Lyon I was dragging wagon arriving in Lyon, France after an overnight flight from the USA, and then a train, all adding up to more than 24 hours of travel. Going down the escalator from the train platform, there was Adrien Roux, the head organizer of ACORN’s affiliate, the Alliance Citoyenne, now renamed Justice Ensemble, standing next to his ever present bike. We met one of the leaders I knew from the staff-board meeting last November in Heerlen, Netherlands, who is now on the staff, along with two brand-new organizers in Lyon, only on board the last couple of days. From there we reassembled in a neighborhood where we had been organizing for some time in public housing units and were now expanding in the general area in the private housing with our partners. Adrien went one way with the new organizers for some door knocking training, and I drew the lucky straw and went with Houcine to meet with some local members in a nearby building, where we were going to help on an issue they were handling.
Arriving at the building, a five-story complex with about 36 units, two of the local leaders met us in front. The issue was straightforward. Water bills had skyrocketed recently, with hikes as much as double. Even though separately metered, some tenants were getting no bills, others wildly inflated bills, and no one was getting bills that they thought reflected their real water use. They had been unable to get the landlord of this subsidized public housing to deal seriously with fixing the problem. Our mission was to start at the top, work our way to the bottom, hit every door, and circulate a petition for all of the residents to sign demanding a meeting with the landlord to fix this problem.
Having only barely ever been on the doors in France, this was all fascinating to me, even if it was just a taste of our constituency and membership. Our crew was persistent and dynamic. We hit almost every door and were almost 100% on the signatures, lacking only five or so units of the 36. Only one resident didn’t sign, because her daughter handled the business of the house, and she wasn’t there when we knocked. About 90% of the units were occupied by Muslim families from Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and elsewhere, so the visits were mainly in French with dabs of Arabic and even English. Even though we were talking in the hallways, many invited us into their apartments to show us other issues they had with the landlord like cracks in the floor tile or water damage in the ceilings from previous leaks.
People were almost universally friendly, and many almost excited for the interruptions to their evening. They were animated in complaining about the landlord to the degree that often we had trouble getting away to hit the next door. Many had small outside balconies, and often there were house plants. Almost no one wore shoes in the house or their regular clothes. Lights were largely off to conserve electricity as the dusk moved to dark. There were all ages, from single elderly women, often slow to open the door, to younger families with babies in arms or small children peeking around their robes. Our crew left perhaps 3 or 4 membership applications, but though they were pushing the organization, they were not pressing people to join. I’ll have to find out about that later.
Two hours on the doors in Lyon without knowing the language is not the deepest dive into our organizing in France, but it felt great to be there, meet the members, hear about the issues, and see them get ready for action. This is the way the building blocks of the organization are assembled. It was fun to be a fly on the wall of the building’s hallways.
