Children of Don Quixote topple a couple windmills

Less than a month after it first pitched tents for homeless people in a gentrified section of Paris, a grassroots movement has struck camp declaring victory in a fight to make housing a right for all in France: After folding their tents in Paris, members of the group known as the Children of Don Quixote, set off for other European capitals to extend the campaign.

Feeling the pressure of a coming presidential election, French President Jacques Chirac used his New Year's address to the nation to announce his government was studying legislation that would make housing a right for all citizens.

Leading presidential candidates--Segolene Royal of the Socialists and Nicolas Sarkozy of the center-right Union for a Popular Movement party--quickly jumped on board with similar pledges. A few days later the government announced an emergency program to open 27,000 new places in shelters for those most in need.

Augustin Legrand--a bearded, 31-year-old, out-of-work actor who stands 6 foot 7 inches tall--launched a Web site Dec. 16 and with the help of his parents and three brothers began setting up bright red tents for the homeless on the banks of the Canal St-Martin, a fashionable neighborhood in eastern Paris.

Through an aggressive media campaign, he invited neighbors and celebrities to join the homeless in the camp for overnight stays. (He turned away Royal, who showed up with a retinue of journalists and photographers to document her night in the camp.)

The movement caught the public's imagination and similar camps sprouted in a half dozen other French cities.

Activists with established associations that work with the homeless criticized the Children of Don Quixote for dominating media coverage and "picking the ripe fruit" of years of work done by others.

Jean-Baptiste Legrand, the president of the Children of Don Quixote, dismissed the charge. He told NCR: "We had nothing to earn from the initiative," but the more traditional associations were actually "earning money" from the continuation of the status quo, which is why they made less radical demands on the politicians.

[Marc Mazgon-Fernandes is a freelance writer based in Brussels, Belgium.]

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