Blue-collar voters in northern France are often seen as a natural base for Marine Le Pen’s surging far right. Yet while her party has made major inroads in this electorate, local elections saw Communists resist what seemed like inevitable defeat.
As Paris’s deputy mayor, Ian Brossat massively expanded the French capital’s public housing stock. He spoke to Jacobin about the left-wing city hall’s record and what lessons it might have for Zohran Mamdani in New York.
The fierce urgency of Now
Humiliated by a Nazi officer as a teenager, she joined the French Resistance. By the time she was 20, she had killed a German soldier, survived torture and captured a supply train.
After the New Popular Front won July’s French elections, it nominated Lucie Castets for prime minister. Emmanuel Macron ignored the result. Castets told Jacobin how the left-wing coalition can build on its progress and stop the lurch to the right.
With the left coalition NUPES rapidly disintegrating in France and the formation of a new party led by Sahra Wagenknecht in Germany, it’s been a dramatic recent period for Europe’s progressive forces.
Philippe Rio from Grigny, south of Paris, has been voted the world’s best mayor. He told Jacobin about the local social programs that have made his Communist administration a global success story
A year of agony and uproar
Parties and movement groups, Cuba and Vietnam, and African scholar activists face the Corona crisis
Divisions on France’s left have helped Macron and le Pen dominate the political terrain. In the country’s second city, grassroots pressure has forced them to put aside differences — ahead of March 2020’s elections, promising a “Marseille Spring.”
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