Paris Residents Urged To Poop In Seine River Today

I have been aware of many protests in my lifetime, but this one ranks near the top of the list. Marches, rallies, pickets, and even sit-ins, but this is the first time I have ever heard of a sh*t in.

The residents of Paris are angered that, in preparation for the Olympics this summer, the French government has already spent nearly $1.5 billion trying to clean the river enough to make it swimmable, even as wet weather has complicated those efforts.

In May, the Surfrider charity conducted tests and found contaminants at levels higher than those allowed by sports federations. One reading at Paris’ iconic Alexandre III bridge showed levels three times higher than the maximum permitted by triathlon and open-water swimming federations, according to the French news agency AFP. Subsequent tests conducted during the first eight days of June also showed continued contamination.

On Friday, officials announced that test results from mid-June revealed levels of E. coli and enterococci bacteria in the river. Despite this, Axios reported that Paris region official Marc Guillaume expressed confidence that the events scheduled for the river would proceed as planned.

The water in the river has been unsafe to swim in for at least a century, yet despite that, French President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo vowed to take a plunge in the water today, June 23, as a show of solidarity that the water will be fine. I believe Parisians are angered not only over the expense of the cleanup but also by the fact that the city and government seem fit to clean the river for the Olympics but didn’t care enough to do it for the general population for over a century.

This is not unlike how Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, uncaringly ignored the homelessness and filth on San Francisco’s streets for years but then suddenly cleaned them up ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit for a high-level meeting with President Joe Biden on November 14, 2023.

After the swim by Macron and Hildago was announced, Parisians on social media formulated a plan to make the politicians “bathe in our sh*t.”

Under the hashtag #JeChieDansLaSeineLe23Juin, which when translated means “I sh*t in the Seine on June 23,” and a website under the same name went viral  supporters of the protest used it as a rallying cry urging everybody to sh*t in the water.

“Because after putting us in sh*t, it’s up to them to bathe in our sh*t,” the website declares. It also features a calculator that lets users input how far they live from central Paris and then calculates when they would need to defecate in the river for the waste to end up in the heart of the capital at noon on June 23. A popular meme with the hashtag shows toilets along the bank of the river.

This is intriguing and very possibly incredibly ignorant. The Olympics are only a month away, and all the officials involved insist that the river will be swimmable. They insist on this despite the water being contaminated with unsafe levels of E. coli and enterococci bacteria and Parisians planning on adding to the contamination with additional fecal matter. In fact, Olympic Committee executive Christophe Dubi has defiantly declared that there is “no reason to doubt” that Olympic events will be held in the river this summer.

Well, this problem stinks for the Olympics and Paris in general. However, in this case, no one can say that the Parisians don’t give a sh*t.