> One thing that occurs to me- correct me if you think that I am
> wrong- is that when riots have occured in recent times in the US,
> they have not spread in a significant way the way they did in
> France. I remember after the LA riots there were some actions in
> San Francisco (maybe in other places,too...I dont recall) but
> certainly no where near the intensity of Los Angeles and they
> certainly did not persist for as long as they have in France.
>
> I dont think this phenomenon can be attributed to the fact that
> there is a stronger Left in France. In fact, the organized Left
> (even the far-Left) seems to have had little or no influence on the
> recent rioting. The actors in the French rioters are fresh on the
> political scene.
>
> Is it that the level of frustration is higher? Is it that the US
> system has been dealing with this longer and is more sophisticated
> in co-opting, funneling such anger?
BusinessWeek says:
<blockquote>Youth joblessness runs over 50% in the suburbs that are home to many of France's more than 5 million first- and second- generation African and Arab immigrants.
Many of the French rioters have been students who figure they probably won't find jobs. Good jobs "are reserved for certain people, and usually it's white French people," says Abdel Karim, a son of North African immigrants who lives in Clichy-sous-Bois, where the rioting began. French-born Karim, 26, finished high school but has never held a steady job. He lives on welfare and rent subsidies totaling about $980 a month.
("Crisis in France," <http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/ 05_47/b3960013.htm>, 21 Nov. 2005)</blockquote>
$980 a month isn't much of a subsidy, but America doesn't give anything to its young able-bodied unemployed men in Karim's situation. In France, even those at the bottom of class relations -- chronically excluded from wage labor altogether -- have more resources than their counterparts in the United States, so they can fight back better when an occasion arises.
Also, France has not put as high proportions of its youth -- especially youth of color -- in prison and under probation as America has. In America, young people who could have rebelled have been preventively arrested and detained. That wasn't always the case here: "A New York Times article stated, 'From 1964 to 1971, there were more than 750 riots, killing 228 people and injuring 12,741 others. After more than 15,000 separate incidents of arson, many black urban neighborhoods were in ruins' (Virginia Postrel, "The Consequences of the 1960's Race Riots Come into View," The New York Times, December 20, 2004)" (Eric Mann, "History Can Guide Us: Toward a Third Reconstruction," <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/ mann061005.html>, 6 Oct. 2005). To a large extent, the "war on drugs," the "war on crimes," and the staggering growth of jails and prisons in America were the elite response to the wave of riots in the Sixties that Mann cites above. The American elite response apparently succeeded in putting a stop to "rhizomatic rioting."
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org> * Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/mahmoud- ahmadinejads-face.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/chvez- congratulates-ahmadinejad.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/ 2005/06/iranian-working-class-rejects.html>