Charlie Hebdo: Demonstrations in New York and Washington

Several hundred people, braving the freezing weather, gathered in New York and Washington on Wednesday to condemn the attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo and to support freedom of the press.

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was one of the 300 protesters in Washington. She came to show her support with her fellow countrymen and her sympathy with the victims.

“We are all still in shock,” she said. “These are cartoonists whose work we have seen every day for years. Cabu even drew me once and it made me laugh at the time.” She added that the attack was “both an attack right at the heart of Paris and a challenge to freedom of speech.”

The demonstration took place in front of the Newseum, a museum dedicated to the American press, and was organized by French expatriate Olivier Roumy, who told Agence France-Presse that he “witnessed the 9/11 attacks, and has today witnessed France’s 9/11.”

Before the names of the victims were read, Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations insisted that Jews, Christians and Muslims were “all united in the face of tyranny.”

Several hundred people, the majority of them French, gathered in New York’s Union Square in temperatures as low as minus 4 Fahrenheit, singing the French national anthem and chanting “Charlie, Charlie.” France’s United Nations Representative François Delattre and the Consul General in New York, Bertrand Lortholary, were among those present.

“How can you not cry?” choked Pacale Padiou through tear-filled eyes, a French woman who came with her husband and 16-year-old son. “Are we no longer allowed to express our emotions? Are they going to shoot us?”

“I am a journalist, I am the Charlie generation, we are all Charlie,“ explained a distraught Mylène Massé. “It’s horrendous. But they haven’t succeeded. They have made France stand up.”

“I wouldn’t have believed that in one month I was going to protest for the life of blacks, and now for Charlie,” commented finance worker, Caroline Mezière. “Even far away, we are still French and we are proud of Charlie.“