Take Me To The Riot

            As we were arriving in our hostel in Marseille, a man came running past us yelling, “the election results are on”, and crowded around the television. Sarkozy is out. Hollande, and socialism, is in. We asked a French man watching the results what he thought of the news, and he said, “I had a really hard time getting here. I am glad that it has changed. Now it will not be so hard for my friends.” Another man says that he knows people working in Paris who have been submitting millions of euro in fake invoices over the past months to try to cover up what Sarkozy supposedly stole over the years. We realized how lucky we were to have ended up in France today of all days. We quickly threw down our bags in our locker and went back to the TV. The people watching asked if we wanted to join, but we heard cheers and honking erupting in the streets. So we followed our ears.
             Soon enough, the flares in the sky led us to the crowd gathering directly in front of Marseille’s Vieux Port. Fireworks, flares, lighters and flamables, signs, and poster flew in the sky. Horns, cheers, yells, whistles rang through the streets. People poured onto the sidewalks, and then finally, all at once, through the wonder of group think, poured onto the street. Police were on the scene, fully decked in their riot gear, but they did not try to intervene. Instead, they let the people have the street, and set up blockades at either end of the street to prevent traffic from coming through.  
             I climbed up on a cement divider to try to photograph the scene, and quickly realized that my shots were not translating what was happening truly, as it was in the air. It was an intangible feeling that permeated everyone around in Marseille. An elderly lady walked in the opposite direction of the crowds and said in French, “It is good you are recording it. Change needs to be recorded.”
             Internalizing this scene, I try to imagine such excitement over a change in political leadership in Canada. Another fellow Canadian at the hostel stated that she “riots over sporting events, not politics”. This quite succinctly summed up Canada’s mild political climate. In a sense, I feel lucky enough to live in a country where the degree of misery over political leadership never stoops too low such that an election would elicit rioting in the streets. At the same time, I am also lucky to be in a country that is passionate about politics on the day of seemingly revolutionary election.            
             As I write this now, the celebration in the streets is changing; a darker side of the crowd is manifesting itself. The bars have stayed open late. The crowds and cheering have turned rowdy. Not that there was any semblance of order before; but now the scene is decidedly more chaotic. People are jumping on the hoods of cars, breaking things. A local states that “in Marseille, the crowds start spontaneously… but they often end in fighting.”
             It is hard not to be optimistic while drunk on the atmosphere of mass celebration; however, logic and rational thought must follow eventually. I am not an expert on political science, nor am I student of economics, but I wonder about the repercussions of electing a socialist President for France right now, in the world’s fragile economic state, and right here, in one of the countries that is essential to the redemption of the world’s economy.
             Conversely, a change of leadership might be what is necessary to help Europe out of its rut, rather than more of the same. Listening to the excitement in the streets, I know that at least for tonight, the French are sure that this change can only be a sign of the great things to come.