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Subject: From Paris, Léa Bouchoucha reports for Consortium News on two sets
of demonstrators, some of whom are mingling while others keep a distance.
From Paris, Léa Bouchoucha reports for Consortium News on two sets of
demonstrators, some of whom are mingling while others keep a distance.
By Léa Bouchoucha
in Paris
Special to Consortium News
Some had hoped the two marches in Paris last Saturday one focused on global
warming and the other representing the 18th straight weekend of Yellow Vest
protests would join forces and help unite environmental activism with
social equity.
On March 8, Cyril Dion, a well-known documentary film maker and
environmental writer, gave a joint interview to Le Parisien with Priscillia
Ludosky, considered one of the founders of the Yellow Vest movement, in
which they both encouraged protesters to march together.
To an extent that happened. Yellow vests were a common sight in the climate
demonstrations on Saturday. And nongovernmental groups Greenpeace France,
the Nicolas Hulot Foundation, SOS Racisme, Friends of the Earth, 350.org and
Alternatiba voiced a fusion of environmental and economic demands. Time
to change industrial, political and economic systems, to protect the
environment, society and individuals, was a typical message expressed on
one banner.
Participants at climate march included a "Revolutionary Grandmother" at
left. (Lea Bouchoucha)
The climate march included a Revolutionary Grandmother at left. (Lea
Bouchoucha)
The contrasts between the two demonstrations, however, wound up drawing the
main press attention. Coverage by outlets such as Reuters and the Associated
Press emphasized how the march on climate change which drew around 45,000
in Paris, according to media estimates was peaceful and included movie
stars. The smaller Yellow Vest demonstration in the capital, estimated at
around 10,000, was marked by rioting and vandalism.
Some Yellow Vests disagree with violence in demonstrations. But plenty of
images have spread on social media that show a few protesters posing proudly
in front of vandalized, expensive restaurants and luxury shops along the
Champs-Elysées Avenue.
A strong majority of French 84 percent of those polled condemned the
violence in a survey released March 20 by Elabe, an independent consultancy.
Part of the Game
Stephanie Albinet, who wore a yellow vest to Saturdays climate
demonstration, would have been in the minority of that polling group. She
was sanguine about the looting and police confrontations shed personally
witnessed at another point that day along Champs-Elysées. Thats part of
the game I would say. At some point we should stop treating the people like
fools.
Consortium News asked Albinet about another criticism of Yellow Vests: that
they are too tolerant of xenophobia and bigotry.
Yellow vests are not all anti-Semitic, racist, violent people, Albinet
responded. They are people like me who for the past four months have
finally found hope in seeing the population wake up. For the past 25 years I
did not give a crap about France, but now I feel like a patriot for the
first time.
Francois Amadieu, a professor at Pantheon Sorbonne University who studies
social movements, noted in a phone interview from his Paris office that
protest violence can achieve results. Its classical and always an issue in
France, he told Consortium News. In terms of timing. French executive
power has often made concessions under pressure. It was for instance the
case on Dec. 10 when the government announced some measures after two very
violent Saturday protests.
Black Bloc Attention
France24 reports that the government has attributed the violence to extreme
elements so-called casseurs who have infiltrated the movement from both
the left and right. The episode is drawing public attention to black bloc
anarchists who have been associated with the most extreme violence.
Amadieu said that black bloc militants arent acting out of spontaneous
emotions. They have long theorized that violence and vandalism will launch
a state reaction by the police. This repression, in the form of tear gas and
so on will gradually cause protestors to become more radicalized and
understand this violence. Black bloc theory also assumes that people become
bored in authorized protests and when there is spillover [into criminal
behavior] people stop being bored and become motivated to reclaim the
streets, and so forth.
The government is planning to militarize its response to Yellow Vest
demonstrations and deploy French soldiers to prevent further violence by
Yellow Vest demonstrators, media outlets are reporting.
Despite some mingling of climate and Yellow Vest protesters, Amadieu said it
was significant that a core of Yellow Vests refrained from joining the
climate march. Usually, this convergence does not work out as it is not the
same sociology, he said.
Hoping to Unite
Corentin Durand, a 26-year-old physics post-graduate student who wore a
yellow vest to the climate march, hopes the two movements are merging. We
should fight a battle on two fronts, he said Saturday as the climate
protest moved through the citys Grands Boulevard neighborhood. I cant
deal with the fact that our society is fully dependent on people who work
very hard every day to make ends meet. Its intolerable, Durand said. I
hope that fighting climate change will bring social justice for everybody.
Corentin Durand: A battle on two fronts. (Lea Bouchoucha)
Corentin Durand: A battle on two fronts. (Lea Bouchoucha)
Durand said his apprehensions about global warming affect his everyday
routine. All day long, in each of my actions; when I turned on the light or
the tap, Im wondering how it would impact the environment. I never ride in
elevators, always take public transit and bike and never get on a plane.
Public transit, however, is patchy in rural France. And when President
Emanuel Macron tried to initiate his climate-protection agenda by raising
fuel prices, he notoriously ignited the Yellow Vest movement, which sent a
loud message not to expect low-income people, already struggling to pay
their bills, to pay a disproportionate price for climate mitigation.
In response to Yellow Vest pressure, Macron on Jan. 15. launched a
two-month-long big debate of listening tours and town halls and citizen
input via booklets of complaints. Some thought the process had been lulling
the Yellow Vests into complacency, but Saturdays protests countered that
impression.
66 Proposals
Attempts to make climate policy more socially equitable are coinciding with
Yellow Vest pressures on the Macron government. On March 5 in the context
of the big debate, 19 nongovernmental organizations presented the
government with 66 proposals as part of a new ecology and social compact to
ensure the countrys environmental transition program is done more
equitably.
One champion of this effort is Nicolas Hulot, a former environment minister
and longtime campaigner who resigned on live radio on Aug. 28 out of
impatience with the governments foot dragging on climate and other goals.
Laurent Berger, a prominent unionist, is also aligned with the effort.
There is no contradiction between social consciousness and the respect of
the environment, Berger told Le Monde. In our pact, we find environmental
organizations, unions, anti-poverty, housing, youth associations and popular
education movements.
In the same article, Hulot promoted big bang reform of a tax system skewed
in favor of the affluent. The current system is unfair, and the burden is
not equally shared, Hulot is quoted as saying.
Stéphane Cuttaïa lives in rural France, the stronghold of the anti-system
Yellow Vest movement that generally regards the Macron government as
indifferent to its concerns and preoccupied with European Union affairs and
urban centers of wealth.
Were very interested in revitalizing the local economy, Cuttaïa said by
phone this week from his home in the Île-de-France region. The Yellow Vests
speak to this. What we see today in France is that there are large cities
Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseille and then there are many rural and
semi-rural territories where public services and trade have disappeared.
Residents here are forced to go long distances to shop, see a doctor. It is
generating many energy costs.
Sign at left: "Macron. Action ! Because, we don't want to explain what was a
polar bear." At right: "Not happy, not happy, not happy!" (Lea Bouchoucha)
Sign at left: Macron. Action ! Because, we dont want to explain what was a
polar bear. At right: Not happy, not happy, not happy! (Lea Bouchoucha)
Green Vests
Cuttaïa runs Cest déjà ça a café that he describes as providing a
community center in the small town of Saâcy-sur-Marne, around 75 kilometers
from Paris. In November, he used social media networks to launch Green
Vests, a largely citizen initiative that hopes to mix Yellow-Vest and
green environmental issues. The Green Vests are now circulating an online
petition with 30 proposals. One of those proposals is free public
transportation in rural areas; a more equitable approach to reducing
emissions than Macrons attempt to raise fuel prices.
We recognize our social concerns in the Yellow Vest movement, but we think
that measures regarding ecological emergency are very limited, Cuttaïa
said. We want to create a bridge between the different organizations
mobilized on behalf of climate deregulations, biological exterminations and
social claims.
Bernard Guericolas, a 75-year-old retiree who joined the environment
protests in Paris on Saturday, regrets the years that have been lost to
inattention and inaction on global warming. When I was young, I was happy
to take a plane ride, Guericolas said. I wouId have loved to own a big car
had I been able to afford one. But I had it all wrong. We were not aware of
what we did. In my mind, its the role of politicians to anticipate and it
is what they are paid to do. At the end, we (our generation) are guilty, but
we are not accountable.
Bernard Guericolas: My generation is guilty, but not acceptable. (Lea
Bouchoucha)
Bernard Guericolas: My generation guilty, but not accountable. (Lea
Bouchoucha)
Along with 2 million other French people so far, Guericolas signed an online
petition in support of the lawsuit that several nongovernmental groups filed
on March 14 against the government for climate inaction.
The lawsuit, which is similar to litigation confronting several other
governments around the world, is probably more important politically than
legally, says Arnaud Gossement, a professor at Sorbonne University in Paris
who specializes in environmental law and spoke by phone. The lawsuit helped
to stir the mass mobilization we saw this weekend, but from a legal point of
view, its more complicated. For one thing, Gossement said, a judge could
dismiss the case. And if the case goes forward, it could take several years.
And we do not have time to wait.
That sense of urgency long pent up among climate activists is motivating
young people worldwide to follow the lead of the 16-year-old Swedish
activist Greta Thunberg, who last year began cutting school, holding
solitary demonstrations outside the Swedish parliament and questioning the
point of schoolwork when the future of humanity looked so uncertain.
In a scathing speech at a UN climate conference during which she told
participants our civilization is being sacrificed so a very small number of
people can continue making enormous amounts of moneyshe became an
international sensation and role model.
About three months ago, some French high school students began cutting
school on Fridays to join climate demonstrations.
On Friday, March 15, Eponine Bob was one of them as she joined the Global
Student Strike march in Paris. Im here because our generation is going to
live with the effects of global warming, the teenager told Consortium
News. People are afraid.
Bob said she tries to do her best to consider her personal effect on the
environment in everyday life. But in the end, its not families that
pollute the most. Its [corporate] lobbies and big companies, she said. I
dont think that there is enough regulation and its become a real issue.
Léa Bouchoucha is a multimedia journalist currently based in Paris. Her work
has appeared in Vogue U.S, the Huffington Post, NPR, CNN International,
Womens eNews, Euronews, Elle, Le Figaro. She has reported from Turkey on
Syrian refugees and LGBT rights and from Israel, where she was working as a
news editor and reporter at the international news channel I24 News.