The French in the Mission talked late this week about Wednesday’s slaying of 12 editorial members and others at the French weekly Charlie Hebdo that has triggered massive demonstrations of sympathy in France and abroad.
“Many people in my generation feel like they grew up with those cartoonists,” Delphine Huet-Cozzolino, who also lives in the Mission and is a landscape designer, wrote in an e-mail to Mission Local. “Literally. Cabu, one of the murdered cartoonist, was a regular guest of the most popular TV show for kids in the early 80’s. As a young adult, you could look up to those guys.
Huet-Cozzolino also spoke of the importance of Charlie Hebdo as an independent journal. The weekly magazine published without any ads for decades, she said, and was known for being critical of several religious and political groups.
“You didn’t have to be a Charlie’s fan, like all their jokes, impudently salacious at times, or belong to the left-wing, to respect them: they represent a truly independent press,” she wrote.
Alexandra Gerteis, owner of Etcetera Wine Bar on 795 Valencia Street, said the attack was “an attack to the core of our system, of [our] way of thinking and freedom of speech,” she said.
The two suspects Cherif and Said Kouachi were of Algerian origin, but were born and grew up in France. The brothers gained access to the newspaper’s offices on Wednesday near noon, entered the conference room and shot Stéphane Charbonnier, 47, a well known cartoonist in France and head of the magazine.
The Charlie Hebdo team was having its regular editorial meeting when the gunmen entered the building. Cartoonists Georges Wolinski, Jean Cabut, Bernard Verlhac ‘Tignous’ and Philippe Honore were also killed during the terrorist attack.
The other victims were economist Bernard Maris, psychologist and columnist Elsa Cayat, copy editor Moustapha Ourrad, guest editor Michel Renaud, caretaker Frederic Bouseau, policeman Ahmed Merabet, and bodyguard Brigadier Franck Brinsolaro.
Guillaume Lachaud, a Mission resident and software developer, reached out to his friends in Paris as soon as he found out about the news.
“A lot of my friends went to demonstrations; It is also a way to fight fear and show that people stand united behind those cartoonist and freedom of speech,” he said of the immediate pour of mourning and support against violence at Plaçe de la Republique on Wednesday night, when thousands of people gathered with candles and pens in hand signaling support for freedom of speech.
Lachaud joined the hundreds of people in San Francisco Wednesday night that gathered outside the French consulate. “We want to try to understand what happened. We were not prepared for something like this,” said Lachaud of the violent attack by the Kouachi brothers.
When Lachaud was younger and living in France, he was an avid reader of Fluide Glacial, a cartoon magazine where Charbonniere, Tignous and Renald Luzier ‘Luz’ contributed. Luz survived the attack because he had overslept and missed the meeting.
This is not the first time the magazine was attacked by fundamentalists. In 2011, they were firebombed for an issue featuring a caricature of prophet Mohammed on the cover.
The magazine, however, was not mocking Muslims, said Huet-Cozzolino.
“They were making fun of fundamentalists, extremists, intolerances of all kinds, from all sides,” she said.
A manhunt for the Kouachi brothers lasted three days after the Wednesday attack. Police presence in Paris increased exponentially and the entrance to the city was closed.
On Friday morning, two hostage takings took place. Police stormed a kosher supermarket in Eastern Paris, where another suspect Amedy Coulibaly and his accomplice Hayat Boumeddiene, held several hostages. Coulibaly demanded police let the Kouachi brothers go, according to news reports.
Coulibaly is also a suspect in the killing of a policewoman on Thursday. Police stormed the place and in the process killed Coulibaly and four other hostages. Boumeddiene is still at large.
At the same time, police raided a small printing firm outside Paris where the Kouachi brothers were hiding with one hostage. The two brothers were killed in a subsequent raid.
Lachaud said the far right is “playing with the fear of some people to stigmatize all the Muslims,” and added “Look at all the other Muslims mourning and crying with us. They are not bad people, they are just like you and they also condemn these attacks. Do not mix Islam with fanatics and obscurantism, this is exactly what the nationalists want you to do”.
For Marco Senghor, owner of Little Baobab who has been in the Mission for 20 years, the attack means that France has to go to a new social revolution and “assess that they [France] have a mosaic of different people living in France and give them a chance,” he said of second generation French who have a mixed racial origin.
“France needs to open their arms to people living in suburbs and be more concerned about their difficulties,” he said. “They are French and they want to be proud and know that people love them,” said Senghor referring to the lack of jobs, high inflation and an increase in immigration from former French colonies in Africa.
“These kids who have nothing, they have a feeling people they don’t like them, they quit school because the families are divided, there’s no money, they live a life where there is no hope, and [fundamentalists] try to enroll them and train them as revolutionary people, and they are against democracy,” said Senghor, who is half- Senegalese and half-French and grew up in Senegal and France.
The real leg work for France in terms of integration, said Senghor, is about to happen.