IN CASE YOU THOUGHT FRANCE BACKSTABBING US IN THE WoT MIGHT BE PRINCIPLED:

In French Campaign, Immigrants Find a Voice: Voter Registration Soars After '05 Suburban Riots (Molly Moore, 2/22/07, Washington Post)

Sixteen months after immigrant neighborhoods exploded in the country's worst civil unrest in nearly half a century, the suburbs are emerging for the first time as a potent force in the presidential campaign.

Immigrant citizens and their first-generation French children have registered to vote in unprecedented numbers, forcing politicians to address a potential voter pool previously written off as politically insignificant.

Thousands of small, vocal political action groups representing Africans, Arabs and young people have sprung up in suburbs across the country, fledgling challengers to the political monopolies of unions and other establishment organizations.

Grass-roots blogs and Web sites are scrutinizing candidate records, becoming sassy and candid alternatives to the nation's mainstream news media.

"The suburban vote is very important," Bayrou, a three-time presidential contender, said in an interview after surprising commuters when he and his media entourage crammed onto a train for the 25-minute ride from Paris to Mantes-la-Jolie. "I'm not naturally a candidate of the suburbs, my constituency historically is rural -- but I am here."
Addressing Discrimination

The suburban violence that stunned the nation and besmirched France's image across the globe not only fueled greater political activism in the immigrant neighborhoods but also has forced presidential candidates to confront issues previously considered politically taboo: racial, ethnic and religious discrimination.

A recent survey commissioned by a black advocacy group, the Representative Council of Black Associations, and conducted by the TNS-Sofres polling firm, found that 61 percent of blacks polled said they are victimized by discrimination on a daily basis. France has no blacks in its legislative National Assembly other than the 10 representatives from its overseas departments that are predominantly black. [...]

In contrast to the United States, France has concentrated its immigrant and poor populations in the suburbs rather than the inner cities.

Suburban issues have dominated the presidential campaign of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, candidate of the ruling center-right Union for a Popular Movement party. Many critics blame him for inflaming the suburbs during the fall 2005 violence when he referred to some youths as "scum" that should be washed out of the neighborhoods.

He has since tried to ameliorate the anger and has appointed an Algerian-born Muslim, Abderrahmane Dahmane, to the position of "national secretary in charge of relations with associations involved in French immigration issues."

But Sarkozy is not expected to draw many votes among immigrants in the suburbs, according to most opinion polls and political analysts.

Dahmane tries to play down the importance of the populace Sarkozy has asked him to oversee: "These communities don't vote a lot; they talk a lot but they don't vote," he said.

That could change this year.

Voter registration has skyrocketed in every French demographic group and nearly every district -- urban, suburban and rural. Across the country, voter registration is up nearly 50 percent over the last presidential election in 2002, according to preliminary figures. In some localities, the number of new voters increased more than 300 percent, according to tallies by the daily newspaper Le Monde.

Analysts and political activists say the increase in voter registration was the result of two events that shocked the country: the 2005 suburban violence and Le Pen's second-place showing in the last election.

Reportedly, policy makers in the U.S. government discount the idea of getting any help from Europe in the Middle East because government there are too afraid of their own populations.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 22, 2007 12:00 AM