Paint the Town Red

Comrades and small property owners.

You came to Bobigny fleeing the high rents of Paris and seeking to emancipate yourselves from the rapacity of the bourgeois who exploit you in all possible ways.

Unfortunately, in our city you have found only high taxes, absurdly poor means of communication, rutted streets, insufficient lighting, mounds of garbage, and no drinking water.... On the other hand, you have a city administration that is very costly and incapable of making any social progress.

The schools have neither daycare centers nor lunch rooms, and your children have to wade through the mud in the winter in order to come home for lunch.

In cities dominated by socialist elements, they make the effort to create means of social education, such as youth clubs, scientific conferences, and so forth.

For these reasons we invite you to join us and examine with us those municipal issues that are of greatest interest to you.

—Socialists of Bobigny, 1910