In 2018, the price of petrol was the spark that lit the fire of the yellow vests, known in France as the “gilets jaunes”. In 2019, when people took to the streets again, it was against pension reform. Many in France assume the two issues are separate, but the protests, week after week, suggest these triggers are not the real issue. In fact, they distract us from understanding the big picture. The media too plays a role in perpetuating an incomplete view. The media tend to focus their reporting on the consequences of protest and not on its underlying causes. There’s been the incremental retreat of the state from rural France: maternity clinics, district courts, army barracks, post offices and shops disappearing from the centres of small towns. The people affected by this retreat realized, thanks to the internet, that they were on the fringe. What the yellow vests gave them was visibility in the media and rapprochement with each other. People who had stopped talking to each other as the town centres were hollowed out in favour of strip malls found each other again at the roundabouts where they gathered to protest. They shared their struggles and cast off the shame of feeling as if they had “failed” to stay in the middle classes.
Protests in France Part 1
