Fighting Brexit with Croissants
By Nadja Spiegelman , 11:52 A.M.
The idea was beautifully simple. On Wednesday morning, a day in advance of the referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union, a team of people would board the Eurostar train in Paris with six hundred croissants in tow. Two hours later, the pastries still slightly warm, they would hand them out outside of Kings Cross station, in London, along with postcards bearing, on their fronts, the message “Ceci n’est pas qu’un croissant” (this is not just a croissant) and, on their backs, hundreds of different messages professing love and urging unity ...
We wanted a gesture that was literally sweet,” the operation’s mastermind, Rosa Rankin-Gee, a twenty-nine-year-old British citizen who lives in Paris, told me. “This campaign—because it’s yes or no, black or white—it’s been so divisive. It’s so full of hateful language and violence. I wanted to do something that was distinctly opposite from that. An act of positivity and friendship.”
The idea came to her during a conversation with a group of friends from primary school. Like many young people who had benefitted from the open borders that allowed them to work, live, and travel freely across Europe, they were against the so-called Brexit. But one friend piped up, saying that she was on the fence. Rankin-Gee asked her, “‘If I bring you a croissant, would that change your vote?” The friend said yes, and the next day sent her a photo of her postal ballot, where she had ticked the box saying that Britain should remain in the E.U. Within ten days, Rankin-Gee had assembled a team ...
Then, on Tuesday, the day before Operation Croissant was to take place, a message from the Homicide and Major Crime unit of London’s Metropolitan Police arrived in her inbox. The office had got wind of the plan and informed her that handing out croissants would constitute an electoral-fraud offense. The team would be in violation of the “treating” law, which prohibits the distribution of food or drink “for the purposes of corruptly influencing a person to vote” ...
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/fighting-brexit-with-six-hundred-croissants
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