Dissolution. Dissolution. Julien (he did not wish to give his name) repeats the word once again. He can’t believe it. “The dissolution woke me up. I said to myself: this is it, this is my chance.” Julien is a tall, shy boy with a brown beard in his thirties, who is kneading a bundle of leaflets for the New Popular Front (NFP) with the air of not knowing what to do with them. “Come on, give me one, you make me feel sorry,” jokes a woman under a pink umbrella. Julien is so moved that he doesn’t hear, she has to take the paper from his hands. She works in a college, here in Bourges, in Cher. Left-wing voter. Very impatient to express her vote, but for whom? Determined to avoid a national catastrophe, but which one?
She talks about this feeling of both vagueness and gravity, of the heavy silence as soon as politics is discussed in the canteen, while an irrepressible excitement rises as the vote approaches. Two days before the first round of the legislative elections on June 30 and July 7, proxies are close to 3,000 in Bourges, compared to 600 for the European elections. She wants to be there too, but it’s so painful. Would she agree to testify on his behalf? “You don’t think about it, with the situation! We live in small towns and countryside, not in Paris. »
For Julien, it is the first day of his first campaign, towing and door-to-door. “All these people coming towards me, I don’t know how to behave, I don’t feel comfortable”he said.. For five years, he had been teleworking for a computer company, a reclusive life, friends moving away one by one, the silent telephone. To rub shoulders with the world, perhaps, he had ventured to a demonstration on pensions, one afternoon, in the winter of 2023. His mother had said to him: “Are you in a union?” She pierced him with her gaze. “I think she would have preferred to know that I was gay. I come from a right-wing family, which defends the value of work.” When a candidate from La France insoumise (LFI) for the New Popular Front launched an appeal on social networks for her campaign in the 3e constituency of Cher, Julien had just been made redundant. A thought crossed his mind: “I’m going to meet people. »
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This day in June, a dozen volunteers met in Val-d’Auron, a district south of Bourges, on the banks of a large lake. Once a chic residential area, it has slowly slipped into a priority zone. Young, fiery LFI activists make up the bulk of the team, friendly atmosphere. “When you are young, you are LFI”, enthuses Nicolas Malin, on unpaid leave in IT. He is returning from a campaign leafleting campaign. Disgusted. “They spat on me, even though I’m from the area.” Emma Moreira is the youngest of the group: 21 years old, denim jacket cut into a bustier, piercing, student at the Beaux-Arts in Bourges. She is the candidate for the New Popular Front, stripes earned at the head of the mobilizations against Parcoursup or the pension reform.
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