LET’S NOT SEE THE BACKLASH BEFORE THE BARRICADE
Remembering my comrades on the 1968 Paris barricades
let’s not be Cassandras
let’s not be doubting Thomases
let’s not be sour
and see the backlash
before the barricade
it is true we have no crystal ball
but do we need a magic look
into the future
to walk alongside our children
in the street
today
now
before it is too late?
let’s see the miracle
let’s learn the lessons
of 1968
before we lament
that we did not overthrow the state
we were taught to emulate
the perfection of mythical heroes
and crave the instant gratification
of immediate victories
born of high expectations –
but is it not good enough
that children
from little Gavroche*
in the Paris 1832 barricades
to Nahel** a century later
teach us that revolution
is simply a thing
to be passed on
and on
a timeslip
and timeless
we might not live
to see its triumph
in our lifetime
but we leave the traces
the recipes
the rites
the hopes
the songs
the fiery footprints
behind
and we do it
with joy
and we do it
dancing
and the cobblestones
we threw so long ago
now sold as expensive artifacts
to antique collectors
are on our mind
* Gavroche is one of the fictional characters in Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables.” He is aged 12 and is helping the Republicans during the upheaval of June 1832 when the Republicans are confronting the national guards and the King’s soldiers sent to restore order. At the barricade erected on Saint-Denis Street, the Republicans run out of munitions. Gavroche leaves the shelter of the barricade to pick up unspent cartridges from the bodies of dead soldiers. In a famous passage of the book, Gavroche is shot as he sings: “the barricade was trembling. But he was singing.”
**On 27 June 2023, Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old French youth of Algerian and Moroccan descent, was shot at point-blank range and killed by police officer Florian M., when he did not comply with an order to stop and instead attempted to drive away in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris, France. He had no criminal record, was well loved and was learning to be an electrician. The murder was followed by over a week of anger and uprisings in Paris.
(c) Julia Wright. October 12, 2026, All Rights Reserved.
A MAY 1968 VET TO THE GEN Z
i am here
you are there
i have not been gassed
your eyes are burning
i can breathe
you are breathless
i was sleeping
you are still on the barricades
but
the elder i am
was once there
at your side
i remember the cobblestone
you have just thrown
it is gray
speckled
with shiny mica glitter
the memory of my clasped fingers
knows its weight
a faraway synapse
in my brain
brings back the joy
brings back the knowledge
that you,
the child i was,
are making
History
with hands
the State emptied
(c) Julia Wright. October 18, 2026. All Rights Reserved.
A PANICKED EUROPE DIGS UP ITS PAVEMENT STONES
Ursula Van Leyen
has launched
an urgent appeal
to the 438 cities of Europe:
“Quick! Get rid of all
your pavement stones!”
in her mind
the problem
of the youth’s despair
would be solved
if unarmed
and bare-handed
they could face war time weapons
as if prying up
millions of pavement stones
from streets where
the protesters
are the children and grandchildren
of those who were paid
slave labor wages
to lay them down –
as if stripping streets
to turn them into dirt roads
would strip the people’s anger
and make them cower
from Albania to Paris
we watch cemeteries
of uprooted stones
and remember
that in 1968 we chanted
“Under the pavement stones, the beach”
where is that beach,
that future
we too climbed the barricades for?
where is that beach
always out of our reach?
she may get rid
of the stones but
Ursula Van Leyen
cannot wash her hands
of the blood
of the beach underneath –
the genocided beach
of Gaza
(Ursula von der Leyen is the President of the European Commission, executive of the European Union.)
(c) Julia Wright October 18, 2026. All Rights Reserved.
WE CAN SEIZE BACK OUR HISTORY AS WE DO OUR LAND
To Mumia Abu-Jamal who wrote to the Youth of France that ” (…) The Americans like to keep their revolutions in museums, under glass, untouchable, in cold vast vaults away from the People. But the French hold their revolutionary beliefs and ancestors in their hearts, in their mouths, in their spirits and in their actions. And the young, the young of today, remind me of the young of 1968 – and that is marvellous (…)”.
” Articulating the past historically does not mean recognizing it “the way it really was”. It means appropriating a memory as it flashes up in a moment of danger”
On The Concept of History, Walter Benjamin, 1940
you are made to think
History
is to be found
in out-of-date
remaindered textbooks
now fed to AI
you are made to think
History is but
a list of dates
to be learned
by rote –
a series of names
of dusty musty
be-wigged gentlemen
signing treaties
over your forefathers’ bare heads
and Black hands
you are made to think
History
is about the lives
of those who are now
dry bones
buried
in soil that belongs
to you –
but who cares
as long as they are out of the way
you are made to think
History
is trapped in the wax figures
of yesterday
but it is you
who are trapped
in a psyop
if you were made
to think so
but it is you
who have been robbed
of the most precious wealth
your ancestors died for
and left you
but it is you
who can seize back your History
as you do your land
but it is you
who can produce History
from the emptiness of your hand
but it is you
who can in real time
shake the world
with a ripple
of do-it-yourself History
and create a new legacy
for those
who will need no diplomas
no instruction guides
no prescriptions
to know
History is a produce
we do not allow
the colonizer to process
absent the People’s factory
(c) Antigone 68. November 2, 2026. All Rights Reserved.
