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American government: we’re deporting your friends and neighbors to third countries, burning your crops, poisoning your water supply, and delivering a plague unto your houses
Americans: What?! You can’t do that! I’m going to write angry social media posts and participate in a quickly-forgotten weekend protest that disrupts little to nothing! Not this weekend though, I have work in the morning.
…and also re-elect you because the other guy said he’d make housing more affordable for everyone
And the other guy was a woman. Can you imagine?
I live in very, very rural France. Country-wide protests are happening because high-school students demand better… Well, better everything.
Yesterday I carpooled with my kid’s teacher to protest in the “biggest” town (pop. 9,000) in the county. 700 people marched. Some drove over 60 miles one way to be there, when gas costs 2,35€ a liter.
In the past week two kids lost an eye, one an arm, one their lower jaw, because of police violence. (The eyes might not be beyond saving, I’m not sure.) Even middle-schoolers fight with their parents to be allowed to protest.Country-wide headcount was 400,000. Our tiny march, every tiny local march did its part.
And that was a weekday, small protest. Saturday after next is a big one.
I’m really proud of the kids.They really do. 3 years ago my daughter was getting ready to take a school trip to France when protests broke out over something. I was worried about the trip and ended up learning a lot about how France protests. Here are some things I learned:
Protesting is considered important and this is taught to kids in school.
It’s often a family affair, grab the whole family and go protest.
Protests are a happy, party-like environment with music and vendors selling food to protestors.
Leaders actually listen to some.extent.
Leaders actually listen to some.extent.
Do they? I haven’t seem a lot of meaningful changes in France due to protests in the last 10-20 years. Perhaps you have a list of them that a directly due to protests? It seems like the ruling class, leadership and in general regular people just ignore protests as ‘part of life’.
Macron cancelled a tax hike right before the pandemic, IIRC. I can’t think of anything else particularly substantial from the last 10-20
They do listen to some extent. Not always, obviously, but saying protests are basically useless is just wrong. The CPE was scrapped after protests in 2006, the écotaxe was abandoned after the Bonnets Rouges protests, the fuel tax increase was cancelled after the Yellow Vests, and the government backed down on several measures after the 2024 farmers’ protests. You can argue protests do not always succeed, but pretending they achieve nothing just ignores what actually happened.
The science on it shows they are effectively useless. What they do is put messaging out that may have long term changes. But quick changes? They typically are worse for messaging. Know what works even better? Voting and participation in government.
Show me “the science”.
