Word: townes
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...recruited armies of foreign workers until the growth boom went bust in the early 1980s. Jobs here and across France have been in short supply ever since. Nearly 20% of Saint-Gilles's residents are jobless, and practically all of those live on state assistance. Roughly 25% of the town's population of nearly 12,000 are immigrant or first-generation French citizens--virtually all of North African origin. Most live in the Sabatot housing projects uphill from the town's center and are frequently reviled by older Saint-Gilles inhabitants as disorderly, uncivil and crime prone...
Tourists have long admired Saint-Gilles for its ancient center: narrow streets, tightly packed stone buildings and 12th century monastery ruins. Its more recent political history, however, has given this Languedoc town a kind of ill fame across France. In 1989, Saint-Gilles became the first town to elect a mayor from the extreme-right National Front party. The National Front leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a perennial loser in presidential elections, has consistently placed first in Saint-Gilles. In short, the town has voted for the kind of xenophobic zealotry that for many years was disavowed by polite French...
...truly believes these policies are necessary," confides a retired Saint-Gilles farmer and past Le Pen voter who identifies himself only as André, "but also because Sarkozy has a far better chance of winning and applying them than Le Pen ever will." If that prediction is correct, this town so reviled for its politics in the past may turn out to have been simply ahead of its time...
Earlier this year, Takoma Park, Md., A suburb of Washington with a liberal tilt, held a special election to fill a vacant city-council seat. It was the town's latest contest under a 1992 law that allows any adult resident--including noncitizens--to vote for local offices. And since the election occurred at an odd time of year, officials took extra steps to get the word out. They mailed a notice, in Spanish and English, to every home. They sent a second notice to every registered voter. Yet when Election Day came, turnout was light, especially among noncitizens...
...would have been safer staying north, near the game parks and Victoria Falls. But Matabeleland is a microcosm of Zimbabwe's implosion. Thousands in the region are dying of malnutrition. Hundreds of thousands survive by trapping wild animals or bare-handed mining. When I arrived in the gold-rush town of West Nicholson, I met with a local miner in his bungalow. Several times during our 10-minute chat, he would step out for a few moments. It soon became clear why. When I emerged from his house, two plainclothes officers were waiting to detain...