by Aaron Hertzberg, Activist Post:
First-person report of QR Codes, Digital IDs, and police militarization of Paris.
This is a guest post from a friend who is on the ground in Paris reporting what the situation is like.
The best way to begin might be to say that there are three distinct categories of Olympic games sites that the City of Paris wants to make ultra-safe for visitors and athletes, each with its own unique security challenges.
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First, there are the many official, already-existing sporting venues (stadiums, arenas, tennis courts, aquatic centers, etc.) located throughout Paris and France. These require the least amount of novel security measures, whether in the form of protective perimeters or the (unusual) methods used to maintain them.
Included among these is the historic Grand Palais, an architectural jewel from 1900 located at the foot of the Champs-Elysées. A monumentally massive building with a marvelously versatile interior space, it regularly plays host to museum exhibitions of all types, in addition to galas, elaborate fashion shows, concerts, conventions, and even an ice-skating rink. Turning it into an Olympic sporting event site wouldn’t have been very difficult.
Second, and complementing these dedicated sporting facilities, are several famous outdoor public monuments and historic landmarks that have been transformed into temporary games sites.
These comprise, most notably, the Trocadero and the area next to the Eiffel Tower, the Château de Versailles, the Place de la Concorde, the Alexandre III Bridge, and the expansive lawns in front of the Hôtel des Invalides.
Massive amounts of bleachers and facilities for ticketed spectators have been brought in and creatively set up to adapt to the often unusual contours and spatial constraints of these areas. Seeing the obelisk at la Place de la Concorde hidden behind a patchwork of crisscrossing bars and stands was strange indeed. From the outside, the expansive fenced-in area, with giant stands rising out from the emptied-out streets, looks like a curious sort of fairground.
Third, and arguably most importantly, there is the Seine River itself, which will be the location of the opening ceremony as well as several aquatic competitions.
From a security standpoint, the first category of venues is the most straightforward because entrances and exits are already part of the structures. All that is necessary to guarantee spectator and athlete safety is to set up slightly expanded perimeters around the buildings and flood the access points with staff and security guards so that no one – or anything – dangerous gets through.
Think of the Barclays Center on game night. Plenty of space to accommodate the crowds at the entrance waiting to go through security, with minimal disruptions to the immediate surroundings.
The second category of event sites, as mentioned above, significantly modify public spaces outdoors; they pose greater security and logistical challenges, as the physical enclosures separating “outside from inside” – separating the ticketed spectators from the unticketed – have to be brought in on trucks and set up.
These barriers are made up of hundreds of miles of what are essentially chainlink fence units (about 10 feet long and 7 feet high) set into concrete slabs that can be moved around and connected as needed.
They wrap around the temporary outdoor sporting event sites in odd, unsightly ways and, notwithstanding the considerable effort to line them up neatly, look to many like human kennels. (Upset Parisians are referring to them as cages.)
The last site/category of Olympic events, and the location of the opening ceremony, the Seine River, is the most problematic in terms of security perimeters.
In fact, in order to meet the endless safety, commercial, and sanitary needs associated with the many uses to which the river is being put, an unprecedented thing has taken place: for 8 days leading up to the opening ceremony (tomorrow), the Seine and its immediate surroundings have undergone a form of privatization that has kept almost the entirety of the Parisian population off its riverbanks and away from its nearest surrounding streets and bridges.
Implementing this shutting down of the river has involved widespread use of the aforementioned chainlink-type moveable fences – thousands of them – along with a novel but not entirely unfamiliar technological device: the QR-coded pass.
To help explain what this is looking like on the ground, I’ll attempt to draw a hypothetical analogy with NYC.
It’s a highly flawed comparison due to the very different layout and features of the two cities, with the proportions off, but it’s the best I could come up with under pressure to illustrate the point.
Imagine that 42nd Street in NYC was the Seine River, and that all of the Avenues slicing through it were Paris’ many bridges connecting the North and South sides of the city.
Now picture the sidewalks of 42nd Street as Paris’ Right and Left banks, or riversides, and all the buildings on the North and South sides of 42nd Street, extending down its entire length, like the rows of charming old Parisian apartment buildings you see overlooking the Seine in postcards.
Okay, now think of what life would be like in Manhattan if, for 8 days, all of 42nd Street (street, sidewalks, avenues, entire blocks of buildings) was completely off limits to all motorized traffic and most foot and cycle traffic, with only two avenues – one on the East Side (say, 2nd Avenue), and one on the West Side (say, 8th Avenue) – left open to handle all of midtown Manhattan’s North-to-South movements: foot, bicycle, and motorized traffic.
