French
youth are ‘Up All Night’ to get … something
Nocturnal
movement with undefined goals is turning into a headache for François
Hollande.
By NICHOLAS VINOCUR
4/14/16, 5:35 AM CET
PARIS — If only
they could be paid off.
A youth-led
nocturnal protest movement known as La Nuit Debout (or “Up All
Night”) is becoming a serious headache for President François
Hollande — not because of its onerous demands, but precisely
because its demands are so difficult to define and neutralize.
Born out of protests
against a labor law reform bill, Nuit Debout started on March 31 with
a call to “stay up all night” launched by François Ruffin,
director of the film Merci Patron! (“Thanks Boss!”) to a crowd in
central Paris. It quickly morphed into an all-encompassing sit-in
movement that has drawn thousands of people each night to Paris’
Place de la République, where they use hand gestures inspired by
Spain’s anti-austerity “Indignados” movement to vote on issues
ranging from feminism to constitutional reform and whether to buy a
sound-system with donations.
Asked on a recent
weeknight about the aim of Nuit Debout, a group of several young men
and women on the square shook their heads at the question before
offering a correction.
“There is no
specific goal per se. The idea is to bring people together, to debate
and to reclaim public discourse from the parties and labor unions
that control it,” said a 27-year-old student at a “Welcome
Committee” tent who did not give his full name because, he argued,
“individual views don’t matter.”
Rather than writing
up a list of demands and delivering them to the relevant minister’s
office, as is normally the practice in France, Nuit Debout, like Los
Indignados before it, wants time to figure out what those demands
might be.
“It’s really a
form of defiance vis-à-vis any kind of corporate body including the
unions” — Julien Bayou, a spokesman for the Europe Ecologie Les
Verts party
Some participants
voiced hope that Nuit Debout would gather enough grassroots support
to become a political force on par with Podemos, the Spanish party
born out of the Indignados sit-in movement. But of the largely white
and middle-class people present in Paris, most said they had no
specific ambition beyond being able to speak their mind — without
meddling from politicians or trade unionists.
“It’s really a
form of defiance vis-à-vis any kind of corporate body including the
unions,” said Julien Bayou, a spokesman for the Europe Ecologie Les
Verts party, who said he attends the soirées frequently in a
“strictly personal capacity.”
Said Bayou, “What
we want is something completely different, even if all this is not
totally thought out with words and talking points.”
Pot legalization bid
It is the very
amorphousness of Nuit Debout, as well as its anti-authority bent,
that makes the movement such a headache for France’s ruling
Socialists and anyone else who hopes to gain from it politically.
Left-wing
personalities including Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a well-known firebrand,
have showed up at Place de la République, eager to shine in the glow
of youthful enthusiasm. But participants said they had no interest in
giving Mélenchon, a former presidential candidate, or any other
professional politician, a bully pulpit on their occupied turf.
For Hollande and his
prime minister, Manuel Valls, Nuit Debout poses an increasingly
vexing conundrum: Should they crack down, or let it flourish?
While the Paris
police prefecture could ban a gathering that ostensibly violates
France’s state of emergency prohibition on public demonstrations
(the city has granted special authorization for the gatherings),
doing so would probably invigorate the protesters. It would also
confirm their narrative that Hollande is not really a left-wing
president, but a stooge of banks and tax-evading millionaires.
The result is
light-touch policing of the occupied square. Protesters are allowed
to set up their tents and equipment in the evening on the condition
that they pack it up and stow it away again each morning. Despite
clashes in the early hours of Sunday morning, when a car was torched,
there has been little violence between protesters and cops.
Another option for
Hollande is to pierce the movement’s momentum by answering its
demands.
This is the approach
the government took to a student-led movement against plans to
overhaul the labor system. After weeks of sparsely attended rallies,
Valls unveiled some €500 million in subsidies and hiring incentives
for young workers. That followed a €2-billion payout for public
sector workers — another key demographic angry with the government
for freezing their wages as part of a deficit-cutting drive.
When it comes to
Nuit Debout, however, such interest group targeting is far more
difficult. For one thing, there is no single agenda or identifiable
demand. Moreover, what some of the protesters are asking for — a
full rewrite of the Constitution, for example — amounts to a
rejection of the system, and is beyond purchase.
In one clumsy
attempt to target the Nuit Debout crowd, junior minister Jean-Marie
Le Guen floated the idea of legalizing cannabis. He was quickly shot
down by government spokesman Stéphane Le Foll, but not before
protesters had laughed off the proposal as an obvious bribe.
“We should not
complain that young people are gathering, acting and dreaming of
collective action,” Valls told Libération in an interview. “It’s
a sign that French society is full of life… But I will never let it
be said that we have done nothing for the youth since 2012.”
No Podemos
In terms of sheer
numbers and geographic reach, Nuit Debout is a limited phenomenon. On
Tuesday night, a crowd of some 500 to 1,000 people filled up just
half of Place de la République, or the surface of a few soccer
pitches.
What’s more
remarkable is the movement’s persistence over 13 consecutive
nights, some of which were very rainy. Participants measure the
duration by saying it’s currently the “43rd of March,” a
winking reference to the movement’s March 31 birthday, and to its
improbable persistence.
Crucially, the
banlieues — or tough, immigrant-heavy suburbs where riots erupted
in 2005 — have shown little interest in Nuit Debout
The resilience is
largely thanks to the efforts of organizers, many of whom are
students and members of anti-capitalist groups, who gather each
evening to deploy tents, tables, food supplies and amplification
equipment for the “General Assembly” — a sort of democratic
forum where votes are conducted by show of hands.
Then they take
everything down early the next morning.
Even so, the
movement remains tiny when compared to the mass following that fed
into Podemos in Spain, or Syriza in Greece.
At its peak, Spain’s
Indignados gathered tens of thousands of participants in central
Madrid for weeks on end. It drew a broad demographic of Spaniards
affected by sky-high unemployment and a housing crisis that hit 80
percent of the population.
While France has 10
percent unemployment and slow growth, conditions are not quite as
inflammable as in Spain. And the demographic that participates in
Nuit Debout is made up largely of young white people, leading critics
to dismiss the movement as a rich kid’s fantasy bound to fizzle at
the first sign of an extended school holiday.
Crucially, the
banlieues — or tough, immigrant-heavy suburbs where riots erupted
in 2005 — have shown little interest in Nuit Debout.
That is a blessing
for France’s leaders, who might not want to discover what happens
when the utopianism of la République combines with the raw anger
simmering in housing projects across the country.
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