Reading about the recent protests in France brought to mind my own brush with demonstrators and the law when living in Paris decades ago.
After classes at the Sorbonne, I used to walk over to Presses Universitaires on Rue Soufflot to look at the beautiful books I couldn’t afford. These were titles from Garnier Flammarion and other high-end publishers, with white covers, red binding, and inserted red cloth bookmarks. I loved looking at them, but you couldn’t just sit down in a comfortable chair and read them like at Shakespeare & Co, the famous small bookstore on the Left Bank that shared a name with the publisher that first issued James Joyce’s Ulysses, which had been banned in America.
One day in early 1970, I emerged from Presses Universitaires and in a minute was stopped by a CRS policeman who asked me for my papers. I showed him my Carte de Séjour (residence permit) to prove I was legit, but he still grabbed and pushed me into a waiting gray Citroën van with a bunch of other young unfortunates inside. Together we headed off to jail.
I discovered later that a big manif (French slang for manifestation, i.e. a demonstration) took place at the Panthéon nearby. The Sorbonne was reducing the number of humanities, language classes, and other curricula, which pissed off the students. My jail companions — there were about 40 of us in a big cell — passionately sang the communist protest song “l’Internationale,” which I knew nothing about at the time. I wasn’t scared, but didn’t know why I was there. I just wondered when and how I would ever get home.
We were released from jail around 4 a.m. The modus operandi of the CRS was to get every young person — especially those with long hair — off the streets and into jail to prevent any gatherings. When freed at 4 a.m., you just want to go home and sleep.
My police record followed me when I returned to Paris five years later. I was at the Préfecture de Police (police station) to apply for a work permit to officially teach in a French school and was told, “Ah, vous avez un dossier.” As it turned out, I didn’t return to Paris that fall so this chapter was closed.
I’ve tried to get a copy of the dossier in recent years, but it doesn’t exist anymore. Two French friends, Yves and Pierre, even went to the Préfecture de Police on separate occasions to inquire on my behalf. Pierre found out that the demonstrations took place on February 26, 1970 on the Rue Soufflot, just as I thought. A total of 671 people were arrested that day, including 80 foreigners, which included me. France was very concerned about having another May 1968 and this “manif” could have led to another big uprising. The dossier was probably never digitized. Too bad, it would’ve looked good next to the Chevalier (Knighthood) award I received from the French government in 1998.