What the street is telling us
On Saturday, 320,000 people by the interior ministry’s count, nearly 500,000 by the organisers’, marched calmly. We were there. Flowers in Guéret, lists on cardboard, and a week that begins this morning.
· N° 12
We walked through the Paris march on Saturday, between the Porte de Bagnolet and the Porte de Charenton. Calmer than a week earlier, calmer than what was shown of it that evening. The ministry counted 291 marches and 320,000 people, 70,000 of them in Paris, 22% fewer than on 24 October; the organisers say nearly 500,000. In Guéret, marchers handed flowers to shopkeepers.
Two days in one
What they are saying fits on cardboard, and it has been the same for three weeks: places, teachers, pay, the right to protest without rubber bullets. The night, for its part, had its small groups: 779 arrests, 159 police and gendarmes injured, 36 shops damaged, 3 looted. In Paris, an incendiary device burned six gendarmes of the same unit; prosecutors are investigating attempted murder. Two days in one. Which one did you see?
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday
This morning, the Lycéens! blockade; tomorrow, schools and universities close while the Assembly votes on the budget; on Thursday, every union but the CFE-CGC calls a strike, private contractors included, a first; on Saturday, act IV. The government wants to calm things down. Between those who march and those who count, who takes the time to listen?
Based on Ministère de l'Intérieur, Le Parisien, Europe 1 and France 24