Contemporary France. News, Politics, Films, Books
The posters are brave, cheery, a little wrinkled: “Together to build the future.” Not this year. Traditionally May Day is dominated by workers and their unions, all of them, like the large Confédération générale du travail (CGT), founded in the late nineteenth century, using it …
The final filing date for the European Parliament elections was May 3, 2019, with the vote to be held throughout the member nations from May 23 to May 26. The Local, a Paris-based English language newspaper, has a full explanation of the process. In brief, …
“‘All politicians are the same, Left or Right,’ declared a sixty-year-old shopkeeper. ‘Always a lot of words, a lot of principles, but what do people see? The concrete. They see prices rising, insecurity, unemployment . . . and one day people get sick to see …
April 6, 2019. The turnout for the Gilets jaunes was estimated by the ministry of the interior to be about 22,300 throughout the nation, with 3,100 in Paris itself. Barred from the Champs Elysées, the protestors instead went to La Défense, the financial center to …
March 23 and March 30, 2019. By now the Gilets jaunes demands are well known. Buying power (le pouvoir d’achat). The RIC (see previous post). Action on the climate (which may serve as a way into a new kind of activism for some). Pensions. A …
Act XIX: Saturday, March 23, 2019. Geneviève Legay, age 73, was part of a small group that attempted to enter an area of Nice that had been closed to Gilets jaunes demonstrators. What happened next is unclear, at least from the video below, but the …
The RIC (pronounced rick) is one of the most persistent demands of the Gilets jaunes. While their other stipulations require changes (and, I would argue, necessary changes) in fiscal policy involving taxes, unemployment insurance, retirement and other issues, the RIC (Référendum d’initiative citoyenne), or citizen-initiated …
Saturday, March 16. The 32,300 Gilets jaunes who turned out on March 16 numbered only a few thousand more than the all-time low of the previous week. They had promised a massive demonstration, with the call of “all of France to Paris.” This planned …
“If we stop, we’ll go back to being anonymous.”[1] Saturday, March 9. Act XVII of the Gilets jaunes brought out only 28,600 demonstrators throughout the country, with 3,000 of those in Paris. (In comparison, the first Saturday, November 17, saw close to 290,000 in France.) But …
