The Gilet Jaunes mobilised again the weekend I was in Paris and we saw them congregating before marching up to the Arc de Triomphe. They went off and started a mini riot and were met with police brutality, tear gas and water canons. Meanwhile we went off to the Henri Cartier Bresson Foundation and saw a great exhibition of the work of Martine Franck. We live in strange times.
Civil unrest is definitely spreading all over the globe and in the news there is now a familiar, almost daily sight of shots of riot police surrounded by billowing smoke violently pulling protestors to the ground but it is not until you read the caption can you tell where the photograph was taken. And all the while life carries on as normal.
We returned to the Champs Elysee the next day and apart from a few smashed windows you could not tell anything had taken place at all. Everything had been cleared up, swept away, but the truth is you cannot brush these problems aside. That is why movements have sprung up across the world in the first place. There are giant chunks of populations who have been ignored for too long and they are now making themselves be seen and heard. The Gilet Jaunes are not fucking around. The French probably do civil unrest probably better than anyone and have a strong history or defiance and revolt and by the looks of determination on their faces this is just beginning…
Plus ca change as the french would say. Or maybe “Vive la revolution!” would be more appropriate. The riot cops came down pretty heavy on the ‘easy to spot in a crowd’ yellow shirts but maybe they would have thought twice if they had giant cobbles coming their way… (p.s i almost took my despacio hi-vis to blend in but decided maybe violence and the spirit of love don’t really go together ;)
this reminds me of when I was in Paris with my parents shortly after the student riots in 1968 – a good number of strees that had been paved with cobble stones were missing thier cobbles – students were hurling them at the police – those were big cobbles, like bricks, not like the little cobblettes in places like Lisboa