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A Montpellier community bar trains neophytes in militant action, terrified by a possible victory for the RN and determined to ride for the New Popular Front. After putting up posters for the first time, many are ready to continue.
It is 7 p.m. this June 21 in downtown Montpellier. Thanks to citizen mobilization, the Quartier Généreux associative café-bar fills up quickly. Maxime came “to ward off anguish, after dissolution” of the National Assembly. “I had a feeling of helplessness, because I never campaigned”blurted out the thirty-year-old, worried that“with the RN, it accelerates the shift towards an authoritarian regime, racism, national preference: I don’t want to live in a country like that…”. Sarah is there because “the extreme right is a danger for my people, the LGBT” and that’“We will have to continue to campaign for things to really change.”
On the evening’s program, training provided by former activists from La France insoumise, with role-playing games to learn how to convince people to vote for the left, a quiz on local political issues, etc. “Who wants to put up posters now?” calls out to a volunteer. Immediately, several people follow her into a back room filled with activist materials, to learn how to make glue and to put up, where permitted, a homemade poster showing, under the humorous slogan “Union Tomato Salad”, the socialist Léon Blum calling for “a generous Popular Front”. As the evening goes on, others take their turn. Among them, Marin (1), 32 years old, who has never fought: “I am committed because there is an urgent need to block
