Parvis de l’appel du 1er février 1954

The Parvis de l’appel du premier février nineteen fifty-four takes its name from an event that galvanized a nation during an exceptionally lethal winter. On that date, the abbé Pierre, a former deputy and founder of the Emmaüs movement, delivered a radio broadcast on Radio-Luxembourg that moved listeners to what he famously termed an insurrection of kindness. He spoke of a woman found frozen to death on a Paris sidewalk, clutching an eviction notice, and demanded an immediate, massive mobilization to shelter the homeless.