A Brief Explanation of the CPE, the November riots, and French politics in general (tags)
The riots in French suburbs have always been detonated by police violence. The first of these riots happened in Lyon's suburbs, in Vaulx-en-Velin, a working class hub with Renault factories. Monstrous urbanisation, tens of thousands of workers who became jobless after corporate downsizing in the 1970s, inexistent public infrastructures, stigmatisation against people of foreign origin, schools that only proposed dead ends, heroin for the young and alcohol for their parents; voila the situation of this peripheral city forgotten by all until police violence led to the death of a young man. Police violence triggered this riot in 1990, and those that followed, all the way up to those of November 2005...