Most of my American friends want to know if all Paris is burning. “Are you safe?” they ask, because media shows video of clashes between police and protesters and fires in the streets.
Anyone who remembers the video from the BLM protests in Portland, Ore., a few years ago will understand the situation in the French capital. Flames can fill a video camera frame even if the area just outside it is chock-a-block with onlookers holding up their cell phones for a better shot. It makes for dramatic television, but it misrepresents reality.
Then, as often happens when the peaceful demonstrators disperse, opportunistic smash-and-grab looters go to work. They, not the student protesters, are responsible for the mayhem. There were no student protests Sunday, but the looters took to the streets after dark.
I’ve been spending a substantial amount of time in Paris for the better part of a decade now, and so far these manifestations have not risen to the level of the Gilet Jaune protests of 2018-20. Place de la Republique has been the site of protest rallies every weekend since I’ve been here, and inevitably the trash receptacles that dot the sidewalks are set ablaze. There are planned marches almost as often, so Parisians are inured to it.
Right-wing Americans have, laughably, blamed these protests on immigration, which has nothing at all to do with the students’ grievances. Schools being understaffed and underfunded are legitimate complaints, and they’re being lodged by French students, not foreigners.
Unlike in the U.S., the rioting does not prompt calls for law and order. The French understand exactly what the problem is – as in most neoliberal democracies, the tax burden has been shifted downward from the rich to the middle and lower classes – and that right-wing government is not the solution. They tend to blame the police, not the protesters, for the violence.
Curfews were imposed in some neighborhoods last night, and more protests are scheduled for Saturday. I’ll be avoiding the areas around government buildings.
Bob Marley wrote this song when he woke up one day to find his Trenchtown neighborhood cordoned off by police for four days following youth riots. It inspired the title of his 1973 album “Burnin’.”
