It was 108° F here this week, and the French police were still teargassing peaceful demonstrators – whether Yellow Vests in Montpellier or Ecologists in Paris protesting capitalist-generated Global Warming on the hottest day in French history!
As the contradictions between neo-liberal economics and human life become more visible, police repression seems to be the new normal even in the “democracies” and I have seen little coverage, much less indignation, in the media at this latest outrage. Pyromaniac firemen!
“Kill the messenger” — whether it be a peaceful crowd of citizens or a whistle-blower like Julian Assange — seems to be the only response left for the defenders of capitalism, even in the world’s two oldest republics: France and the U.S.
Forget about the so-called authoritarian “populists” and outright tyrants like the darling Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia (who will host the next G-20 after murdering a journalist).
And yet we struggle on. My local Yellow Vest group is right now participating in the national Assembly of Assemblies, presenting our Convergence34 resolution calling on Yellow Vests to join together with ecologists, struggling workers, unions, students, discriminated people, women, etc. to block the whole country and force fundamental changes.
With the total collapse of the parliamentary Left in the European elections, the Yellow Vests’ “demand the impossible” solution seems the only reasonable one left. And although Macron’s government claimed “victory” in those elections, in fact his party came in second behind LePen’s, with only 11% of the electorate voting for it.
On the local level (Department 34, L’Herault) we are meeting this Tuesday, bringing together 20-odd autonomous local Yellow Vest groups for the third time. It has taken us 7 months of being beaten over the head and vilified to get organized, but we are still here. And still prepared to keep things going over the sacred summer vacation — normally the death of French social movements from 1936 to 1968 — just to remind folks we’re still around… For example a ‘Yellow Beach’ demo this weekend.
The hope is that the situation will heat up in the Fall, when people return to work and school, and lead to a general strike. The issues are still there, and Macron has given NOTHING in his neo-liberal steamroller drive to gut schools, hospitals, public transport, retirement, health, unemployment and to privatise everything in sight (eg Paris airports).
So our Yellow Vest groups will continue to hold the door open for more folks to join the struggle. We are beginning to get structured; we will go on standing in the hot sun on a few traffic circles with our flyers and yellow vests; we will continue to support the striking emergency room personnel and the striking HS teachers (some of whom are refusing to turn in their students’ grades at the crucial Baccalauréat exam). The crisis ain’t over yet.
A year ago as vacation-time arrived, the dilatory tactics (one-day “strikes”) of the French union leaders had led to the total defeat of the organised working class, steam-rollered under Macron’s Thatcherite counter-reforms. Then, in the Fall, out of no-where, the Yellow Vests sprung up like mushrooms in the damp woods — a vast social movement, 300,000 strong, with the backing of 75% of the French public, struggling against the same reforms but from a poor consumers’ point of view. Quite a surprise, and still alive eight months later.
Unfortunately, the two movements failed to unite, despite the efforts of some of us, and the Macron steamroller continued to move forward, crushing civil liberties and the right to demonstrate in the process, leaving the Yellow Vests bloodied but unbowed.
A convergence of movements and a resultant runaway general strike is not a totally impossible hope. If the social struggle rises again next Fall, as it must in this increasingly unequal society with a long revolutionary history and a hereditary hatred of the contemptuous aristocrats who rule over it, who knows what will happen?
Anybody got a better idea?
Richard Greeman
Fifty years of activism: civil rights, labor, antiwar, antinuke, you name it. Author of anti-capitalist satire: BEWARE OF VEGETARIAN SHARKS www.lulu.com/contents/923573
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