It's the 38. March, and the uprising continues

I'm going to add to my reading. I'll allow myself to do something more – something more than I would have done if nothing more had happened, somewhere else, quite far away from Bergen, at that moment. When I insist on pointing out that something is happening right now, in France, at Place de la République (but not just there), it's because I'm afraid that in a few months or a few weeks, even in France and especially there, that is, nothing happened. That is why I take the road around Norway to say that something is happening in France: You are the witnesses.
Today it is the 38. March. This month of March will have hundreds of days, maybe it will come up to thousands. However, if you check a French news site, it is quite possible that it will say that it is the 7. April. But that's not true.
Since the 31. March there has been a public assembly at Place de la République, right in the center of Paris. Without managers. Without any parole. Without any requirement – except for the creation of a democracy. a really democracy. At Place de la République there are no angry people, no anger. Everyone is too busy trying to establish this democracy by submitting all the details for a vote, so that it sometimes goes quite slowly. – but what about? You know you have to be here a long time, there is no point in rushing.
Ever since the first days there has been a hospital on Place de la République. There has also been a place where you can have a cup of coffee and a snack. There are concerts, there are sales of books. Recipients, unemployed, refugees, students, schoolchildren and pensioners gather every day on committees before voting in general meetings. Several matches unite.
Here there is also a place where the undocumented and the activists in DAL, those who fight for the right to housing, can speak out. Because it is very difficult to find housing in Paris, a city full of empty apartments. In Paris, which is surrounded by the shops of Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel and other brands known around the world, Roma and refugees wander around all night, or they sleep on the ground – men, women and children. There are so many who reach out, at the same time as the Panama Papers come out. As the list of heads of government and companies evading taxes grows longer and longer, so many poor people reach out in the streets of Paris, lying on metro lines or sitting leaning against walls with recessed ATMs.
Every single day this March, you learn new methods to protect yourself from blows from the police. They have been hitting France hard lately.
All this, of course, takes place far away from Bergen. But it may well be that Norway, which today is what France was before – rich and innocent – tomorrow will be what France is today. We have seen the fall of Greece. We follow how Spain, Portugal and Ireland are fighting. Maybe it's time to dump her and move on. Perhaps the time has finally come for us to fix what is happening to us.
Translated from the French by Thomas Lundbo.

Quintane has published about fifteen books on the borderland between poetry and other literary genres – plays, novels, autobiographies and reports.
In 2015, the book came out tomatoes published in Thomas Lundbo's translation by Audiatur publishing house.