Sarkozy Gets Graffitied in Montreal, And Who Can Complain About That?

The following from No One Is Illegal Montreal, regarding some graffiti that went up on the campaign officies of French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy in Montreal a few days ago:

According to mainstream media reports, this past Monday night (April 30, 2007), unknown individuals (“les inconnus”, in French) re-decorated the exterior of French right-wing Presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy’s offices in the upscale Outremont neighborhood of Montreal.

Articles, in English and French, are linked HERE.

Sarkozy’s Montreal office is his biggest outside Europe, in a city that has the largest concentration of French voters outside of France itself.

According to mainstream news reports, the three unknown individuals left spray-painted graffiti and posters denouncing Sarkozy as a fascist and demagogue.

Some of the graffiti read: “Sarko facho”, “Votez Sarko le démago”, “Sarko, sacre ton camp d’ici”, “Ni en France ni au Canada, pas de patrie pour les fachos”.

One poster that was plastered over the office windows read: “Lutte sans frontière contre le fascisme” [“A struggle without borders against fascism”].

One point the mainstream media in Canada and Quebec hasn’t mentioned is that Nicolas Sarkozy, as French Interior Minister, built his reputation on the scapegoating and attacking of France’s immigrant youth. In the midst of the banlieue [immigrant suburbs] uprising of 2005 — which was prompted by the police-initiated murder of two youths in the Paris banlieue of Clichy-sous-Bois — Sarkozy described youth rioters as “racaille” (which can mean both “scum” or “rabble”). Using fascist language, he has vowed to “karcherise” immigrant-dominated neighborhoods.

More generally, Sarkozy has increased the repression of immigrants and racialized communities, as well as other marginalized sectors of France, particularly the poor, working class and unemployed, by the cops and state. The state of emergency, declared and enforced in 2005, was racist and without precedent. France’s large non-status population (“sans papiers”) has been increasingly targeted for arrest, imprisonment and deportation. Sarkozy has openly pandered to the constituency represented by French fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen.

No One Is Illegal-Montreal — an immigrant justice collective that fights against borders and states — supports the individuals who targeted Sarkozy’s office. Moreover we reiterate our solidarity with “the rabble” who continue to demand and fight for justice with dignity.

On our terrain of struggle, in colonial Canada, we continue to be actively engaged in movements for justice, dignity and self-determination, in opposition to police brutality, racial profiling, detentions and deportations. In solidarity with our migrant justice allies in France, Europe and the rest of the world, we continue to demand free movement, and status for all.

Vive la racaille! Sarko: Y’est où ton char?
Lutte sans frontières contre le fascisme!

–No One Is Illegal-Montreal (May 2, 2007)
noii-montreal@resist.ca
http://nooneisillegal-montreal.blogspot.com

One should remember, of course, we’ve got more than one Sarkozy of our own…