Responsibility and Presidential Power

Our Constitution establishes the rule of law. Yet there is no denying that necessities will sometimes overtake us. If a system of balanced powers attempts to incorporate all necessity into law it will surely fail. It may subvert what it aims to preserve. It is therefore absurd to imagine that the President will never go beyond the law. This paradox -- how to contain lawless power within the law -- runs to the depths of the American constitutional system.

Cicero's famous maxim salus populi suprema lex esto -- the safety of the people is the supreme law -- is no answer. More than a stretched metaphor, this doctrine is false. We must always defend the public good, but law and necessity are opposites. Law is the product of human Will, necessity is the enemy of our liberty. The two must never be equated.

In fact, when George W. Bush called us to a `war on terror,' he submitted America to the rule of iron necessity and made himself its agent. He pushed the question of law -- as essential as it may be -- into the background. Since the secret program of domestic surveillance by the NSA was exposed, however, the President has urgently and often repeated two claims: the spying is necessary and it is legal. This double-edged proposition leads us astray. George W. Bush seeks to hide his actions behind the undecidable and suffocating paradox of Presidential power.

The earliest records of Congress show that our Founders had this paradox clearly in mind. They were also nearly unanimous in recognizing the best way to live through it. Only a fool or a dangerous man, they believed, would try to stretch the law to encompass the necessary. A righteous President will respond to crisis with whatever means are available. On these rare occasions he might be expected to break the law to save the nation.

This bad solution is the best one. But it is only tolerable if the political process continues swiftly after the crisis has peaked, and does not accede to continuing menace. The Constitution must transcend events and actors of the moment.

What comes next makes the difference between democracy and dictatorship. Only that next step can de facto set a firmer limit on the use of power beyond law. This is something law by itself cannot accomplish.

The Founders were perspicacious where we are myopic. They insisted that a President who acts from necessity beyond law must in short order show his cards. Entrusted with great power he must accept the risks that come with it. Personal risk should always be a factor in the actions of the powerful. This will not inhibit leaders from stepping forward. No person of character -- which is to say, no one fit to be the American President -- will thereby fail to do what is necessary for the safety of the country. Indeed, risk informs and steadies the judgment of capable leaders.

The risk to the President is that his use of power -- his judgment that everything in some terrible moment requires him to transgress the law -- will be judged and found wanting. For the rule of law means that no man is a judge in his own case. Every power must be accountable, every power checked. The only alternative is despotism.

That is why the President, out of respect, indeed love, for the Constitution, must prove in times of crisis that he has no will to be a despot. He must take the initiative. High stakes leave no room for ambiguity and quibbling. Pure necessity is the only language we may accept beyond law. Adopt it and no other. Go before the deliberative body of the People. Name the act, explain it, lay bare the precise circumstance and motive. If the necessity was authentic, and the President's reasoning right, he will be absolved from momentary transgression. An act of Congress may indemnify him. An act of Congress may even raise him as a hero. Then let the next election, and beyond it history, decide if the judgment will stand. Let all the branches of government take their real share of approbation or blame, of glory or shame.

For George W. Bush to claim the cover of law now, after all that has transpired since September 11, is to obscure the overriding question: How shall we, as a nation, live with the paradox of presidential power? This is a political question.

Opponents of the secret domestic surveillance program have fallen into the trap set by this President's mixed message. They argue about right instead of power. They stand by, even nourish with the President, the sources of an unchecked power Jefferson so aptly called "monocratic."

Mr. President, the Founders also knew that the Constitution presupposes a specifically political and democratic kind of virtue. It cries out for a rejection of this false discourse and a settling of accounts. "Lawyering up" corrupts your true case. Claim on your own behalf that the Constitution grants you no authority to infringe our rights but does offer the President the privilege to seek enhanced powers with the agreement of the other branches of government. This is the true meaning of the Supreme Court's decision in Youngstown Sheet & Tube, which slapped down President Truman for usurping the power of Congress without their complicity.

Mr. President, you say you have told us what you can. But you demean the law by using it as a screen to cover the necessity you exalt but do not specify. Dare instead to proudly declare your best reasons for tracking down your fellow citizens like conspirators or `enemy combatants.' Let the People judge if you were right to overstep the law. Suffer the consequences if you were wrong.


Written from Princeton, N.J., January 20, 2006

Come Out Fighting

On National Public Radio, a blue host bleats "Your side won...at a cost of national unity." Her red guest fires back without hesitation: "We’re preserving important values." He turns back the question — "Do you mean to say that if we had voted with the other side on homosexual marriage we would have national unity?" — to draw his own conclusion — "No, of course we’ve got a divide..."

This divide is where politics should be. It has opened into an abyss. The blue side tries to ignore the political divide altogether. The other side welcomes the abyss.

The legions of George W. Bush won the election because in general Americans have forgotten what politics is. More than any policy of the President, law of the Congress, or ruling of the Supreme Court, this heralds the end of democracy. America desperately needs to revitalize politics. This means we have to learn to take conflict seriously.

It is obvious that Democrats have failed to do so. Especially after 9/11, all they can muster is a few rounds in the ring. Then, it’s a handshake and home for dinner. And "healing."

But how can it be said that the hard-driving trickster cadres of Karl Rove don’t take conflict seriously? It has to do with their total obsession with themselves.

The President’s team mobilized so-called "value voters." These are people who may negotiate over where to put the new traffic light or how to rebuild the dilapidated school, but are unwavering on questions like homosexual marriage or abortion. Why?

Some will say rigidity sets in when it is time to "preserve important values." That is exactly wrong. In local conflicts the stakes are palpable. Resistance comes from neighbors. If conflict goes too far, all projects in the city are blocked now. That is soon intolerable.

When it comes to general questions, however, the risks of taking a position are small. Distance and abstraction slow compromise. Beliefs which never meet the obstacle of reality are smug. The unchallenged self-righteous see no need to negotiate because they don’t have to. Conflict without stakes becomes a game. It, perversely, intensifies. But this kind of conflict is increasingly sterile.

Politics is what makes conflict productive. When we forget this, the canny few herd the many like sheep. Grazing the pasture of morals and emotion we are drawn away from our interests. We become preoccupied with immobilizing and insoluble problems like impurity and insecurity. Public debate fails and the civic good slips from sight.

Today, we are witnesses to this kind of shift. All parties have become complicit in the anti-politics politics of the wolves. The defeated praise consensus and point to "the need for unity." The winner says to his adversaries "I will need your support, and I will work to earn it." A myopic press tell us these two statements are the same.

They are not. The call to come together and the call to change sides are as different as red and blue. When John Kerry speaks of "the danger of division" he speaks from a position of weakness. The consuls of George W. Bush brim with glee. The dangers of division derive from the wolves, not from the sheep.

An important part of politics is to make life costly for the wolves. Fanaticism burns unchecked in a political climate where values stand apart from everyday interdependence. More dangerous than the single-issue voter is the "whatever it takes" posture towards conciliation.

Shall we stand suspended in "national unity" to witness the final destruction of a decent and honest America?

Should we be grateful to the congressional cowards who did not oppose the gratuitous invasion of Iraq?

Should our children honor those who burden their future with ruinous tax cuts for the rich?

"Healing" that gives free rein to fanatics is a dangerous disease. America needs to channel its conflicts into politics. We must do so between elections. We cannot simply wish conflict away. Only concerted resistance will make the wolves think twice, or even once.

The two words which have burst onto our screens since election day — "values" and "unity" — speak volumes. Of course, politics emerges from our beliefs about what is good. And it sometimes arrives at a momentary consensus. But such things stand outside the special kind of human relationship which takes its name from the ancient Greek word for city (polis).

Politics begins with the fact that we must live together everyday. Inevitably, this will lead to problems, and problems will escalate into conflict. No matter how rowdy it gets, politics constitutes conflict into a structured field. This is an indispensable benefit for everyone in the city. It is the public good that makes us citizens.

We enter the field of politics by choosing speech over violence. When love or friendship settle an issue we have taken another path. Look around and you will see that this is exceptional. Even within the most tight-knit community the essential plurality of human beings time and again brings politics back to the center of our lives. We do politics when we cannot see eye-to-eye but must live together anyway. It is not a matter of agreement but of constantly shifting balances.

The democracy we adore is not a moral doctrine or a type of love. Democracy is a species of politics. No better way has been found to realize our distinctively human capacity to engage in conflict with words. A nation that cannot sustain political forms for conflict cannot be a democracy. That is where we are headed. Unless the sheep speak up.


Written from Princeton, N.J., November 8, 2004

Bush Alone

Finally, we see President Bush without his handlers. He stands, as if alone, on the debater's stage, without script, without buffers. His own policies are enlisted like troops to attack him. He has no defense against the failures of his own judgment.

Here we see a President thoroughly dependent on his "team." They formulate his policy. They communicate his intentions. Without their assistance even the basic question of his office - responsibility - seems unreal to him. One might think Americans would readily recall such a leader.

But George W. Bush will not be sent home to Crawford because he depends on others. He inherited the famous "teflon" from President Reagan. His dyslexicon has had an impenetrable charm. A crucial part of his managed message has been that he has good managers, as if to say "trust him because he trusts them." He achieved weirdly pastoral heights at the Republican convention. This, moored by or mired in the mud slung by Dick Cheney, seemed to be pushing him towards the finish line.

Then came the first debate. A force appeared on stage that is more powerful than the artifice of any candidate. It is more significant than George W. Bush's inability to stand on his own two feet. And it could swing the election out of his reach.

That force is politics. Not the jabbering of parties, but the basic fact identified by Aristotle and still with us today. Human beings who must live together can address problems with violence or speech. The political option is speech, and its democratic form is dialogue.

Dialogue is a natural extension of speech. It opens different perspectives and brings us towards truth. It also makes self-expression consistent with equality and dignity. What the first debate showed us, however, was something even more basic about the connection between dialogue and leadership.

The purpose of human speech is to be heard. Hearing, one reacts and speaks again. In this back and forth, everything depends on the kind of "fittingness" - much broader than civility - that Cicero called decorum. Say something without decorum and you will not be heard. You won't get the desired reaction.

There is no fixed rule-book of decorum. It is a sensibility one learns in dialogue itself. While it is important to learn about others, the key to democracy is that as each person seeks decorum in dialogue they must make adjustments. An unstated negotiation goes on within speech to make speech effective. Our world together grows together as we talk.

If getting elected is the measure, it will be difficult to judge before November 2 whether the artful staging of George W. Bush's campaign - with every word prepared in advance, and every chance for real interaction avoided - has been effective.

Yet, it may be, as the Founders might have said, "God's nature," the political nature of human beings, that removes George W. Bush from the White House. For, managers or not, he has been sequestered from dialogue at every level and every turn. He has no conferences with the press. Only avid supporters may attend his stops on the campaign trail. By all reports, he brooks no objection even within his inner circle.

While our President presents himself as a man of unshakeable principles, the truth is that without dialogue one's character withers. The common sense of the people advances while the leader lags behind. One's capacity for speech - which means not just the arrangement of one word after another, but a suppleness of character that allows for learning and adjustment to new facts - is arrested. The exorcism of dialogue from President Bush's daily life has had a devastating effect on who he is and how Americans see him.

Presidential power is sermonic: it is a relation established in words between the leader and the people. Effect depends on decorum. Decorum, in turn, arises within an on-going relationship between the President and the people.

After almost four years of holding himself apart from dialogue, of engaging in the spectacle of leadership without leading, here is what we saw on that debater's platform: George W. Bush was out of place. We are no longer familiar with his capacities or incapacities. Of course he looked weak compared to John Kerry. But he looked pathetic compared to his image of himself. The American common sense of decorum has advanced in the national dialogue without George W. Bush's participation. He has now shown himself to be unfit for the presidency.

French Lessons

We yearn mightily to learn from the past, but often history does not oblige us. As sure as we can be of superior American firepower, we cannot know where, in the next years or decades, the Iraqi crisis will take us. Still, one must sometimes act from uncertainty. It is, at such times, especially important not to act from ignorance.

The so-called "lessons of history" are modest. They concern nothing but homely facts about our human nature. In burgeoning countries on this shrinking planet, we must live together every day. The world will not end tomorrow. It is better to act together than alone. It is better to speak than to fight. These truths are often disappointed. But they must not be ignored. Democracy is never built on such ignorance. It is America’s current disgrace to try.

The Foreign Minister of France, Dominique de Villepin, offered us a corrective lesson on February 14th. Americans should pay attention. The force of the French position is not just the eloquence with which it was stated. Nor is it just a respect for these truths. It is what brought forth applause at the United Nations and, the next day, millions into streets around the world. It is the desire to exhaust the political option before recourse to war.

The French are not angels. Perhaps they, too, want control of Iraqi oil. Perhaps they just want to stick it to us. It does not matter. Just as the motives — good or bad — of the Bush administration will not determine where history takes us.

What counts is that de Villepin found words which at once express the particular interests of France and appeal to the common sense of the world. The political option corresponds to the kind of world democrats want. What counts is that the Bush administration has been unable to find such words. The reason is simple. Pure ambition cannot be disguised as the common good.

Only in public debate do such differences come to life. It is a sometimes unwieldy but still formidable machine. In the forum of the United Nations, the need to negotiate is a demand for reasons. It is a force without arms. France is winning the argument because everyone knows — indeed, everyone admits — that it would be better to talk than to fight. Better not to act alone. Thus, unwavering "unilateralism" leaves the Bush administration with nothing to say to those whose future it aims to control. For this war concerns the whole world.

The American President has said that if the United Nations does not follow his program, it will "fade into history as an ineffective, irrelevant, debating society." The opposite is true. The Bush administration made a cynical bet. They sought U.N. support while believing it unnecessary. In so doing, they made it necessary. Their hubris made de Villepin’s words ring out. Nothing shows more clearly the power of the U.N. than George W. Bush’s losing bet. This will be true even — especially — if America goes it alone.

Perhaps you think de Villepin’s speech was just words. Think again. Every power of every State comes down to the human energies which execute it: someone must build the buildings, collect the taxes, teach the children, carry the guns. These energies are directed more by beliefs than by commands. Governments stand on opinion. This, finally, is the winning force of France’s position. It is spoken in words that even Americans can believe. If only we have the courage to do so.


Amended English version of "Lezioni Francesi," Written from Paris, February 27, 2003

Lezioni Francesi

Anche se desideriamo imparare dal passato, spesso la storia non ci fa questa cortesia. Per quanto possiamo essere sicuri che il potere armato dell’America sia schiacciante, non possiamo sapere dove la crisi irachena ci porterà nei prossimi anni o decenni. Malgrado queste incertezze, debbiamo a volte agire comunque. In tali momenti è però importante non agire sulla base dell’ignoranza.

Le cosiddette "lezioni di storia" non ammontano tutto sommato a molto. Alcuni fatti semplici e familiari. Riguardano la natura umana. Il pianeta si restringe, i paesi sono traboccanti di gente, ma non è cambiato l’antico fatto che dobbiamo vivere insieme ogni giorno. Il nostro mondo non finirà domani. E meglio agire insieme che da soli. Meglio parlare che combattere. Spesso non siamo all’altezza nemmeno di queste modeste verità. Ciononostante esse non debbono essere omesse. La democrazia non è mai fondata su tale ignoranza. Tuttavia l’attuale disgrazia degli Stati Uniti è proprio di dimenticare questo.

Il giorno di San Valentino, il ministro degli esteri francese Dominique de Villepin ha reso omaggio alla possibilità di sostituire la violenza con la politica. Chiamiamo questa l’opzione politica. Si è trattato di una lezione correttiva e importante. Dovremmo - noi, popoli e governanti, Americani e Italiani - fare attenzione. In che cosa è consistita la forza della posizione francese ? Non solo l’eloquenza con la quale è stata esposta. Neanche la sua armonia con i prinicipi fondamentali. Piuttosto c’è stata qualche cosa che ha suscitato l’applauso nella grande aula delle Nazioni Uniti e, il giorno dopo, dei milioni sulle strade del mondo intero. La forza dietro il discorso di de Villepin è un desiderio naturale di percorrere l’opzione politica prima di ricorrere alla guerra.

Questo desiderio non ha niente a che fare con la virtù. Poniamo che i francesi non siano angeli. Forse anche loro hanno sete di petrolio - anche se credere che gli Stati Uniti cerchino di controllare il petrolio iracheno sia sottovalutare il perfido fanatismo del governo Bush. Forse - come dicono sempre più spesso negli Stati Uniti - i francesi sono gelosi, vigliacchi, rompiscatole. Non importa. Non c’entra. Esattemente come le motivazioni, giuste o sbagliate, buone o cattive, del governo Bush non determineranno per nulla dove la storia ci porterà.

Cosa importa allora ? Il fatto che de Villepin abbia trovato parole non ambivalenti ma bivalenti. Allo stesso tempo, è riuscito a esprimere degli interessi particolari francesi e a fare appello al sensus communis del mondo. L’opzione politica corrisponde al tipo di vita che desiderano le genti democratiche.

Inoltre importa il fatto che il governo Bush non sia arrivato a trovare tali parole. La ragione è semplice. Il lupo dell’ambizione pura non può essere travestito sotto il mantello del bene comune.

Non è purtroppo una favola. La storia non ha una morale. Se imparassimo da questa situazione, sarebbe attraverso le nostre proprie parole ed azioni. La democrazia ha bisogno sempre di un pubblico per smascherare i trucchi. E’ nella dialettica del dibattito che la differenza fra due discorsi viene svelata. Il dibattito pubblico è un macchinario profondamente umano. Di tanto in tanto è poco maneggevole. Ma, per quanto possa sembrar strano, questa debolezza non è l’essenziale. Nel foro delle Nazioni Unite, il dibattito impone la necessità di trattare; le trattative impongono la necessità di giustificarsi. Il dibattito pubblico diviene perciò una forza senza armi. La Francia ha la parte vincente perche dà giustificazioni inconfutate e irrefiutabili. Tutti sanno - a ben vedere, tutti ammettono - che sarebbe meglio parlare che combattere. Meglio non agire da soli. Il suo incrollabile "unilateralismo" ha lasciato il governo Bush senza niente da dire a coloro i quali il futuro pretende dicontrollare. Questa guerra riguarda tutto il mondo.

Il Presidente Bush ha detto che non si lascerà far dominare dalle voce dei milioni; tuttavia ha risposto chiaramente al discorso dei francesi. Ha detto che se le Nazioni Unite non marciano al ritmo della sua canzone, questa istituzione sperimentale "scomparirà dalla storia come una club di discussione inefficacie e buona a nulla."

Ma, la verità è, ovviamente, il contrario. Il governo Bush ha fatto una scommessa cinica. Ha cercato il sostegno delle Nazioni Unite mentre credeva che non fosse necessario averlo. Facendo cosi, l’ha reso necessario. La sua prepotenza ha amplificato la voce di de Villepin. Nulla avrebbe potuto mostrare più chiaramente il potere delle Nazioni Unite che la scommessa perdente di George W. Bush. Questo sarà vero anche se - soppratutto se - l’America decidesse di andare avanti da sola.

Forse crederete che il discorso di de Villepin e il dibattito alle Nazioni Unite siano stati poco più che un insieme di parole, vento. Ed in generale, l’uso della parola contro la violenza è un segno di debolezza. Ricredetevi. Tutti i poteri di ogni stato, in ultima analisi, consistono nelle energie di coloro che li eseguono: qualcuno deve costruire edifici, raccogliere le tasse, insegnare ai bambini, portare le armi. Queste energie sono dirette piuttosto dalla convinzione che dagli ordini imposti dai governanti. Come ha detto David Hume, i governi si fondono su questa forma d’opinione. Aggungiamo che questa opinione si fonda sull’uso della parola in pubblico. E’ questa, infine, la forza vincente della posizione della Francia: usare dei termini, delle parole in cui anche altri possano rispecchiarsi, sulla base delle quali possano agire. Ci volevano milioni d’italiani e americani il 15 febbraio pronti ad accettare coraggiosamente questa sfida. Prima o poi, George W. Bush dovrà ascoltare. Le vere consequenze di questa guerra dipenderanno dal momento in cui questo avverrà.


Scritto da Parigi per la rivista "Il Ponte" [non e uscita], 24 febbraio 2003

Undocumented Vacation, or Vacances Sans-Papiers

[This piece was written in August 1996; I post it to suggest how easy it should have been to predict the recent social unrest in France.]

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The summer exodus from Paris is famous. Parisians set out for everywhere to forget, well, Paris. That is the myth, and an evening walk in the near empty streets of wealthy central arrondissements could lead you to believe it. But follow the thirteen lines of the subway's circling web towards the edge of the city and another story begins to unfold. These trains, like the "A" Train in New York immortalized by Ellington, are vectors of class and race. At each station northwards they darken with Arabs and West Africans. Pass the Gare du Nord and step out into the life of the night at Barbès-Rochechouart.

The myth has an official form. Thanks to the brief administration of socialist Léon Blum in the 1930's, every legal French worker has the right to a paid vacation. In early August the newspapers celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of this tenacious right in a country with thirteen percent unemployment. The right persists because, so far, the French resist "restructuring." Last Winter much of the country shut down for more than a month in support of a transportation strike. From all walks of life commuters made their way to work on foot, not so much to defend railroad workers but to block the erosion of a range of established social entitlements similar to the paid vacation. Some observers took this revival of broadly-based protest politics as the last gasp of the sense of social justice in France. The French, they said, will soon follow their neighbors and lay down in the path of an increasingly exigent commitment to "Europe" and "the Global Economy." The next decade will tell if the denunciation of injustice, a central theme in French political culture since the Revolution, is headed for the history books. For the moment, however, it seems to be making a comeback.
The August myth tells you it is the height of vacation. The newspapers sing the right to leave both work and home behind. Yet even at midnight the streets of the Goutte d'Or district are full. This is because on these sloping streets near Montmartre the residents are often neither French and nor working legally. The neighborhood resonates with the languages of Mali, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast. One of those languages is French. Follow the lines of decayed and demolished buildings and the promise of public housing; old Paris is coming down and something new is growing. Two policemen with their blue pillbox hats and a radio watch over the perimeter of this battleground for the new France.

Not far beyond is St. Bernard de la Chapelle. In this sober catholic church hundreds of undocumented aliens from francophone Africa form the latest front-line. They do not have the right to a paid vacation. How, indeed, can you go on vacation when you are nowhere at home? There is slight chance that they could ever return to their lives in France if they crossed a national boundary. The summer, for them, is a time to stay put and live out the accelerating nightmare of France's turn to the right. While the French at the mediterranean coast frolic in the sea, the Africans in Paris struggle not to be forgotten.

Like the beginnings of the sanctuary movement in the United States at the time of the war in El Salvador, churches in France may be becoming an important site of political conflict. It happened a bit by chance. Three hundred Africans at St. Bernard, mainly from Mali, occupied the church when forced from a series of other locations in the City of Lights. They have now been squatting there for more than a month. Many are refusing to eat; the hunger strike is in its forty-sixth day. They demand recognition that they belong to and in France.

Although surprised by the occupation of his church, Father Henri Coindé insists that civil laws are subject to a moral test. He evokes the Natural Law tradition so familiar to readers of Martin Luther King. To this he adds an acute sense of political sociology, insisting that "this situation has been created by the government and they should take responsibility for it." It is the political shift to the right that has caused this new crisis. New immigration laws pushed over the edge a lot of people who for years have managed to scrape by. Thus, Coindé has refused to sign official papers authorizing expulsion of his refugees. Every morning at sunrise those inside the church and a greater number of supporters outside brace for an assault by the police.
It might be said that the battle is against the harsh immigration controls put in place by former and present Ministers of Interior Charles Pasqua and Jean-Louis Debré. These laws aim to stem the natural tides of population which renew all vital cultures and make great cities like Paris organisms of human creativity. They serve the same ends as some laws proposed and some enacted in the United States. The lois Pasqua are, for the moment at least, more effective than what we have seen in the United States for four reasons. First, the actual proportion of illegal immigrants living in France is very much lower than in the United States, amounting to about 0.15% of the total population. Second, this relatively small number can be located easily because dark skin color and immigrant status are more likely to come together. Third, the highly centralized administrative apparatus which covers the relatively small territory of France makes for a tight net of social control. Finally, in a country where public justification is so important it clearly helps the government that no political stand-off here is yet the subject of twenty-four hour media surveillance.

Since the baton was passed from Pasqua to Debré last year, the immigration hardliners have brought one especially pernicious element of the law to the foreground. The reform of the Code de la Nationalité denies automatic citizenship to children born on French soil. This is a radical break from the French republican tradition. It incorporates the dreams of Le Pen and the Front National into the core of the political program of President Jacques Chirac's "center" right government.

The attempt to impose this new form of control over the livelihood of human beings has produced, not surprisingly, a panoply of unintended consequences and new points of conflict. Since early this year, the movement responding to the increasingly offensive immigration policy has been growing. Alluding at once to the bureaucratic state and the revolutionary tradition, the name that has stuck to the movement is les sans-papiers. It is as though les sans-culottes were missing documentation instead of pants.

The new laws seek to sustain the public order by shifting responsibility for demographic chaos squarely onto the shoulders of the weak. Americans will recognize this strategy and its consequences from recent efforts in California to prohibit the delivery of basic services to non-citizens. Such policies in fact disrupt social practices which respond to irrepressible long-term human needs and which are the results of decades of bricollage and mutual accommodation. Networks of human interdependence cannot be smashed without destroying the beings which make them up. So no one should be surprised when this type of immigration law creates just what it aims to avoid: disorder and violence in the lives of citizens and immigrants alike, and an increasingly misplaced assertion of state power.

Such disorder is now erupting from the parisian cityscape and seeping into the lives of neighbors and friends, parishioners and priests, co-workers and bosses. Thus, the battle is not really against the immigration laws but for work, for families, for a moderately stable life. In the long run, it is for all children born on French soil. This includes the children born in the sanctuary of St. Bernard during the continuing occupation and hunger strike, who unlike their little brothers or sisters born before the first day of 1994 do not have the automatic right of citizenship.

It is after midnight now. A sleepless buzz is in the streets. Camping is a vacation favorite in France, and around the church tired campers await the dawn. In their midst, the high and the low, the drunks and the Derridas. A young student from Mali, alone in Paris for four years, working her way up the ladder to the exalted position of secretary, has recently finished her classes. School's out and this, she says, gives her more time to come to the church. More time to fight for a vacation. Maybe tomorrow this battle will be about the beloved right to a paid vacation. For now, it is against forced repatriation and the wrenching apart of families. It is a most emphatic assertion of residence and the longing to be at home. It is the battle for the new France. It is a battle that is coming soon to your neighborhood.


Written from Paris, August 1996