Q: “You threw paving stones at [the cops]?”
A: “Oh yeah. I had no problem doing that. And I threw marbles as well that we stole from stores. And towards the end we even managed to steal tractors from construction sites and we knocked over trees with them.”
The mass protests that shook France in May 1968 were exciting, dangerous, creative, and influential, changing European politics to this day. Students demonstrated, workers went on general strike, and factories and universities were occupied. Before it was all over, children, homemakers, and the elderly were swept up in the life-changing events that targeted bureaucratic capitalism and the staid Communist Party. The French state was on the ropes and feared civil war or revolution. Decades later, here are the eye-opening oral testimonies of those young rebels who demanded the impossible.
Published on the 50th anniversary of those momentous events, May Made Me presents the legacy of the uprising: how those explosive experiences changed both the individual and history.
“These powerful and moving testimonies create an eye-opening account of the inspiring events of May ’68, which are more relevant for today’s activists than ever before.” —Paul Mason, author of Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future
Jadual kandungan
Introduction
Chronology of Events
Veterans in the Struggle
Jean-Jacques Lebel
Alain Krivine
Prisca Bachelet
Henri Simon
Students in Paris
Sonia Fayman
Suzanne Borde
Isabelle Saint-Saens
Jean-Pierre Fournier
Pauline Steiner
Pierre Mercier
May Outside Paris
Jacques Wajnsztejn (Lyon)
Joseph Potiron (La-Chapelle-sur Erdre)
Guy Texier (Saint-Nazaire) , Bernard Vauzel (Saint-Nazaire) , Dominique Barbe (Nantes)
Myriam Chédotal (Saint-Nazaire), Eliane Paul Di Vicenzo (Nantes)
Jean-Michel Rabaté (Bordeaux)
Jos and Helene Chatroussat (Rouen)
May and Film
Michel Andrieu
Pascal Aubier and Bernard Eisenschitz
Some Anarchists
Daniel Pinos
Thierry Porré
Wally Rosell
Index
Mengenai Pengarang
Mitchell Abidor is a translator from Brooklyn whose works include A Socialist History of the French Revolution by Jean Jaurès and Anarchists Never Surrender by Victor Serge.