Cergy, March 30, 2020
Mr. President,
«I’m writing you a letter / That you might read / If you have the time.» For those of you who are literature buffs, this opening line probably rings a bell. It’s the opening of Boris Vian’s song “Le déserteur,” written in 1954, between the Indochina War and the Algerian War. Today, no matter what you may claim, we are not at war; the enemy here is not human, not our fellow man, it has neither thought nor intent to harm, ignores borders and social differences, and spreads indiscriminately, jumping from one person to another. The weapons—since you insist on this war-like vocabulary—are hospital beds, ventilators, masks, and tests; they are the number of doctors, scientists, and healthcare workers. Yet, ever since you’ve been leading France, you’ve turned a deaf ear to the cries of alarm from the healthcare community, and what was written on a protest banner last November—“The government counts its pennies; we’ll count the dead”—resonates tragically today. But you’ve preferred to listen to those who advocate for the state’s withdrawal, pushing for resource optimization, flow regulation, and all that soulless technocratic jargon that obscures the reality of the situation. But look: it is public services that are currently keeping the country running for the most part—hospitals, the National Education System and its thousands of teachers and elementary school teachers who are so poorly paid, EDF, La Poste, the metro, and the SNCF. And those whom you once dismissed as nothing are now everything—they are the ones who continue to empty the trash, ring up items at the registers, deliver pizzas, and ensure that material life, just as indispensable as intellectual life, goes on.
It’s a strange choice—the word «resilience,» which means rebuilding after a trauma. We’re not there yet. Be careful, Mr. President, of the effects of this time of lockdown, of this upheaval in the course of events. It’s a time ripe for reevaluation. A time to yearn for a new world. Not yours! Not one where decision-makers and financiers are already shamelessly trotting out the old refrain of «working more»—up to 60 hours a week. Many of us no longer want a world whose glaring inequalities have been laid bare by the pandemic, Many of us, on the contrary, want a world where basic needs—healthy food, healthcare, housing, education, and cultural enrichment—are guaranteed for all, a world whose very possibility is demonstrated by the solidarity we’re seeing right now. Know this, Mr. President: we will no longer let our lives be stolen from us—we have only this life, and «nothing is worth more than life»—another song by Alain Souchon. Nor will we allow our democratic freedoms—which are currently restricted—to be permanently muzzled; freedoms that allow my letter—unlike Boris Vian’s, which was banned from the radio—to be read this morning on a national radio station.
Annie Ernaux
