Signs reading “Nous sommes Charlie Hebdo” or “Nous sommes tous Charlie Hebdo” –

“We are Charlie Hebdo”, or “We are all Charlie Hebdo” are still posted all over Paris, over a

month after 12 people were murdered at the office of the satirical weekly.

There are several memorials of flowers, handwritten signs, and candle stubs near the

Charlie Hebdo office, a ten-minute walk from my apartment. Huge banners hang from the front

of City Hall; smaller printed signs are on supermarket doors; more opportunistically, a handout

magazine whose main content is discount coupons claims also to be Charlie Hebdo. A sign at

the entrance of Université Paris 8-Vincennes/Saint-Denis, where I am teaching for the spring

semester as an invited visiting professor, mourns Bernard Maris, a professor of economics at

Paris-8’s Institute of European Studies, whose weekly “Uncle Bernard” column in Charlie

Hebdo was one of his many journalistic activities. A guard now (sometimes) checks ID’s of

people entering the university; I’m told there was none before. We’ve also heard that other

publications, like the feminist magazine Causette, are under threat.

Many of the people I’ve spoken with went to the huge demonstration at the Place du

Republique, at the same time noting the hypocrisy of a demonstration in some sense for press

freedom, with the head of state of Saudi Arabia in the line of dignitaries. Saudi Arabia had just

ordered a blogger to receive a thousand-lash whipping.

People I’ve spoken with had mixed responses to the paper itself. Some said they used to

read it, but had stopped in the past 10 years. Many were felt repelled by the kinds of racist and

gross things Charlie Hebdo had printed in recent years. They felt it was attacking immigrants

and others who have little power. No one, of course, thought anyone should have been killed.

Some of the signs in the pictures are left over from the demonstration — often enclosed in

the plastic covers that French students keep their papers in.

Photo Credit: Ellen Gavrey.

Ellen Gruber Garvey is an NJCU English professor visiting Université Paris 8-Vincennes/Saint-Denis during spring 2015.