For decades, McDonald’s was the brand French people loved to hate.
From the 1970s it was accused of being the exporter of mal bouffe (bad food) to the land of fine dining, blamed for introducing millions of French people to high-calorie American fast-food.
It was also resisted as a symbol of US economic and cultural imperialism, particularly by left wingers, in a country that remains suspicious of globalization — and more eager than most to defend its own language and culture.
Photo: AFP
French farmer and one-time presidential candidate Jose Bove built a political career through his opposition to McDonald’s which saw him trash a restaurant in the south of France in 1999.
And resistance to the golden arches continues: a mayor on the island of Oleron in western France has famously battled to keep the company out, and the brand is still a favorite target of anti-capitalist protesters during street demonstrations.
NOTHING ELSE
But in a turn of events that would have French food purists choking, campaigners including local lawmakers have mobilized to save, not shut, a restaurant in one of the poorest suburbs of the southern city of Marseille.
“From the outside it might seem to be just another restaurant,” local MP and hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said in a visit last month to the outlet where he was cheered and applauded.
“But it’s the only place where there’s something going on in this area, where you can get something to drink or have a bite to eat with friends.” The campaign to prevent the “McDo,” as it is known in France, from shutting — local Socialist and even Communist Party figures have joined Melenchon — is an unusual development for politicians better known for their opposition to multinational companies.
But it has also served to highlight how the American fast-food chain has become a pillar of the local community, underscoring the lack of other facilities, and economic opportunities, in France’s deeply deprived suburbs.
“There’s only this,” one local, Farida Mameri, said as she arrived with her children. “This area without McDonald’s? There’d be nothing. When you meet someone it’s here, there’s nothing else.”
DRUGS AND POVERTY
The restaurant is located next to the partly completed L2 trunk road in the tough northern suburb of Saint-Barthelemy, a multiethnic area home to a large Muslim population and some of the city’s poorest housing estates.
McDonald’s is the second-biggest formal employer in the neighborhood with its 77 staff, after a local supermarket chain, trade unionists say.
Residents lament how shops and businesses have gradually moved out at the same time as drug-dealing has flourished — providing more lucrative, and dangerous, opportunities for unemployed local men.
Marseille remains an important gateway for drugs arriving in Europe from North Africa, causing deadly turf wars between Kalashnikov-wielding gangs that are a blight on the lives of local families.
In May, amateur video went viral showing several masked men armed with machine guns running through a housing estate in nearby Busserine, where police — and journalists — are often wary to enter.
Since opening in 1992, the McDonald’s has helped to stop some of the criminality, employees and campaigners say.
“McDonald’s kind of got me out of the shit, if you’ll excuse the term,” Nordine Aklil, a 27-year-old employee, said. “I had come out of prison and McDonald’s offered me rehabilitation basically. It also allowed me to have more stability in my life.”
Salim Grabsi, a member of a working class collective in the area called SQPM, agreed that the business had played a “social role” under its previous managers.
“Young girls and young boys who haven’t got internships, they end up here,” he explained. “When kids no longer have any interest in school, or they no longer want to go to school, to avoid them landing in drugs and all that, their first job is often at McDonald’s.”
HONORABLE ENDING?
At stake is the threatened closure of the restaurant by its current operator, a franchiser called Jean-Pierre Brochiero who owns the restaurant in a 50-50 joint venture with McDonald’s France.
He claims the site is loss-making — which the branch’s employees contest — and wants to sell it to a Tunisia-based company which would open an “Asian halal” food outlet targeting the local Muslim population.
The employees, who have been protesting for months, believe the takeover plan is a ruse to avoid paying them redundancy compensation and they have gone to court to prevent the transaction.
“As badly paid as they are, as bad as working conditions are at McDonald’s, their whole life is built around this job,” a lawyer representing staff said after a court hearing on Monday.
“The whole life of the neighborhood is built around this restaurant. McDonald’s needs to be aware of that and they need to come out of this honorably too.”
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist