France's Intifada: Rocking the Casbah, From Paris to Algiers
On a cold day in March 2007, Andrew Hussey was returning from work on the Paris metro and, as usual, got off at the Gare du Nord station to change trains. On this day, something very unusual was happening.
In the introduction to his book, The French Intifada: The Long War Between France and Its Arabs, Hussey writes:
As I walked up the exit stairs I could smell smoke and hear shouting…. I could see armed police and dogs…. I pushed my way through the crowd, burst into the empty piazza, and found myself in dead space, caught in a stand-off between two battle lines – on one side police in blue-black riot gear, drumming batons on their clear, hard shields, and on the other a rough assembly of kids and young adults, mainly black or Arab, boys and girls, dressed in hip-hop fashion, singing, laughing and throwing stuff. You could tell from their accents and manners that these were not Parisians; they were kids from the banlieues – the poor suburbs to the north of Paris, connected to the city by the trains running into the Gare du Nord.
Source: www.truth-out.org