NOVANEWS
‘We Are In a State of Insurrection’: Deep Inequality and Macron’s Dedication to Elites Fuel Yellow Vest Uprising in France
The price increases for the utilities will be suspended for six months, said Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, but leaders of the demonstrations in which hundreds of thousands have donned yellow safety vests were dismissive of the gesture.
“It’s a first step, but we will not settle for a crumb,” Benjamin Chaucy, one of the leaders of the protest, toldAl Jazeera. “The French don’t want crumbs, they want a baguette.”
The yellow vest protests began November 17, with 300,000 low- to middle-income demonstrators expressing outrage over fuel costs, which have gone up 20 percent in the last year as a result of Macron’s plan to tax carbon use. The price hikes are the result of France’s effort to reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent in the next 12 years—but the reaction from protesters suggests intense anger across the country as low-income households have bore the burden of the green initiative, adding to the untenable cost of living for many, while the rich have been given generous tax cuts.
I don’t understand why not give the low income people fuel subsidies and go after the real big polluters??
“France suspends fuel taxes increase to end Yellow Vests protest” by @tictochttps://twitter.com/i/moments/1069981449921675264 …
Workers who live in rural areas far from city centers were the worst-affected by the fuel taxes, as they rely on their cars far more than city dwellers, bolstering protesters’ complaints that Macron represents those wealthy enough to live in Paris and other large cities.
“People want fair fiscal justice. They want social justice,” Thierry Paul Valette, a Paris protest coordinator, toldAl Jazeera.
Four people have died in the Yellow Vest protests so far, and an estimated 75,000 people took part in demonstrations that turned violent in Paris this past Saturday. Hundreds of vehicles were set on fire and the Arc de Triomphe was vandalized with the words, “The Yellow Vests will triumph.”
Meanwhile, police used water cannons, stun grenades, and hundreds of canisters of tear gas against the demonstrators, as well as arresting about 400 people.
French government considers state of emergency over Paris yellow vests protestshttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/02/french-government-considers-state-emergency-yellow-vests-protests/ …
Al Jazeera English✔@AJEnglish
Violence during ‘yellow vests’ protests in Paris — in pictures http://aje.io/h76em
‘Listen to the anger of the people’: the message of this yellow vest protester in Paris’s Place de la République #GiletsJaunesParis #f24 #giletsjaunes #GiletJaune
65 injured, 140 arrested in #Paris#protests. http://bit.ly/2zBcTJn #GiletsJaunesParis
According to French journalist Agnès C. Poirier, both far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the left-wing group France Unbowed, have tried to link themselves to the Yellow Vest movement—but their attempts have been rebuffed.
“The protesters seem wholly uninterested in party politics,” Poirier wrote in the New York Times last week. “But they do have something in common with the extreme right and the radical left: a profound dislike of Mr. Macron.”
While only a few hundred thousand people have physically taken part in the movement so far, Le Figaro and Franceinfo reported late last month that 77 percent of French people support the Yellow Vests’ protests.
“The Yellow Vests seem to be the face of a deep malaise in French society,” wrote Poirier.