Paris, Saturday, May 16, 1998

We have come upon Place de la Bastille, ever alive with the power of the offended common man to recast the leading roles of history.  There is a brain-scrambling explosion of irritated pistons as a thousand motorcyclists circle the monument at the center.  For thirty minutes, the massed bikers tie up the traffic of five key streets feeding this busy intersection, invoking French history in their anger over some act of government.

Finally, they park, ignoring the horns of taxis and the half-hearted imprecations of gendarmes, who realize they are powerless to deal with so vast an army.

What is government's transgression?  A halting multi-language conversation with a sympathetic onlooker reveals that some minister or other has done something with the speed limit.  In consequence, the word has been passed among those who speedily thread their way through Paris traffic on two wheels.  Their message is simple:  They want the decree rolled back, and they have invoked the power of citizens in a democracy to speak loudly together through song, rhetoric or blasting engine exhaust.

Here, in the home of Voltaire and Rousseau, on the Revolutionary stomping ground of Thomas Jefferson, and the home of Le Resistance, the very stone of buildings dating to the 17th Century bristles with democracy and the power of the people.

I am five time zones and 3,600 miles from Roosevelt Island.  But, for the moment, my heart is equally at home in this place where officials, when they misstep – even in so small a matter as a speed limit – hear from those who take offense.

DL