Protests in France | Bally Bagayoko: The Face of the New France

Right in the middle instead of just there: Bally Bagayoko can be found in the front row of the student protests. Photo: xxx The scene went viral: Bally Bagayoko stood as a protective shield between the police and the demonstrators during the student protests. He was forced to accept the tear gas from the police. Bagayoko is not just anyone, but the mayor of Saint-Denis in Paris, a banlieue dominated by immigrants. He was born in Levallois near Paris in 1973 as the son of an immigrant family from Mali.

Bagayoko has been active in local politics since 2000 and rose to national prominence in the local elections in the spring. He ran as the top candidate on a joint list of the left-wing party La France insoumise (LFI) and the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) and won more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round. A medium sensation. With him, the left is governing a city in France with more than 100,000 inhabitants for the first time. Bagayoko is not the only black Muslim who won for the left in the local elections, but he is the most prominent. Since his victory, he has been exposed to racist campaigns from the right more than ever. The French public prosecutor's office has now started investigations into racist insults and cyberbullying.

»I embody everything they despise. “I don’t fit into their model of power, into this ‘white’ idea of ​​the republic,” he says. "But that is the reality, and today France, in its diversity, has produced people who a few years ago had no right to hold these positions."

Even as mayor, he remains true to himself and continues his work as a youth basketball coach two days a week. Bagayoko grew up in a social housing area and, after studying in Paris, worked for the transport company RATP. And he lives with his family where he works.

The fact that the portrait of French President Emmanuel Macron stands on the floor in his office facing the wall is not his fault: “The portrait? When I arrived it was already there. I didn't take it down, I just didn't hang it back on the wall." Understandable: in the office of the symbolic figure for the new France, Macron would have missed the wall.

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