An amp under an umbrella, placed on a bench in La Plaine, the largest square in downtown Marseille. The gray sky has cleared the esplanade a little, but the small neighboring farmers’ market still attracts people at the end of the day. Some curious people, leeks sticking out of the bag, have spotted the megaphones that a small troop is busy connecting. And for those who haven’t seen anything, Marien Guillé does the rest: “Come closer, come closer, it’s the trial!” shouts the actor, cap pulled down to his ears. Behind him, a duo shares blackened sheets of text, to the sound of the harmonica drawn by a third. «No trial of the rue d’Aubagneepisode five, it’s now!” finally announces Marien.
Since the trial opened on November 7, 2024, around twenty of them have taken turns three times a week in several public places in Marseille to “shout” the summary of the hearings. The initiative was born within the Collective of November 5, formed the days following the disaster which left eight people dead on this day in 2018 and generated a wave of evacuations in the city. It was Laurent, one of the historic volunteers of the collective, who had the idea of bringing together Guillaume Derieux and Marien Guillé, both actor-criers and residents of the Noailles district, to bring into existence the trial which ends this week at beyond the walls of the court. Around them, they form a team of around twenty “criers” to declaim, one per week, summaries written from press articles and verbatim statements collected at the hearing.
“Bring in the lawyers”
Each quarter-hour episode is structured around the mode “bring in” the theme of the week: “Bring in the cracks” when the court is interested in technical expertise, “bring in the administration” when it is municipal management that is discussed… For episode five shouted that day – “bring in the lawyers” –the megaphone bearers first recite the list of requisitions received the day before. What follows is a story that skilfully weaves together the facts raised during the week of debates, punctuated by replayed bits of dialogue on the stand or shocking sentences chanted in a loop, like this “zero euros spent” in the building on the 180,000 euros of work costed by a design office before the collapses. The whole thing sticks rather faithfully to the reality of the debates, with a concern for popularizing legal aspects. The reading of messages of support to the victims’ families concludes the sequence, applauded by passers-by.
“There are a lot of reactions, people who don’t have the time to get information, and that’s the goal, Marien points. For example, a majority of people don’t know it’s happening right now. Hearing someone shouting through a megaphone sometimes has more impact than reading something in the middle of other information.” Very often also, at the end of the intervention, people come out of the audience to come and talk about their own situation of poor housing. The criers direct them to other volunteers in the collective or invite them to participate in one of the many scheduled meetings.
Large citizen march before the trial, collection of messages of support for the victims’ families, massive display even on the court gates to “recreate the omnipresence of the issue of poor housing in the city”, columns published in the media – the latest, published on Mediapart on December 11 and signed by several collectives and associations, calls for the opening of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into substandard housing –, “popular assemblies” where a lawyer for the civil parties and journalists answer questions from the public… For a month and a half, a wave of initiatives has accompanied the trial thanks to the general mobilization sounded by the Collective of November 5.
A time of visibility which complements the in-depth work carried out tirelessly by several actors on the ground in Marseille. Thursday, December 12, in his indictment, the public prosecutor, Nicolas Bessone, wanted to thank them “solemnly” for their actions “complementary” of those carried out by its services. “The trial puts the focus back on substandard housing and its systemic dimension, this chain of responsibilities which is at the heart of the debates, notes Kevin Vacher, sociologist and member of the collective. It’s an angle that allows us to do teaching, to show how unworthy housing works. This also allows us to draw conclusions, to know what we are doing tomorrow on this subject. It is not up to the judges to give a political dimension to this trial, it is us, the residents, who give it. Hence the importance of mobilizing.”
Green collective ribbon on the buttonhole
Matthieu joined the Collective for the trial, “first to help with technical questions”. The professional assistant director finally joined the team of 70 “popular clerks” who, every day, take turns in the courtroom to transcribe the proceedings. Groups of five people, green collective ribbon in their buttonholes, reproduce word for word, in a digitally shared document, the verbatim statements of the trial. Everyone can also add more personal comments. Before this trial, which he follows on site “almost every other day”, Matthieu was new to legal matters: “I particularly learned the symbolic importance of speaking out for the people who experienced this tragedy.”
This Wednesday, for the last day of the trial, the Collective of November 5 calls one last time on the Marseillais to come en masse to attend the hearings, to support the civil parties. The next day, the criers will spin all the episodes written for the trial one last time on the Place du 5-Novembre, very close to the void left by the collapsed buildings. They will shout very close to the electrical transformer where dozens of messages have been stuck for a month to families bereaved by the disaster. On each of them, Liliana Lalonde, the mother of Julien, one of the eight victims, added a «merci» in pen.
