Yellow Vest and Maga Demonstrators
After having witnessed the tragedy with the election fraud rally yesterday, I decided to weigh in with my personal experience as an American ex-pat and sometime demonstrator here in France.
I have attended several Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) demonstrations over the past two years. To set the record straight, the Yellow Vest movement is a global movement covering a number of grievances that affect most of the population (except the elite). The grievances have ranged from worsening conditions in hospitals to cuts in education and pensions, to increased demands on the public sector across the board. And so much more. It was not just the famous diesel tax hike, but that was the straw that broke the camel’s back and sparked the movement. (On a side note, you must understand that the French government had long promoted diesel vehicle use by pricing diesel fuel way below that of our very expensive gas, which is currently around $7/gallon. Diesel cars are more expensive than gas-powered cars, so this was an investment at the time, but the cheaper fuel and better mileage made it worthwhile in the long run. Another important point is that people with lower paying jobs often live further away from their work, so fuel factors in their budget more than for others. I think you get the idea).
Anyway, I had heard a lot of mixed stories about the Gilets Jaunes movement, so I decided to start walking in a few to see for myself. It was an eye-opening experience. The entire spectrum of society was out there: students, the elderly, lawyers, nurses…and yes, the long-term unemployed, who were often toothless and carrying their can of beer. The media decided to focus on them first saying, ‘These people just want ‘free stuff’. (sound familiar?). This was the first media assault on the movement.
Before going on with the Gilets Jaunes, I’d like to enlighten you on French media. Like in the United States, the French media has evolved into an extremely-biased corporatist propaganda tool, owned by a handful of oligarchs. I have been in France for 27 years, and the changes in reporting the last 10 years are startling. I even experienced my first gaslighting with supposedly state-funded France Info, when they announced Hillary Clinton’s California primary victory the day before it took place! It’s important to bring this up, because this is part of the one-two punch that quashes popular uprisings.
Let’s get back to what I was saying. No matter the social caste we were in (let’s face it, that’s what we’ve become), there was a wonderful energy amongst us during these marches, and friendships formed. People were creative with the slogans they wrote on their vests and in the way they demonstrated (camping inside the roundabouts, barbeques on the freeway…). Perhaps they were disruptive (which is the goal of movements, of course), and they could be noisy, but the real GJ movement was NOT violent as the media portrayed it to be. With the exception of the camps and the freeway barbeque, all marches were officially registered at the prefecture beforehand. In short, they were legal protests for legitimate causes.
That’s not to say there are some rogue members of the GJs that have committed some acts of vandalism, but by and large, the local organizers of the movement did all they could to keep the group within their confines during the walks. We all knew that any bad publicity would hurt the cause. This is when the next assault on the movement happened.
Many demonstrations in France take place on Saturday afternoons, starting at 2 pm and ending at 5 pm. After waiting for everyone to arrive, the walks start about 15–30 minutes later. All goes well until the end, when the rabble-rousers come in. All you need to blend in is a yellow vest, this article of clothing that was required by then-President Sarkozy to be in all vehicles in case of an accident or breakdown. This was a perfect way to create identity in this budding uprising, as we are really in a state of distress. It was also a perfect way for any agitator, be it lone wolves or government-sponsored mercenaries, to infiltrate the movement and cause trouble.
As we continue to march in these demonstrations, the tone usually gets tenser and tenser. M-80s start exploding, and the build-up of riot police thickens. Cannisters of tear gas are thrown at the demonstrators and flashballs are fired. I usually will have left by then. The impact of a flashball fired at close range (as is often the case here) is extremely harmful. Hundreds of people have been seriously injured and a few have even died from these arms.
Bear in mind that I live in a smallish town, so we don’t have the same police presence as in Paris, where I have also been twice for demonstrations. That’s whole different ball game. This is where I learned about “kettling” the technique the police use to corral demonstrators and ultimately beat them up. Prior to the lockdown last March, I was in Paris with my friend, an Afghan correspondent for Radio France International to partake in a Julian Assange rally. It happened to morph into a Gilets Jaunes demonstration, and we decided to join in. Looking around, there were essentially the same mix of demonstrators as in my town. I noticed that very few people were wearing yellow vests, as by then, the vests were essentially easy targets. I also noticed that the tone was both ominous and tense, something I rarely felt in my town. We started the morning march around 10:30, walking down the Blvd Montparnasse, which was lined with robocops standing shoulder to shoulder. Against my friend’s advice, I tried to be friendly with some of them in hopes to latch onto to a tiny bit of humanity they may have inside them, but all they did was stare back blankly. As we walked on, the wall of police narrowed in. There were police in the front and in the back as well. At one point, a group of demonstrators was encircled by cops. By then, we had managed to get out of the procession, albeit with some difficulty. The police wanted us to stay in. From a safe distance we saw tear gas rising up from the mob. I’m not sure how badly they got pummeled at that point.
It was even worse in a “general grievances” march I went on in Paris last September (by then, the word “Gilets Jaunes” wasn’t heard as much). Even though it was an officially declared demonstration, the prefecture blocked all the Métro exits near the meeting place. After jogging a few kilometers to make it in time, I ran into a group that was forming in a blocked-off intersection just before my destination. There were at best a couple hundred people, but everyone was scattered, there was little comraderie, and the atmosphere was tense. There were more youth dressed in black and a lot more police surrounding us. This didn’t bode well. We were prompted to march quickly, and as our small, scattered group walked down the boulevard, the riot police started lobbing tear gas from behind. As we started running, I frantically looked for a safe haven. Most stores were shuttered up, but thankfully, a boulangerie was open. Many of us poured in, along with fumes of tear gas. I waited 45 minutes before I felt it was safe to leave. I didn’t dare to venture too close to the demonstrations, which went on until late afternoon, as I knew anyone near the periphery could be kettled in and pummeled with tear gas, flash balls and bully clubs.
Perhaps the greatest harm, however, has been with the media, which focuses its reporting only on the agitators and vandalism, extracting these elements and blowing them up out of context. Without public support, the movement is smothered. Unfortunately, most people have lapped up this fake news. The most poignant account was getting a play-by-play from a gentle young man who volunteers at a bike association in my town. He had gone to Paris to demonstrate and found himself cornered by riot police with their arms on him and a group of other marchers. They sought shelter in a nearby hospital, where they were well received, even if their presence might have surprised some inside. That was my friend’s account. The “official” version was far from that, but who are you going to believe, a kid or a glossy magazine? So, people ended up believing that the Gilets Jaunes stormed the hospital and threatened personnel. This is why I tell the “tsk-ers” that they cannot judge without seeing things for themselves. We are unarmed civilians in the war of information. Being there should give you some street cred, but you first have to deal with people’s cognitive dissonance- they simply refuse to believe you. In short, we have our work cut out for us. We have to be more diligent than “professional” journalists.
On a side note, I remember running into one of my neighbors, a journalist for our local paper, walking with his notebook during one of the demonstrations. He didn’t seem to be on his way to meet anyone, so I tried to engage in a conversation with him. It was weird finding myself asking him the questions; he wasn’t very interested in knowing either my or others’ views, so I took it upon myself to play the role he should have been playing. He was equally disappointing in his responses, which were terse. He cut out quickly. The inaccurate reporting of events the following day didn’t surprise me.
I’ve gotten a similar reaction on several occasions when I tried to contact a childhood neighbor of mine who has risen the ranks of the San Jose Mercury News. First, it was just to talk with her about the Julian Assange extradition preliminary hearing that I attended- to see if what dispatches they were getting…if any. Crickets. What blows me away about this particular “non-exchange” is that she will ultimately be in the same position as Julian Assange.
So, being the curious person I am, I’ve become a citizen journalist. Someone’s got to be on the ground, right? Luckily, I’m finding myself in good company: millions of people are holding up their cell phones, sharing in convo groups, YouTubing from their cars, and writing up articles like this one. Dedicated citizens giving raw coverage from the source, warts and all.
While marching with the Gilets Jaunes through my smallish town, I paid particular attention to the by-standers watching us. Some were admirative, a few seemed not to care, others were curious, and a few were either scared or scornful. I’d go to those people first and ask why they were feeling that way. In five minutes, I could convince them that we were not the enemy and that we were marching for them, too. Some even joined us. Shopkeepers, who had been pummeled with high rents, high parking rates, Amazon and a weakened economy, started finding a scapegoat with the Gilets Jaunes. I went to some of these shops (the ones that didn’t shutter down as we approached), and I talked to the shopkeepers. In five minutes, they realized that we were not the enemy, and that our 10 minutes of walking in front of their shop is not the reason that their business is suffering. I feel tasked to do this mini PR campaign all the time, not just during the demonstrations, but in my everyday conversations. Communicating with empathy is so important here. However, you will have to deal with pushback, which is hard, as you know the person in front of you is ultimately shooting himself in the foot.
I have participated in other demonstrations as well for climate change, and had a completely different experience. No police brutality; no public scorn. I figured this is for two reasons: one, is that the climate change movement has involved a lot of kids, which would make for bad PR if you beat them up; and two, that this is a “safe” subject for the government to skirt around and not do anything, as they have been doing for years. You can attend a women’s march against violence and expect the kid-glove treatment as well. These are causes that haven’t made hard demands that hurt the bottom line of the government.
I cringed while watching what transpired yesterday at the so-called “Trump” rally (for many of us progressives, we saw this as a demonstration against election fraud and for democracy and the right to protest). I felt a sort of PTSD of what I have lived through with the Yellow Vests: the minimalizing of the message, the mass labeling of the demonstrators, the violence inflicted by the infiltrators, the police brutality towards innocent demonstrators, and the public “blaming the victim”. What the people on the sidelines, those sitting comfortably at home watching the biased commentary on their TV screens, don’t get is that “those people” are fighting for us all. This is NOT a Trump issue, it’s much, much bigger than that. Keep that in mind when you are about to criticize any movement.
