during their strike. The Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste During 2008, Autain became involved with the Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste (NPA) (New Anticapitalist Party) under development, launched by the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire. Autain attended the national conference of l'Appel de Politis, a movement to create an alternative to the left. She called for "an acting out", making reference to the necessary creation of a new political force. However, this unity did not materialize. Clémentine Autain expressed regret that Olivier Besancenot and the NPA did not seek to build political majorities nor to work and create alliances with others, such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Today Autain is active with Fédération pour une alternative sociale et écologique (FASE), for which she is spokesperson. In particular, she has represented FASE at the congress of the Parti de Gauche de Jean-Luc Mélenchon, indicating her desire to work with him despite differences on issues such as secularism, the Republic, the forms of political organisation or the concept of "revolution through the ballot box", to which she prefers that of "democratic revolution". Activism Autain was raped at knifepoint near the Université de Paris VIII when she was 22. She first revealed this publicly in 2006. As the spokesperson for Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the 2012 presidential election, she disclosed this during the presidential pre-campaign as "a way to bring the issue of violence into the debate". This rape marked, for her, the start of her engagement in feminism. She was active in the Union des étudiants communistes. She supported the Collectif contre le viol and contributed her feminist perspective. She made the Mouvement de libération des femmes (MLF) the thesis topic for her DEA in History. In 1997, she decided to create a new feminist organisation, Mix-Cité, for which she was co-president. The organisation is well known in France for its protests against the use of live models in the display windows of the shopping center Galeries Lafayette. She next worked as a parliamentary assistant to Georges Mazars, the Senator for the department of Tarn. She worked with Cécile Silhouette, a Paris councilor, who was elected as a representative of Ensemble pour une gauche alternative et écologiste. According to Le Monde, she would also have been close to the leftwing socialist current associated Jean-Luc Mélenchon. See also Mix-Cité Parti communiste français Regards References Bibliography Anne Delabre, Clémentine Autain. Portrait, Danger public, novembre 2006. External links Portrait de Clémentine Autain in Libération