Pompiliu Sterian Throughout my life, there were 15 different addresses where I lived, most of them before the war [WW II, trans. note]. I was always a tenant. I always lived in two rooms with my family. Only once we lived in a three room flat and we sublet the third room in order to manage paying the rent. We lived in a basemen apartment, in the attic, in shared flats. Back then, there was an unwritten rule: people used to move out and change tenancy in late April and late October [probably due to the fact that some families…
by Mihaela MICHAILOV Each time I write an article dedicated to the theatre for children and teenagers, I inevitably ask myself a few questions: whose is the theatre addressing the youths? does it take into consideration the structural changes of childhood? does it know its children and teens? how aware is this theatre of the fundamental role it could take in forming the children and teens, in the spirit of attachment to emancipatory, liberating stories? how eager is this theatre to diversify the children’s experiential horizon, to deconstruct the stereotypes they borrow, to show them the possibility of change they…
Do you happen to know what the relocation criteria were, that the authorities had established for the evicted people? Violene: I didn t understand much about the criteria. Yet I know that families with small children and those who worked legally were relocated. On the other hand, I know families with small children that didn t receive another place to stay. The duration of their stay in the camp was important – the ones that had gotten here more recently weren t relocated. Had the people in the camp been monitored by the City Hall, did every one of them…
A few years ago, in Romania, I met one of the members of La Patate Chaude – Violene, who was studying in Cluj at the time. When I was in France earlier this year, I went to Grenoble, where I met Violene again. In March, we visited together the Roma migrants camps, with people coming from Romania, Serbia and Macedonia, whom she works with closely, and in September, I interviewed her for the current G.A.P. issue. For starters, could you please describe in a few words your activist profile and the projects you are involved in? Violene: For more than…
A gunfight between law-enforcement and two suspects occurred the night between the15th and 16th of July 2010, following an armed robbery at a casino in Uriage-les-Bains, Isere, 15 km away from Grenoble. After several gunshots, one of the suspects, Karim Boudouda, age 27, was shot dead, while one of the officers was wounded. The incident caused a number of riots on the streets of the Villeneuve neighbourhood in Grenoble where the deceased young man came from. The following night, near the town of Thésée-la-Romaine, in the French central region of Centre-Val de Loie, Luigi Duquenet, age 22, coming from a…
Marta Talacha In 2013, Marseilles became a European Capital of Culture – to the awe and discontent of other French cities, but to the joy of intermediaries and speculators in real estates. The second largest city after Paris, first in inequalities and social divisions, leading in poverty and its nearly 40% unemployment, the town has built its identity on a coexistence of many cultures, races and religions. Immigrants have been forming the pulse of life here for ages. Armenians escaping the Turkish holocaust, Italians fleeing fascism and poverty, North-African Jews, pieds-noirs or Algerian repatriates, resettlers from Tunisia and Morocco. Here…
In the meantime, the police had asked the neighbors about us, anyway, everyone knew of his addiction, and that he sometimes slept on other people’s cars, the knew more than me. But no one was telling, because they thought it is a personal problem, to be solved in private. And they were grateful when we left, we were a dysfunctional family, that creates discomfort for everyone and that’s it, this is the approach. But the police weren’t supportive, they were drinking with my husband in the neighborhood. I hadn’t expected to be considered guilty of all this, but the police,…