millions are still dying of disease and starvation, when millions still lack even the most rudimentary of education, an international organisation's leaders are telling us that "we've just emerged from an era marked by irresponsibility," and spending hundreds of millions of euros to say so, take a few pictures, and move on out to prepare for the next photo op.
Looking at those two days of Sumptuous Summit for Some from another few angles: During those 24 hours, approximately 16,000 people died of AIDS; 80,000 people died of starvation; and more than 100 million children continued to lack access to any form of schooling.
I'm just sayin'.
Oh, and while I'm at it:
When I finally got back from the sojourn to see my president, Jean-Philippe (who had a pass, remember) picked up the camera and flew out the door to see what he could see. At one point, just after taking a superbe photo at one of the checkpoints, a policeman accosted him, getting extremely red in the face, and threatening to take him to jail if he didn't erase the photo. As you can probably imagine, none of Jean-Philippe's protests for his rights (he'd checked on this beforehand, of course) had any postitive effect on the man, who simply got redder in the face, and much more threatening. So the photo was erased. My, "What could he have really done, had you just turned around and walked away?" was answered with, "Anything he wanted to."
Gotcha.
We heard a lot of grandiose talk about democracy this weekend. But one has to wonder where democracy goes at times like this.
