by Walter Agnew Moore II
1 May 2002, Paris, France

Peter and I are running our guts out, up the long boulevard that goes from the Bastille to the big plaza they call "Nation". We dodge the people, cut side to side. Pete is over to my right sticking mostly to the sidewalk. I am in the street.

No danger of cars. The boulevard is full of people. They have turned out in protest of Jean-Marie LePen's fascist National Front.

Whoomp— fwoomp— leap past person after person, diving through holes in the crowd. Jump— did I just hurdle a baby-carriage?

Rugby was good training for this day. I can watch Peter off to my right with peripheral vision, and still pick out the path where I am sprinting.

We both have packs tucked under our arms. We look like escaping thieves. My face is getting hot and dry.

I slow down for a few seconds, walk. The guys in front of me carrying furled flags are looking up over their shoulders to the right, cheering at someone up above. They are cheering in rhythm. I follow their stares.

On a third floor balcony over us is an old woman. She is holding onto the railing with one frail hand. Her hair is long and white. She pumps her other fist in the air. The young men on the ground roar a cheer at her. She pumps her fist again. They roar.

I turn and start running again. Welcome to May Day, 2002, in Paris.

They will say that there were 400,000 people here. Others will say double that. I have no idea, and I don't know how anybody could get an accurate count; people kept coming and coming, and everybody didn't march by the planned routes.

I can tell you how it was on the Boulevard Magenta when we first got to Paris. You know how big and wide the main Parisian boulevards are? Magenta was solid with people walking, and that wasn't even on the march route. They were people *going* to the march.

We got to the planned march starting point, Place de la République, and you could barely get through. Every square foot of ground had somebody on it, and every vertical surface had been climbed by people with flags and banners. You don't realize how big the statues are until you see them covered, ant-like, with people.

We forced our way out to the middle, and that's where we stayed. I would have fallen several times except the crowd held me up.

A girl to my left kept leading the crowd in chants of "AVANCEZ! AVANCEZ!", as if all they needed to hear was her voice to get things moving. There were the inevitable little girls riding on daddy's shoulders. A man on the traffic signal above us started beating a Mardi Gras rhythm on a pot. The "avancez" girl and her friends danced to the beat, as much as they could in the press.

The traffic signal changed from red to green to red, over and over, as we stood locked in place.

Have you ever been trapped in a tight crowd for an hour? And have you had to listen to some sort of Turkish clarinet back to your left warble for that hour? I was about ready to tear Le Pen a new one.

The lady next to me was about 4' 6" in heels. I looked down: "Can you breath?"

She looked up. "Barely." I braced my elbow against her husband's green jacket, and she got between us in the space we made. Then I had to grab his jacket as I got pushed backwards. It was tweed, the jacket.

The smoke from temporary kebab stands drifted over us from time to time.

"Look, Peter, the sun is only about 30 minutes from going behind that building! We'll be in the shade soon!"

The guy on the nearest microphone kept telling us what was going on up ahead, to be patient, calm; any trouble would play to Le Pen's advantage. Then he said "There are six times as many people here as anyone thought would come. That is why the parade cannot get through. The fact that the parade cannot get through as scheduled is a testimony to our success!"

The crowd exploded into cheers.

There was the slightest let-up in the crowd, and Pete and I wormed through to a central tree-shaded island where we bought Cokes and stood in conditions that were only very crowded, as opposed to impossibly crowded. I was getting bumped every 5 seconds, but at least I could breath freely. Then we hit on a trick— we deliberately stood in the greasy smoke coming from a kebab stand, and we actually had enough space to relax and look around.

Peter said: "Look over there, that group of flags is moving."

"Hell, Pete, they're not moving— they stopped already."

But he was right. They did get moving again. The Paris cops had let down some barriers and were letting groups go down three different routes instead of just one. We hopped a fence, and Walter and Peter paraded in between a large group of "sans-papiers" (no papers) men from Africa, and a maniacal drum-corps of Uruguayans who were protesting people who had been "disappeared" by their county's leaders.

I need to check in on that Uruguayan business, seeing as how I probably got taxed to pay for it.

I was happily shuffling along samba-style with the group of tall pretty French women who had accumulated behing the drummers, but Peter got it in his head that we were going to miss our bus back to Amiens, and he grabbed my arm and hauled me off. We took off down a side street to make our own way to the end of the parade route, Place de la Nation.

Halfway there, we ducked into an artsy cafe for coffee. It started to rain. We moved on again. We stood in a doorway while Peter tried to call the others. No luck— all the people with cell-phones in such a small area had overwhelmed the net.

An old man in a suit steps out the door. We say hello.

He looks at us: "So you are in the manifestation?"

"Oui monsieur— we were, now we are trying to call, but the phones won't work. You wouldn't believe how many people are out."

He nods. "It's a good sign." His eyes are slightly red.

"It's a very good sign."

Place de la Nation is crawling even thicker with people than the last place we were in. "Peter, we can't get stuck in that. The bus is somewhere on the other side, let's work around the side-streets."

He holds up his hand and has his phone to his ear. He starts talking.

"Yeah, yeah, we're there, at Nation. Where are you? Almost there? Where's the bus? You are marching next to a big orange banner? We are here, we'll just wait 'til we see you and then go find the bus together."

So we stand by the street as the water flows past in the gutter. The sidewalk is packed. Young men are standing on top of the bus shelters clapping, I can look up and see them through the reinforced glass. I don't see an orange banner, but they will get here, the parade is moving.

There is an entire group of people with the blue-white-red tricolor. Le Pen and his bunch have been carefully trying to get the national flag associated only with the Far Right. This group's goal is to steal the flag back from him for all the people. The same thing with the Marseillaise. They are not singing it as I look, but they will be, later, all over.

Makes me think about what people said about this election.

Moussa said: "I think French people forgot what the Africans did for them. In the wars, they brought lots of Africans here to fight for them."

He's right. They fought hard. Lots of them never left. You can tell which ones they are even from the highway— the French gravestones are crosses, the Senegalese and other Muslims have gravestones shaped like minaret spires.

Laetitia said: "I'll go to Portugal if somebody like Le Pen gets in."

Laetitia has light hair, almost blonde. She is legally French. Her parents both came from Portugal before she was born. They came here and worked.

A drunk guy in a bar said: "Don't think that all the people who voted for the National Front are jackasses. They are people with real problems, problems where they live, problems you cannot understand because you don't have to live where they live."

He's probably right about the problems. It's Le Pen's proposed solutions that have me out here on the street.

Most people don't even talk about it. But a lot of them are here.

Still no orange banner. The bus will be leaving soon.

"Uh, Peter, where are we supposed to be?"

"Right here, Place de la Nation."

"That sign says this is Place de la Bastille."

"No—"

"That sign up there."

"PUTAIN MERDE! The bus is leaving in 10 minutes!"

And so we start running.