"If you do an article about me, you will say that I fought to the end. The doctors tell me I won't finish the month. That was five days ago. The last phone call from Patrick Nello, known as "chick", died this Tuesday morning, at the age of 71. A nickname that will undoubtedly speak to all those who have crossed the portal of the prefecture / departmental council in Créteil. He demonstrated there every day for more than 15 years, decked out in his horrible canary yellow t-shirt that he did not leave until he returned home to Villejuif.
The man who tagged road signs
Can't you see who it is? If you are from Val-de-Marne, you have inevitably seen the slogans he tagged on almost all the road signs in the department. Word games, which we will indulgently qualify as "complex": the famous "Val Mensonge Departe Ment" or the classic "Val Mensonge PCF". These tags earned him several lawsuits which he miraculously won.
Poussin denied being the author. He told us he was going on a "walk". In fact, we knew very well that it was him. Every night, he would get up at three in the morning, put on his yellow T-shirt, get on his bike and roam the roads to tag all the road signs he passed. At 6 am, he was stationed in front of the prefecture security booth and demonstrated. In fact, he just wanted departmental council officials to see him. To make them understand that he would fight "to the end".
Bodyguard of Georges Marchais
The reason for this hatred for the department? In short, he felt he had been ousted from a billboard company that worked for the General Council (PCF) at the time. A sickly resentment towards communism, undoubtedly proportional to the past commitment of this hard-working comrade. “He has been to Cuba several times where he does training camps, smiles his only daughter Clarisse. He was a pure Marxist. He believed in revolution, in a more just world. "
During the 1981 presidential election, he was one of Georges Marchais' bodyguards. “It seems he made me jump on his knees,” says Poussin's daughter. It is also in Champigny, the city of the former figure of the PCF, that the “betrayed” comrade presented himself to the cantons in 2015. A candidacy (DVG) just to rot the president as much as he could ( PCF) from the Christian Favier department, also from Champigny. His score was starving but it was a matter of principle.
Every day, from 6 am to noon, he typed the discussion with the peacekeepers assigned to the gatehouse. As soon as the police radio crackled, he called the editorial staff to "give the news". Because this former book worker at France-soir, of all the fights of this corporation which negotiated the hard way, adored the Parisian. It had become a "contact".
"Hello, it's Patrick, it seems that there is smoke in Bonneuil"
A contact not very sharp on the hierarchy of information but of a regularity and an unfailing fidelity. "Hello it's Patrick, say so it seems that there is smoke in Bonneuil". Well at six in the morning, it was a little rough waking up sometimes. Indifferent to the sleepy voice which answered him, he concluded each of these messages with this completely useless precision: "You would have to inquire." "
Let's face it frankly, we weren't checking the fifteen potential pieces of information that he gave us in three hours. Sometimes it was very obscure: "The mayor goes there". At first we were trying to dig. "But which city Patrick? Why is he moving? " And he, imperturbable: “I don't know. You should inquire. "
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We almost forgot that Poussin, who lived alone, also had a life on the side. “I saw him often,” says his daughter. He was incredibly generous. He was helping a lot of people. But for him, the fight came first. "His last fight, Poussin did not win despite" the efforts and kindness of all the caregivers of the Gustave-Roussy Institute ", where he was being treated for his leukemia. But he fought to the end.
