There is a misunderstanding surrounding Paris 2024 and the time has come to undo it. The misunderstanding is this. These are not, strictly speaking, the Paris Olympic Games. Or not only. They are the Games of the suburb.
In the suburbthe young, poor and multicultural outskirts of Paris, is where the Olympic Village, the Stade de France and the Aquatic Centre are located. It is in the suburbwhich usually appears on the news and on the front pages due to riots, Islamism or marginalisation, is where these Games will leave the most tangible mark. So the pedestrian gets on line 13 of the metro, the umbilical cord between the capital and the northern outskirts, and arrives early on Tuesday at the office of Karim Bouamrane, the socialist mayor of Saint-Ouen.
“I have always said this, and I say it with all the respect I feel for the Parisians and the Mayor of Paris,” the Mayor declared, half joking, half serious. “Paris will become a suburb de Saint-Ouen.” The idea is that the Games will precipitate the transformation of the suburb so that municipalities like Saint-Ouen are no longer decentralised in relation to the neighbouring capital, and these municipalities become the new centre. “For me,” says Bouamrane, “the Olympic Games are a political weapon that allows me to go faster, higher, stronger.”
The mayor talks about the triple legacy of the Games for this municipality of 50,000 inhabitants, which includes part of the Olympic Village and several training grounds for the Olympic Games.
The first legacy, he says, is intangible, “the feeling of pride for the boys and girls” in an area that has a bad reputation. “When you come from a working-class environment like mine, the first heritage is dignity, respect and pride,” he says, and switches to Spanish, a language he speaks, like Arabic, English, Italian and Portuguese: “Like in Barcelona 92, the feeling of pride is hyper-im-portant.”
Second legacy: the feeling of security, which, he says, is not just a question of police, although that is also a question of “beauty” in public spaces.
And the third legacy: urban redevelopment. In the Olympic Village alone, there are two schools, a three-hectare park and a thousand new homes, of which 250 will be social housing. Beyond these constructions, the ambitious Greater Paris project is underway, which should integrate the entire region into a transport network that will help to unclog the city. suburb.
“This is like a bicycle,” says the mayor. “I am in good condition and I can pedal, but now they have put an electric battery on it. We go faster! But we have to keep pedaling!”
Pedaling, figuratively speaking, is something Bouamrane has done all his life. His parents were Moroccan immigrants. He grew up in an unsanitary building in Saint-Ouen where the neighbours had to share a toilet with three families on the same floor, and there were no showers. To shower they had to go to the municipal showers.
“My childhood was happy, because I was lucky to have a lot of love in my family,” she recalls. “We were not aware of our poverty.”
As a child, Karim spent his free time kicking the ball against a wall. He loved the Brazilian team in the 1982 World Cup in Spain. His idol was Socrates.
“I thought I was Socrates,” he says, “although I didn’t know that Socrates was a politically involved footballer.” And then comes the twist in the story, which not even the best scriptwriter could have imagined. From that wall and that unhealthy house in the suburb Poor but happy, from the 70s and 80s, there is nothing left. And what is there today in the same place? The Olympic Village. In fact, Dr. Socrates Street. “Where I used to live!” he exclaims. “Exactly the same place!” In the case of Bouamrane, who before entering politics was a businessman in the cybersecurity sector and has been mayor since 2020, republican meritocracy worked. Is it still like that?
It is legitimate to doubt it. This is a country marked by the attacks of the past decade, by the outbreaks of violence in the suburbs such as last summer, and also by entrenched discrimination. Those with a name of Maghrebi origin, or those who live in certain neighbourhoods, have an even harder time finding work and making a career.
“There should be more cases like mine: we fight for that,” says this man of the left who passionately defends what in France are called republican values and secularism. “My philosophy is: do you choose your life? Or do you suffer it?”
The problem, according to Bouamrane, is not the suburbor it is not just the suburb. It is the distance between those who live in the “urban hypercenters” and those who live in the “peripheries”, whether urban, such as the suburbor rural areas. “When you live in the hypercentres,” he explains, “you have everything: people with a university education, hospitals nearby, good transport, contacts and connections. In the peripheries you have fewer hospitals, less education, fewer schools, less quality infrastructure. This is the social problem in France, and it is deteriorating.”
The risk, according to the mayor, is that the Games will be nothing more than a “magic parenthesis, a party” and that when they are over everything will be the same again. The alternative, he says, is to take advantage of the momentum “to transform society and territories on the basis of values of equality.” “And this,” he adds, “is prepared before the party.”
The pedestrian has been following Bouamrane for months. He saw him this spring, precisely in the still empty Olympic Village, when he inaugurated the Rue du Dr. Socrates with relatives of the footballer and a large Brazilian delegation. He has met him several times at the matches of Red Star, the legendary football club from Saint-Ouen, older than Barça and associated with the revolutionary left. The old stand, now demolished, was named after Rino della Negra, a Red Star footballer and a member of the resistance against the Nazis until he was arrested and executed in 1944.
“I see only positive effects from the Games for Saint-Ouen and Seine-Saint Denis,” said one of the stadium’s regulars, former President François Hollande, a socialist like Bouamrane, during the last match of the season in May.
And this man, who is already a whirlwind under normal circumstances, is even more so these Olympic days, from one competition to another, from an interview in his office to a meeting with his other idol, besides Socrates. He is Tommie Smith, the American athlete who won gold in the 200 metres at the Olympic Games in Mexico in 1968 and, on the podium during the ceremony, raised his fist in protest against discrimination against blacks in the United States, a gesture for equality and civil rights that cost him dearly at the time but has never ceased to resonate.
And here, in Saint-Ouen, is Tommie Smith, 80 years old, an imposing figure, surrounded by dozens of young people in the suburbto inaugurate the Tommie Smith local sports ground.
The athlete and the mayor have known each other for years. Tommie calls him “son.” Karim refers to him as “my uncle Tommie.” In his speech, the mayor links Tommie Smith’s fight with the political battle that took place in France a few weeks ago with the far right.
“We saw it in the last elections. Either the France of darkness, or the France of enlightenment that Saint-Ouen embodies, that embodies the Republic, that embodies the values that Tommie Smith defends,” said the mayor in his speech. “Democratising excellence means democratising beauty, it means democratising elegance, education for all, it means democratising pride and being from Saint-Ouen, being from Seine-Saint-Denis, being French, as seen in the opening ceremony of the Games, is wonderfully embodied by the raised fist of Tommie Smith.”
When pedestrians hear Bouamrane, they cannot help but think: this man is aiming high.
He is no longer young enough to be a promise, nor is he a well-known figure in France. His political space, that of the social-democratic and moderate left, does not have it easy in the context of parliamentary paralysis and polarization following the legislative elections of July 9. And yet, his message goes beyond Saint-Ouen and the suburbAnd it is not difficult to imagine him in higher positions. Even president?
“If I start by saying that I want to be president of the Republic, it would be disrespectful to the people who are suffering,” he replies. “What interests me, Marc, frankly, is saving the country.” Nothing less.
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