In Essonne, summer camps to fight against brawls
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It’s a bet on the future that could be summed up as follows: child friends, forever friends. It is on this that four mayors of the Essonne department are betting, whose cities are hard hit by the phenomenon of brawls between rival gangs. By organizing joint activities for 9-11 year-olds, throughout the year, they hope to break, even before it is born, the feeling of belonging exclusively to a single territory, a single district. “The idea is to ensure that our children meet and build a common story when they are little, so that, when they grow up, they have less desire to put themselves on their heads”, explains the mayor of Epinay-sous-Sénart, Damien Allouch (Socialist Party). The high point of this unprecedented prevention system: the summer vacation camp.
Enzo is hilarious, over the moon, ” too happy “ to the idea of spending five days with his friends from the “interco vigil”, understand “intermunicipal”. It is 9:30 a.m. on this Monday at the end of July, in the parking lot of the Epinay arts and culture centre, around forty children from the four towns are stamping their feet while waiting for the arrival of the bus which will lead them to the Indre.
Enzo is 9 years old, a cap and sneakers, a small suitcase on wheels and the desire to be friends with everyone. With the guys from his town, Quincy-sous-Sénart, but also with young people from Varennes-Jarcy, Boussy-Saint-Antoine and Epinay-sous-Sénart, the town “enemy”, the one with which generations of big brothers have been fighting for nearly half a century, since the construction of working-class neighborhoods. “We don’t talk about that too much, slip Enzo, it’s better not, because hey… the big ones, they don’t mix too much…”
“Erase all these barriers”
Some hate and fight each other, sometimes to the death. Without really knowing why. “As far as we can remember, rivalries have always existed, without knowing the causes, we are all from the territory, this question of municipal borders is part of our DNA”, recalls Mr. Allouch. In 2021, a 14-year-old child was stabbed in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, and another, even younger, seriously injured, during a brawl between two rival districts of Quincy and Epinay. The day before, another fight had caused the death of a 14-year-old girl, a few dozen kilometers away, in Saint-Chéron.
“With the activities all together and the inter-municipal summer camp, the children from the different towns will know each other, when they all arrive at school, they will recognize each other, it’s nice and very reassuring for us, the parents”, comments Enzo’s mother, Linda, 33 (she does not wish to give her name). From the first meeting “intercom” a few months ago, 11-year-old Erynn volunteered to play the middleman. Originally from Epinay-sous-Sénart, she moved to Boussy-Saint-Antoine two years ago. Thanks to the intermunicipal activities, she reunited with her old friends whom she hastened to introduce to the news. “She was thrilled to do itcomments his mother, Yamina (she wishes to remain anonymous). Getting them to meet like this when they were young is great, it gives them a chance not to fight once in college. »
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