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France: Protest flags

French Tricolore flag with a black heart
"Arts" flags

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French Tricolor flag with a black heart

Flag seen during the 1 May 2002 demonstration in Paris - Image by Jorge Candeias, 6 May 2005

On 2 May 2002, the Público newspaper had in its front page a call to an article about the huge 1-million people demonstration in Paris against Le Pen that took place the day before. The main illustration was a group of three young men, most probably Maghrebine, on a statue flying a big French flag with a black heart in the center. The flag's proportions are about 5:9.

Jorge Candeias, 6 May 2005

The presidential elections showed M. Chirac as winner and M. Le Pen as runner-up, while the Socialist candidate was only third. In the second round of the elections M. Chirac and M. Le Pen were the only candidate, and there was between the two rounds a nationwide appeal to voters not to vote for Le Pen, an appeal mainly to people who ordinarily wouldn't dream of voting Chirac.

Jarig Bakker, 6 May 2005

The statue is the allegory of the Republic erected on Place de la République.The black heart might recall the black hand used on stickers (and maybe on home-made flag) by the movement SOS Racisme when they launched the campaign Touche pas à mon pote (Don't touch my buddy) in the late 1980s. The campaign started when Le Pen's FN started its ascension. Since SOS Racism was often seen as an organization managed by the Socialist Party, the use of a heart might be more neutral than the use of the hand.

Ivan Sache, 9 May 2005

"Arts" flags

In March 2004 there was a manifesto assembling artists, intellectuals of all kinds in France (and also lawyers, medical doctors, architects, etc.) against the sectorial policies of the French government, gathering over 40 thousand signatures and appealing to fight againts the "war on intelligence" that in their opinion the government was undertaking.
This resulted in an article in the Público newspaper. The caption of the photo illustrating the article made clear that it had been taken in the summer of 2003, when "intermittent" artists organized rallies all over France, protesting against the same issues that brought up the manifesto a few months later.

The demonstrations included the display of allusive flags. They were different, but designed under a common plan: plain flags with dark drawings or sillouettes in the center. Based on the shades of grey in the black and white photo, I would risk saying that the flags were red with black drawings, but please don't take this at face value. The drawings, as said, were varied, and portrayed the various aspects of artistic work. In the photo, there are flags with the drawing of a clown's head (two instances), with the sillouette of a ballerina and with what seems to be a writing feather inside an inkstand.

Jorge Candeias, 11 December 2004