Think Locally...
Socialist Manuel Valls is taking on what he terms "the largest challenge confronting France today" — the modernization and integration of increasingly disparate sections of society. To do that, Valls is challenging many sacrosanct French political tenets with activist proposals to desegregate economically and ethnically defined banlieue populations and embrace "positive discrimination" for minority groups.
"Evry presents the essential urban challenges facing France: immigration, high unemployment, rising crime and deteriorating social relations," Valls says. "I'll have time later for higher-profile jobs at the national level. This is where I need to be now." His unconventional positions reflect Valls' unusual political route to city hall. Raised in France by a Spanish father and a Swiss mother, he attained French citizenship in 1982. Forgoing the finishing schools common to France's political élite, Valls entered the Socialist Party at ground level, becoming "a professional politician by engagement, not instruction."
After nearly a decade of work as a party activist and parliamentary aide, Valls was named adviser to Socialist Premier Michel Rocard in 1990 at the age of 28.
When conservatives gained power in 1993, Valls won a spot on the Socialist Party's national committee, and in 1997 he directed its savvy communications campaign during legislative polls that swept the left back into government. That achievement earned Valls a job as Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's spokesman and image czar, a post he left last year to become mayor of Evry, a town outside Paris. That precociously-obtained, hands-on education may allow Valls to spring rapidly to a national position once his work in Evry is done.
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