In Paris, Protests Over Pension Law Take On a Hint of Menace

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During the French Revolution, the Place de la Concorde, the sprawling cobblestone square across the Seine from the National Assembly, was known as Revolutionary Square — the place where the newfound power of the street paraded on full display, in all its glory and horror.

It was there that both King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were guillotined before packed crowds.

Over the past week, the square, which now resembles a chaotic traffic circle, reclaimed an echo of its former self as people overflowed it — drawn by instinct and word of mouth to protest the government’s decision to push through its unpopular pension law, moving back the retirement age by two years to 64.

Arriving shortly after Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne forced through the bill with a constitutional measure, rather than a free vote in the National Assembly, they were propelled by indignation, anger and hope that their show of force on the streets would change things.

“We are relieved, because we know the fight will continue,” said Lou Chesné, the leader of the Rosies, a troupe of dancers that led the crowd in a cheeky rendition of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” adapted to reflect the moment.

The question now for President Emmanuel Macron and all of France is whether this opposition grows and hardens, and if so, what form the protests will take — strikes, marches, violence or a combination of them all.

The first real indication of which direction things may turn will come on Thursday, when the country’s top unions have organized a national strike and protests across the country — their ninth in recent months, but the first since the law was passed.

“Will the movement continue at the same level as before?” asked Pascal Perrineau, a political science professor at the Sciences Po university in Paris. “And will it begin to be tainted by violence?”

Over the course of the last week since the government rammed through its law, the protests have shifted from traditional union-organized marches, with carnival-like elements, to something more menacing.

Every night, “sauvage” — wild, improvised — protests have broken out. Groups gather and march together, dumping out the putrid bags and bins lining many streets because of the ongoing strike of garbage workers, and lighting the trash on fire.

“Paris Rise Up,” they chant. “We decapitated Louis XVI. We will do it again, Macron.”

The police have fortified their presence.

After Parliament met again and failed to bring down the government on Monday, many demonstrators slipped out of the authorized protest zone on Place Vauban, which was surrounded by throngs of police trucks and officers in riot gear.

The filmmaker and writer David Dufresne followed one group, streaming live, for eight hours. “It was like a game of cat and mouse,” he said, with the group dispersing at the arrival of police, and using social media to find one another and start again, 15 minutes later.

Mr. Dufresne said he had the feeling he was living a moment in French revolutionary history like the Paris Commune in 1871, or the time in 1789 when a group like this stormed the Bastille prison, freed a handful of prisoners and took the supply of gunpowder.

“You can say that’s romantic, outdated,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

Gone are the giant union balloons, the dancing troupes and even many of the protest signs — the hallmarks of what many consider the classic French protest movement.

Now the protesters are younger, many wearing masks and helmets.

Before the police banned protests in the Place de la Concorde on Saturday, the protesters set fire to a giant wooden spool at the foot of the bridge leading to the National Assembly, taunting the phalanx of police in riot gear gathered shoulder to shoulder on the other side. A hulking armored water cannon rose behind them.

A group of protesters gathered up cobblestones from a gaping pothole and hurled them at the riot police, who later rushed in at full sprint, their batons raised.

“You have the impression that we aren’t in the same social movement that started last January,” when the government announced its intension to raise the retirement age, said Stéphane Sirot, a historian at Sciences Po who specializes in protest movements and unions. “These are really things that are new, but not shocking.”

Some protesters over the last several days pointed out that the earlier union marches, despite their large numbers, had not worked; the government had passed its law anyway. They said it was time to try more confrontational actions, like those of the Yellow Vests who four years ago ransacked the Arc de Triomphe. They were arrested by the thousands, but they got the fuel tax repealed.

“It made things change a little more,” said Etienne Chemin, 30, a computer programmer, sipping from a beer on the edge of the crowd last Friday night.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Tuesday tabulated 1,200 undeclared protests across the country, which left considerable damage in their wake — parliamentary offices ransacked, Molotov cocktails hurled at government offices, the Lyon city hall attacked.

In a televised interview Wednesday, Mr. Macron alluded to the mob that ransacked the U.S. Capitol. “When groups, as they have this week, use violence without any rules because they are not happy with something, then that is no longer democracy,” he said. “We respect, listen, we try to advance for the sake of the country, but we cannot accept insurrectionists or factions.”

Over the first three nights of improvised protests, 425 people in Paris were arrested, but only 52 were charged, the Paris prosecutor’s office told Agence France-Presse. Familiar criticism about police violence and preventive arrests, raised during the Yellow Vest demonstrations, has already resurfaced.

The new volatility of the protests presents a challenge not only for Mr. Macron but for the unions as well, as they try to keep the public on their side.

The question is, if the unions can gain control of the movement, or if they find themselves overwhelmed,” Mr. Sirot said. “The two forms of protest could be complementary, if the unions succeed in keeping control over their own marches.”

On Tuesday evening, the unions organized another official protest on the Place de la République. It offered a scene familiar to many French workers — giant balloons  floated above vans, speakers roared from the back of a flatbed truck, protesters waved union flags. A university band played Charles Aznavour’s “Emmenez-moi” on their horns and drums, near vendors who sold hot dogs and grilled chicken in baguettes.

But later that night, the police swept in and the cat-and-mouse game ensued, offering another vision of where the country might be heading.

Near the middle of the dense crowd, Angelique Del Ray, a philosophy professor, stood with her young daughter and held up a hand-drawn sign suggesting that the pension law belonged in the piles of garbage.

Ms. Del Ray said she had protested every evening since last week, when the retirement law was pushed through. She harbored hope.

“It’s important to keep up the pressure on him,” she said of Mr. Macron. “He is no longer democratically legitimate. We will push him to the wall.”

Tom Nouvian and Constant Méheut contributed reporting from Paris.





Source : Nytimes