For most of her youth, Aissata Tounkara studied, played and danced within smelling distance of garbage bins.
The all-girl, hip-hop dance troupe that she and her teenage girlfriends created to avoid the hostile young men in her suburban neighborhood rehearsed in a government apartment block next to a grungy room filled with garbage bins. The space where her mother helped neighborhood youngsters with homework adjoined the garbage bin space in her public housing project. The local mosque occupied the former garbage alcove of another apartment complex.
"When you grow up here, you always have the feeling that you are being associated with garbage," said Tounkara, born 29 years ago in this town of sterile apartment blocks and strip malls on the western edge of Paris.
Two weeks ago, the government chose Tounkara, daughter of Muslim immigrants from Mali, as the personification of its efforts to bring change to its most alienated communities. She won an annual contest for the most innovative business proposal from a young entrepreneur from the poor, multiethnic suburbs. She has since been feted by corporations, ministers and presidential candidates for her plans to open an ethnic clothing, jewelry and food shop.
But with France preparing nervously for the anniversary Friday of last fall's nationwide rash of suburban violence, Tounkara -- articulate and ambitious -- has turned her award and her access to the French elite into a podium to confront a government she said is doing little to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people and their families in restive suburban ghettos.
"I got a prize and they forgot about the other ones," said Tounkara, who wears dreadlocks bundled neatly inside layers of scarves. Her family and many friends, she said, have urged her to curb her criticism, especially in her face-to-face meetings with top government officials including Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin: "People tell me to be careful, but I'm not scared."
Little steps
The French government contends it's trying. The ministry responsible for housing, employment and social programs said it has signed contracts to renovate buildings in 112 of the country's poorest suburban neighborhoods and plans to replace or renovate government housing projects in an additional 358 communities over the next seven years. The government has also launched employment programs, though most have failed to generate significant numbers of jobs.
It was in Tounkara's home town of Argenteuil, within sight of her apartment, that Sarkozy exacerbated last year's violence by referring to the youths involved as "rabble." The clashes between youths and police began when two boys were electrocuted Oct. 27 after leaping into a power substation while fleeing police. The violence and arson spread to virtually every town in France. Rioters burned an estimated 10,000 cars and attacked or torched more than 300 public buildings.
The entrance to the town of Argenteuil, with a population of more than 95,000, is marked by a yellow sign: "Flower town."
Among its towers of shabby subsidized apartment blocks, there are few flowers, only small strips of grass and swaths of concrete. Carpets and sheets hang out windows, drying in the dim light of a fall afternoon.
Six police cars are parked in the shadows of a highway underpass. "That's new," she said. "They're getting ready for this weekend."
In a classified memorandum leaked to the French newspaper Le Figaro earlier this week, security officials said the social conditions that led to last year's violence remain unchanged and warned police forces to prepare for a possible recurrence in the next few days. Tensions have risen throughout the suburbs in recent weeks, with several major clashes between police and youths.
Overnight Wednesday, youths -- some of them armed -- forced passengers off three buses in suburban Paris, then set the vehicles on fire. No injuries were reported.
Tounkara, like most residents of suburban public housing projects, has little use for the French police. Three years ago, she said, when she reported her 1988 Peugeot stolen, the police officer accused her of filing the report to get insurance money. When she said she had no insurance, he threatened to arrest her for that omission. She stormed out of the tiny station house with its rusted sign on the front door. Her car was never found.
A short walk from that police station is the government-subsidized housing complex where Tounkara and her three siblings grew up with her parents -- farmers who migrated from Mali and raised four children on small salaries earned cleaning buildings in Argenteuil.
"My dad always made sure that we did our homework," Tounkara said. "He was aware that it would be our way out."
Tounkara followed his advice, and did so well in math that she was accepted in a post-high school accounting program at a prestigious school in a neighboring suburb. She went on to study television production.
After her long hours scrubbing and cleaning in the housing projects, Tounkara's mom worked as a volunteer helping youngsters with their homework. They met in an unused room next to the garbage bins. But the government didn't make it easy for children in her building to do homework: The building supervisor ordered her mother to pay rent for the space, money she could not spare.
The building where her parents still live -- Tounkara now has her own apartment, which she shares with her boyfriend, in another government apartment block nearby -- recently received a new coat of white paint and shutters.
"Cosmetic," said Tounkara, raising her voice over the screaming engine of a passing motorcycle. "The government has given money for buildings but nothing for the people. Buildings are not enough."
She walks across the town center, an abandoned square of broken concrete and abandoned shops. Groups of bored young men in hooded sweat shirts lounge on crumbling concrete walls. She doesn't shrink away. "How's it going?" she asks, voice soft but firm. She gets looks but no hassles.
Little police presence
Police seldom venture deep into these neighborhoods. Police union officials have said repeatedly in the past few weeks that many of the suburban areas are too dangerous for officers to enter.
There are good and bad neighborhoods within the housing projects, said Tounkara, crossing a community called the Musicians Quarter (its streets are named for the likes of Beethoven and Chopin) and heading toward the bad side of town.
"One family with problems can create a bad reputation for a neighborhood," she explained. "There was one family with seven kids in jail. The government moved them out."
She launched her idea for a shop selling African clothes and jewelry and the apparel of other ethnic groups -- the kinds of things she likes to wear -- when she was laid off several months ago by a television production company.
"When you're born in such a neighborhood, it's harder to succeed," she said. "We're aware of it. A lot of the friends I had had a very hard time finding a job. Some people became drug addicts, others went to prison, and others struggled but still can't find a job.
"My mother couldn't help me find a job because she only knows cleaning ladies," she continued. "We realized that not everybody was equal."
Tounkara's prize from the government's "Talent in the Suburbs" contest was the equivalent of $1,900 and a corporate sponsor to assist in her project. She's looking for space in central Paris. Her neighbors in the suburbs, she said, can't afford even the modestly priced items she plans to sell.
"We want to help, but we won't devote our lives to change what this state created," Tounkara said.
"I live in an ugly neighborhood. I'd like to own a house with a garden in a nicer suburban area," she said. "I won't have children in Argenteuil. I want a better life for them. Our parents didn't have a choice . . . but I have a choice to live in a better neighborhood."
Researcher Corinne Gavard contributed to this report.
