Report from Paris: an encounter with the left

It is a strange springtime in 2024 Paris.

The events celebrating International Women’s Day, March 8, started the evening before with a strange demonstration of 4,000 people passing on Rue de Renard, which is the street behind the Pompidou Center, where I encountered them by chance.

“Feminist strike begins on March 7,” read flyers announcing the march. “Tonight we are a night demonstration to allow women who cannot strike tomorrow to mobilize,” explained Arya Meroni, the self-declared secretary of AG Feminist, who identifies herself as “an activist, anti-capitalist and for globalization.”

She also emphasizes in interviews that her Feminist Assembly is “neither a collective, nor an organization, nor an association.”

What is it, what does it mean to be “secretary” of a non-organization, and who finances her and the various names of groups she lists, I do not know, and none of the journalists interviewing her has raised these questions anywhere in the French press.

Neither does the local press raise questions as to how this March 8 International Women’s Day celebration came to be open not only to women – though they were the vast majority in this evening demonstration – but also transgender individuals (though how they were identified I do not know); gay men (how they were all identified, I have no idea either); and the “undocumented,” which is the term for those who have entered France illegally (guess they were easily identified – having no papers whatsoever to present).

The rights of “sex workers” appeared to have been another cause, although I did not see any slogan suggesting that they wanted to become like their Amsterdam Red Light District fellows in their famous windows, who are unionized – but who also pay taxes.