Liberating a City and Liberating Women

LIBERATING PARIS

Paris has changed a lot since it was liberated from four years of occupation by the Nazis in August of 1944. In fact, my own street has changed a lot since just last week! Every time I blink, some new retail established has closed and re-opened or some street has been repaved and gentrified. I can’t keep up.

Paris is ever evolving in some ways, while remaining absolutely the same in other ways. The charm of Paris does not change, its skyline might change slightly and improvements are always taking place. In a report online as long ago as June of 2014 on Golem 13 published 50 photos by Julien Knez comparing particular spots in Paris taken during the Liberation of Paris and those same spots today. Julien toured Paris in search of the places photographed 70 years earlier taken by both anonymous and famous photographers such as Robert Doisneau, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Roger-Viollet or Robert Capa.

I’ve chosen a few of the 50 that illustrate the residential neighborhoods in lieu of monuments, yet you can see all of them by visiting Golem 13:

PLACE SAINT-MICHEL August 19 1944 where the uprising began. Gilbert-Jeune was a restaurant then!
 
BOULEVARD MAGENTA August 21, 1944 where the residents covered the wreck of a German patrol car with flowers. Three plaques are there now paying tribute to the five people who died at this spot.
 
RUE DU MAIL in the heart of the 2nd arrondissement at number 29 where the FFI pose in front of a vehicle taken from the Germans.
 
RUE RODIER in the 9th arrondissement where both they young and old got their hands dirty mounting a barricade at the corner of rue de la Tour d’Auvergne.
 
PLACE DE LA BASTILLE where nurses improvised an aid station at the entrance to the Métro to treat the wounded.
 
PLACE OF THE REPUBLIC where Parisians are protecting collaborators and Germans from the angry crowd. In today’s Paris, Place de la République is the center of political activity.  
 
RUE DE RIVOLI where armored liberators are in front of what is still there — a Heyraud shoe store!
 
AVENUE MOZART in the 16th arrondissement where children were play-acting to be soldiers on the wreck of a German military vehicle.

• • • • • • • • • •

LIBERATING WOMEN

Gender imbalance…

In an effort to balance the gender imbalance of women’s name on Paris city streets (only 2.6% of the city’s streets are named after women), the activist group Osez le Féminisme (Dare to be Feminist) installed guerrilla signs to rename the streets and parks after such women as singer Nina Simone, sailor Florence Arthaud, and author Simone de Beauvoir. This inspired a group of women at Mapbox to analyze seven major cities in a project called “Mapping Female versus Male Street Names.” The results in the cities of Bengaluru, Chennai, London, Mumbai, New Delhi, Paris, and San Francisco yielded an average of 27.5%, with India leading for having the most.

Where are the women monuments?…

At the same time, New York City’s Fabulous Lulu Lolo wants to know where are the women monuments…not only in New York, but all over the world. Read all about it and follow Lulu’s campaign to honor women by visiting her site.

Participate by nominating a woman you think deserves a monument! Then take your photo holding up a placard with your nomination. My daughter nominated me! Now, you do it for someone you treasure. Here’s where you start.

Beauty for freedom…

For the last few days my daughter, Erica Simone, has been in Cambodia working with the organizations Beauty for Freedom and Together1Heart bringing art and photography workshops to a group of 53 young girls who have been rescued from a life of sex slavery and human trafficking — some as young as four years old. The girls have experienced things you could never imagine possible — they have been beaten, chained, tortured and raped. On Friday she and her fellow volunteers will go into the brothels to help the women who have not yet had the luck to escape. They will bring condoms, food and care and listen to their stories, hopefully preparing them to be rescued soon. These women barely eat, barely see the sun and live a life of cruelty that would destroy your heart if you heard their stories.

They need your help ASAP. $150 will feed 30 women for three days. Your generosity might save a life!!

Read Erica’s recent blog with photos and to make your donation like I did, visit gofundme.com/beautyundefined or via Paypal: [email protected]

A bientôt ,

Adrian Leeds
The Adrian Leeds Group

Respond to Adrian: [email protected]

 
P.S. House Hunters International will sometimes re-air episodes I’ve taped for them. Now they have posted some of the episodes to their site so that you can view them at your leisure–with no commercials! Please have a look at Finding Happiness in Paris.