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Hi Gemini! A short text to talk about what is happening in the streets of Paris and elsewhere, as I'm spending most of my time and energy out there. If you saw trash on fire, I'm going to talk mostly about that. I won't talk about what the reform is about; essentially, people's anger is focused on the change of the legal age for retirement, pushed from 62 to 64 years, which a good two thirds of the population rejects, including a significant part demanding the legal age to be 60 again.
The law has been discussed in the parliament since January, followed right after by the “intersyndicale”, a coalition of unions, calling for protests in every city. These protests gathered a lot of people, were rather calm, without a lot of fights. Weeks after weeks, the government insisted on pushing the reform and lied several times on TV, to the point that usually complacent journalists got angry against officials, feeling duped. The rallying had ups and downs but until the 7 of March we still had a massive presence in the streets. Fearing they were about to lose the vote in the parliament, Macron decided to use the 49-3 to adopt the law without a vote. A “motion de censure”, vote of no confidence, failed to only 9 voices (got 278 voices, with 287 required). See the links below for details on our shitty system!
Wednesday Macron talked on the news to not say anything new, which angered the population even more. The following day, the protect called by the intersyndicale gathered between 1 and 3.5 million people, and was the biggest gathering ever recorded in Paris for a union-called protest.
So what's going on in the streets?
Unions call for protests and gatherings, which are mostly non-violent, with a very diverse panel of protesters, except bourgeois and retired people, Macron's voters.
But since the usage of 49-3, at the end of those events, people don't want to go home anymore. They are angry and want to protest more. The police obviously does not want that and tries to send everyone back home. Bigger crowds get in “nasse”, police blocking every way out and no one can leave or one-by-one. Smaller groups manage to form protests, called “manif' sauvage” (wild protest), without an organisation, nor watchword, nor known course, nor declaration obviously. In these manifs sauvages, folks yell slogans, laugh, move swiftly, block the streets behind them, burn trash, break stuff, explode in smaller groups when the police runs through them, gather again by chance and get back to it! In several places at once in Paris but also in other cities, until midnight and after. Tactically, because we roam in busy streets, it is easier to scatter and avoid the police. Strategically, we tire them out day after day.
In these protests you meet a lot of young people, with varying sociological backgrounds, who don't see themselves going back home after witnessing Macron's arrogance. Some want to mess around the streets to show their despondency, others do it simply to hinder the BRAV-M, the cops running after protesters on motorcycles to beat them up. For the first time the mainstream media use the term “violence policière”, which was previously unacceptable on national TV. Of course there are some really angry protesters and a good amount of manliness display, but there are a lot of girls, as angry as the guys, roaming the streets. Most importantly there is a serious amount of shared joy (“wooow that was a close one! :D” after a successful escape from the cops) and kindliness among protesters. Lots of them are in the streets for the first time, not really sure about what's going on but not easily afraid by the BRAV-M, whose actual goal is to terrify people so they won't come back.
We saw a 19 year old boy get run over by a cop, then return to the next demonstration on crutches. We saw a well-dressed girl calmly light her cigarette on a garbage fire. We saw a young girl enumerating her first baptisms of the evening, first gassing, first blow of baton, first arrest (with release fortunately), telling us that it was quite a lot but without thinking of withdrawing from the fight. We heard a lot of insults from the cops, from angry residents, but also testimonies of support from waiters, people on the terrace, and also from residents. A group of young tourists were waltzing in front of a garbage fire with accordion music; we said “Welcome to Paris!” and they answered laughing “Thank you!” We also saw fires overflowing and endangering houses: in most cases the first concerned, inhabitants and shopkeepers, recognize themselves that demonstrators come to help to calm the fire.
Hi Elon by the way, who spoke publicly in favor of the reform (what are you meddling with? dumbass), as Tesla regularly get targeted along the way.
A Tesla catching fire (a neighbor came to extinguish it) (187KB)
🔥
It's difficult to know what's going on in public opinion. Obviously the wildness of some demonstrations is shocking, but as most people are ulcerated by Macron's contempt, the breakage is understood. Not very condoned, but understood. The walls that the peaceful appeals ran into solidified the determination to take the mobilization to the next level, but it's not clear that burning garbage cans (the garbage collectors' strike meant that Paris was temporarily under more than 10,000 tons of uncollected garbage) produce an image of any use. Showing the world Paris on fire, it allows to stick a picture in accordance with the state of mind of the population. Let the strikers know that Paris does not rest as far as the refinery in Fos-sur-Mer. On the other hand, we obviously fear that the breakage (we are talking mostly about harmless fires and not the indiscriminate breaking of businesses) will serve as a totem for the executive to show the demonstrators as beasts with a thirst for violence, justifying a brutal repression. It's good to remember that many demonstrators don't break anything or not much at all, maybe just trip up a trash can here and there. On the other hand, in the manifs sauvages, as now most of the time in union demonstrations, groups smashing McDonalds, banks or blocking the streets with construction barriers are rarely booed. The perennial conflict between the unions and the famous lead procession born in 2016, if I am not mistaken, seems to be suspended in recent weeks. This is also what Andreas Malm observed on the weekend of March 25 in Sainte Soline during the confrontation between demonstrators and police: “Very often, in my activist experience, I have observed tension between radical demonstrators and other demonstrators who tried to dissuade them. That's not what I saw this weekend.”
Already in the last few days, the amplification of the police mobilization and repression seems to have put a blow to the volatility of the manifs sauvages. On Saturday, the BRAV-M was so omnipresent that they only found a bunch of Spanish tourists to arrest… It's hard to imagine how these wild demonstrations will evolve. Although they provide an undeniable adrenaline to the participants, let's keep in mind that these are only demonstrations of urban anger, a small part of the strategy that can lead us to throw this reform in the dustbin. We are not shooting at the Versaillais like it's 1871.
We also see blockades all over France on strategic infrastructures: refineries, ports, activity zones, incineration centers. I regularly try to participate in the blocking of the Romainville waste disposal center in the suburbs of Paris, which is used to collect the city's garbage following the shutdown of incinerators, but we are now being beaten up.
It is too early to draw definitive political conclusions, but it is easy to understand that the French are now openly disagreeing with the functioning of their institutions and the omnipotence of the president, and an executive that drapes itself in legalism and police repression does not respond to this rage. As one police union representative inadvertently pointed out, it is now the police who "hold the republic at arm's length". I can't wait for the cramp.
Jérémie Zimmermann explains better than me the events leading up here and also what the hell is 49-3:
Jérémie Zimmermann on Mastodon
Talking about us on CrimethInc:
[CrimethInc] France: The Movement against the Pension Reform
Andreas Malm quote:
