« Heritage is always political. It’s symbolism, it’s history. Something precious, fragile. There is no culture without heritage » : Jacques is a bookseller in La Goutte-d’Or. On the ground floor of the building that he bought there with friends fifteen years ago for a pittance, he has installed his shelves of old and rare books that you only discover once you push the heavy porte-cochere. Heritage. And he started campaigning for this district of 18e district – one of the poorest in the capital – in the process of gentrification.
Only here, far from improving, the situation is deteriorating there, he denounces, and the burglary of his bookstore, two years ago, put him on the ground. « A bookstore is a temple, it’s sacred! » He who, in 1996, was at the Saint-Bernard church – at the end of the street – to support undocumented migrants, has thus become today one of the spearheads of #saccageparis, this movement which for a year has been is spreading on Twitter to denounce Anne Hidalgo’s policy in all directions.
Garbage not collected, endless construction sites, traffic plans deemed inadequate, poorly maintained street furniture, constructions criticized for being too high, too wide, too new, too old… 2,709,000 tweets counted in ten months, 8,000 per day on average since August, in eighth position of the # (hashtag, hashtag in French) most used in France in 2021 if we are to believe the calculations of Visibrain, a monitoring service on social networks.
Rampage: “looting, plundering, destroying and stealing”, says LeRobert. The word has the connotation of barbarian hordes sweeping over the civilized world. The success of #saccageparis has this flavor. “A slogan is always a shortcut, and a shortcut is always stupid, the Goutte-d’Or bookseller justifies himself. But we need watchwords. This floating suggestive is both the risk and the great thing: yes, recovery is inevitable. Only here, I campaigned a lot in local residents’ associations for very little result. Now, with a tweet, I have the town hall running after me to erase a tag. »
Containment, a trigger
We find X, alias Panamepropre, in front of a half-pressure in a café in La Motte-Picquet-Grenelle, at the other end of Paris. Fifties, white-collar outfit coming out of the office, frank and sympathetic smile. #saccageparis, it’s him. “It’s amazing to have created a brand, he thinks aloud, not unhappy with his modest package. QWhen on March 21 I used it for the first time, about a series of tweets about Parc Monceau, I had the intuition that it was a strong, severe hashtag. I did not choose it by chance. I wanted to strike the spirits. This is what is happening. »
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