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1. 2/13/12 Jean-Christophe Parisot, a Champion of France s Downtrodden - NYTimes.com
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"I have a very special relationship w ith people. They know I've endured so much that they immediately respect me," said
Jean-Christophe Parisot.
By MA A DE LA BAUME
Published: January 13, 2012
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MONTPELLIER, France FIVE seat belts strapped Jean-Christophe RECOMMEND
Parisot to his seat in a van on his way to a desolate Roma TWITTER
neighborhood in this city in southern France. A home care aide LINKEDIN
carefully stabilized his head and held a telephone to his ear. E-MAIL
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He might have looked like a patient
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Languedoc-Roussillon, it was just
another day on the job. At the age of 91 articles in the
past month All Recommendations
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10, Mr. Parisot received a diagnosis of 1. IHT RENDEZVOUS
Editors
limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, a rare genetic The Delicately Poised Chemistry of
Enlarge This Image Diplomacy
degenerative disease that has, so far, paralyzed his torso
and most of his limbs. 2. SOCIAL Q’S
Take Her at Face V alue
On average, people with his condition die when they are 30
3. EDITORIAL
to 40 years old. So Mr. Parisot, whose two sisters have the Attacks on Disclosure
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2. 2/13/12 Jean-Christophe Parisot, a Champion of France s Downtrodden - NYTimes.com
same disease, has learned to live with the knowledge that 4. OFF THE CHARTS
A Recov ery With Business Stepping O
he probably does not have many years left. “I often tell my in Front
children that the quality is more important than the
5. IN TRANSIT
quantity of years,” he said. Sun Salutation Indeed: Y oga on a
Paddleboard
In a country where only 35 percent of physically disabled
6. SHORTCUTS
people are employed, Mr. Parisot has been a trailblazer all
Nanda Gonzague f or The New Y ork Times
Prev enting Identity Theft Without
Mr. Parisot, 44, a deputy prefect in Pay ing Monthly Fees
France, w here he tends to the needs his life, and he recently became the first disabled person to
of immigrants, the poor and the elderly. be named a deputy prefect. In that capacity, he is in charge 7 . Canadian Company Swept Up in
of what France calls “social cohesion,” tending to the needs Suspected Plot to Smuggle a Qaddafi
of the elderly, immigrants and the poor.
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His nomination as deputy prefect was surprising in a country where success stories like his
are rare. It was “a signal,” he said, to show disabled people that they can attain the highest 9. CHICAGO NEWS COOPERATIVE
goals. President Nicolas Sarkozy said as much at the time of Mr. Parisot s appointment. Another City s Lesson About Crime
Reduction
“I m going to appoint a quadriplegic man as a prefect, not for his handicap,” Mr. Sarkozy
said, “but for his competence.” 1 0. EDITORIAL
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Mr. Parisot cannot write by hand or type; he endures four hours of medical treatment PRESENT ED BY
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every day and can breathe only with mechanical assistance. His office is constantly kept at What’s This? | Don’t Show
80.6 degrees Fahrenheit to help him make use of the last remaining working muscles in
his hands. But he can talk, and he speaks slowly and eloquently. He has an exceptional
memory, and he works 60 hours a week.
His ability to talk about his disability without reserve, his limitless ambition in a steadily
weakening body and his political connections developed at the elite Institut d Études
Politiques de Paris, better known as Sciences Po, have made him an unofficial spokesman
and role model for many disabled people.
“He is so handicapped that what he did is exceptional,” said Philippe Van Den Herreweghe, Ma the Best Actor get the
a disabled friend in charge of disability employment policies at the French Education
most attention
Ministry. “Mr. Parisot has helped change the glances of others, to change attitudes and ALSO IN MOVIES »
reduce prejudice.” Cast your Oscar votes
George Clooney & Alexander Payne interviewed by Da
Mr. Parisot s life, in a country where he says physical and mental disabilities are still seen Carr
as “human tragedy,” has been one of firsts.
In 1989, he became the first handicapped student to graduate from Sciences Po, where his ADVERTISEMENTS
wheelchair would not fit into the building s ancient elevators. (A friend managed to
narrow the width of the wheelchair by removing some screws, forcing Mr. Parisot to sit
In trodu ci n g: Th e In teracti v e A rts &
for eight hours every school day in a cramped seat.) En tertai n m en t Gu i de
Moving up through the hierarchy of France s public administration at an exceptional pace,
he was appointed at 41 as the prefect s collaborator in the department of Lot, in the
southwest of France, becoming the nation s first disabled local administrator.
“I m not the typical civil servant locked in my ivory tower,” Mr. Parisot said in an
interview. “I have a very special relationship with people. They know I ve endured so
much that they immediately respect me.”
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With four permanent assistants, Mr. Parisot works to reduce the isolation of the elderly
and improve living conditions for one of France s largest communities of Roma, or Disabilit
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Gypsies. He often travels to nursing homes, prisons and troubled neighborhoods.
$35,000 in Disability Credits.
HE has learned to conduct his life with the same speed and determination with which he .TheNBA.ca
steers his motorized wheelchair along the narrow corridors of the prefecture. He has
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3. 2/13/12 Jean-Christophe Parisot, a Champion of France s Downtrodden - NYTimes.com
written six books, including a novel, an essay on theology — he is the youngest deacon in
France — and a biography of a distant cousin, Frédéric Chopin, while raising four healthy
children with his wife, Katia.
“My wife and I wondered many times if we had the right to have children,” Mr. Parisot
said, adding that doctors told them there was a 3.5 percent chance that their children
would inherit his disease.
Born in 1967 in what is now Burkina Faso, in West Africa, where his father worked as an
engineer for the French Navy, Mr. Parisot spent most of his teenage years coping with
fatigue, solitude and the pity that his condition inspired. “I experienced people looking the
other way, the embarrassment of relatives, the disguised hypocrisy,” Mr. Parisot wrote in
his book. “My body was strangeness, my lifestyle eccentricity.”
While his schoolmates were taking swimming or soccer lessons, Mr. Parisot was writing to
all the descendants of Napoleon s generals to ask about their ancestors battles.
His parents learned that they were carriers of the disease when their first child was 7, and
then watched as their other two children developed symptoms. Back in the 1970s, Mr.
Parisot said, limb-girdle muscular dystrophy had not even been identified as a discrete
disorder. Nevertheless, all three siblings have made constructive lives for themselves; one
of Mr. Parisot s sisters is an engineer, the other a parliamentary aide.
“I told my children that even if they didn t have legs, they would always have their
brains,” said Martine Parisot, Mr. Parisot s mother.
After years in the Civil Service, some at the Education Ministry, Mr. Parisot co-founded in
2000 the Collective of Disabled Democrats, a party aimed at defending the interests of the
six million disabled people in France. He tried to qualify for the presidential race in 2002
and 2007 but could not gather the required signatures of 500 local officials from across
the country.
“I wanted to show that the handicapped weren t spectators, but actors in political life,” Mr.
Parisot said. His party s program included increasing France s budget for disabled people,
establishing legal protections against discrimination toward them and promoting a debate
on sexual assistance for the mentally and physically disabled.
Mr. Parisot s physical condition and his exceptional determination occasionally intimidate
some of his colleagues. Bernard Andrieu, who worked with him in Lot, said that each of
his visits outside the office required considerable logistics, and that “his work pace
sometimes overwhelmed the people who worked with him.”
But Mr. Parisot has learned not to be shy. In 2007, he met with Claude Guéant, then chief
of staff to Mr. Sarkozy and now minister of the interior, and told him that he wanted to be
a prefect.
“Mr. Guéant asked me if I would be able to hold a meeting with 50 people,” he said. “I
said yes.”
While constantly fighting fatigue and declining health, he denounces a world made only
for “bipeds,” and is particularly critical of French companies, which rarely follow
government quotas to hire more disabled people.
But he takes heart that two years ago a second disabled civil servant was named a deputy
prefect, this time in the tiny Gers district, in southwest France. And he says that he has no
qualms about the future, whatever it holds.
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4. 2/13/12 Jean-Christophe Parisot, a Champion of France s Downtrodden - NYTimes.com
“I don t fear living, and I don t fear death either,” he says. “I believe in God, and he knows
what is good for me.”
A version of this article appeared in print on January 14, 2012, on page
A4 of the New York edition w ith the headline: A Champion of France’s
Dow ntrodden, With Limits of His Ow n.
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