France in Flames: The Latest on the Riots

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What shocked me about the Yellow Jacket protests and riots a few years back was how few Americans were even aware of it. Today France is again dealing with a wave of protests that makes the Yellow Jacket uprising look like a parlor game.

If you read the stories, some media accounts call it protests, others call it riots.  This is an attempt to bring awareness to those who are unaware or who have only read headlines. I first share a dozen Tweets which show the variety of responses from unofficial observers. I follow this with two BBC references and then pull it together with comments from two explanations from people living in France whose identities I can't disclose.

First, some of the responses from Twitter. 

1.
It’s happening in France!!! 2 mayors mansions have been “burnt down” by protestors! 

The revolution, it seems will start in France. People are done with Macron. 
The protests are so so heavy that THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH POLICE to “contain” the protesters! 
Viva La Revolucion

2.

In western France, locals armed with baseball bats fight back against migrants looting shops and businesses, in scenes resembling outright civil war.

This is coming to the UK (and Ireland) soon, make no mistake about it. All by design, of course.

3.

U.K. leaving the E.U. looks better every year with the forced immigration policy.

4.

Who/what is behind this? It is not spontaneous as is being promoted. What is the global agenda here? Is it the Kochs, the billionaires?

5.

They’re chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ as they torch France.

6.

This can't be good for tourism, remember when protesters used come out in the daylight with peace signs and said make love not war!!!;

7.

(photo of fires, Arab men with AK-47s) This isn’t Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan. This is France where 9% of the population has brought down entire cities!

Where are CNN & BBC now?

8.

Rioters have set large residential building on fire in Grigny, France.

9.

The media gave us wall-to-wall nonstop propaganda coverage about the fake “Russia Coup” last week.
Now, they are silent about the coup and riots in France. Not surprised.

10.

There are reports about the death of a police officer who was lynched earlier in Nanterre. Here is another lynching of an alleged plainclothes policeman in France by Islamists, last night.

11. 

Zebras, giraffes and horses in streets after being let out of the zoo by rioting mobs in France

12.

Bus carrying Chinese tourists attacked in Marseille, France, amid ongoing riots.

* * * 

BBC:  France shooting: Clashes and tear gas in Marseille as chaos continues

BBC: A library was set ablaze on Friday night in a suburb of Metz in eastern France. The incident happened a day after a nearby concert hall and municipal building were ransacked. Metz Mayor François Grosdidier said firefighters who tried to reach the scene were attacked.  

* * * 

Unnamed Source Anthony
The French people are very unhappy with Macron's second term aggressive neoliberal Thatcherism. He only cares about GDP, consumption, full employment, financial objectives and the military. He also made a u-turn towards conservatism and top-down authoritarianism. This has been deeply irritating to the French for at least two years now, most of the population doesn't care about getting rich or consuming more, they care instead about saving the environment and improving their bodily and mental health and collective well-being. Forcing an unpopular productivist retirement reform down the population's throat was the last straw. The disenfranchised youth and ethnic minorities are specially hopeless. Intolerance and white-supremacy has been on the rise and the government does little to stop it.

Incapable of being in tune with current events, he slowly built a gigantic powder keg, just waiting for a reckless cop to light it up for him. I had predicted it would happen about 6 months ago, my only surprise is that the trigger event didn't happen earlier.

 

Unnamed Source Carla

In Lyon I saw a big fence in flames down on the ground floor of a building and the day after at the same place there was a motorcycle in flames almost burned! The quarter where I stayed was not in the center so it was calm and quiet. I only see the troubles on TV. They are people pretending to do it as a revenge for the killing of a young boy 17 years old who was trying to escape from the cops after some  speed excess by car. but in fact it's a protest against the retirement at 64 years. Some people are doing it just for the sake of robberies in the shops which sell food, hifi stuff, sport shoes that will go to  their families or be re-sold... mostly left wing people from immigration...

* * * * *

Interesting that Bob Dylan and his Never Ending Tour has been touring the EU and performed in France the 27th through the 30th. The times continue to be changing. 

Feel free to leave a comment if you have insights to help shed light on these events.

Initial Thoughts After My First Trip to Italy

Three of 9 Michelangelo statues in the Medici Chapel

Thursday evening I arrived at my home back in Duluth after an eleven day journey to Italy, specifically Florence and Parma. Becoming immersed in these two cities was so uplifting and sensational that trying to write about, share it, it has been challenging. 

I wrote over 40 pages of notes during my stay, and took what seems like a thousand photos. Over the next few weeks I will attempt to present "snapshots" of the various experiences I had there. 

Late last night I scribbled these two statements in my journal:

If Italy doesn't move you, then your eyes were closed.

If Italy doesn't change you, then your heart was closed.

Time will tell as regards the truth of the latter. From the moment I arrived, though, I fully experienced the former.

* * * 

Over the years I've thought much and written numerous times about influences. Usually I connected influence with people. A century ago, however, a Nobel prizewinner gave a few lectures on influence and connected it with places. Places can pull us just as much as they invigorate us and make us come alive. One of my first thoughts after I'd checked into my AirBnB and began walking the streets of Florence was this one: "I'm home." Something was resonating within me at a very deep level. 

What follows are a few miscellaneous photos from Florence with more to be shared as time unfolds over the weeks to come. 

Bust of Gallileo

Michelangelo's Bacchus

In an open square by the Academy

Bridge across the Arno

Courtyard of the Pitti Palace

One of literally countless painted ceilings.

Typical windows seen from the streets. 

There were three especially cool and unexpected surprises while I was there. Last weekend there was a protest by Peruvians in Italy, aimed at drawing attention to alleged genocide taking place in Peru under the current government regime. On April 25 there was a national celebration of the Liberation of Italy from fascist dictator Mussolini. Florence celebrated with speeches, the laying of a wreath at a monument commemorating this event in which the U.S. drove out Italy's enemies during World War II. (I plan to devote a blog post to this historical moment in which my father-in-law participated.) And third, there was a fantastic MC Escher retrospective of the first order in which I learned of Italy's influence on this great 20th century designer/artist. (This will be re-visited later as well.)

Then there were the numerous interesting people I became acquainted with. And the bookstores. And the food. And the wonder of it all.

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Lawrence Roberts, Author of Mayday 1971, Sheds Light on the Biggest Day of Mass Arrests in U.S. History

"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."
--Oscar Wilde

Author/Journalist Lawrence Roberts

Over the past few years I've attempted write about some of the experiences of my youth in an effort to perhaps gain deeper insights to what I saw and felt and thought, and how it may have shaped me. One of these was my experience of hitchhiking to Washington DC to be part of a major antiwar rally. What prompted me to write my story was Ken Burns' 10 part series on the Vietnam War. I believe it was part seven that covered the events of Mayday 1971. Watching this led me to write a blog post titled Mayday 1971: Correcting the Narrative in the spring of 2019. 

As it turns out several people who had been there for the Mayday rally left comments, and this past fall one of them informed me that a book had been written about the events preceding and surrounding protest. The book is titled Mayday 1971.

After acquiring a copy for myself I reached out to see if I could interview the author, who has clearly taken great pains to assemble and organize all this information so we have a better understanding of what happened and why. 

Lawrence Roberts has been an investigative editor with ProPublica, the Washington Post, Bloomberg News and a leader on teams honored with three Pulitzer Prizes. Mayday 1971 is his first book.

EN: A very big thank you for the work you've done here, Larry, and your efforts to give us an understanding from all angles. Where were you during the Mayday 1971 protests?

Lawrence Roberts: I came to D.C. with a group of friends to participate in the demonstrations. We drove down in a VW microbus from northern New Hampshire, where I was a sophomore at an experimental school called Franconia College.

 

EN: Did you participate in the non-violent protest training on Sunday May 2? What thoughts were you having then?

LR: I wasn’t there for the training because I didn’t camp at the West Potomac Park site. I was staying with friends at George Washington University.

 

EN: What bridge or intersection had you been assigned to block?

LR: My affinity group went to a traffic circle near Georgetown.

 

EN: Were you surprised by how quickly this event seemed forgotten in the shadow of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers?

LR: Yes, I was amazed that the biggest season of dissent in Washington history, followed by the biggest mass arrest in American history, all taking place under a president who would eventually resign in disgrace, had faded from collective memory. Like many people who had been there, I would get quizzical looks for years when I told people what happened. They’d never heard of the events and weren’t quite sure they believed me.

EN: What were the biggest insights you gained from researching and assembling this book?

LR: The Vietnam antiwar movement didn’t realize at the time what a profound effect it was having inside the White House. It’s an example of how sustained and organized nonviolent dissent can influence public policy. I also found it illuminating to retrace how people on all sides of the Mayday protests confronted that extraordinary historical moment. Some people stuck by their principles, while others, for all kinds of human reasons, were slippin' into darkness, as a popular song of the time said.

EN: What were the biggest challenges?

LR: Finding out who exactly ordered the mass arrests. Investigating who dynamited the U.S. Capitol in March 1971, and if the bombers had help.

 

EN: How did this experience color your understanding of the current protest movements on the right and the left?

 

LR: It’s striking to me that a half century ago, thousands of people who came to D.C. to protest nonviolently  against the policies of an authoritarian president were greeted by more than 15,000 police, National Guard, soldiers and marines, and mass detention camps, while this month, thousands of people who came to violently support an authoritarian president found only a handful of Capitol police in their way.

 

You might think that these events were like apples and oranges because they are separated by fifty years. But when you look at the Trump administration’s militarized overreaction to the 2020 protests by Black Lives Matter in D.C. and Portland, and elsewhere, you can see that the powers that be still tend to overestimate the threat of disorder from demonstrators on the Left, and underestimate the threat from the Right.

 

Although the Mayday Tribe’s motto was “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government,” the 12,000 protesters only ever wanted was to stop traffic in the capital. They had no intention of trying to overthrow Congress or override the Constitution, as the pro-Trump mob tried to do.

 

EN: Your book includes a lot of interviews with people who were involved in Mayday. Have you heard from others since it was published?

LR: Yes! I've been collecting some fascinating individual stories about those days from protesters, police, federal agents. They're available at www.lawrenceproberts.com/were-you-there

* * * 

Photos

Middle: Antiwar groups targeting the Selective Service, which conducted the draft. (AP/Charles Harrity)

Below: Troops from the 82nd Airborne being flown in to land on the National Mall (Washington Star photo/Pete Copeland)

* * * 

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it echoes."--Mark Twain 

Related Links

Lawrence Roberts' Mayday 1971 Takes Readers Behind the Scenes at the Biggest Mass Arrest in U.S. History

New book: www.lawrenceproberts.com

Twitter: @robertslawrence