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<\/p>\nHundreds of thousands of people joined yesterday\u2019s \u201cBlock Everything\u201d protests against France\u2019s budget crisis after the government fell on Monday. Police estimated 175,000 people attended 550 political rallies and 262 infrastructure blockades across France. Tens of thousands marched in several distinct protests in Paris. Police said 10,000 marched in Toulouse and in Rennes, 8,000 in Marseille and in Lyon, and 6,000 in Montpellier.<\/p>\n
Clashes erupted as 80,000 police deployed by President Emmanuel Macron assaulted protesters, arresting 540, including 211 in Paris. Drones overflew protests in cities, including Paris and Bordeaux, and across Brittany\u2019s Morbihan and Orne regions. Police charged peaceful rallies and also arrested 30 students after assaulting a blockade of H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Boucher high school in Paris.<\/p>\n
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The protests were an eruption of anger at Macron\u2019s call for social cuts to fund rearmament and France\u2019s massive sovereign debt and his naming of Defense Minister S\u00e9bastien Lecornu as prime minister after Prime Minister Fran\u00e7ois Bayrou fell Monday. Four French governments have fallen in two years. But even as an overwhelming majority of French people oppose Macron\u2019s social cuts and his calls to send troops to Ukraine, he again named a fifth unpopular, right-wing prime minister.<\/p>\n
The protest revealed growing disillusionment and anger with organizations promoted by capitalist media as the \u201cleft,\u201d like Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon\u2019s populist Unsubmissive France (LFI) party and the Stalinist-led General Confederation of Labor (CGT) union bureaucracy. Their role in shutting down strikes in 2023 against Macron\u2019s pension cuts, now opposed by 91 percent of French people, was widely noted. Workers need new organizations of struggle entirely outside the structures of official politics, based on an international, socialist revolutionary perspective.<\/p>\n
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WSWS reporters intervened at the \u201cBlock Everything\u201d protest in Paris. Alexandre, a music student, said: \u201cWe have felt for a long time that no one listens to us. The nomination of yet another prime minister from Macron\u2019s party was the straw that broke the camel\u2019s back. \u2026 We live in a harsh political climate, we see really fundamental rights constantly put in question. It doesn\u2019t matter who we vote for, decisions are taken elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cCome on, we were a large majority against the pension cuts. We were not listened to at all on that. Then they start talking about attacking birthright citizenship as if that were normal. Then they try to steer us onto other subjects, to get us to focus on [Muslim clothes like] the abaya.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alexandre stressed his outrage at the media coverage of Gaza: \u201cThis is a genocide. I have made certain friends, one is from Gaza. It is so hard, his relatives are living things that are difficult to imagine. We then are told the problems of people in Israel, who overall still live relatively well, are on the same level as problems of people in Gaza, who are living horrible things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luc and Boris, technicians at a repair center for Paris mass transit, stressed growing financial pressure on workers, and their disillusionment with LFI. Luc said, \u201cWe try each month to finish not too far into the red. It\u2019s unbelievable. We are the country that pays the most taxes in the world. It would not bother me to pay taxes if public services actually worked well. But the CAC-40 [Paris Stock Exchange] are the buddies of the government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boris and Luc, Paris mass transit workers, attending a \u201cBlock Everything\u201d protest in Paris<\/p>\n
Boris said French life today is summed up by left-wing British author George Orwell\u2019s phrase: \u201cIf your salary is only enough to eat and sleep, it\u2019s not work; in the old days it was called slavery.\u201d He stressed his disillusionment with the sell-out of the 2023 pensions struggle.<\/p>\n
\u201cM\u00e9lenchon,\u201d Boris said, \u201cis a dinosaur. He is there trying to get himself a position. And he got one, but he\u2019s a turncoat, just like the trade unions. Once they have what they want, for them it\u2019s over. As I see it, they\u2019re all the same. They defend their little piece of the pie, and they\u2019re willing to abandon everything to have just a little more.\u201d<\/p>\n
The WSWS spoke to a group of literature students, including Emma and Eva, who said: \u201cIn the June 2024 legislative elections, LFI got a lot of votes, but we are stuck again with a right-wing prime minister who does not correspond at all to our expectations or political demands. We feel no one listens to us.\u201d Emma added: \u201cThere are parties I support more, but there is not a single party I fundamentally agree with everything on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Literature students at a “Block Everything” protest hold a sign saying; “We want workers, nurses, teachers in government. Put a stop to the democratic illusion.”<\/p>\n
Explaining their homemade sign, they said: \u201cThe people in the government come from the social elites; very simply, France is not represented. Not enough power is given to the French people. The same people always decide for us. We want a government that represents what France is today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bastien, a theater student, discussed the French budget crisis. \u201cWe are coming to the end with capitalism and free market policies as they have worked for many years. The proof is what is happening in the economy, besides all the craziness happening on top of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Explaining why he wants a general strike, he said: \u201cWorkers are worth much more than billionaires, who do nothing, sitting on their chairs. Workers are the true essence of the people, they are the ones who really make the country run. And so, if we strike, the country is immobilized. And one-day [strikes] are not enough. We really need a strike that will let us immobilize the country and then really change things.\u201d<\/p>\n