at the Pics d’or, humor in the face of inhumanity – Libération

The Abbé-Pierre Foundation is organizing this Monday, November 18, at the Théâtre de l'Atelier in Paris, a parody ceremony rewarding the worst anti-homeless measures. Way of demonstrating through humor the absurdity of moving the problem of homelessness rather than tackling it head-on.

It's wonderful, the human imagination. A brilliant tool at our disposal to invent machines capable of going into space, wonderful worlds just by turning pages, and a whole bunch of ways to prevent homeless people from sleeping on our doorstep. For years, the Abbé-Pierre Foundation has regularly denounced these treasures of ingenuity deployed not to solve the problem of homelessness but to constantly move it. A Sisyphean fight. So to get its message across differently, the association has focused, for the third time, after two first editions in 2019 and 2020, on the Pics d'or, a ceremony which rewards the worst anti-homeless measures.

“Show how absurd it is”

This year, Blanche Gardin, godmother of the foundation, presented the public prize. Awarded online by more than 13,000 voters, it rewards a pile of gigantic flower pots without any flowers in them, in Lyon. The installation notably beat the total walling of the arches of the elevated metro on Boulevard de la Villette, in the 19th arrondissement of