Bordeaux, 19th Oct. 2001, Registered letter (Ack. of receipt)

to

Madam Chairman

1. It can be useful to specify that the leader of your company you mentioned is your own son, to whom I pointed out that you had certainly made an error in leaving my letter of February 7th without answer.
   When you argue that you were abroad, it cannot justify that you did not read a letter for which you signed an acknowledgement of receipt, and even though somebody else signed it, it would imply that in your company, the mail is not passed on to its CEO. After 2 years of correspondence with your close relations and yourself, a 7 months delay before you deign to answer to the first declared victim of facts that you recognize partially is not a big proof of "haste", and shows instead that, contrary to the assertions of your director of the 3rd-11-99, you did not take this matter "as seriously as it was required".
   From your first sentence moreover, you restrict the facts to the 1999 grape harvests only, and you never mention the other victims.
   
   
2. When you give the credit for the regular return of a "big part of the harvesters" to the friendly spirit which you declare to have maintained, many of the other domains could also take advantage of a weak turnover, and this, all the more they are away from Bordeaux. I myself moved closer from Margaux to your domain, although in that case one can effectively speak about this spirit (notably by the simplicity of the top management, the never-failing benevolence of the foremen, and a profit-sharing for the fixed employees).
   You attribute to this same friendly spirit the widely (?) positive aspect of answers to your questionnaire. You may forget that, most of the people questioned are employees under job constraint answering to their current / future employer. Maybe you forget also that, after 2 years, some harvesters are no more under such domination, and that I received assurances that some of them will speak.
   
   

3. You say that "Mr. Delmas has imposed harsh sanctions on the guilty ones". Very well, but on one hand neither he nor you touched on any measure taken for the victims, while the priority is opposite, and on the other hand, would there be no other responsibilities than those of the direct perpetrators ? They would not have been able to continue to knock down people into trucks if the foremen had not turned a blind eye. M Delmas will have to assume the responsibility for having conducted an inquiry without trying to obtain the detailed testimony from the victims, for breaking his word to inform the first declared victim (you did inform me about "harsh sanctions"), and for standing in the way of the search for and broadcasting of the truth (concealing proofs to the victims). Nevertheless, you are "sure that Mr. Delmas acted for the best to implement these domestic values". But how will you be able to justify your trust in someone whose deeds contest his word ?
   Finally, the Director and yourself will have to justify the lack of apology, all the more proposals of compensation, in spite your recognition of part of the facts.

4. When you regret that I you "did not inform you of these events in the proper time and place", you seem to forget also that I had the choice between to move away towards a more friendly domain, or to try to make peace with the tractor drivers, and you cannot ignore that I made this last choice (cf 25th-9-99 p2). As for me, I regret that 2 years after you were "informed about it", you have not still considered that I might tell the truth.
   Do you really believe that I took the risk to make up all this, even though, economically speaking, I am more than met my match, and that I would have taken the risk to pay expenses in such position ?
   

5. On the other hand, this hypothesis is to be considered for a moral and existential reason : I urge you to share my conviction that it is better to say the truth, not only for reasons of a "categorical imperative" or from fear of punishment, but because he is of our own interest to consider that nobody can escape from the subconscious, and that we should take care of it, or even to manage it.
   As Mr. Delmas will be accountable for writing that I was an "unwelcome visitor", you too will have to explain what you mean exactly by your terms "threats" and "defamations", and if you cannot give precise details, I shall demand other apologies. Furthermore, you mention my "insinuations saying that Management might have been a witness of your incident without reacting". As far as one can consider that "Direction" begins at the level of Director, not only I defy you to find a single quotation of similar meaning in my letters, but it will also be necessary to add to the grounds for complaint that of "invented and slanderous assertion". Finally, everyone will appraise your blending.

6. Sheer invention also, a little bit condescending one, when you say "We regret that you keep only a bitter memory from your experience in our company" : rather than to admit a truth that you do not appreciate, you project onto me an embittered profile which is far from being mine. I think on the contrary that some fruits are tasty only when their pits had been removed. There also "your company" is a mix of persons of which I keep a more or less good memory, while you would want me to throw away the baby with the bath water.
   Along with the same creative vein, you declare "to understand my anger about the unfortunate incident", in order to complete my painting as an embittered and irascible person.
   Please know that a computer search made on the word "anger" in all the letters of this correspondence supplies only one occurrence, which is in your letter, and I defy you to find a sentence with similar meaning in any of my writings. If I speak about "resentment" in my 1st letter of the 25th-9-99, I don't refer to the possible feeling of the victims, but to those that regret less violence than its denunciation ; it is advisable here to have a thought for the rest of the staff which could be affected, which I can help only by advising them to think about the recent case of the employees of AOM, victims of your next-door neighbor.
   

7. On the other hand, I used several times the words "dignity, respect, apology", facing the terms "violence and depredations of property with premeditation and repetitions". You do not mention any of these first concepts, and to go on with the same blame I have laid on your director, you try to minimize the facts by limiting them to my single case, to a single year, and to a single "incident". I shall not condemn your way of doing, like you do with me, when it is up to justice to judge these attempts to hush up facts and to ignore the victims.
   
   
8. You feel only regrets while what is needed is apology and clear commitments, if we "think to future in a positive way".
   
   

9. Following your Director and his lawyer, you repeat the fault of considering only material and secondary aspects, declared as such (the clothing wrapping : cf. item 3 of my comments of the 26th-1-01), while values such as dignity are ignored. The only values mentioned are domestic values, while here it is more widely about clannish values : defense of the interests of the majority shareholders of a public company whose declared purpose is profit-making, relations based more on a feudal model of vassalage than on the universal principles upon which our republic is based (on the one hand, part of the permanent staff expels at once a harvester for verbal violence, on the other hand they turned a blind eye during several years to the repeated physical violence carried out by members of this staff : is it the way to grant an equal respect to everyone ?).

10. Same fault, but made for the 3rd time about the cleaning of clothes (cf 9th-11-00 et 26th-01-01).
    Idem for the "relevant documents" (cf. my comments of the 26th-1-01), about what it should also be stated that the estimate of 2000F that I sent to you (9-11-2000) shows that your assertion according to which "a 1500F cheque will widely cover the expenses" is deceitful, and that it only takes into account one of the 6 damages listed in this letter. Since, for example, I have just finished 14 days of grape harvests "on my last legs" (I still have 2 blisters on my right hand), and since I was - for two years running - under the constraint of an increased distance to the work place, that just confirms that prejudice is still going on, what you persist in ignoring.
    

11. Idem for the immediate appeal to your lawyers before any proposal of compensation to the victims. Since you pretend to ignore what I wrote in the 1st point of my comments of the 26th-1-01, "The fact that Mr. J.B. DELMAS prefers to give money to a lawyer rather than to the victims - seasonal workers with limited resources - aggravates his case", I shall ask that the other victims share between them - as compensation - twice the fees you will give them.

12. Finally, why do you persist in speaking about money for a love rule (excluding the other victims), even when you are answering to my letter of the 7th-02-01 in which I clearly declare "please consider as null and void my proposal of amicable settlement as long as personal apologies are not made to the victims" ?
    

13. For all these repetitions, and because the victims, of whom some might well become my witnesses (and even could possibly join me and assert their claims for legal redress, would it be only a moral one), can only be revealed by an independent inquiry - your own being quite unreliable - as well as because it is necessary to settle who says the truth and who does not want to discover it, therefore I shall take legal action to claim an increase in the estimation of the "pretium doloris", as I had warned you I'll do ( the 7th-2-01),so that the compensation takes into account all the damages I listed and penalizes this oblivion of the victims, which can be termed now a contempt (after 2 years of correspondence, and in spite of the acknowledgement of part of the facts and liabilities).
    
    

14. Since you still refuse to consider the possibility that there were other victims, I can only offer you a last chance of avoiding an action at law if I don't claim for the others also their fundamental right - protected by the constitution - to respect and dignity. We shall well see which conception of justice will win out : that of an equal justice for all or that of a justice applied to only one.
    Of course, we have just seen "sliced" cases, helicopters in the Himalaya, reciprocal indulgences at a top state level which are likely to weaken the credit of our institutions abroad, suits abandoned for procedural irregularities, freemason's lodges "a little bit too clannish" within the judicial institution, local practices aimed to avoid any disturbance to the local worthies rather than to recognize the rights of everyone, or aiming to slow down the enforcement of laws for the weakest welfare...
    But let us remain optimistic, at first because there are still honest judges ((Eric de Montgolfier, Van Ruynbecke & his Swiss counterpart), then because we are responsible for the smooth running of our society, would it be only in order to enjoy ourselves a "friendlier" life, finally because general instructions were given to the judiciary so as to sanction severely the infringements on the dignity, unpunished up to now for being "traditional" ones ("raggings",...), and because here, besides, there was physical violence.

15. Faced with the disasters that you deplore, and in order to avoid them in future, it would be necessary to look into the causes of violence, and to prosecute the culprits will never be as effective as to dry up his main source : inequalities and injustices. You talk about New York, but is it fair not to mention equally Sabra & Chatila, and to refuse to see the source of these atrocities in the daily violence committed by the powerful against people whose right to forge their future has been denied during 25 years ?
    Actually, how can we eradicate the kamikaze phenomenon (or acts like the one committed by Werner) if justice does not protect better and quicker (Papon, Pinochet) the weak from the abuses of the mighty , and if we let some of these weak think that they have no other way to exercise their right to resist oppression ? As for me, I request everyone to share the point of view of the Human Rights League, which "firmly reminds that certain acts cannot remain unpunished", and I take the liberty of adding : would it be only a symbolic condemnation.
    If you don't care about people's dignity, if you take advantage of the inequality and its development (important increase of the vintage wine prices and development of a speculative bubble outside any control, versus a regression of the wage part in the wealth produced, along with the extension of mass unemployment and precarious jobs), and if you minimize injustices, you are part of the problem more than of the solution.
    
    
16. As for the unselfish aspect of our action, I already knew the variant of the politician who are multiple office holders and claim they are fighting unemployment. Given the present circumstances , while your Director declares that "we are gathering gold in the estate", it is quite laughable. To speak about it seriously, I have to mention the argument used by one of my fellow travellers in a meeting with Sister Emmanuelle, namely that charity has not to be a substitute to justice.
    Ite, missa est.

Yours sincerely.