The revolt of the “Gypsy families camp”: episode 3/9 “the measure of the wound”

The revolt of the “Gypsy families camp”: episode 3/9 “the measure of the wound”

by | Mar 12, 2026 | "The gypsy family camp" uprising

BATTLE STORY

The revolt of the “Gypsy families camp”: episode 3/9 “the measure of the wound”

bY Pierre Chopinaud

The episodes of the series are based on a lecture given by Pierre Chopinaud on May 16, 2025 in Berlin for the European Romani Institute for Art and Culture (Eriac).

 

(Previously…)

“What was now certain was that the story in which I had grown up, the story in which I had learned I was like a character, the story in which my conscience was formed, the story whose moral dictates that if human dignity dies in one person, it dies for all humanity, because all lives equally deserve dignity, the story whose principles and values ​​state that all human lives are equal in dignity and have the right to security and happiness, especially if they are exposed to political hatred—this story would lose all meaning if I didn’t take action. By doing what? I didn’t yet know. Except perhaps to strive, with others, using the powers I possessed, and which I still needed to discover (what can one do at 18?), to make reality resemble the ideal we dream of. To make the world coincide.” as it should be with the world as it really is, as the master of radical political organizing, Martin Luther King, said when describing his vision: “I had a dream.”

 

 “The wound that separates reality and the ideal cannot be healed with the humanitarian bandage of social aid, nor with moral sermons; it must be healed with the instrument of power.”

The gap between the ideal and reality is the measure of the wound afflicting the conscience. It is through commitment and action that reduces this gap that the one whose conscience suffers heals their wound.

But it is not, according to the precepts of Dr. King’s radical political organization, with the humanitarian bandage of social aid, nor with moral sermons, that one heals the wound that separates reality and the ideal; it is through the instrument of power. This is what I will explain by recounting the story of the Romani resistance and May 16, 1944.

Something that could have happened twenty years ago meant that reality was not what I see, that reality—mine, yours—more closely resembled our ideal, the world we dream of where all lives matter, where all lives are equally worthy of mourning; One thing that could have prevented a 27-year-old Roma woman, among my loved ones and those who matter to me, from being gunned down in cold blood by hunters sympathetic to Marine Le Pen, with her unborn son in her womb, as happened in June 2024 in the Jura region of France. One thing that could have prevented the execution of young Angelo, 37, brother of my friend Aurélie Garand, a young Yenish woman living in the city of Blois in central France, on March 17, 2017, by French army special forces because these forces, in order to combat terrorism, conduct training exercises on “Gypsies.” One thing that could have prevented my friend Sue-Ellen Demestre’s mother, a Roma woman and voyeur, from dying because of environmental racism, because she was forced to live on a reception site between a factory and a concrete mixer, is the recognition by European states of the genocide perpetrated against Roma, Manouche, Sinti, Gitans, Yenish, and Travellers during the Second World War. This thing could have prevented Roma people in Metrovica from dying until 2019 under the responsibility of the UN, after the nationalists of the time had murdered their loved ones and burned their homes.

“Today in Europe, while the global far right is coming to power everywhere, recognition of the genocide is lacking.”

 

Why this? Because when states acknowledge that a group of men, women, and children was treated in the past as if they did not belong to the human community, as if their ignoble and anonymous murder were the killing of an animal, this acknowledgment restores a name and a burial to the deceased, gives them back a measure of their dignity, and reintegrates them, through the remembrance of their name and the condemnation of the crime of which they were victims, into common humanity and into history. By restoring this dignity to the dead, it tells their descendants that their lives matter today. And that they must be protected, because they are particularly vulnerable to the political ills that chronically afflict our societies, the ills of racial hatred that chronically afflict nation-states, which then threaten the security and lives of citizens belonging to racial minorities by saying: your lives don’t matter, your dead will not be mourned.

Today in Europe, while the global far right is coming to power everywhere, recognition of the genocide is lacking.

“Anti-Gypsyism is one of the paths that the new fascism is forging to reach its end.”

It is precisely to build this kind of state shield, even as Marine Le Pen is on the verge of power in France, that I am currently, along with a few friends, founding a new Roma youth organization whose mission is to obtain from the French government recognition of the genocide perpetrated against the Roma, Manouche, Sinti, Yenish, and Travellers during the Second World War.

For we believe—but is there still time?—that such recognition by the state and the nation will help prevent the far right from coming to power. Anti-Gypsyism is one of the paths that the new fascism is forging to achieve its goal. Recognition of the genocide by the state and the nation, by political parties and civil society, can be one of the antidotes.

“What we need, then as now, in the dangerous new world we are entering, is the power to act collectively and resist.”

I repeat: is there still time? In France, we are just moments before the far right returns to power. Isn’t it already too late? It’s there in Italy, in Hungary, we can say, in America, let’s not even go there, it’s stronger than ever in Germany, in Spain. It has always been both too late and still time. In any case, there is an urgent need for action: the value of our lives and the lives of those close to us depends on it. Our security. There is an urgent need to build power. Because soon, we will only be able to rely on ourselves and our allies.

Similarly, for European states to recognize the genocide perpetrated against Roma, Manouche, Sinti, Yenish, and Travellers during the Second World War, if there were still time, arguments based on morality or responsibility are insufficient. What we need is the power to compel them to do so.

And the campaign for genocide recognition that I am developing in France is actually less about obtaining this recognition than about creating the power structure that will be able to act in the next crisis. Because, once again, what we need, then as now, in the dangerous new world we are entering, is the power to act collectively and resist.

That is why we need stories like the revolt of the Roma family camp on May 16, 1994.

(To be continued in the next episode…)

The revolt of the “Gypsy families camp”: episode 2/9 “The world as it really is”

The revolt of the “Gypsy families camp”: episode 2/9 “The world as it really is”

by | Feb 10, 2026 | "The gypsy family camp" uprising

Battle STORY

The revolt of the “Gypsy families’ camp”

Episode 2/9: “The world as it really is”

By Pierre Chopinaud

The episodes of the series are based on a lecture given by Pierre Chopinaud on May 16, 2025 in Berlin for the European Romani Institute for Art and Culture (Eriac).

 

(Previously…)

“The stories I heard, and that you surely have heard since childhood—the stories and grand pronouncements that form the foundation of contemporary European civilization—can be summed up in a slogan, in a moral: ‘Never again!’ Never again should children, men, and women be placed in the state of distress and indignity into which they were subjected by racist and nationalist hatred during the Second World War. Yet here, somewhere in Europe, the children, women, and men of a national minority had been almost entirely driven from the land, from the country to which they belonged, by racist and nationalist hatred, and those who remained were left to die under the care of the United Nations, the very organization tasked with protecting them, in a state of organized collective weakness that had no equivalent in Europe since the Second World War.”

 

 

 “Today, the Roma minorities of Ukraine are at risk of being erased from the present and past of the nation to which they belong.”

“Never again?” That, I’ve heard since childhood, is the moral of European history. Yet here and now, before my very eyes, it was still happening. It was still happening, especially for children, women, and men whose ancestors, 60 years ago, were victims of the genocide perpetrated by the racial hatred of the Nazi German state and its allied and collaborating states.

I want to emphasize that, 20 years later, today it’s still happening for the Roma minority in Ukraine, both in the eastern regions invaded by the Russian army and in the still-protected central and western territories, who are at risk of being erased from the present and past of the nation to which they belong.

.

“Does this mean that Europe was still suffering from the same ill? Was the moral of contemporary European history a bad fable? “

 

As an outsider, the situation I witnessed called into question my own history, my own identity as a Frenchman, as a European, the principles and values ​​in which I had been raised. How is it possible that here in Europe, men, women, and children whose ancestors were victims, just like the Jewish men, women, and children of Europe, of the immense crime in whose memory modern Europe was rebuilt, could find themselves thus driven from their land, murdered, abandoned, victims of the states to which they belong, under the responsibility of the United Nations, and in the indifference of the consciences of the people?

How was it possible that men, children, and women—whose parents’ and grandparents’ bodies had, 60 years earlier, been reduced to lives deemed worthless—could, with the widespread consent of elites and the people, be rejected 60 years later from the condition of humanity and the dignity that, as a natural right, belongs to them?

Does this mean that Europe was still suffering from the same affliction? Was the moral of contemporary European history a bad fable?

How can we look at this question now, 20 years later, when far-right and fascist movements are returning to power, one after another, in European countries?

 

“To make the world as it should be coincide with the world as it actually is, as the master of radical political organizing, Martin Luther King, said when he described his vision”

 

For me, the moral of the little stories I’d heard there 20 years ago, when I was 18, was that my life had to take a certain direction. I didn’t know exactly which one yet. But what was now certain was that the story I’d grown up in, the story in which I’d learned I was like a character, the story in which my conscience was formed, the story whose moral says that if human dignity dies in one person, it dies for all of humanity, because all lives equally deserve dignity, the story whose principles and values ​​say that all human lives are equal in dignity and have the right to security and happiness, especially if they are exposed to political hatred—this story would lose all meaning if I didn’t take action. By doing what? I didn’t know yet. Otherwise, I would strive, along with others, using the powers I possessed, and which I still needed to discover (what can one do at 18?), to make reality resemble the ideal we dream of. To make the world as it should be coincide with the world as it truly is, as the master of radical political organization, Martin Luther King, said when he described his vision: I had a dream.

(To be continued in the next episode…)

The revolt of the “Gyspy families camp” : épisode 1/9- a story of power for the present

by | Feb 3, 2026 | "The gypsy family camp" uprising

Battle story

“The Revolt of the “Gypsy Families’ Camp”

Episode 1/9: “A Story of Power for the Present”

By Pierre Chopinaud

Par Pierre Chopinaud

 

 

 

The episodes of the series are taken from a lecture given by Pierre Chopinaud on May 16, 2025 in Berlin for the European Romani Institute for Art and Culture (Eriac).

“The choice between rebellion and submission—that’s what I’m going to talk to you about, by talking about the revolt of the prisoners in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Gypsy family camp on May 16, 1944.”

My name is Pierre Chopinaud. I am a writer. I write novels in French that recount the intimate dramas that stir the hearts of men and women, but also the great historical dramas that humanity has experienced since its beginnings. The stories I imagine are interwoven with the war in the former Yugoslavia, the Second World War, but also the wars between the Persians and the Greeks in antiquity. Above all, in the novels I write, I tell how these great dramas of human history enter the hearts of men and women and influence their destinies, the decisions they make, the choice to rebel or submit, to be indifferent or to commit themselves, for themselves or for others.

Ultimately, that’s what I’m going to talk to you about today, dear friends, by telling you a few words about the revolt of the prisoners in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Gypsy family camp on May 16, 1944, and the Romani resistance movement that I co-founded between 2010 and 2015 in France, in Paris, or more precisely, in the northern suburbs of Paris, in Saint-Denis, which is also the place where the presence of Romani people in France was first mentioned in 1427.

“Radical political organizing is an art that allows people in subordinate positions to build power in order to restore justice and reclaim their dignity.”

I speak to you today as a radical political organizer, because it is in this capacity that I co-founded the May 16th Movement. Radical political organizing is an art that allows people in subordinate positions to build power in order to restore justice and reclaim their dignity. The fundamental maxim of this political art is “there is no justice without power.” To this, I personally added, as the slogan of the Conatus organization that I founded to collectively practice this art: “the last are first.” This is a slogan I borrow from the Bible, the New Testament, from Jesus Christ if you will, but I take it more specifically from Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., a radical political organizer who was one of the leaders of the African American Civil Rights Movement. If radical political organizing is like a martial art, Martin Luther King, and his nonviolent revolution, is our Bruce Lee.

I’m telling you this because the Romani resistance movement, the May 16th Movement, the story of the uprising in the “Gypsy family camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau” on May 16, 1944, is a story of power. More precisely, it tells how to use history and stories as a leadership technique to build power and work toward justice—not only memorial justice, but justice for the present.

“The men, women, and children who arrived in the commune from neighboring Kosovo, where the war on land and the bombing campaign had just ended.”

At the age of 17, when I started to be a bit of an adventurer. It was precisely my last year of high school, and it was also the year of the Kosovo War, when European and American governments were bombing Serbia and Kosovo to end the conflict. I was perplexed by the excesses of state propaganda in my country that justified this bombing campaign. Since I wanted to become a writer and go into politics, I decided that my place was among the people there, trying to be useful amidst the catastrophe, and that I would learn more there than by listening to scholars talk at university.

There, I had my first deep and lasting encounter with Roma men and women. I was eighteen years old. I was in the commune of Suto Orizari, which I imagine most of you know. An extraordinary place in the suburbs of Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, the only municipality in the world where the entire municipal council, including the mayor, belongs to the Romani community. Here, children and teenagers in schools and colleges learn Romani, the literary Romani language, written by artists who, for some, live on their street, in their neighborhood. It’s the language everyone speaks, in its various local dialects, in shops, hospitals, and markets. It’s also the language I learned there and still speak daily with my daughter, more than twenty years later. I was welcomed there into a small social organization whose employees were mostly Romani. This organization was responsible for identifying, registering, and assisting men, women, and children arriving in the municipality from neighboring Kosovo, where the war and bombing campaign had just ended, in accessing their rights.

The stories I heard, and that you surely have heard since childhood—the stories and grand pronouncements that underpin contemporary European civilization—can be summed up in a slogan, a moral: “Never again!”

I then listened to the accounts people were giving of the absurd and violent war that had driven them from the land to which they had belonged for centuries, in the heart of Europe. I felt, vaguely at first, that is to say, deep in my heart, that the principles and values ​​conveyed by the stories I had heard everywhere since childhood—at school, in books—the principles and values ​​that underpin Europe as a civilization, were entirely absent here: the dignity of every human being, which must be protected by the rights that belong to them, simply because they are a man, a woman, or a child; the dignity that institutions, states, international organizations, and the European Commission must guarantee in everyone.

“But here, somewhere in Europe, the children, women, and men of a national minority had been almost entirely driven from the land, from the country to which they belonged, by racist and nationalist hatred.”

All the stories, all the grand pronouncements, were a dead letter here, compared to the small accounts of people who told us of the distress they were in, and even more so the distress of those who had been unable to leave, and who had remained, caught in the crossfire of nationalist hatred. And above all, amidst the weapons, the fire that hadn’t quite died down in the city of Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo, where Roma men, women, and children were being protected by the UN in a camp built on land poisoned by lead. Even though they had survived the burning of their neighborhood, the murderous madness of nationalists on both sides was slowly killing them from below, so to speak, under the responsibility of the intergovernmental organization founded after the Second World War to protect children, men, and women when they are endangered by the state of which they are citizens. The UN contingent responsible for this catastrophe was French, and I felt in my heart that I was particularly affected by this disaster.

The stories I heard, and that you surely have heard since childhood—the stories and grand pronouncements that form the foundation of contemporary European civilization—can be summed up in a slogan, a moral: “Never again!” Never again should children, men, and women be placed in the state of distress and indignity into which they were subjected by racist and nationalist hatred during the Second World War. Yet here, somewhere in Europe, the children, women, and men of a national minority had been almost entirely driven from the land, from the country to which they belonged, by racist and nationalist hatred, and those who remained were left to die under the care of the United Nations, the very organization tasked with protecting them, in a state of organized collective weakness unparalleled in Europe since the Second World War.

(To be continued in the next episode…)

Story of the “moms’s collective” : episode 9/9 “the battlefield is the heart of the people”

Story of the “moms’s collective” : episode 9/9 “the battlefield is the heart of the people”

by | Jul 28, 2025 | Moms' Collective, Uncategorized

Battle story

The battlefield is the hearts of the people

EPISODE 9/9 : the battlefield is the hearts of the people

By Pierre Chopinaud

 

(Previously…)

But nothing could be done: no words could give her courage. Fear and resignation had taken over: her fear as a mother was the source of our downfall. She refused to act, and that was her most pressing right. From her point of view, she had nothing to lose except what she felt was already lost, just as it had been lost to her at birth: her child’s dignity.

 

“

“Sometimes, for a greater good, one must go through a lesser good: even a small evil. It is the eternal question of the relationship between ends and means.”

The battlefield is in people’s hearts. And history is impure. Sometimes, for a greater good, one must go through a lesser good: even a small evil. It’s the eternal question of the relationship between ends and means. And to understand this, to overcome the fear in Marina’s heart, the mothers’ collective had to this time instill an even greater fear. It was a moral dilemma. It’s wrong to force someone to do something they don’t want. But giving up the fight to be morally pure meant condemning all children like Marina’s daughter to never go to school. It meant losing everything the collective had gained over the past year, and even more, it meant losing the children here, but also in French Guiana, in Mayotte, all the children in France who live in shantytowns. Wasn’t that an even greater evil? What use would our clear conscience be in the face of the thousands of children who would fall back into the garbage bag of lives that don’t matter?

This problem is as old as the hills, as old as David and Goliath. And very often, activists respond to it with their heads, with their reason, like the German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant: “Act always and everywhere in such a way that the maxim of your action is universally true.” If I lie once, I make a law of lying. No just end justifies an unjust means. An evil means corrupts its end.

“in the field of action or around it, those who prefer to keep their conscience absolutely pure, at least according to the idea they have of it (because the rules of purity are relative to each person), are very often those who do not necessarily need the change sought by action”

But the strategists of his time responded to Immanuel Kant: “You, the philosopher, in your room, your hands are clean, but that’s because you don’t have any hands.” This means: you are a man who knows nothing about action. For the field of action is not one of pure rationality, and the moral law only applies to those who do nothing. They will always have a clear conscience.

This is why, in or around the field of action, those who prefer to keep their consciences absolutely pure, at least according to their own ideas of it (because the rules of purity are relative to each individual), are often those who do not necessarily need the change sought through action. They often need the purity of their conscience more than to get their hands dirty.

Now, the members of the mothers’ collective all necessarily needed the change they sought through action: because the dignity of their children was at stake; It was this keen awareness of the need for change that had driven them into action and enabled them to build power, climb the ladder, and win victories.

They hadn’t been able to convince Marina to continue the fight through hope; they wouldn’t lose the entire war, however; they would convince her by “terrorizing” her. It was the lawyer who took the responsibility of getting her hands dirty. Fear prevented her from acting; fear would force her. Lawyer Anina Ciuciu said that if she didn’t appear before the Council of State, she would bill her for the entire procedure from the beginning of the fight. She would owe her an immense debt, and she wouldn’t let her go. It was a bluff, of course. Marina had seen Anina ready to fight the Minister; she wasn’t ready to fight Anina: she was more ready to confront her husband.

W

“Marina had been afraid of Anina, but now she was proud and happy: she and the others had won not only against the lady at the ticket office, not only against the mayor, not only against the rector, but against the Minister of Education, against the State.“

On D-Day, she was ready, along with the other mothers, to enter the Council of State chamber. We had launched the offensive. The names of the mayor and Marina’s daughter were all over social media. There were already articles in the press. People all over France, by the thousands, were signing the petition. The mothers of the collective, dressed as if they were going to church, entered the grand gold and purple halls of the Palais Royal, where the highest court of the French Republic sits, to reclaim the value of their children’s lives.

To dodge sentencing, the minister personally called the mayor of the local school that very day to force her to enroll the little girl in school. It was a race against time: if she were enrolled before the judge ruled, the French Republic would avoid humiliation. Imagine the mayor’s face that morning in front of her phone? Imagine the face of the judge at the Montreuil court who ruled in favor of the mayor against Marina? Imagine the face of the rector who perhaps had, in one way or another, given her the order?

.

“They had killed the “big boss,” won the game. The game was over“

As we left the Council of State, the mothers held up a large banner, their children ran and played between Buren’s famous black and white columns. The child had been registered, the Minister had not been sanctioned, but we had won! And we were already talking about it, the press was there: “a collective of mothers in precarious situations has won against the State,” wrote the Mediapart journalist the next day, who had been following our adventure since the first day. Maria’s mother had been afraid of Anina, but now she was proud and happy: she and the others had won not only against the woman at the counter, not only against the mayor, not only against the headmaster, but against the Minister of Education, against the State.

They had killed the “big boss,” won the game. The game was over.

The headmaster, even if he had nothing to do with the judge’s improbable decision, had made an irremediable mistake. Believing he was crushing us, he had given us a weapon to strike harder. Our rights were even more firmly entrenched in the law. The minister must have banged his fist on the table, and his blow must have resonated throughout all levels of the administration.

A few weeks later, we learned that the rector had been dismissed from his duties. Was it because of our campaign? We will never be certain. All that remains is for us to draw a final conclusion.

“We had not only affected the structure but we had profoundly transformed it.”

In the following days, Lucile’s phone started ringing again in her office at Askola. It was the usual bureaucrats. They were calling to make threats and announce that the administration was undergoing reform. The rector’s office would now intervene immediately when a mayor prevented a child from entering school. But in return, they had to lay down their weapons: no more press, no more courts. Indeed, since that day, the rectorate systematically intervenes when an illegal refusal is reported, and the mayor complies. We had not only affected the structure, but we had profoundly transformed it, at least locally.

But the threats were pressing: the bureaucrats had been forced to reform their practices, but it had clearly cost them money, and they were just waiting for one thing: to make them pay.

A few weeks later, the collective legal proceedings concluded. The one associated with the major campaign launch: “The Return of…” Faced with threats and intimidation from bureaucrats, including the intimidation of cutting public funding from Askola (which desperately needed it for its daily work as a school mediator), the team of leaders decided it was best not to make a splash.

On this occasion, we learned that the rector had been replaced: was it because of us? We don’t know. But we like to think so.

We have conquered an island, but it is the archipelago that must be tackled. The fight for justice is never satisfied. That is why for thousands of years the battle of David against Goliath has been fought and recounted…”

In the end, the wolf had not only been beaten, but had finally left the forest. And we won again: the mayors and the new rector were condemned once again. We didn’t shout it from the rooftops. The Askola Association had been financially jeopardized. And the big change, unexpectedly, we had achieved before this grand finale. Had we won? Not quite.

Because we know that if those in power, thanks to us, have changed their practices, they only do so when the rectorate’s services are contacted against a mayor by a parent who knows the procedure. What about the hundreds, thousands of parents who live in shantytowns, squats, on the streets, and who arrive alone at the counter? It was undoubtedly to allow themselves to continue to disregard the lives of their children that the bureaucrats, by giving in to the mothers’ collective, bothered to threaten the Askola team.

We have conquered an island, but it is the archipelago that must be conquered. The fight for justice is never sated. That’s why for thousands of years, the battle of David against Goliath has been waged and recounted…

To be continued…

Story of the “moms’s collective” : episode 8/9 “lose everything or win everything”

Story of the “moms’s collective” : episode 8/9 “lose everything or win everything”

by | Jul 18, 2025 | Moms' Collective

Battle story

The battlefield is the hearts of the people

By Pierre Chopinaud

 

(Previously

It was not only the first defeat, but it might even be the end of the war! The mothers’ collective had been struck by surprise and knocked to the ground. Marina, in whose heart the other mothers had kindled faith, resented them: she had deluded her. And the others began to doubt their power. For if the judge had ruled in favor of the mayor this time, why wouldn’t he repeat this decision? It was undoubtedly the effect of the pressure coming from those in power. It was the obscure effect of the structure counterattacking. The mothers’ collective was stunned.

 

“

“This certainty must be communicated by an organizer to the leaders he trains, who in turn must communicate it to the people they will engage in action. But this certainty is always simulated: because uncertainty in politics is the only truth.“

Alisa, Mirela, Lucile, and Emmanuelle were on one knee. Not only had their opponent landed an unpredictable blow, but his blow was powerful. So, as organizer, my role was to urgently gather them together: like a trainer sitting next to a boxer in the corner of the ring after he’s been knocked out.

We had to understand what had happened, assess the damage, catch our breath, regain courage and hope, and adapt our strategy, decide what tactics the mothers’ group would use not only to get back up, but to fight again.

The group’s lawyer, Anina, was at their side. Perplexed, and also stunned. The judge’s decision, however you looked at it, was abnormal: why had he ruled in favor of the “wicked” mayor against Marina, the mother who was defending her child’s right to go to school?

The decision was contrary to morality, of course, to common sense, but above all, contrary to the law. I helped them analyze. Either the judge had decided under pressure from powerful people—was it our big bad wolf, the rector, who had appeared in the darkness of the woods to strike us down?—or he had made a serious legal error. We will never know for sure. No one ever sees clearly into the faces of power.

And uncertainty characterizes the context of all political action; it is the very nature of what happens on a battlefield to be uncertain. A strategist (every good leader is a strategist, and it is the organizer’s role to train them to be so) makes his plan perched atop his mountain, looking down at the battlefield, and before the battle has even begun. The least flawed plan reduces the element of chance and uncertainty in its unfolding: “If everything goes as planned, we will win.” Before engaging people in combat, one must be as close as possible to this certainty. Because this certainty, an organizer must communicate it to the leaders he trains, who in turn must communicate it to the people they will engage in action. But this certainty is always simulated: because uncertainty in politics is the only truth. However, as far as I’m concerned, I don’t engage people in an action if the plan developed doesn’t assure me that I have an 80% chance of winning. 20% is the place I give to chance.

“Strategic genius consists of dealing with the moment when chance arises: chance is the material of strategy, and there is something in it that is of the order of mystery or intuition.”

Because chance is chaos, chaos is the enemy of organization… But chance can also be opportunity.

No matter how close to perfection the plan or strategy may be, as soon as the members of the organization implement the thought-out tactics, as soon as they engage in actions on the battlefield, chance arises from all sides. However small the place it was given in the plan, the less important.

Strategic genius consists of dealing with the moment when chance arises: chance is the stuff of strategy, and there is something mysterious or intuitive about it.

This is why many great strategists throughout history attributed their decisions to omens or inspiration… But that’s another matter. This is how the act of strategic decision-making resembles the act of creation in art…

Be that as it may, Anina had an idea. And it was this idea that saved us.

Chance appeared on the battlefield in the guise of a constraint or an opportunity. She had the idea of transforming constraint, or misfortune, into luck, into opportunity.

The mothers’ collective was not only going to challenge the judge’s decision, but was also going to take the dispute to the highest court: the Council of State!

It’s a bit like if, in a game of chance, after losing 99% of their treasure, a player outbid their opponent by a disproportionate amount. It was a major bluff. We could lose everything or win everything.

W

“The risk was great, it was commensurate with the stakes, and commensurate with the chance. We were entering into a dance between chance and certainty.”

The risk was great, commensurate with the stakes, and commensurate with chance. We were entering a dance between chance and certainty. The Council of State’s decision could, if it upheld the wicked in its decision, result in the new law, the new rule. We would then not only lose the battle for Marina’s child, but it would be the tragic end of our story: injustice would prevail, the wicked would win, and the lives of the children we were fighting for would be thrown among the garbage to which the powerful in the department doomed them.

Even more serious: we were taking the risk of destroying the decree won long ago by the #EcolePourTous collective, which was the lever on which we had relied throughout our campaign.

Suffice it to say that going to the Council of State was taking the risk of everything collapsing. Not only would we lose our war, but retroactively lose the wars of those who came before us.

But it was also our luck: we felt we were reaching the end of our story: by accident, everything was coming together. The drama was about to unfold. It was a final face-off that the mothers’ collective was about to engage in. They had everything to gain and everything to lose: no calculation could guarantee us victory. So, each of us in the small group of leaders, Anina was the first to overcome the doubt that was agonizing her, and Mirela and Alisa announced to the members of the collective how they would get back up.

And in truth, like good leaders, they initially concealed the fact that they had been knocked down. For courage and hope are the two substances that, in the hearts of those who fight, win the war.

“This whole campaign was a game from the beginning, but a game whose ending can have dramatic consequences on reality.”

We had to put all the strength of the mothers’ collective into this final act, and to mobilize our forces, we had to be courageous. This required a bit of drama. This entire campaign had been a game from the beginning, but a game whose end could have dramatic consequences for reality.

By emerging from the woodwork without showing himself, the rector had committed a fatal error. He had tried to trap us, but the mothers’ collective was about to turn his trap. Because the final act of this story, of our David versus Goliath, was now the story of the innocent little girl Maria, versus the Minister. We were going to hold the latter accountable and tell the story. They say that leadership is about convincing others to take action despite uncertainty. That’s why one of the greatest challenges of action for justice, the most decisive of battles, the site of the great battle, is in the hearts of the people. The act that makes the difference is the one that transforms fear into courage in the hearts of the offended.

But alas, nothing is pure in this world. Before setting out to fight this last battle, the greatest, the one we perceived to be the grand finale—from which the women of the collective would emerge victorious or even more humiliated—they had gathered all their best weapons. And among these weapons, one was formidable.

A few weeks earlier, as part of another campaign I was organizing related to the issues faced by unaccompanied minors, we had made Raphaël Glucksman an ally. And he possessed a weapon that would be useful in the final act of the mothers’ collective’s story: his Instagram account.

We were going to use it. But first, we had to interest him in the cause. After a well-organized and prepared meeting, it was done. He would be part of the fight.

The tactic (the action) was as follows: on the day of the hearing at the Council of State, the mothers’ collective would launch a petition that would be circulated on the MP’s Instagram account and led by his team. The unjust story of Marina and her child humiliated by the wicked mayor of a commune in Seine-Saint-Denis would reach an unscheduled hearing that very day. And since the case would be brought before the Council of State, it would not only be the mayor’s responsibility that would be engaged, but that of the French government in the person of the Minister of Education. In this case: Pap Ndiaye. He would be the target of the public accusation, of the shame. He would not only become the villain of the story but would also, in the event of victory, be the person found guilty, responsible for this infamy.

“No words could give her courage. Fear and resignation had taken over: her fear of motherhood was the source of our sinking. She refused to act, and that was her most pressing right”.

Everything was ready. But nothing was possible without Marina taking action. The target was clear, the weapon loaded, all that was missing was her decision. Nothing was possible if she didn’t file a complaint. The entire outcome of the war depended on her hesitation between fear and courage. The decisive site of the battlefield was the secret of her heart.

Now, discouraged by the unexpected defeat: once again, she said “No!” She had once given her trust because Alisa and Mirela had given her hope. But she had lost. She no longer believed in the power of the mothers’ collective. It was in her consent that the final word of the story lay. It was less in the judge’s decision than in her heart that victory would be decided.

But nothing could be done: no words could restore her courage. Fear and resignation had taken over: her fear as a mother was the site of our shipwreck. She refused to act, and that was her most pressing right. From her point of view, she had nothing to lose except what she considered already lost, as it had been lost to her at birth: the dignity of her child.

(More in the next episode….)

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