For 48 hours, hundreds of thousands of photos of the degraded capital, littered with rubbish and ugly by recent developments, have been pouring out on Twitter.
Rutted streets, tagged facades, bare lawns, the Villette basin soiled by a tide of rubbish, piles of bulky items, rickety ephemeral terraces.
These shocking images were shared with the hashtag #saccageparis.
This hashtag, launched on March 21, gathered 23,000 tweets on Saturday April 3 at 5.30 p.m., and rose to the French social network trends.
#saccageparis #JeVeuxParisPropre https://t.co/3TvmWsCgba
- ParisPropre (@PanamePropre) March 26, 2021
The contributors present themselves mainly as Parisians who criticize the policy of the mayor of Paris.
They do not claim to belong to any political party but accuse the mayor PS Anne Hidalgo of having transformed the City of Light into "an open dump".
The mayor of Paris is round back ... for the moment and had not responded to our requests either.
“No one is available to answer,” the City's press service said on Saturday afternoon.
But political figures, they take advantage of the surge.
"The degradation of our beautiful capital by the Hidalgo team is suffering," mocked the president of the National Rally Marine Le Pen.
Laurence Parisot, the former patron of the Medef, is moved by this "movement of destruction, ugliness, defilement".
Rachida Dati, the mayor (LR) of the 7th arrondissement, is also making her voice heard.
Enough to shake the walls of the Town Hall as Anne Hidalgo leads her offensive towards the 2022 presidential election. We found the man who launched the hashtag on the @panamepropre account.
He agreed to explain to the Parisian how this hashtag #saccageparis was born and how he will continue the fight.
He wishes to remain anonymous.
How was this hashtag born?
@PanameOwn.
The story is very simple.
It started with a burst of anger!
I have been a Parisian for twenty years and I have seen the city deteriorate since the arrival of Anne Hidalgo at the head of the Town Hall.
It was already tangible a little before but it has amplified and accelerated in recent months.
The tags, the wild posters, the damaged road signs, the garbage in the gutter, the broken roads ... I had ended up getting used to it, until the day I realized the extent of the degradation of our city.
In addition to the problems of cleanliness and sanitation, there are also damage to heritage.
The historic fountains are removed, degraded, even repainted.
The Butte aux Cailles, the Butte Montmartre, the Place de la Concorde or the Champs-Elysées are in a catastrophic state.
Hence the idea of creating an account last February to share this observation.
I created this hashtag #saccageparis almost two weeks ago.
This notion supposes a voluntary act.
Emmanuel Grégoire (first assistant to Anne Hidalgo) says he wants to promote another aesthetic, a new urban grammar.
I am going to suggest that he hold a local referendum on these new orientations.
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You wish to remain anonymous.
But who are you ?
Are you affiliated with a political party?
I am in my fifties.
I am an executive in the private sector.
I travel abroad a lot.
I am not included in any party.
I used to be close to the UDF.
I am a moderate progressive in my expression.
Some would say that the far right or the right is behind.
I can tell you that I have also received many messages from people on the left who share my anger.
There are even gardeners in the city who contacted me to tell me that they were unhappy to see the city evolving like this.
All of this transcends political parties.
I am a simple Parisian who claims his fed up.
I don't want to put Paris in formalin, I like street art, but I am against the fact, for example, of removing the grilles from trees and replacing them with ugly logs.
It is not worthy of Paris.
Were you surprised at the success of your tweets?
Yes.
I had not imagined it would take on such a scale.
Still, it's not that surprising.
Parisians have joined the hashtag.
I couldn't be the only one struck by these images.
We are thousands to say stop!
Behind #saccageparis, there are just ordinary inhabitants.
It's even stronger.
I think that the wisteria affair (
Editor's note: tree which had been enthroned for more than a century on the Montmartre hill and which was torn off by the city services)
triggered this movement because it is a symbol.
You say in one of your tweets that you want to put pressure on Anne Hidalgo ...
Internet users have said that services have started cleaning up certain areas ... I'm happy to hear that.
But we will have to keep up the pressure because the mayor of Paris only understands the balance of power.
With other Internet users that I do not know, I am working on a manifesto on Paris 2030. We want Paris to once again become one of the great and beautiful capitals of the world where life is good, where people get around by bicycle, but where we do not wage war on cars, where we feel safe.
