L'appel des résistants

From France today we receive an Appeal of Resistance Fighters. A dozen or so of the last living members of France's "Greatest Generation" who fought against the Nazi occupation issue a final call to maintain the social and democratic spirit in which the movement was founded.

We therefore call on the movements, parties, associations, institutions, and unions that are heirs to the Resistance to rise above the sectoral stakes, and to devote themselves first of all to the political causes of social injustices and social conflicts, no longer solely to their consequences, in order to define together a new "Program of the Resistance" for our century, recognizing that fascism always feeds on racism, intolerance, and war, which themselves feed on social injustices.

We call finally on children, young people, parents, old people, grandparents, teachers, public authorities, to raise a true peaceful insurrection against the mass media which offer, as the horizon for our youth, only commercial consumption, contempt for the weakest and for culture, generalized amnesia, and excessive competition of all against all. We do not accept that the principal media from now on are controlled by private interests, contrary to the program of the National Council of the Resistance and to the ordinances on the press of 1944.

More than ever, to those who will create the century that is just beginning, we want to say with our affection:

"To create is to resist. To resist is to create."

The top singatory is Lucie Aubrac, who engineered a prison break to pry her husband Raymond (also a signatory) from the clutches of Claus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon.