Portside

Their voices are weak, hoarse from the dust rising with the comings and goings, but they still carry. Around the brass instruments of the marching band bordering the CGT entertainment workers' stand on Avenue Rosa Luxembourg, this Saturday afternoon, September 12, Antoine and Andrée, both 62 years old and with thirty years of communist activism under their belts, harangue passersby when the music fades. "Come on, let's sing, let's keep going!"

Beside them, Louise, their little girl, doesn't quite know where to look. At 16, for her first Fête de l'Humanité (Humanity Festival ), she simply nods her head, all smiles, her eyes wide open to the joyful crowd with raised fists. For such a shy girl, "that's not bad at all ," her grandfather teases her.

Around them, people are singing at the top of their lungs to a tune from the Popular Front: "Let's go towards life/Let's go towards the morning/Arise my blonde / Arise, friend/He goes towards the rising sun/Our country."

"To rediscover a form of joy and happiness in the struggle"

Paradoxically, in every booth, in front of every concert, behind every glass shared during this 91st ^edition , the fear of a twilight is what is being discussed. The twilight that would be brought about by the arrival of the far right in power in France on the evening of May 2, 2027.

“Finding a form of joy and happiness in the struggle is the first step towards reaching the time of cherries,” muses Anna, in her thirties, “an anti-capitalist activist without party affiliation .” An anarchist symbol is drawn on her cheek with a marker. She no longer really remembers how it appeared.

Behind the counter of the PCF stand in Pyrénées-Orientales, Adrien Calvet navigates from one request to another. He serves beers, launches as many debates, teases his neighbor "with LFI leanings" , asks about the sangria being prepared... But when this danger is mentioned, he rests his elbows on the bar and breathes deeply.

At 24, this resident of the town of Elne, a communist municipality that fell in March into the hands of the far right, knows all too well how this risk becomes a reality .

“When the new mayor took office, his first actions were to remove LGBT symbols from public spaces, impose a 11 p.m. curfew, organize a Bastille Day parade that went from one cathedral to the other, and fire employees he suspected of not sharing his views…” he summarizes. He himself lost his job because of it.

Changing humanity

To move forward, individually and collectively, Adrien is counting on the Fête de l'Humanité, this "window onto the struggles" which he was keen to open for citizens very far removed from the left by encouraging them (successfully) to make the trip from very far away.

“So that they see that the left is made up of real human beings who are aware of the real problems ,” he confides. “ This event is invaluable . For three days, we prove to ourselves that we know how to come together and compare our perspectives on the realities of our regions in order to try to move forward together. We talk, we shine a little, and we give each other strength.” The times demand it.

During these three days of festivities, artists also played a significant role, performing on the stages where Angela Davis, Josephine Baker, and Nina Simone have performed, and speaking out as they left the festival. "With what awaits us in 2027, we must fight the far right and its harmful ideas ," chanted Sam Sauvage on Friday. "The goal is for us all to be in the same boat, united by our values ," added rapper Ino Casablanca shortly afterward.

“Where has the ‘no’ generation gone?” asked Suzane, one of the headliners on Saturday night, as if issuing a call to action. She also dedicated her performance to “the voices we no longer truly hear,” “under the skies of Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine, to the women forbidden to dance, to live, to the children who live with monsters in their homes . ”

Like her, earlier in the day, before the speech by Fabien Roussel , national secretary of the PCF and candidate for the presidential election, personalities mobilized for a better world were applauded: the parents and relatives of Christophe Gleizes, a journalist unjustly detained for more than a year in Algeria; the undocumented hairdressers of the Boulevard de Strasbourg, who fought for seventy-nine days to end their exploitation; the firefighters who fought throughout this sweltering summer against devastating fires.

Knowing one's history is essential for moving forward.

“Faced with capitalism and its agents like the far right, culture has a central role to play,” observes Anita Binacchi, 76, a member of the CGT agri-food union for forty years, under the stand of the publishing house Le Temps des Cerises. “ Creating, reading, feeling emotions, these are means of struggle and resistance. And not insignificant ones.”

It is in this spirit that some twenty cultural organizations signed, this weekend, the appeal launched by L'Humanité "for culture and creativity to thrive" in the face of "attempts by the far right to seize control of our imaginations ." This initiative aims to allow the various stakeholders in the sector to come together to prepare a joint response.

With her hand resting on books exploring the thought of Marx, Engels or Lenin, Anita repeats to anyone who will listen: "You have to know your history to move forward!" At a time when the Popular Front is celebrating its 90th anniversary , an anniversary celebrated during this edition, her formula resonates with the curious young people who come to venture around these publications.

"Back then, arguing from time to time to clarify things didn't prevent us from working together ," remarks Jérémy, 30, a supporter of La France Insoumise wearing a vintage blue football jersey with the LFI logo.

A statement echoed by historian Ludivine Bantigny on the Agora stage on Saturday: “The Popular Front represents strength and joy. It is an emancipatory project of justice and an anti-fascist force. There was sometimes a certain level of hostility between the committees, far greater than what we sometimes see today, but the will for popular self-organization prevailed.” A delicate path that everyone seems to want to take. A demanding, but essential, path.

L'Humanité (lit. 'Humanity') is a French daily newspaper. It was previously a de facto organisation of the French Section of the Workers’ International, and thereafter of the French Communist Party (PCF), to which it still maintains links. (Wikipedia.) Subscribe.