In Paris, a Protest Movement Awakens

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/opinion/in-paris-a-protest-movement-awakens.html

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PARIS — A revolt over proposed labor-law reforms in France has set off an uprising among French youth, fed up, they say, over their government’s failure to tackle a host of problems and thus robbing them of their future. Calling itself Nuit Debout — roughly translatable as “Standing Up at Night” — the movement recalls Spain’s 2011 anti-austerity Indignados movement and the Occupy movement in the United States. But there are also echoes of France’s own history of popular revolt, including the student-led protests of May 1968.

It all began on March 31 after upward of 390,000 students and labor union members marched in several cities to protest a plan by President François Hollande’s government to change protective labor laws to make it easier and less costly for employers to lay off workers. The idea, the government argues, is to open up jobs for younger people and reduce a seemingly intractable unemployment rate of 10 percent (nearly 26 percent among the young). Mr. Hollande has said he will not seek re-election if he cannot deliver on that promise.

But the attempt to weaken worker protections — whatever its intended benefits — is, in the eyes of many on the French left, a betrayal by a Socialist government they did not elect to enact business-friendly policies long advocated by the right. This move has crystallized more general frustration with the Hollande government. On March 30, Mr. Hollande was forced to abandon a constitutional amendment that would have allowed citizens found guilty of terrorism charges to be stripped of their citizenship, a proposal that provoked mutiny in the ranks of the Socialist party. On Monday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced measures aimed at mollifying the students, including a government subsidy for graduates seeking work. Student leaders vowed to continue their protests.

After the March 31 demonstration in Paris, a handful of protesters decided not to go home and headed for the Place de la République, where they spent the night. Every night since then, between several hundred and several thousand people have gathered there to call for nothing less than the invention of an entirely new political and economic order.

Last Friday, the atmosphere at the Place de la République seemed more Woodstock than man-the-barricades revolution. Some in the young, white crowd were dancing to techno music. A large group sat on the ground attentively listening to someone speaking with a microphone.

There was also an inflatable bubble labeled “Ephemeral Agora.” Inside, a young man was speaking to a small crowd. I asked a group of women, all in their late 20s, why they were there.

They said they had come as much to find out about the movement as to support it. Perrine Gueguen, a high school teacher, said: “We’re under a state of emergency in France, and there is a lot of frustration. During the COP-21 climate meeting in December, we were not allowed to demonstrate on environmental issues.” Her friend Gaëlle Marchand added: “Neo-liberal economics are hurting everyone. Now we have the Panama Papers. We’re headed for a wall.”

Outside the bubble, there was an information table where people could sign up to volunteer. I asked the young woman behind the table, who would identify herself only as Rosalie, what the movement was about. “Our grandparents failed to bring about systemic change in 1968,” she said. “Our parents failed in 1995,” when there were massive protests against pension-plan reforms. “Now our generation has a chance to do something.” She added, “We’re really worried about the National Front, about the environment, about a lot of things, and we have a lot of ideas.”

With presidential elections just a year away, Nuit Debout is not good news for Mr. Hollande’s embattled Socialist party. His approval rating, which rose after each of last year’s terrorist attacks, fell last month to just 17 percent. On April 6, Mr. Hollande’s outspoken minister of finance, Emmanuel Macron, announced that he, too, was launching an alternative political movement, called En Marche! (Let’s get moving!), that he says will be “neither on the right nor on the left.”

It is too early to tell whether the Nuit Debout movement, which rejects any formal structure, will evolve into a viable left-wing political party along the lines of Spain’s Podemos or Greece’s Syriza parties. On Monday morning, all temporary structures were cleared from the Place de la République, but the protesters were allowed to continue gathering at night, provided they stayed peaceful and vacated the public space in the morning.