Speech by Jean Luc Mélenchon launching meeting of the presidential campaign, Paris, 29 June 2011

There you go ! Our first message is our number, is our union! It's over, time to scatter and impotence! Finally, we meet! Finally, we can move to the country and we offer him our solutions!
Here we are on a place, that is to say, a place open to all, since we are talking to all. On a place like, now, this is the signal that gives the world begins when a civic insurrection, like that which we call. We hold the first meeting of the presidential campaign. We are not here to celebrate a candidate, but our collective strength; we are not gathered to settle scores or to some sort of war unlikely people. We move to our people, with a sense of seriousness and responsibility that should be ours, for all of us, since we have this clear awareness that the storm season is back in history, and that then it behooves us to be a forceful and determined hearts that know no panic, provide breaks that are needed to turn the page on this absurd order that humanity plunges into chaos.

All this mess is the fact of a mad capitalism! Crazy, when ninety percent of the world's financial transactions are done without any real content material! Crazy, when, in the fifth economy in the world, ours, three hundred thousand people are without electricity because they can no longer afford it, so we have Europe's first network! Glory to you, Robin Hood, which have restored all missing this electricity to our brothers!
A crazy capitalism, when the means of science and technical tools would enhance human life, and we see life expectancy in good health back in seven European countries, including Germany, that 'was presented to us as a model because it would sell more and better than others, have plunged to 20% price of its population in poverty.
A crazy capitalism blinded by productivism, which, while making soothing declarations, saw, during 2010, beating records of CO2 emissions, so that henceforth it is the human ecosystem itself even that is in question, which means that all of us are responsible, personally, for our choices, our actions, our political commitments, the common destiny of mankind, the preservation of the only ecosystem that makes human life possible, and which is compromised because of this that capitalism and productivism.

What is at issue, at this hour, it is the fate of human civilization. Yes, the crisis is a great misfortune. But it is also an opportunity to be born a new world, conscious, fraternal, devoted to the life, rather than plunder and gorging, as is what is happening today due to monopolize all powers powers. The worst for us, it is not the crisis, the worst thing would be if we were not able to draw a new world.
Therefore, on the horizon of 2012, we are more than a campaign. In this context it is not an alternate to the father in question. It is not that the one replacing the other in important positions to replace those who give blows to those offering plasters, unless it is the reverse. It is a break that we call the French people. The question is who can embody the human general interest. Is the oligarchy and its combinations, under the mysterious action of the invisible hand of the market, which so closely touches your pockets; or the collective intelligence of many, the people, all the people who knows better than others what is good for him, because it is him.

So it is more than a campaign! This is to mature in our people, and on behalf of the world, the image of this great revolution that was born on our soil, and that began a few hundred meters from here ... to this image a new revolution, a citizens' revolution, peaceful, democratic, with ballot papers, which we have never been afraid, us!

But a revolution, because it changes the political institutions and recast the rights of the sovereign, the whole people, through the abolition of the presidential monarchy, the transition to a sixth republic is the fact of a constituent assembly. Do not tell me we can not change the constitution! Since 1958, they changed twenty-four times, and during the last ten years, ten times! Once a year, and the last is not even finished being applied. What have in common among these twenty-four revisions Twenty-two of them is that they were decisive and made without asking the people, by referendum, as we are committed to the do.

A revolution, because we must change the system of property ownership in regard to the common goods of general interest, of which I want to mention our interest in the future through education of our children. No, the school will never be a market! Yes, knowledge must be shared, not to mention, free, and free of revealed truths! The energy, health, and finally finance itself, money, must become common property.

A revolution in the order of values, because it is to substitute, in the hierarchy of standards that apply to all circumstances, either the free and undistorted competition, which is the cardinal value of the construction of the liberal Europe, but solidarity, the link between each one. And the right that when the solidarity is, we no longer despise those who benefit. Down the word assistantship! There is no assistance! Only citizens who help each other.

A revolution finally environmentally friendly, because it is in all things to establish as standards first one that requires everything to be consistent with long-term ecosystem of interest without which our life is impossible.

So if it is good of all, a crisis of civilization, and the need for citizens' revolution ... so, friends and comrades, my fellow citizens, all of you, tens of thousands who follow our gathering on the internet or on LCP Public Sénat - to whom we address the most fraternal hello - we dedicate this rally in our Greek brothers and sisters, in their stubborn struggle. The rage in his heart, we say to them: "Here is the France that supports you! French bankers who oppress you and oppress you, the beautiful people who have condemned you for breaking your country, act to our shame at all! A Prime Minister who will not resist the diktat one hour! We say: the bad days will end! One morning will rise, which will find us all united to throw out those who no longer have their place in this community, where we should first worry about the good of everyone before the interests of a few. ! "

And you, people, wear this word everywhere! You saw what it costs to capitulate. Never listen to the honeyed voice of those who call "courage" unconditional surrender to the banks! Never listen to those who recommend your arrangements and compromises that always end the same way: you have to give, again, again, and again! They do not have limits. At the end, they will ask the Greeks to sell up the air they breathe!

Time characters rang. All we're involved. To all our problems, there is a solution: sharing and democracy. If you were so sure of your remedies, oh the good doctors of the IMF, then you would do the minimum that is necessary to a free conscience. You who so often we do the lesson and go for the world, a partisan and very misinformed way of example-against our republican and democratic worries! Since you are - it seems - beacons of freedom, while in Greece, as in Iceland, do vote, give voice to the people, do a referendum!

I said it's time characters. And that's why I want to make a second dedication. I dedicate this evening to the decision of the judge who acquitted Xavier Mathieu, the leader of Conti, creating a case law that shows us that the Republican justice can do better than to run as a photocopier, the texts of the law, but that it deserves to understand its deeper meaning. In a free people, trade union action to protect and conserve his livelihood is not a crime, it's a right! Xavier Mathieu, and you other trade unionists who have the guts when it fichages a thousand a day, resist; when he is nine hundred thousand custody a year, that is to say one and a half percent of the total population - including infants and bedridden - we salute your courage, and we say to each of you and all of us, "The first duty of a free consciousness is to resist. "France must become resistance earth.

So if this is the picture, if that is the challenge, we must be up to the circumstances. And that is why we have met the first condition: it is the union, which has broken the most valuable and respectable habits. I salute these militants, these concerned citizens who took the initiative, sometimes asking if they were, if they were not going to compromise what they had so carefully preserved for all our sakes. I extend the most cordial hello to all those who, with their votes, have made possible our union, our shared agenda, our common candidates for the presidential and legislative, making us worthy of the French people. I greet the Communist militants, and I say, because I can do it, how much I was repulsed by the atmosphere of the nostalgic for the Cold War, gentlemen éditocrates who insulted ceaselessly then came this great party deep history of our country, and always at the rendezvous of large gatherings for resistance and social conquest.

Yes, we are the union of the Front! We do not settle accounts with the past, we work exclusively, we reach out to all, to all, whatever they could think of to date and hour. We, for our reliability, for our work, for our gathering, won the Republican fatherland. We deserve your trust. We are able to exercise, making it the people, the power that would be given to us.

At this point, I want to salute and pay tribute, too, to those who, all those years of division and fragmentation, when the left seemed to be doomed to not have to offer sacrifices to the French that "balanced", there where we we announce unilateral sacrifices, because there are some who have already sacrificed much, and so it is the turn of others; they're not alone: ​​they have the means, which is not your case ... I want to pay tribute to those who have kept the flame lit, kept the embers, when the ashes seemed to want to stifle: anti-globalization which, since Porto Alegre, have allowed us to taunt Davos; feminists, who kept the flag of the fight, when they were called, by "modernity" to move on; trade unionists prevailed when the order of every man for himself, and where it was considered a buffoon when devoted herself to others, risking his career, his family, his free time, hello to you! And you all, activists of human rights, which you are exposed against racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, all the leprosy of the spirit that roll with this rotten system! To you, the righteous, who have waited any instructions to go to the rescue of children that had just picking up in schools to take their parents hostage!

Yes, our battle, our Left Front, task of putting his feet in yours. Then, as France is this such as these means are given to us, we are, when prevailing now in the rest of the left, a hubbub and competitions that we respect but we do are not always safe to understand the differences ... we are left, the stability and unity pole.
We can not be because we're clear. We can not unite our people in confusion, politicking tips, directions quad words, and so on. Our shared program, to be presented at the place where his writing began, that is to say, the Festival of Humanity, is called "the First Human" because it does There is nothing more anti-capitalist, more Republican, more communist, more socialist, more ecological, more libertarian, to proclaim: "Place to humanity!" to that in each of us men and women, children, people of all ages.

Our program, I would say a few words, so that they are heard unambiguously. We are the party of the concrete radicalism. We announce that we will take, take lots: one hundred ninety-five billion, which went pockets of labor with those of capital over the last twenty years! This is our flexibility. We are sharers!

Wealth sharing first start in giving strength to those in need, to ensure the life of today, of tomorrow ... all those and all those who need to break away from the abject precariousness, the retreat of human civilization which, as if we had forgotten, Mrs Parisot, who have been foolish enough to say that, since love is precarious work can be too ... Madame, for us, the 'Love is forever! And the job is for now! We begin by restoring a right in the future to those who can not undertake anything because their contract is three months, then three months, then six months, then a month and a year, for years. Down insecurity, fear of tomorrow! To eight hundred and fifty miles precarious the three civil service, we give at least one good reason to vote in 2012: we pledge to you that you will all tenured, since you're good enough to do the job today! And precarious private: we will ban in companies, in the largest as in the smallest, there are more than 5 to 10% precarious, and all others will have a permanent contract, so that in back to the period when it was the normal contract. Finally, to project themselves, organize ...

And in business, we will establish the maximum wage, against the force-feeding of the few, who make the confession, as you saw in this TV show where Mr. de Margerie, in good conscience - Total's boss - was able to tell me he did not know why he won three million euros. So I told him, "If you do not know, so make them! "
In companies, all companies, not just those in the public sector, because then there would be only three fifty-three million enterprises in the country, and only 9% of all workers. All businesses! And we know that many of them are not affected, since now account auto-entrepreneurs, this deliberate slavery and allegedly chosen in the number of companies. All businesses! We will build - not to punish, but to create a virtuous circle - the maximum salary that will ban, as proposed by the European Trade Union Confederation ... that not a top salary can be twenty times higher than in low - and perhaps less If unions want!

Sharing wealth and ecological planning: yes, we want to enter - as the great educated people, educated and qualified than we are - as pioneers in the future! Nothing scares us. We are able to organize the energy transition; we are able to organize the general piggyback; we are able to discover new energy sources and propose them in abundance to all; we can take our country to the production-rut, to invent a new agricultural model, relocate a powerful industry, respectful of common goods. We know everything! We are the people, we are many, we are intelligence!

Finally, to mention only that, the Left Front, it will be France that offers peace to the world. France has nothing to do among the troop of North Americans auxiliaries! It will withdraw from NATO, it will withdraw from Afghanistan without waiting for the Americans to give the signal. It has nothing to do in Libya, where it happened, an exclusion zone of airspace, to participation in a civil war in which we have nothing to do, because " with such methods, we ended up disfiguring the revolution that began to be born.

All you who are listening to us, you who are here, do not doubt your strength or your ability to outwit the stupid blackmail that are on offer when the right and its board stipendié, the UMP, has unleashed on you watchdog, the Apostle of the unconditional surrender: the National Front which, once again, offers to give up our greatness, our influence, our duty, our hopes, our project, our listening with people from all over Europe, and offers to run to hide under the table, but not before divided the country along religious people in the land of secularism and the Republic one and indivisible. Party with a low forehead!

It is us ! And it is to us that will be the great momentum of all those who want to give this country a chance; women and men who make it up, the role that is expected of them before the world.

Our campaign, my friends, is not that of money, because otherwise we would have lost in advance. I watched what the figures from the previous year: the UMP has arranged twenty-three million; the Socialist Party of twenty-one million. And we, if we find the banker may succeed us together in two, maybe three. It is about ourselves that it takes. The Left Front calls on countries to take action as it did in 2005, and to resume the thread that was broken after 55% of the French have said no to liberal Europe, with reason, as Following proved ... the French people, we call not to give up its democratic sovereignty at this time when, it seems, should be, as in the days of Capet, we first present our budgets before His Majesty the European Commission, which would tell us that we have the right to do - or not do. NO ! We, the Left Front, we will ask France to opt out, as other countries have obtained for social rights ... us against this alienation of our sovereignty, that is to say our ability democratic and popular.

My friends, all of us begin a long and beautiful path. Yes, I said it's over, the time of our dispersal. Come on, on all sides, and think that between indignation and resignation, history has not yet decided the point where it lay, finally, the cursor. That these places inspire you! Following the example of the great Jaures, who gave his name to this popular metro station, the inflexible will, when storms rise, to uphold individual courage and the light of reason against the blindness. What do you think this place, named rightly, Martyrs Square Stalingrad, thinking of one hundred and five thousand Soviet that allowed by their sacrifice, overturning which made it possible to break the back to the Nazis, and that gave us our freedom . Consider what price to pay for the blindness in history, the cowardly abandonment to the moods of the moment, who prefers the folly of his little mess on his little fire, much to the collective momentum can take everything.

In my turn, a word more personal, thinking of my own, come so far, and that gave me the taste and pride of French passionately love my country, because it is republican and universalist. I close with the words of the poet to say my love for our country and our republic, my France, in the words Ferrat, "that I lived in what I imagine, I did not finish d write your song, my France, the one that sings in me, the beautiful, rebellious, and the future holds tightly in her thin hands, that of thirty-six to sixty-eight candles, my France, "from the most combatant women and men who offer him a collective destiny of love and brotherhood. "
